Slashdot Mirror
Gaming Netflix Ratings?
Nom du Keyboard writes "Not for the first time, I've noticed a new film that hasn't yet even reached the theaters, yet has hundreds of positive votes and/or reviews recorded on Netflix. This time the movie is Inkheart. For a movie that doesn't even hit the theaters until January 23, it already has 428 votes and a rating of 4.3 (out of 5) on Netflix. Seems more than a bit fraudulent to me. Also, it has a review that doesn't even review the movie, but instead says the books are great, therefore the movie should be too. Does the word 'shills' come to mind? With millions spent to promote a movie, are a few hundred of that going to phony voters? Or have that many people actually seen the film and just can't wait to rush home and log onto Netflix to vote? Just what is Netflix's responsibility here to provide honest ratings?"
But it isn't rare for there to be advanced screenings of a movie a week or two in advance of the public release date.
I wonder if we'll ever see movie cinemas with terminals or similar at them that let you rate a movie as you walk out after seeing it.
Maybe not released yet in the US, but there is a world beyond the US borders and the film has been released places there. It's actually quite a good film based on an interesting idea.
Wait. I must be lying because it isn't released yet... Or... Perhaps the world extends beyond American borders. What, Americans make up only 5% of the world population? (10% by body mass)
Deleted
kdawson is a drama queen.
Release:
Germany 11 December 2008
UK 12 December 2008
Brazil 25 December 2008
Iceland 26 December 2008
This happens everywhere. Why, even this very comment was modded to +2 before I even made it. You can't trust anyone these days.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
... or usenet or wherever todays kids get their moviez from...
Ebay used to be a decent place to get deals, then a few years ago the scammers found out they can fake feedback, and you ended up with 2000+ "transaction" power-sellers who will take your money and run faster than the nigerian prince.
Leave any negative feed back and it's "i've pleased all these guys, there's always one troll to screw it up"
If you browse around a while on sites like ebay and amazon you'll notice the patterns these people have, the same people giving feedback to each other, it's disgusting really, but any peer contributed system is subject to gaming via astroturfing.
Just see the net neutrality debate, or swiftboat.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
... like just about everything in life, from Amazon.com to Slashdot, caveat emptor.
What is Slashdot's responsibility to provide honest moderation?
Both are just aggregates of random people who bothered to comment, and don't pretend to be anything more. If you want a "professional" movie rating, look at the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, where currently the Tomatometer for Inkheart is at 63%, based on 19 reviews.
Remember, however, that Netflix doesn't show you the rating of a movie; it shows you its best estimate of how well you will like the movie. And does a pretty good job of it, too, once you've rated a few hundred films. So there are a few problems with your reasoning, in addition to the painfully obvious "it's already been released elsewhere" point covered in previous comments:
- Is it even possible to make a shell account? Last I checked, you have to be logged in to rate anything on Netflix. And being logged in means you're a paying customer. I can't imagine paying $5 or whatever per single vote being cost effective, even at the cheapest service tier. Maybe there's a way if you abuse the free trial system, but that still strikes me as an awful lot of work.
- Say, for the sake of argument, that these ARE shill accounts. They signed up somehow, rated that one movie, and never did anything again. If they haven't rated any other movies on your list, Netflix's algorithm will have nothing to link it to your preferences. I.e. it won't affect the rating you see in the slightest.
- Let's even examine what happens if it's a multi-movie shill, perhaps kept up to vote highly for every movie released by a particular company. Again, the ranking system will almost certainly end up filtering out the result: unless you also happen to have given high scores to everything else that company has released, it's not likely to matter much in the final star value.
- Assuming that you're looking at the unweighted score - an inadvisable decision, given that the remarkably astute ranking system is the best part of Netflix - you have to account for the long-term balancing effects of opinionated Internet voters. See, for example, IMDB, where new movies often peak onto the top 250 only to be struck down by Godfather/Shawshank/etc. fans. If someone only sort of likes a movie that's unrated, they might give it a 3, whereas showing up to see it rated 5 is going to result in a 1 and possible an irate comment. The flock will detect the wolf in their midst soon enough and crush it.
- Who the fuck uses Netflix to get ratings for unreleased movies?
On a tangentially related note, I first read that title and thought we were going to see a Netflix-like weighted rating system for games. I'd kill for a way to heavily weight lovers of Dwarf Fortress while throwing out comments from Halo junkies when deciding what to play next.
You don't have to be a Shil to post reviews before the movie is out, you just have to be a fanboy. The 'I read the books' comment is definitely by a fanboy.
I used to see a lot of this crap on EBGames.com before they got smart and disabled reviews before the games came out. Now it's called 'Preview Buzz'. You see the exact same comments, but they don't get to provide a rating.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Getting a link to a movie on Slashdot. How much did they pay you for that?
