pillreports and ratings: eating more than one pill at a time

is it just me or is it difficult to accurately rate a pill if
a) youre consuming more than one at a time, or more than one in a night (and dont have enough time in between dosage to allow for comeup and comedown)
b) consuming a different pill either before, same time, or after as the pill you are rating
c) are enjoying a polydrug combination?
its just kind of annoying to look at a pill report and have people say 'yeah great wonderful pill, peak lasted 4 hours' and then look further down to note that they ate two or three in the course of the night? i mean, by rating guidelines, a nine/ten is "Real MDMA, Peak 5 Hours, Clean, Single Dose, Must be EZ-Tested" and even a 7 is "Real MDMA, Peak 3 Hours, Clean, Single Dose" [note in both 'SINGLE DOSE'] and if you eat two of the pills, you DOUBLE the dose of mdma, and hence of course if you eat two pills the effects are going to be much more pronounced..
for me a pill can only be rated at an eight or nine if they allow me to go the whole night, or most of it, without wanting more. and maybe its a tolerance issue, but the point remains... and i do know that it would be fruitless disregarding pill reports where the user eats more than one pill at a time, because most people do - its a simple fact that there are probably more people out there eating 3 in one night and actually posting a rating (because theyre more likely to be in the drug culture and ie pill reports), than people eating one.
but is there something we can change? or maybe mods can adjust the rating, or make it clearer to people that they need to take dose into account when rating?

yer i rember reading not long ago a guy rating a blue dexter a 7. But futhur on he says he drank 12 beers b4 it...
And another thing that anoys me is when people give good pills shit ratings cause there tolerance is so hight, and they dump every weekend.. no wonder!! Theres alot of inacureses in pillreports. but if u sift thru it u can generally pick up what there like.

ive come to regard pill reports as a measure of central tendency. ive given up reaing the actual reports...rather i just look for patterns

I have no problems with people taking multiple pills over the night and reporting one. Some people are a fair judge of this sort of thing, and if they say in the report they have consumed multiples then thats fine. Consuming multiples and not saying so is where you hit snags.
Better to have a report where someone has consumed more than one than to have no report at all.

^^^^ right on Soma. There are alot of shit reports in there but it's better than not having them there at all.
Everyone who adds to the reports usually determines if the report is correct or not, that's what makes pill reports so good. If someone said they were "off their face" and they had two of them, then someone else said they ez tested it and came up MDMA had one and they were "flying", you can pretty much say that it's a good pill.....
The one thing that really pisses me off though is the people who keep writing new reports on the same pill!.......IT SHITS ME TO TEARS. I think one day I counted something like 10 reports on the board on the beige safe sexes. WHAT IS THE USE OF THAT?? Anyway, it happens and I guess you can't just keep deleting all of them otherwise you wont get reports at all.

Yeah I mean, ok, your not going to be able to accurately distinguish a pill rated 8 between a pill rated 9 because they affect everyone differently anyways, and what you might consider a 9, someone else may consider a 6...you kknow what i mean.
The purpose of pill reports is 'harm minimisation', so you can log on, compare your pills to what other people have said about em, and then go, 'sweet, well it's not gonna kill me...other people have said it's ok..."
And I know this has ben done to death...but remember, test you pills.
Take Care =P

As long as the pill has been tested and the reports are fairly consistent it's good enough for me. I take most of the comments with a grain of salt as people tend to get excited and embellish on the 'wiked goog's aiiight...'.
It's better to have more reports from various posters and you can use your judgement and the general trend of reports to make a decision whether or not the pill is worth chasing. I basically ignore the ratings as a result, I look for trends in the posts that are there however if one type of pill is receiving higher ratings than another it is obviously more interesting.
But referring to the topic at hand I would be less likely to take a report seriously if the poster had posted more than one report and had consumed more than one type of pill or even to a lesser extent more than one of the same pill. But even so I would not completely disregard it, if it has comments to back it up.

