Editing The Pen Addict 523/transcript (section)

== Break ==


'''Brad:''' Sorry I was busy scrolling through the offers. I was thinking as I'm looking through this they rarely have inks on our page at Pen Chalet. This week they have Krishna Super Rich inks and they have Colorverse Rising Reflection Glistening Ink in there. So there's a couple ink options for you. There's also a couple of Conklin Wood Barrel pens. They have a fountain pen. I'm actually kind of more compelled by the Rollerball the 898 Rollerball that's listed down further below. It looks like a cool shape and a cool design for me. Then you roll into the big ones like the Visconti Homo Sapiens Demo Stones which is a great deal. They also have the Pelican 205 Petrol which is a highly recommended pen by me. I have not done a rating on the Pelican 205 but I assure you that one will rate out very well. One of my favorite hard to say that's an entry level pen being you know over $100 but it's just a fantastic fountain pen one that I love. So yeah go check out all the deals at penchalet.com.

'''Myke:''' Alright so that's penchalet.com to go and check it out for yourself. Hit the password hit the podcast link at the top of the website. Enter the password penaddict and you will get your hands on these wonderful offers and the code that you need to save on 10% anything at any time over at Penchalet. Our thanks to Penchalet for the continued support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Brad:''' Alright so what you're telling me is to stop talking.

'''Myke:''' I did try three times I think. To take a break today.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I just have a real difficult time explaining this in a podcast segment because it is. It is. And it's broad right? Like it's there's a lot of moving parts. It's hard to make something complicated simple Myke.

'''Myke:''' So you mentioned some of the products that you scored so far and the ones that we've got in the notes like the Rotary 600. What did that score? Just as a refresh.

'''Brad:''' 80. So yeah it's an 80. It's one of the two 80 products. The Bit Crystal?

'''Brad:''' 60. That was a big controversy. Controversy Myke. Why was it controversial?

'''Brad:''' Because people thought I was way too high on that although I think there was a lot of support for that grade. It's again it's a contextual grade. I enjoy that pen a lot and it sits here in my pen cup as we were talking about last week. It is every time I pick it up it's always going to work exactly how I expect it to work and you can't say that about every product. It's also beautiful. It's also fun to use. It's also convenient like it's portable right? you can take it places. It's also a good art tool in that you can do different shading and coloring with it. It's a very multi-purpose pen that is extremely inexpensive. I don't like price doesn't you know isn't necessarily a category in these ratings because like it's products I already own. Again I'm not recommend it's not a recommendation with you know a recommendation price very much plays into that but these are almost like discounting price but you can't help but talk about the price in some of these when they're very low or very high and the brick crystal is just very very inexpensive and it just makes me enjoy having it around so I will choose that pen. Should price impact the scores? No I don't think so and for what I am trying to do I don't think so. I can't help but talk about it right when you talk about the pilot 823 right I think it's a good value pen but that doesn't go into the grade of what I feel about the pen and the product as much I'd be lying if I said it didn't impact it some right like that's just how these things work that's how like just built-in biases work right I like I haven't graded out a Nakaya and maybe I won't I don't I don't know what I'm gonna do from one week to the next I just have I keep a running list and pick one that I want to use that week or discuss so I don't think price should be a category for pen addict ratings or a consideration for pen addict ratings but when I do reviews on the blog they are a hundred percent part of the review because again in the recommendation hey is this a good deal is this a good value which you can't define for everyone to begin with but you can just kind of contextualize hey is this ink a ridiculous price per milliliter and makes it not as compelling even if it's good can you buy a similar ink for half the price would you consider that like that's a pen addict review that doesn't that doesn't relate to you know what I think about it and in for the pen addict rating so

'''Myke:''' the last one that we included in the notes was the statler war packs which scored what

'''Brad:''' 20 20 it is I called it like the meme pencil it's not really a joke like it's for real like it's this extruded like trying to be like recyclable eco-friendly but it's just a bad performer right if the core was good and you could sharpen it it might rank like a 40 or something like that but it's just not only a bad a poorly designed product it's a poorly functioning product and that just drags it down the list but that is actually one of the challenges you know when I wrote about it this week for pen addict members in the newsletters like the selection bias that I have towards stationary is why would I ever choose to have these bad products around so it's hard to have a bunch of grades that are low on the scale because I don't use those products anyway so that it's that's been a little bit of a flaw in the system right whereas those products are perfect for pen addict.com reviews right they're great for reviews to tell you hey don't spend your money on this product but then after that like if I do that like I might never see the product again you know I've probably given it away to someone or you know send it to the kids for school or something like that so I don't have a lot of like horrible products laying around so that's there's definitely some selection bias involved in that.