Seriously, even if the movie hadn't been released anywhere, there are still plenty of opportunities to see it. Producers hold previews all the time, and it wouldn't surprise me if they modernized things by encouraging those previewers to post their comments right at the theatre lobby.
This happens on Amazon.Com quite often, with products that are not yet released. Do I consider it fraud? Not necessarily. Once the masses weigh in, the law of averages will too.
-David
I had thought Netflix was a US only service. 400+ reviews for a film that's only been released overseas seems quite a lot - I guess Governor Palin has reignited the legendary American love of travel and curiosity about foreign countries.
Inkheart is in the theatres here in Brasil for the last three weeks.
Maybe it just didn't hit the theatres in the OP's city/state/country??
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
it's the date thing mate it said 4/12 on the American box, so they though April... that's all, they don't know we write our days and months backwards!
My preferences are set to filter anyone below 1, but I still see all the garbage that the trolls are working so hard to post.
I don't see why this should be happening now, I used to be able to not see any of it, but with this new interface it seems its impossible to escape reading the first line of the troll posts.
It needs fixing.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I teach 5th grade, and many of my students have read and enjoyed these books. I'll bet most of the reviews are kids who liked the books, and don't really think or care yet about whether the book does justice to the movie, if the movie is any good, if Slashdotters think that their rating is fair. They're ten... and they know how to use a mouse.
And really, do you take any kind of online polling seriously?
Then again, should we really be surprised to see this happen, with interviews for upcoming releases taking the form of "this will be the greatest thing EVER!" for absolutely any game or movie that comes out, especially those that turn out to be complete garbage? Don't believe the hype machine, folks, is what I'm saying.
...that everything on a retailer's site is advertsing? Is it that hard to find sites that rate stuff but don't sell it?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
While fraud may be a problem, I don't think it is. Pre-screeners get a copy of the films just for these sorts of things.
I know for a fact that if you look for it, you can get "Taken," "Defiance," and other movies on the internet in DVD quality over the internet "for free." I am further certain that members film community and/or MPIAA uploaded the movies to drive up viewership at the box office.
For instance, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" sucked, so the "screening" video is not out there. "Gran Torino" was an excellent movie and did well at the box office, and the screening video *is* out there.
My new criteria for seeing a movie in a theater is looking for the screening video on-line. If it is out there, its probably a good movie because someone put it out there.
I remember when "Dark Knight" was at the number 1 spot up against godfather and shawshank
Thankfully someone has fixed that, but it just shows how inaccurate internet polls are.
It's easy to get a high positive ebay score if you have a legit business that doesn't depend on reputation, like selling LED replacement bulbs for cars or something like that. The penalty for failure is low so people will buy from you anyway, and items are cheap so you have high volume and get a high score. The eBay score doesn't really tell you much on their own if they have 1 negative and 2000 positives, and the negative is for a thousand dollar item, and everything else was a buck, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...by stupidity.
I think Hanlon's Razor applies here. Many people here on Slashdot like to put on a tinfoil hat and shout "AstroTurfing" for almost anything. I'm harder to convince of that.
I'll put aside what many have pointed out here, that the film in question has already been released in places.
NPR had an interview a month or so ago with David Edelstein, a film critic who happened to be the first to go public with a negative review for Dark Knight. In other words, he was the one responsible for first knocking it down from a 100% rating on metacritic and similar meta-rating sites.
In the interview he said he regretted having been first because of the backlash he received, but that he stood by his rating.
He also went on to point out the deluge of emails he received from angry fans. Many of whom would go on to criticize him at length while prefacing the email with "I haven't actually seen the film yet, but..."
Fanboys are rabid. They defend movies, hardware, software, etc, often sight unseen, because they want their horse to win. Even if they don't actually know what it looks like.
In this case, the movie is based on a book. I don't doubt that many of the votes on NetFlix are folks who have rated the film sight unseen, because they WANT to like it. They're jazzed about it, and they want it to be rated highly.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
That is the worst way to write dates. You can't tell 2010 and 1910 apart, and if you try to sort a bunch of files named by date, in your scheme the dates are all mixed up.
You want big-endian, and 4 digit years:
YYYY/MM/DD.
The ISO agrees
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
The GP didn't say liking things is idiotic, he said that voting on a movie before actually seeing it is idiotic, regardless of whether you're familiar with the underlying story.
And yes, voting based on invalid data is stupid. Well, stupid or deceitful, but people are generally more in the former category.
Case in point: Catwoman. Anyone who would "pre-rate" this movie 5 stars because they're fans of the Batman universe and love Halle Berry is categorically stupid.
Really? You are honestly trying to claim that it isn't stupid to rate a movie as being good even when you have not seen it? Really?