Slashdot Mirror
Some Netflix Users Have Rated 50,000 Shows
An anonymous reader writes "Netflix has released some statistics about its users, showing that more than one percent of its customer base has rated 5,000 shows or more, and a few hundred users have rated over 50,000. A reporter for The Atlantic tracked down a few of those extreme users to find out why they do it. Mike Reilly, a producer, heard about the Netflix prize, and wanted to test the limits of the movie recommendation algorithm. Lorraine Hopping Egan has rated about 6,500 movies, but she still uses word of mouth when trying to decide what to watch."
FTA:
Several hundred Netflix members have rated more than 50,000 filmed entertainment programs. 50,000! To watch all those at a pace of one movie or TV show per day, it would take 136 years.
More evidence that Immortals walk among us.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
where did it go? the stuff that mattered used to be around here somewhere.
anyone see it?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Title says 50,000 article says 5,000?
Assuming we rate 50,000 movies at 2 hours a movie, this comes out to approximately 11.4 years of straight time. (i.e. no sleep). This does not include the amount of time to rate these items. I know tv shows are less than two hours, but if these ratings are for a series, as opposed to a simple episode, then even more time will be needed.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
To end the confusion, here's what TFAhas to say about it:
Several hundred Netflix members have rated more than 50,000 filmed entertainment programs. 50,000! To watch all those at a pace of one movie or TV show per day, it would take 136 years.
But those users are just the extreme end of a broader behavioral pattern. About a tenth of one percent (0.07%) of Netflix users -- more than 10,000 people -- have rated more than 20,000 items. And a full one percent, or nearly 150,000 Netflixers, have rated more than 5,000 movies. By contrast, only 60 percent of Netflix users rate any movies at all, and the typical person only gives out 200 starred grades.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The "more than one percent of its customer base" has rated 5000 shows and not 50 000. In TFA, 50 000 is only displayed for an "elite rater".
This is typical where you give people the choice of rating something. Same goes for music. People on a music torrent tracker rate every single torrent uploaded, even without ever downloading it - just because they don't like the artist,. and make sure nobody else does either.
Or they do the opposite and rate every single song by his "best" artist a 5/5, even if the song is total shite.
This is more of an internal social conflict rather than some mathematical dillema, it's just people being people (and by people, I mean dicks).
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
because I liked it
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
it takes 1000 ratings before it gets good? It doesn't get really good until you rate 5000. Therefore, it is only really good for 1% of the users.
@AnonymousCoward the 50,000 number is correct #!informative.
I have rated 2223 items at Netflix, 99% feature length movies. Since becoming a member I have received and watched 1034 movies. I own a little over 2000 dvds and Blu-Rays. Yes, I watch a lot of movies (and obviously have no life). But, that is my main entertainment; I do not subscribe to cable or satellite tv, I am over 60 years old, and have seen a -lot- of film over the years. And no, I won't tell you where I live or how the alarm system works. So yeah, I suppose I can see how someone could have rated -maybe- 5000 movies/shows. But, 50,000? I can not quite fathom that. Perhaps someone with even less of a life than mine spends all day compulsively rating movies based entirely on their descriptions and cast lists? Robots? The studios and/or MPAA? As a side note, Netflix recommendation engine seems to have no clue whatsoever what I am likely to enjoy, probably due to my wide range of preferences. I am constantly amused at some of the stuff they suggest and have noticed that the old pre-contest engine, for my tastes, was much more likely find stuff I like and potentially rent.
1. Family accounts with multiple people compulsively rating everything
2. Rating things without having seen them. I don't need to see Michael Jackson's This is It or The Princess and the Frog to know that I'll think they're shit.
Slashdot has a ratings system, too.
You go to http://slashdot.org/firehose and look at the articles by clicking on their titles, maybe follow the links they contain to see if the summary is correct and the links work and aren't a trap or anything, then you click the + or the - and pick a category for your reasoning from the inadequate list.
The idea is that when stories like this one come up that are (a) dull, and (b) poorly written, and (c) so is the summary, you can have a voice in saying whether it's forced upon the rest of /. or just scrolls off the bottom of the Firehose, never to be seen again until the inevitable dupe is posted.
But clearly, that ratings system isn't doing a bit of good, because, dayum...
Has anyone read the title as: "Some NetFlix Users Have No Life"
By contrast, only 60 percent of Netflix users rate any movies at all, and the typical person only gives out 200 starred grades.
Why??