The thing that i notice seems to happen is ppl don't pay attention to the duration times specified on the rating guidelines. A lot of reports tell of 8's and 9's that "didn't last very long"...
But I must agree that (slightly) innacurate reports are better than none, it puts you in the ball park as to the quality of a pill if your totally in the dark.

well i already do base my understanding of certain pills on patterns and the majority of reports rather than individual ratings.... but what pisses me off is as squirrel said.. their ratings dont fit in with the guidelines.. if you peak for 5 hours, but had 2, then logic will say that if the same person had only 1, theyre more likely to peak for only 3 hours max.
i guess it bothers me because some people will happily have 2 pills in one night regularly to compensate for weaker pills... while i rarely want to be having more than 1 pill, nor want to spend the money on a pill to find out it only reaches a value of 8 when double dropped
[ 28 September 2002: Message edited by: melancholic ]

Remember however, the max effect you would get from any one pill would problably be 5 whole hours of full blown peak. If someone took 3 and got there, it is possible that someone may get there with only one and a half.
People are encouraged to give as much (relevent) information as they can, that way everyone can make their own judgements.
Rare you will find a pill poorly rated. If someone says it went for two and a half hours, rest assured we will modify the rating. Just remember, mods sleep too and have big weekends.

Further to that, the reports are entirely subjective and based on the mood of the poster. What one thinks of a pill with respect to another may be contrasting completely.

IMHO the whole rating system on pillreports is retarded.

Cheers, and your thoughtful constructive ideas are...? Or is it a no-hoper and we just scrap PR for its retardedness?

This post is not directed at anyone in particular, but rather Pillreports users in general.
Pillreports is a global database for measuring the quality of ecstacy pills. It says so right in the title bar.
Let me break that down: It's global, so we have information pouring in for many countries, into this database. It's supposed to be about 'ecstacy' pills, which as we know are notoriously variable in contents and quality. Pillreports is also supposed to be a qualitative reference for the contents of the pill.
The first question anyone asks about a pill should be "What's in it?" - Now this question could be simply answered in general, if everyone carried reagent testers with them when purchasing pills. Unfortunately, not everyone is able or willing, to do this. So Pillreports exists as a way of sharing the knowledge that we may gain from testing results. If everyone got into the habit of testing their pills with a reagent tester, then chances are Pillreports would become somewhat redundant. A Pillreports based only on testing results would simply be providing a record of what anyone could find out easily for themselves.
So, the second question people ask about a pill is, "What's it like?" - this opens up a barrage of subjective comment that is neither qualitative, quantitative or verifiable - because people react differently to the same chemicals, but many aspects of the experience are common between people. A system of peer review has the potential to provide information way beyond the normal resources of a single person, meaning that someone should be able to get authoritative information on the general quality of an ecstacy pill based on the experiences of others. However, this information must be taken with a grain of salt, knowing that everyone is different. A Pillreports based solely on user ratings would be an unsupported comparison of opinions and subjectivity.
However, fortunately with Pillreports we have the option of gaining information about someone's pill experience based on both user rating (subjective) and reagent test result (qualitative). Ideally this information would be able to be compared with GC/MS testing of the pill (quantitative) to allow people to judge accurately what the pill contains, and what to expect from it. Without the quantitative measure, we have a Pillreports that is based on deduction. From a test result, and user report with a subjective rating, we may make inferences about the suspected contents of a pill, and how strong the dose is. This is incomplete information, and it cannot be expected to be foolproof, hence many people's exasperation with Pillreports (particularly when they expect to be given precisely accurate, free, easily accessible and reliable information about something they bought off the street from some dealer).
Think about this - you hear about a pill, with vague or clear details about its appearance, contents and the effects it gives to a user. When you look up this pill, on Pillreports, you are comparing your observations to someone elses... and while they may experience exactly the same effects as you do, their way of expressing this in writing may be vastly different to yours. The terms they use, the intensity with which they describe the experience, their personal history with drugs, the setting they dosed in, and many other factors contribute to the report. People often find it hard enough to agree on the colour of a pill, let alone the suspected contents or dosage.
You cannot expect Pillreports to be a foolproof method of identifying your pill and forecasting what you'll get out of the experience. Instead you must treat Pillreports as a reference, from which you are able to draw limited conclusions based on other people's opinions. Even if Pillreports was modified to include GC/MS quantitative results, the information would only be any good if you could confirm absolutely that your pill was from the same batch, and even then only if it was a well produced, consistent product. The ultimate responsibility for finding the information lies upon your own shoulders; test your pills and practise harm minimisation when trying new product. It is not the duty of someone else on the internet to provide you with a perfect shopping list to go out and find the sickest shit on the street to fuck you up.
The rating system might be a ham-handed approach to broadening our information gathering strategy, but it's the best option we've got. It adds another dimension to the qualitative data we can get from reagent testers. The wide user base tends to support peer review, allowing for anomalous results to be pointed out quickly, and the addition of moderators in the last year has improved Pillreports out of sight.
If you can think of ideas to improve Pillreports, let us hear them. How would YOU organise a global database of ecstacy results to ensure that the information we have access to (qualitative test results and subjective reports and/or ratings) is presented in a useful and unambiguous fashion? What is lacking from Pillreports now besides access to quantitative dose information?
Furthermore, does Pillreports provide you with a list of pills so that you may avoid the dangerous ones, or do you use it as a shopping list, to find what's good? It seems many people who complain about the quality of Pillreports are in the second category, because they are demanding 100% information about MDMA pills and splitting hairs between ratings of 7/8/9/10, while most of these issues do not arise with bunk pills.
Lastly, a lot of people are in the habit of consuming more than one pill in a night. The reporting that is concomitant with this approach to drug taking appears to be getting up a few people's noses. However, is it not more honest to mention that a particular pill was taken as the 2nd or 3rd of the night or whatever, rather than not posting, or rating it down because it wasn't a baseline/peak/baseline experience? Plus, in the event that a pill is taken with others, and a difficult experience results, then it gives a good indication of pills that should not be mixed. Finally, a report like this could give you an idea of how strong the effects of the pill would be, if taken after another. So it's more information that you can use to determine something about the pill you think matches the report.
A few things to think about - Feedback?
BigTrancer

