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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."
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
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
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.
I've rated about 3600 titles... but honestly, you don't have to watch an entire movie all the way through to give it a one star "I Hated it" or two star "I didn't like it". Sometimes I'll play a low rated movie for 15-20 minutes or so just to see if it's an under-appreciated gem -- or I'll play a 3 star movie and skip around waiting for it to pick up, then close out and rate it w/ 2 stars because I didn't enjoy it.
5,000 titles isn't that impressive when you consider every TV show, documentary, and movie you've ever seen in your whole life. I rated over 2,000 titles my first day or two of Netflix just to seed the algorithm with my preferences. If I had rated every children's show (Barney for example) with one star instead of simply clicking "not interested", I would easily have over 4,000 rated by now & it's only my second month of Netflix.
My guess is most people just don't bother to rate things b/c of the time involved in clicking the ratings for each one. I swear, rating over 2,000 titles was like playing whack-a-mole for hours.
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.
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've rated about 3600 titles... but honestly, you don't have to watch an entire movie all the way through to give it a one star "I Hated it" or two star "I didn't like it".
It feels like I have seen hundreds of movies where a brilliant ending changed my impression of the movie from "huge waste of time" to "OMG, that was very clever, I'm going to be thinking about that for a long time!".