What's the bet that none of those reviews begin with "Me and my girlfriend watched this together..."
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
It really depends on what they mean by rated - if they include 'not interested' (aka the rating count they show on the "movies you'll love" page), then I have 17344 ratings. However, I estimate I've probably only watched about 2000-3000 movies and TV series (not all through Netflix, of course).
Why do I do it? Because I like to be able to see on my queue when things will be added/removed from watch instantly. Seems like a lot of work, but it really isn't if you sit browsing through descriptions while you watch a movie. Probably only took me a few days rating for a couple hours a day to get through the entire WI section.
They recently changed the way the WI browse genres worked - it used to not display anything already in your queue, which was nice - when they made the change I had to give everything in my queue a temporary rating to make it disappear again - slightly annoying. I like to know that when I use browse I am seeing things I haven't evaluated before.
In case anyone is curious, your DVD queue has a limit of 500 titles, and you can add an additional 500 to the Watch Instantly queue. Currently at 406 and 375 respectively. It's nice to be able to browse quickly down a list of titles I'm actually interested in, rather than all the garbage that surrounds the WI gems.
The heading says 50,000, which is pretty crazy.. but all of the text refers to numbers more like 5,000....
I rated the article 4 stars because it used an interrobang in the article title
Based on your interest in interrobangs, you may like the State Library of New South Wales and Propaganda Against Recreational Substance Use.
Slightly off-topic:
I haven't posted this question to the Netflix folks yet, but I can't believe no one has asked for it. If you are a Netflix person, please take this as a minor request from a customer who just wants to see you do better.
Million dollar prizes for nifty relational search algorithms are neat and all, but how about one simple thing that shouldn't cost more than two weeks developer time and would be a really nice feature: be able to sort a queue, specifically, be able to sort based on date released. Other sorting factors could be useful, but date released would be the best, especially for those of us MST3K fans for whom the series isn't numbered on the DVDs . . .
Nathan's blog
They could have watched enough of something to know they didn't like it, and giving a low rating.
They could be channeling opinions from friends.
With some botting thrown in for good measure?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I prefer IMDB for rating stuff. I have a list of about 500 movies I want to see so I don't really need more recommendations right now. I also have been very interested in short subject pieces (short attention span?) lately ranging from animated to pre-1900 Edison etc. stuff. There's a lot of DVDs of these but if I want to keep track of what I've seen and what I thought of individual "movies" I have to go somewhere other than Netflix.
IMDB is very good for this since they're about 98% complete in my current experience. There's some obscure stuff that hasn't made it in there, but often I'm surprised at how comprehensive it is. I only rate individual "films" and TV series. I don't do individual TV shows since I can remember most every movie I've seen, and TV series that I've seen, but my memory of random individual shows from mostly forgotten sitcoms from the early 1980s is poor. There's also sometimes a substantial delay in them updating with new episodes of lesser watched shows. If it's not in IMDB within an hour or two of when I watch it it probably will never get rated by me.
Even with that I'm approaching 3000 ratings on IMDB. That said, I stopped rating stuff on Netflix after about 1000 ratings and it does mention some interesting things from time to time.
Not the film class I took - we often watched the movies over the span of two class sessions.
Okay, we had long films (The Seven Samurai being the longest) and a 2hr session; conversely, I guess you had short films and a 3 or 4 hour session.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
With torrent ratings, there may also be some confusion as to whether you're supposed to rate the artistic quality of the content or the technical quality of the torrent.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Biggest way to improve the recommendations is to stop recommending things I already have in my queue!
FTA:
A reporter for The Atlantic tracked down a few of those extreme users...
Man, when I do that, they call it stalking. WTF?
Watching that many is certainly possible, but recalling them all seems unlikely.
World record holder Gwilym Hughes got it by watching ~14 films a week from 1953 to 2008. He said: "People think that I'm glued to the television set 24 hours a day but I'm not because I'm a member of about 10 organisations. I watch films from about 9pm until about 12. Sometimes I could set up one on the televisions in the study. It works out about 10 to 14 films a week."
His favorite movies is also one of my favorites -- Lawrence of Arabia.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-11066046
I have something like 3000 items rated and my experience is items average a lot less than two hours. I have a lot of 20 minute show episodes rated. Also it's important to note that more than one person use a single account and with steaming you can pump through shows pretty quickly.
My theory is they had to rate that many movies to get the stupid Netflix rating system to make suggestions for them. I was well into 1000+ ratings before it'd even occasionally try. Horrible system.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.