Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings (fivethirtyeight.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Statistical news blog fivethirtyeight.com noticed some odd discrepancies in online movie ratings, which caused them to do some investigating. They found it was generally a bad idea to rely on such ratings, particularly from sites like Fandango. "When I focused on movies that had 308 or more user reviews, none of the 209 films had below a 3-star rating. Seventy-eight percent had a rating of 4 stars or higher." Further, "In a normal rounding system, a site would round to the nearest half-star — up or down. In the case of Ted 2 [which was displaying 4.5 stars], then, we'd expect the rating to be rounded down to 4 stars. But Fandango rounded the 'ratingValue' [4.1] up. I pulled the number of stars listed on the page of each film in our sample of 437 (with at least one user review), as well as the ratingValue listed on the page's source. And I found that Fandango doesn't round a rating down when we'd mathematically expect that ... Fandango.com's rounding methodology, even if it was just an innocent bug, is a good example of why you should be skeptical of online movie ratings, especially from companies selling you tickets."

Comments

Very suspicious....

[tonyyeb]

Ted 2 [which was displaying 4.5 stars]... Was that out of 100?!

Re:Very suspicious....

[Anonymous Coward]

Also remember that the minimum you are allowed to give on most sites is 1 out of 5, meaning even if everyone hated the movie it would have a "1". In other words people think of the "out of 5 stars" as a system of zero stars to 5 stars but in reality it is one star to five stars.

Example:
One person hates the movie and gives it "1"
One person love the movie and gives it "5"
The average is "3", which visually is not the middle,
Despite only 50% of people liking the movie it appears as if 60% like the movie
Also, stars have a positive connotation. 3 "stars" to me does not seem to represent that half of the people in the world hate it.

This affect also skews the results the worse the reviews. It is nearly impossible to have only 1 star show.

Re:Very suspicious....

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Example:

Two people hate it: 1 star
One person likes it: 5 stars
Appartent, rounded star rating "2.5 Stars" or "50%"
Real percentage of people that like the movie 33%, a FIFTY percent difference in actual vs. apparent rating (or 17 percentage point difference)

Imagine stacking other factors talked about in the article. Basically the ratings are a fabrication.

Re:Very suspicious....

[Gr8Apes]

Ted 2 was actually 9 half stars, because no one could figure out how to rate it 0.

Re:Very suspicious....

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem is that we're using an all-positive scale to capture positive and negative opinions. The results will never be interpreted correctly because that's a feature of the system. "How much did you like this movie: a little, somewhat, a good amount, quite a bit, or a lot?" It's Colbert's "Great President or the greatest President?" bit, only with the expectation of being taken seriously. The RT method at least addresses this, to some extent.

But there's still a lot missing in terms of magnitude. Without standard deviation bars, the star ratings don't tell you a whole lot. A bland but tolerable movie might get straight 3s, while something with strong niche appeal might get the same average with mostly 1s and 5s. There's a lot more useful data in the voting, especially if you can determine patterns in voting behavior and group movies based on who feels strongly about them.

And the final issue is the skewed distribution of samples. Presumably, the worst of the bunch never see the light of day. The movies that don't even deserve one star and would be liked by nobody should never be released into the wild. Some still are, but many more aren't. So of course most movies, especially the ones seen by the most people, have high ratings, as seen in the comparison plot in the article. It is essentially a letter grading system where a 3 equates to a C; once you get much lower, you flunk out.

What matters isn't how many people, on average, don't hate a movie, it's who likes it and how their opinion relates to you. Expect ratings systems to get a lot more personal in the future, essentially becoming targeted advertising.

Re:Very suspicious....

[Anonymous Coward]

in the case of online movie ratings I sometimes think it's not justifiable if only vote on a matter of course , should be seen also from other assessments . thanks for the info " Slashdot " , - http://www.paketkreditmobilhonda.com/

Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[sandbagger]

A friend is in the movie biz and his reaction to any criticism of the recent Star Trek reboots is Rotten Tomatoes is an objective measure. I can forgive him the logical error because he's in the industry and the financials are more important to him than say to you or I. So aggregated movie reviews that drive customer purchases to him indicate success.

However, as far as I know, Rotten Tomatoes never publishes its weighting formula
And it's opened by a movie studio.

This seems to me perfect for abuse.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[gstoddart]

A friend is in the movie biz and his reaction to any criticism of the recent Star Trek reboots is Rotten Tomatoes is an objective measure.

Well, in part you need to remember these reviews are done by the entire movie-going public, and not just nerds.

So, it is entirely possible that you disagree with the movie-going public. But I don't think that means the reviews aren't honest.

I'm pretty sure TFA even says that both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB consistently come out pretty close to one another.

