When to use a separate table

So I am designing a rather large database but more often then not am confronted with the doubt weather I should place a specific field in its own table or not.

Please bare with me, and imagine your building a database for a review site.

There is a table that holds the review records that users have given for a particular product, however the reviews that each user provides will also be subject to review from other uses. In reality we are talking about a review of a review, my question is should this field be placed in its a separate table? After-all, i it has nothing to do with the review of the movie itself.

Now lets take the statistics tables for example. The database will collect statistics regarding reviews, posts, user registrations, etc… Keeping all the stats records in the same table just doesn’t feel right, even-tough all of the fields related to statistics. Right now I am placing user stats on one table, reviews stats on another, etc…

Very interested to hear your opinions.

How about giving some table layouts, so we can get an idea of what you’re doing?

Hello there guido,
Should have given the advance warning that I’m no data architect, this is being built in an excel sheet to be handed to a professional after its done, but I would like to deliver it as close as possible to the final conception.

Off Topic:

Please bare with me == let’s get naked :rofl:

bare should be bear

You can imagine a naked database if you want! :smiley: