Must EVERYTHING be an 85 score or higher?

I have noticed the trend you mention. However, the case with the "unwarranted" 100 score (according to a whisky connoisseur, let's say) is an outlier IMHO and one can quickly "ignore" such a review if they feel it is not consistent with their experiences or expectations.

I think the beauty of this site is that people can post their own individual score (using whatever system they wish), and tasting notes, and one can compare and contrast with their own thoughts and opinions.

IMHO this site is richer for having an "open" system of reviews. As with many things in life I believe that it should be left to the individual to be the judge of what they agree or disagree with, whilst accepting that others' views will differ and respecting the right of others to put forth their opinion.

There have been lots of discussions RE: the 100 point scoring system and its pros and cons. For a purist the scoring system does not make sense because there is not a normal distribution of scores out there (there are many more good to great whiskies than there are very poor whiskies which makes sense, if you think about it - it would not be profitable for a distillery to put out totally crap whisky, right?).

Personally, I've rated whisky below 70 on a couple of occasions where 70 for me is the borderline between a good and not good whisky. Any whisky I rate over 90 has to be truly exceptional and I'm yet to score that high on Connosr (although when I finally taste my Port Ellen 30yo, it may break my rarified "superstar" 95+ points rating).

I seem to have hit on a comfortable rating formula which puts my whiskies close to the way Jim Murray might score them. - which works for me, because I enjoy looking up whiskies in his Holy Scripture (P.S. props to whomever it was recently on Connosr that used this term instead of Whisky Bible, I'm really liking it and hope you don't mind that I've stolen it!)

I'd personally never score a whisky 100, but the reason why most of my scores are around 85 is because I only buy good whisky's and therefor don't generally get to take notes anything that would get less then 80 in my scoring.

For what people are paying for most of the whiskies reviewed here, they damn well should be scoring in the 80+ range! That said, I tend to ignore the score and read the comments. Recently I looked at a review (I can't remember what it was for), where the comments were some of the most complimentary that I have yet seen, but the score had been posted somewhere in the high 60s...

@PDD I half agree with you. If someone rates a whisky very high or very low without a proper review, I usually dismiss it.

On the other hand, my rating scale is relative with what I have tasted. I have many bottles at 90+ but whenever I taste something exceptional, all my other ratings will go down a bit.

@PDD I agree with you. The fact is that mostly everyone here indeed is ignoring reviews like the '1sentence-100' you mentioned. Another point I noticed is a guy who just created an account here to make advert for his homepage...

In my opinion we shouldn't ban or delete those pple but maybe we could downrate them or the reviews like we can do here at the discussions. I additionally would love to see some more options here, e.g. statistics for the user's ratings. An average rating for the particular user would be very interesting to put his scores in a context.

I was planning to ask @Jean-Luc about some board-issues, but he hasn't added me as a buddy yet :(

@Peatpete You are right too, but I am looking at the average scores of specific whiskys here too. And I would prefer to have this score open-minded.

@PDD My friend I myself have a scoring system similar to Systemdowns. And have encountered much the same thing has whiskywise. Having tasted one awful whisky, WHICH the whisky bible had given 91ish. And 3 superstar whiskies. A 40 yr old Speyside that I won, a bottle of Ardbeg Lord of the Isles (runs $800-1000) and my all star friend Glenfiddich Snow Phoenix.

I myself, tend to research the heck out of my whiskies before buying or even drinking one. And considering that most whisky distilleries won't be producing bad whiskies because then you will get a bad reputation.

That being said I have tried whiskies that scored very high, but wound up not caring for them because of taste considerations.

The RANDOM high and low reviews with scores out of whack and no explanation does irritate me, but I just ignore them and move on. When they've rated a whisky and thrown the score out of whack I'll be honest I start doing averages. If I get that average off one or two doubtful reviews, I then ignore those reviews and just average out the rest.

@peatpete, without a uniform scoring system, some people wanting to use the whole 100 point scale might find a mid 60s score acceptable or even good. I think the premise of a 100 point scale is somehow based upon a notion some of us (at least in the USA) have from grade school about a good grade. A D grade (below average) was usually in the 60 point range with the best grade being a 100 but many countries and cultures don't grade this way, some countries give a 1 for the best score and a 5 for the worst in school marks.

Unless the scoring system is defined here, it's somewhat open to interpretation what a score means. At least in Mr Murray's book, he has a scoring system. In the absence of a clearly defined system, I think you really have to go one the reviewer's comments.