I trust both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, because I've actually seen movies which are terribly reviewed, and which should have been.

But assessing your opinion of the Trek reboots vs the general opinion of them isn't really the point.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[renderhead]

I was surprised to learn that @sandbagger is right: Rotten Tomatoes has been a subsidiary of Flixster since 2010, which was in turn purchased by Warner Bros. in 2011.

I never had much reason to question their weighting formula, though, mostly because Rotten Tomatoes has a good distribution of ratings from 0% to 100%, and because there is not much fine-grained scoring on each review, just "positive" or "negative".

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[ITRambo]

When Rotten Tomatoes shows a low score I generally agree that the movie sucked. Their audience scores that are around 60% are somewhat suspect.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Rotten Tomatoes has a rating that is only from "critics" and a rating that is only from "audience." However, I feel there are other factors that go into these scores. The film After Earth has a Rotten Tomatoes critic rating of 11%. While the film probably did not warrant a 'fresh' rating (>=60%), 11% seems punitive, in my opinion. I wonder if the film critics had some kind of beef with the cast or crew and took it out on them in the reviews, as there are plenty of similarly poor 'Sci-Fi' genre films scoring in the 40-55% range, which seems more reasonable, but I would have expected at least better than 30%.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[BlackHawk-666]

That was a particularly poor film. While 11% does seem low compared to other horribly poor films with the same production values, it doesn't seem low if you remove production values as a component - since without those the film is total excrement.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Straif]

As far as I know RT's weighing formula is simply the total numerical score given to a movie from reviewers divided by the number of reviewers. That's why their scores show all decimal points (6.4/10 or 3.1/10); there is no rounding. You can select which reviewers are included in their rating but it's still simple math.

The freshness rating is another creature entirely and while quasi-related to the score, the reviewers are free to rate a movie fresh or not independent of the score they gave it. That's why you can see a reviewer giving a movie 6.5/10 on their own site but still rated as rotten. Reviewers are not held to specific rules as to what they define as fresh or rotten.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[gstoddart]

At the end of the day, a review is a professional opinion.

There are tons of movies the critics loved, but the public hated. Likewise, there's a bunch the critics hated, but the public loved. Then you get movies like Gigli, which everybody hated, and which IMBD says i the 50th worst movie of all time.

You take your tastes, combine it with the reviews of critics and any other sources, and decide if you want to see it or not. Then you figure out how you really thought about it.

Critical review often has nothing to do with box office success.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Flavianoep]

I wonder if the film critics had some kind of beef with the cast or crew and took it out on them in the reviews, as there are plenty of similarly poor 'Sci-Fi' genre films scoring in the 40-55% range, which seems more reasonable, but I would have expected at least better than 30%.

More likely they had a beef with Scientology.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Ecuador]

You don't seem to understand how the tomatometer works. Instead of it being similar to a 1-10 or star rating that gives an average over review scores, it is simply what percentage of reviewers were positive instead of negative. I find it quite easy to believe that only 1 out of 10 professional critics found the movie good overall. Now, rottentomatoes also averages the score of the same reviewers and for After Earth it gets 3.8/10. I suspect when you were expecting better than 30%, you were thinking something like average score, i.e. the reviewers did not thing it was good, but did not punish it by giving it a 1 out of 10 score. And that is indeed the case, on average they gave it a 2/5 or 4/10.
Although I don't blindly follow critics, I do look at rottentomatoes and it usually gives at least an indication of what to expect. Sometimes even reviewers themselves are polarized, but since you get review "blurbs" if you scroll down you quickly figure out if things that reviewers like/dislike are the things you like/dislike. IMDB is also a great score, since I more or less agree with it for quite a lot more movies than the ones I disagree with it, which is not something I can say about many other ratings. Also note that IMDB has a genre bias, so for example a comedy getting 6.5 might actually mean a decent comedy when a drama getting 6.5 is probably not good. But you learn to use it and it helps narrowing down what to watch next. It certainly does a helluva better job compared to the VHS covers which was all I had to go with back in the 80's at the movie rental store...

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Archangel Michael]

I am a fan of the Original Mad Max movies (Mad Max, Road Warrior). Having perused the wonderful reviews of Fury Road, i decided I would watch it.

As a movie it was passable, but not 5 Star great.

I really liked the movie Avatar, except for the Fern Gully / Pocahontas plot lines it was fantastic experience. But I only would give it 4 stars (because of the plot), so something like Fury Road was at best (IMHO) a 2.5 It was fair, plot lines were fairly flat, characters were mostly one dimensional. I'm glad I didn't see it in theaters, I would have been disappointed in wasting that kind of money on it.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Triklyn]

my method is to find a movie critic whose opinion makes sense to you, ie) valid criticism or praise that you can recognize. And trust in them to continue to make observations that you can agree with.

Mine is Mark Kermode. He's an old lefty, and far too openly feminist at times, but very entertaining, and the very moment he described the poignancy of Four Lions was the moment I knew I could trust what he was saying.

Him and Simon Mayo do a 90 minute show on fridays on the BBC radio thing. podcasts are available maybe 8-9 hours after the live show. Perfect to commute to, to run to, to ride to...

really anything you'd welcome some excellent company to.

3 wittertainment

and

Hello to Jason Isaacs.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of Battlefield Earth. After Earth is that horrid movie Will Smith bought as a vehicle for his son which, AFAIK, has nothing to do with Scientology.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Dutch Gun]

I've noticed a lot of people tend to be rather binary in their ratings. If they didn't like the movie, 1 star. If they liked it, 5 stars. I often think user ratings would be better off with a simple thumbs up/down. That is, did you enjoy the movie/game/whatever or not? 1 to 10 scales are particularly bad, because everyone has a different idea about what a value of 7/10 represents. By boiling it down to a binary decision for everyone, you eliminate the ambiguity of how the scale is interpreted.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Sumus Semper Una]

I've always felt that the way many people think about movie reviews is generally flawed. They seem to go to imdb or rottentomatoes and say something like "Oh, movie X got high user reviews. It must be a good movie." To me, what they should really be saying is, "Movie X got high user reviews. People who go to this kind of movie generally liked it." I think a good example of how these are different is the movie Jurassic World. It got 70%+ from both audiences and critics on rottentomatoes and more than 7 average rating on imdb. That doesn't mean it's an ground-breakingly good movie. Quite the contrary. If you saw the original Jurassic Park, you already saw a movie with the same basic plot and movie-going experience. If you go to that movie expecting to see an objectively wonderful film, you are going to be disappointed. If, however, you already know that the plot is basically the same and you want to see a shallow disaster/CG flick with dinosaurs, you're going to get exactly what you wanted and be mostly pleased with the result.

Reviews are ALWAYS subjective and always will be. If you went and saw a movie based purely on how many people liked it without reading any of the complaints/praise of the movie, the problem is with you. If you vociferously disagree with a movie's popularity and think it should be less popular, again the problem is with you. You're looking for objective measurements that don't exist.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Did you see Atlas Shrugged? Part I of that train wreck masquerading as a film production also got 11% from Rotten Tomatoes, which, in comparison, After Earth is a masterpiece. At the other end, I don't feel that Ender's Game deserved 60% (just coincidentally the lowest possible score to be 'fresh'), and not because it "didn't follow the book," (or maybe it did, it's been over 25 years since I read that book) but simply because it was not a very good flick. I do understand the Tomatometer rating as I have been using Rotten Tomatoes since around the time the site was launched, which is why I feel I have observed in certain instances some kind of breakdown in their algorithm, or whatever.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[yodleboy]

I don't know what may or may not be going on at RT, but I know that they are the only reviews I really pay any attention to. I've found that in general, their ratings track fairly well with my own opinions after seeing a movie. If nothing else, it gives me some way to rank multiple movies I might be considering. I might have missed seeing Edge Of Tomorrow had I not stopped by RT (tom cruise was making it a no-go for me).

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Flavianoep]

You're thinking of Battlefield Earth. After Earth is that horrid movie Will Smith bought as a vehicle for his son which, AFAIK, has nothing to do with Scientology.

No, I am not confounding them. And as far as I care to know, After Earth has something to do with Scientology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Earth#Scientology_themes

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[cshay]

Rotten Tomatoes sure spammed the h*ll out of Wikipedia! How they managed to get away with that without being shut down by the powers that be is beyond me!

Or maybe they caught the fancy of the same OCD autists who love the word "portmanteau" and they spread the spam far and wide... who knows?

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[KGIII]

I have never, not once, let somebody's opinion decide if I'm going to not watch a movie. I have listened to people (like folks here) and watched movies that I might not have watched otherwise because I didn't know about them. However, I've never listened to someone tell me not to watch something and I don't use review sites.

Then again, I don't watch a whole lot of movies though I'll probably be suckered into attending one this evening because, you know, female. This one seem particularly fond of movies. Heh... I really need to do an Ask Slashdot. She's about 1/3 my age so I've not yet had sex with her - I've actually said I'd like to wait to get to know one another better and we need to have a huge conversation before that happens, anyhow. *sighs* I mean, you guys pointed me in the direction of my favorite Linux distro, right? So, you can't be all that bad at giving advice. Right?

I need a fucking professional assistant or something.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Icyfire0573]

I think there isn't a lot of indicate of what would make something a 4 vs a 5 in a lot of cases to the point where people like something and don't want to penalize it. But, as far as I can recall, Google or Youtube (don't know who owned it when it changed) Had the same problem with their video reviews. 99% of people were only doing 1 and 5 stars (or whatever their ranking was out of). Anything that was in the middle people didn't bother to review and 2s and 4s were not used. They switched to Thumbs up/down and started getting a lot more useful data.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Ecuador]

Atlas Shrugged has one fourth the number of reviews, it got the 11% having just 5 critics like it. That's like a margin of error. Never mind the fact that they probably had less expectations than a big budget movie with acclaimed actors (but they did indeed rate it less than After Earth on average). And I did not like Ender's Game at all, but that is mostly because it missed all the important points of the book, I am sure the vast majority of the reviewers had never read the book and some might not even be able to tell Star Wars from Star Trek ("hey, they are space movies"). So you are nitpicking, and you still don't seem to get it when you are talking about "some kind of breakdown in their algorithm". Their algorithm is "positive reviews"/"total reviews". That's it. It does not break down, but it just shows whether there is a consensus AMONG CRITICS on whether they think a movie is good or bad. Nothing more, nothing less, it will not tell you if you will like the movie and it will certainly not agree with you.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[david_thornley]

Reviews can be useful, in that they can tell you what's good about the movie and what's bad. I pay much more attention to the text than the rating, since that can only be for one set of tastes, which I won't share entirely if at all.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[gstoddart]

I have never, not once, let somebody's opinion decide if I'm going to not watch a movie

Sometimes it's a good idea.

Sometimes a movie comes along, and you think "if they did this well, it will be great, but if they don't do it it will be complete dreck". And it takes a couple of reviews to figure out which it is. Sometimes the review confirms your fear that, yes, it really is a terrible movie.

Then again, I don't watch a whole lot of movies though I'll probably be suckered into attending one this evening because, you know, female. This one seem particularly fond of movies. Heh... I really need to do an Ask Slashdot. She's about 1/3 my age so I've not yet had sex with her - I've actually said I'd like to wait to get to know one another better and we need to have a huge conversation before that happens, anyhow

???? LOL, either this is the best troll ever, or a desperate cry for help. So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Don't be a predatory douche, but don't assume that being a gentleman won't eventually wear thin and you'll lose your chance. It doesn't need to lead to marriage, but it doesn't need to be a creepy old guy with a younger woman.

She may not be interested in an old fashioned guy, and she may not be laboring under any illusions.

As long as she's of legal age, of sound mind, and not a total innocent -- assume she's an adult and capable of making her own choices. She's probably already made similar choices with people with less honest intentions. And she probably knows this.

The conversation doesn't need to be that huge, because she may not see a shag as that big of a deal.

Sometimes, or so I'm told, a normal guy who is stable and has made good life choices is all it takes. I can't say what you are in the equation, but the fact that you seem to care suggests you are.

If she's down with it, and not being coerced or manipulated into it ... at a certain point you have to realize that it's not about you and your hangups.

If the difference is being hit on by some creepy guy her own age who can't afford to buy her dinner, and someone with a little less hair who can buy her dinner ... she may know exactly what she wants.

These may be entirely your hangups, and not hers. You obviously want to be a mensch here, but maybe she doesn't need you to be a monk.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[irrational_design]

I'm a nerd, but I loved the Star Trek reboots. Maybe Rotten Tomatoes is objective, but you are subjective about the subject so you have trouble being objective about the objectivity of Rotten Tomatoes.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Anonymous Coward]

my method is to find a movie critic whose opinion makes sense to you...

Good luck finding one of those!

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[KGIII]

That doesn't help my sex life one bit. ;)

Anyhow, I imagine I'd read comments if I were looking to see a movie and not rely on the numbers. I mostly just see what looks interesting or what the other person wants to see. The exception is when someone recommends a good movie (or a particularly bad one like The Gamers which was awesome and recommended to me on this site) and then I'll usually give it a try. So, I guess your method makes sense and would probably make more sense if I wanted to see more movies. Someone usually suckers me into seeing a new movie every month or so. Truth be told, I don't really like most of them but I don't hate them either. I'd much rather curl up in front of a warm fire and watch a documentary.

About a week ago someone, an AC, shared a bunch of documentaries and I went through their list but it turns out I'd seen them all. I watched a few again, however.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[KGIII]

No... No... I have to have a conversation with her and it's not that conversation. It's only fair that I do. *sighs* I'll try to be brief - you've never steered me wrong before and helped me pick my favorite Linux distro so...