'''Myke:''' So you've got 25 products rated through the power system.

'''Brad:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Myke:''' At the moment 10 of those 25 are 60 above average. 5 are 50 average and then you've got like you know a few more below and above those two scores.

'''Brad:''' Yeah so that's 15 out of 25 kind of in the middle there. Mm-hmm. So we're looking at a bell curve. So definitely and it is that's where the bias comes in and that my choice right I'm choosing a lot of the products that hey I use this product a lot let me write it up for the par and see how it stacks up right let me see how it stacks up against these others and it turns out that a lot of the products I choose to use I think are better than average. Funny how that works right that's like it's completely biased like I'm not trying to be unbiased in these ratings right like I'm not like I'm very clear on that. Um so that tends to be the hardest part is kind of describing the middle ground and what the differences are in these middle ground products which are all great like these are great products that I use it's the most used category of products like by far so it's probably going to continue to have this bell curve distribution on the grades on the par scores that I keep giving um just because that's the products I enjoy using the most right and then it's really hard for a product to separate either above or below that middle ground so maybe in the end you know a year from now is has you know the usefulness of this um you know this scale um become you know not necessary maybe maybe maybe but um you know it's kind of like we'll see how it goes like it needed to get to a certain point to kind of sort out these grades as I thought they would right I don't I don't pregrade these products right I don't think about this ahead of time like oh I'm going to write up the 70 today it's like I generally don't think about it that way I don't the grades just kind of are what the grades are um so yeah they're going to keep piling up there in the middle they they just are and maybe that's a flaw of the system maybe that's a benefit of the system you know I'll let the I'll let the user decide if they they get bored with this oh Brad everything's a 60 that Brad uses I was like yeah well you're right so maybe the usefulness of the system um ends at a certain point but right now I'm kind of enjoying kind of sorting all these

'''Myke:''' products out do you score then write the article or do you write the article then score I write the

'''Brad:''' article and then score and now that I have a bulk of them I can look like I will think about a product so like I just did the vanishing point right and it only scored a 50 and I put in the reasons why it scored a 50 and then I look what I'll do is I'll look at the other 50 rated products and see if it fits in within and then I'll look at the other 60 rated products and go does it fit in with that group like am I choosing the group in the 60 ahead of this 50 product and if the answer is yes repeatedly well then I've scored it then it's a 50 right like I can take what I've already done and take all the 60s and decide is it a 60 is it a 70 or is it a 50 right and it really works for me that way when I put these products as simple as putting them side to side and going hey you know what I which pin am I gonna choose and not choose for today but which pin am I gonna choose like overall like for forever right what I choose you know the big crystal over the vanishing point that's not how it works right so the big crystal is kind of related more to like the different ballpoints in that in that range right but the pilot vanishing point is a 50 and the Lamy Safari is a 60 I'm gonna pick up the Lamy Safari a lot more than the vanishing point these days right just from ease of use just from a fun factor just from the options that I have with inks not that I don't have options with the with the vanishing point but that's just where I'm at right now with like pin like the vanishing point and why I would put the Safari in a category up from the vanishing point so it's it's definitely useful having other scores to play off of when you're writing up a new one so like you know that's that's kind of how I think about it does it fit you know by the time I'm done writing the article what have I decided the grade is going to be and then how does that grade fit in with the other things that have already graded around it either above or below it or the same and is it correct and again that's just where things fall

'''Myke:''' all right I think that wraps it up for this time I'm pleased we've spoken about all right I want to be able to touch on the power ratings in the future like I've been encouraging you to bring this to the podcast yes because look well because I feel like it's just completely confusing no no we can sit and discuss the idea behind it all day and people can either get it or not like what we've done now but at a certain point you understand what a score is so like it just contextualizes