Edit - don't you hate it when somebody gets their reply in before yours!!!!! Especially when it is so much better Good work BT!
I agree that at times the rating system can backfire but what do you expect when it is set up to allow for personal opinions from complete strangers, not to mention tolerances, experience levels or people talking up there own stock.
Personally PR has helped me out on many occasions, admitedly it never has and probably never will be a sure fire method to guarantee quality but it does give you an idea. By reading the various posts and seeing if the comments shoot them down you can hopefully at least not get utter crap. Beyond that its all personal preferance anyway. (So yes multiple posts can help )
Now as for the original topic
I myself tend to have more than one in a night and often mix types... I guess when posting it is only a general personal responce anyway, and as long as you let it be known in your post that you did this i think its ok. Again leaving it up to the reader to make up there own mind using your two cents.
[ 02 October 2002: Message edited by: Hobo.inc ]

well i dont really have any suggestions, because im more complaining about what the users post and whats beyond the moderators control... i do love the site and commend the mods for their work on it cos it has helped me before and it will again in the future... i do use it as a reference...
my only suggestion is that the mods maybe add a section in for them to fill out such as "pill number/other pills" which may allow someone to put in "2nd pill, had <xx> before hand" or "only pill during night" .. im just throwing things in the air.. dont take this as a complaint about the database
note i think apollo is referring to giving a pill a rating out of ten in general, rather than the system on pill reports! because for every pill there will be someone out there who would rate it low and someone who would rate it high.. and if the only patterns you looked for were highs and lows, why not just scrap the rating system and just say the experience was bad or good or great or excellent.

[ 04 October 2002: Message edited by: melancholic ]