Some years ago, I sold my business. In doing so I acquired some wealth. Now, I'm neither hiding nor lying about any of this to her - I've just not had the discussion and have purposefully made sure it didn't pop up because I'd really like to know someone's intent. At this point, I think my best option is to just open a couple of web pages that show some credit union account balances and answer any questions honestly and openly.

My other option is to send her to college and move along. She's good people and has been fucked over in life for reasons beyond her control and our meeting was entirely accidental.

So no, not a troll. Just confused and not really sure if I can ask friends and family - those bastards are biased. ;) Half of my friends would be like, "Dude, if you don't then I'm going to." The other half will send me emails taunting me no matter what I do. I've got great friends. I love them to death but they're about as bad as I am. So, why not ask Slsshdot? I mean, yeah, a distro is an important thing. You got that right, might as well try anew.

The reason that I've not disclosed the entirely of my past is that I've not been asked and because I'd rather know someone and at least guess their intent prior to doing anything further. It tends to change perspectives in good or bad ways. I need a fucking life coach or some shit like that. Sadly, I'm not kidding. Even if I didn't want this to, it turns out to be a big thing in the past. I've had some nasty run-ins and needed to seek legal help in making sure that the break was clean. (I seem to get really stupid when there's a female involved. You'd think I'd get better with age, no.)

The 'beauty' of this is that it actually goes back to an 'Ask Slashdot' a while back where I had a long drawn out conversation with someone who suggested I try this. There's more to the story but that's her story to tell and not mine to share. Suffice to say, she's been fucked over since day one and was living in the same hotel I randomly chose thanks to friends and some local charity. I've since taken over payments for her room. feeding, etc... I'm thinking a stack of cash and a thank you note and a quick trip home might be the easiest way out. (No, she's not an addict or user or anything.)

I can't really explain it better, I don't think. Sorry if you think it's a troll. Trust me, I've got... Well, no, I don't have better things to do with my time but pretend I do. I seriously need a life coach or something. And no, no I don't *really* expect a rational answer. It was ask here or /b/, after all. (Only marginally kidding.) I am, however, open to advice seeing as Slashdot happily opines on my gender, sexuality, political beliefs, and my operating system of choice. You never know, you might have the right answer.

Hmm... Is open sourcing my life a thing?

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[thegarbz]

Rotten tomatoes has the great benefit that it separates critics from the audience. This gives you a very good indication of how faithfully a movie can cater to a minority crowd. Movies like 300 rated slightly above average by critics and yet overwhelmingly positive by the audience was a good indicator that it would be a visual feast that tries to replicated the comic from which it's based.

I find myself generally checking out reviews by genre. If it's a war story or otherwise historic or intended as some masterpiece of the arts I trust the critics. If it's something that panders to nerds, teenagers, or any other group that critics often don't fall in then I trust the audience reviews. For universal appeal films like general comedys I look at the combined result.

Also I have found myself disagreeing with critics or audiences, but I have not yet found a case where I disagree with both at once. i.e. if a movie is rated well by both I have found I've enjoyed them, if they are rated poorly by both then I typically don't.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I like movies that everybody else hates. I liked Pixels. I laughed a lot. Apparently, Adam Sandler is not funny and there is something wrong with me for finding the movie silly and entertaining.

So, I am accustomed to ignoring movie ratings. I just have nonstandard tastes.

I liked Hellboy 1 and 2 as well. Are there any kindred souls out there?

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Ann O'Nymous-Coward]

THANK YOU SO MUCH for this rec! I never would have run across these two without your mention, and I rather enjoy their banter (and was very pleasantly surprised that bbc.com's iPlayer didn't geoblock my US-resident self).

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[SillyHamster]

A friend is in the movie biz and his reaction to any criticism of the recent Star Trek reboots is Rotten Tomatoes is an objective measure. I can forgive him the logical error because he's in the industry and the financials are more important to him than say to you or I. So aggregated movie reviews that drive customer purchases to him indicate success.

It is an objective measure of the ratio of positive reactions to a movie.

Individual reactions may be based on subjective opinion, but the number of positive/negative reactions is an objectively measurable quantity.

To attack the objectivity of a Rotten Tomatoes score, you'd have to find fault with the method of binning reviews as positive/negative.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Triklyn]

:) welcome to the church sister.

Please proselytize. Spread the good word :)

personally, i just download them to my phone and listen to a couple during bike rides.

just watch out, there have been wittertainment related accidents... and miracles. you don't know which one will strike though.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Triklyn]

:) they've got a good love-hate relationship going on, and the easy familiarity of 2 decades.

I believe Mark recalled, apocryphal or not, that his first words back on air to simon, after a 5 year hiatus, were "and another thing."

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[Wolfrider]

> I've since taken over payments for her room. feeding, etc... I'm thinking a stack of cash and a thank you note and a quick trip home might be the easiest way out.

