Is now the time to read less lengthy drama reviews but rely more on the rating websites?
I suppose those theatre-scholars in general still does not trust these websites enough...
Theatre-scholars lack a tradition of assessing the acceptance of "ordinary" audience of the play. Only in the last decade did the academies of theatre studies start to practice a certain dose of quanti-qualitative research. Some people believe that this tardiness of taking on new methods must arise from the fact the present researches imposed on the general audience are inclined to extract some partial information, emphasizing the aspects in the experience of the general audience that can support scholars' original assertions so papers of these researches are not neccesarily more "justified" than the traditional lengthy experience reports of some professional critics. Theatre experience is a organic entity, after all.
That is an interesting topic, I wonder how the video game scholars would do in the similar situation. I suppose scholars of most genres of contemporary arts must have similar problems with regard to their research method.