--IDK why I'm getting involved here, but you seem pretty free with your personal life, so why not. :)

--If you're paying for her room, etc, you're creating a sense of obligation/gratitude. If she's in her 20's and you're retired, my advice is to simply befriend her (don't sleep with her!) because from what you say she's had more than enough trouble in her life so far as it is; why risk pregnancy on top of that? Do you really know her well enough that you know for *certain* that she wouldn't go after you for child support if it came down to it??

--I have the same instincts to help people, but don't get involved in her mess. Seek professional counseling if you have the resources, ask someone you trust from church or an old friend if you're not sure you're doing the right thing. I can only give advice from a distance since I haven't met either of you, but my advice is to BE CAREFUL, guard your heart, and don't put either one of you at risk. Stop paying for her room if you don't want some kind of trouble down the road. (I say these things as a friend who has also been in some avoidable predicaments/romantic entanglements.)

Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola

[KGIII]

Too late. ;-) And nah, she's pretty normal, it's just her circumstances that have put her where she is. Both her parents are now incarcerated, for example. (Yes, I've permission to disclose such.) It's not like I can't afford to put her in a room. I don't think I'd be financially burdened to do so in perpetuity, to be frank.

What ended up happening is, well, I opened up a few of my credit union and bank accounts as well as a copy of my 'play' portfolio - the one I use to just learn and play with. Those add up to a goodly sum. I told her that I had something to disclose and that I'd declined advances earlier because I'd wanted to make see her intentions. I then showed her. She didn't say anything at first and then she turned and said, "So, are we still going out to dinner?" I said yes. She kinda giggled and said, jokingly, "So you're going to be my sugar daddy, huh?" (And chuckled - it was obviously humor.)

She then had a billion and ten questions. Which I answered. She wanted to know why I'd not disclosed it earlier and I told her how it changes people, how they react, and that it's tough for me to really judge their motives so I felt that it was best to at least spend some time with her first. And we spent a lot of time together first. It was all crammed into a relatively short time-frame but it adds up to a lot of time. She understood my reasoning and I'd never lied to her, I'd just not told her. Prior to this, I'd told her that I was out searching for some meaning to life and that I was curious about what the world had to offer. Both of which are completely true. Being honest was essential for me.

Dunno where it goes from here but it's going somewhere. In fact, she's still sleeping while I am drinking icky hotel coffee. I should probably stop paying for her room now. It's not like she's used it. So, I can continue on my wanderlust and take her with me or I can bring her home or I can continue on my wanderlust without her or I can go home without her. I'm growing fond of her but I'm kind of cautious and this was rather unexpected.

I'm a big fan of protected sex. Pregnancy is still possible but, to be honest, meh... I can afford a kid. I don't really want one at the moment, I'm kind of old for that. But I can afford one. I'd rather be an optimist and hope that, should that happen, we continue to get along.

A part of my goal, with my wanderlust, was random acts of kindness so who knows? She's only 18 (some 39 years my junior) so I could just pay for her college or something nice and move along. It's not as if we're entirely serious or anything. I may be fond of her but I know how stupid I get around certain women so I'm a bit guarded for a couple of reasons.

I do, really, appreciate the reply. I did get a couple of emails as well. And, yes, yes I will post it right on Slashdot. Believe it or not, I got good advice up to, and including, your belated advice. As for your concern, well, I could probably actually give her half of my assets and not have to change my lifestyle at all. Of course, for the sake of mentioning it, I'd obviously not do so without a compelling reason - which means that (and this is REALLY unlikely) I'd even have a pre-nup. I keep a lawyer on retainer just to fix my mistakes or to help me not make them.

Anyhow, there are a couple of other interesting things and, if you've read this far, I might as well share them. This whole thing started back in the Ask Slashdot question about what someone would do if they suddenly acquired a bunch of wealth. Eight years ago, almost, I sold my business. My business was traffic modeling. I was on the cusp, in the early 1990s, when we did so "on a computer." (Which is actually a big thing.) We were working with TB sized data sets in the late 90s. In the end, I had about 200 people who worked with (not for - I'm anal about that) me.

I sold my company for a goodly sum in cash and an even large amount of shares in the parent company - which I couldn't divest for six months or so afterwards, should you eve

Ummm .... duh?

[gstoddart]

You mean people on the intertubes selling us stuff might not be honest about the reviews of the stuff they're selling us?

IMDB, sure, I mostly trust them. Because a LOT of people review things on IMDB. Rotten tomatoes is an aggregator which includes a lot of sources. I mostly trust them to be independent and coming from real sources.

But, really, ANY review site directly owned by a company trying to sell you stuff should probably a) be required to state their affiliation, and b) assumed to be engaging in a little corporate driven puffery.

From the sounds of it, fandango (which I am admittedly not familiar with) is either more likely to give good reviews, or is deliberately skewing to better reviews to sell product.

Are they uniformly rating all movies better (in which case they're just generally bad at reviews or too easily pleased), or if movies from specific studios get pushed up (in which case it's probably getting into a grey area).

The problem with content on the internet is knowing who paid for it, and what other affiliations they have.

Don't most video game sites also just give overly good reviews, often based on a product they've barely seen or have been prohibited from giving bad reviews?

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[UnknownSoldier]

Agreed.

If the **data** _isn't_ open, then the propaganda and conclusions about the popularity (or lack of it) should be taken with a LARGE grain of salt and healthy skepticism about the validity of the data.

i.e.
* If the data isn't open, question the validity of the data!

e.g.
The only people who trust out-of-date and inaccurate data like the Nielsen Ratings are the people buying and selling broadcast licenses to cable companies.

> The problem with content on the internet is knowing who paid for it, and what other affiliations they have.

^ This.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Exitar]

Sorry, but I stopped trusting IMDB when the best movie in their Top Rated Movies was The Dark Knight.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fandango sells tickets online for theater chains. I used it this past weekend to reserve tickets for "The Martian" on the big screen. After I got home, I had an e-mail from Fandango asking me to rate the movie. There's some selection bias, since people generally see movies they are likely to like, so it's not surprising Fandango's ratings skew high.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, Fandango's business model is to sell tickets to movies through online methods. Website, app, whatever.

Thus, Fandango's vested interest is purely in getting people interest in watching movies, not pushing any specific subset (well, they push the set of theaters that they can sell tickets to). The easiest way to inflate ratings without destroying all credibility is simply to auto-drop half of the low reviews while keeping all the high reviews. If a movie is really bad, there still won't be enough high reviews to fully outweigh the bad, but mediocre, niche, and popular movies will have very high ratings.
Star ratings are subjective anyway, so you shouldn't compare ratings given by different sources for different movies. Either compare reviews for the same movie to find what reviewer you most agree with, or compare one reviewer's ratings for different movies to decide what seems worth the time to watch.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[gstoddart]

Well, look closely at that:

Ratings: 9.0/10 from 1,515,627 users Metascore: 82/100
Reviews: 4,406 user | 636 critic | 39 from Metacritic.com

When 1.5 million people say they liked it, the rating is saying "lots of people liked this film"

Now, contrast that with Shawshank Redemption, which is currently rated #1 on IMDB:

Ratings: 9.3/10 from 1,539,960 users Metascore: 80/100
Reviews: 3,773 user | 192 critic | 19 from Metacritic.com

At least they tell you how they got there.

Like Dark Knight or not, it was a wildly popular movie, which brought a very well known graphic novel to the screen. It also got Heath Ledger an Oscar, if you place any value on that.

If you expect such ratings to 100% match your own opinion, you have an over inflated sense of self importance. ;-)

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[lcarnevale]

I do agree with what you and others says, I use IMDB for trying to "measure" a movie, but as with most things this is about personal preferences, taste, if you like. Not every people will find a certain movie good or bad, no matter what critics says. The same goes for almost everything, I can safely assume that everyone likes cheese but that is not true, but if we put a rating to that it may come up with a 9 out of 10 or maybe more. But that does not mean everybody should buy it and eat it, it just means a lot of people like it, you have to try it for yourself to see if YOU like it. I thinks the same happens with movie ratings, they're a guide, but no matter what people say about it, you still have to watch it to see if you like it or not. The rating can be a good indicator, but until you actually watch the movie, you just wouldn't know.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Z00L00K]

I agree that IMDB is reasonably trustworthy. But I'd also go to various newspapers to see movie ratings if I'm very interested. However the comments added to a movie on IMDB is sometimes more helpful than the rating - and it's often obvious when a comment is "too good" or "too broad".

Also realize that this applies to all kinds of stuff, not only movies. And on other items the ratings can be downratings as well as upratings by paid posters to promote a certain product and demote another. This may be a frequent case when it comes to mobile phones (cell phones for you in the US) since some brands gets strange downvotes/downcomments or upvotes/upcomments that doesn't seem right.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cartoon!

Graphic novel indeed! If you like cartoons, that's your business, but don't try to make it sound adult.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Bert64]

Not just fandango, anyone is only going to watch movies they expect to like and theoretically people shouldn't be reviewing movies they haven't watched...
So really it's only paid movie critics who are ever going to be watching movies they don't expect to like.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[dpidcoe]

The same goes for almost everything, I can safely assume that everyone likes cheese but that is not true, but if we put a rating to that it may come up with a 9 out of 10 or maybe more. But that does not mean everybody should buy it and eat it, it just means a lot of people like it, you have to try it for yourself to see if YOU like it.

This is why I find the actual written reviews on IMDB to be vastly more useful than a number. To continue your analogy, if the people who give cheese 9/10 go on to describe why they like it (taste/texture/etc.), someone who hates cheese could skim the reviews and realize "everyone gave cheese 9/10 doesn't mind that their food is literally a giant mass of dead bacteria, this probably isn't a food that I'll like"

Though oddly enough, I find the inverse of the scenario much easier. i.e. 9/10 people say they love cheese and it tastes great but don't give much feedback other than that. However, the one in ten posts a rant about how disgusting it is because it's literally just mold and bacteria. Generally the rants are more honest and on point about what it actually was that made them hate it, meaning I'd read the review from the guy who hates cheese and go "makes sense, but I don't care what it's made of as long as it tastes good so in my case it's worth a try".

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

> It also got Heath Ledger an Oscar, if you place any value on that.

Nah, his last film could have been Bonzo Flings His Poop and he would still have gotten the Oscar for dying young.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Solandri]

Nearly all ratings are voluntary, and so suffer from self-selection bias. The measured ratings for general interest movie like Shawshank Redemption are typically lower than a special interest movie like Dark Knight (or Harry Potter, or Twilight, or Lord of the Rings) which appeals to a dedicated fanbase. The latter typically have a lot of fans who rate it highly just because it appeals to their group. That is, they rate it according to more lenient standard than they rate other movies, or they flat-out stuff the ballot box to try to get others to see it, to exaggerate the size of their interest group in hopes of encouraging more such movies to be made.

This sort of bias is so endemic to online polling that it's hopeless to try to correct it. All you can do is keep it in mind when you see ratings, and decide that Dark Knight is probably really around a 8.7, not a 9.0. And Shawshank Redemption must be really, really good if it's holding onto the #1 spot despite not appealing to a specific demographic.

I've seen some sites attempt to correct for this by assuming any "real" sample will be gaussian (have a distribution which falls on a normal curve). If the votes something receives are skewed away from guassian (e.g. clustered towards the high end), the site attempts to correct for this by skewing the score down. No idea how accurate or reliable that is, but it is being done in some places.

If you expect such ratings to 100% match your own opinion, you have an over inflated sense of self importance. ;-)

Rather than try to come up with one, universal rating which is implicitly applicable to everyone, Netflix's approach is probably more sensible. Depending on the movies you watch and the ratings you give them, Netflix builds up a profile of your preferences. They try to match your profile with that of other people who watched similar movies and gave them similar ratings, then makes recommendations based on what those other people watched. So if you hated Dark Knight, then there's a good chance you're not really into movies based on comic bo^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgraphic novels, and so will downrate them for you personally.

This does raise some privacy implications, but on the balance I believe this is the more sensible approach to ratings. Giving up some privacy to greatly increase the signal-to-noise ratio of things like movie recommendations may be worth it in some cases. This also mostly corrects for self-selection bias, assuming your self-selection can be accurately measured.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[BlackHawk-666]

IMDB is a good indication of what the masses think. It's not a good indication of quality overall, since the masses are more an indication of popularity over quality. In fact, the more popular a movie is, the more bland and un-interesting it usually is. Appear to a wider audience usually means appear on a much more limited and conventional base.

TLDR: Popularity is no gauge of quality.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[thedonger]

If you expect such ratings to 100% match your own opinion, you have an over inflated sense of self importance. ;-)

Is this your first day on the Internets? Turns out access to a constant stream of information and interaction actually makes us dumber, less perceptive people.

Or in XKCD terms: Someone is wrong on the Internet.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Z00L00K]

That's why the comments are good too.

But realize that movies are there for entertainment purposes in most cases so if someone produces a movie that is "good quality" but nobody watches it because it don't provide entertainment, then it may not be good quality after all.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have watched a decent percentage of Netflix's 'B' movies, the bulk of which I did not like.

posting anon due to shame

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[David_Hart]

Nearly all ratings are voluntary, and so suffer from self-selection bias. The measured ratings for general interest movie like Shawshank Redemption are typically lower than a special interest movie like Dark Knight (or Harry Potter, or Twilight, or Lord of the Rings) which appeals to a dedicated fanbase. The latter typically have a lot of fans who rate it highly just because it appeals to their group. That is, they rate it according to more lenient standard than they rate other movies, or they flat-out stuff the ballot box to try to get others to see it, to exaggerate the size of their interest group in hopes of encouraging more such movies to be made.

I agree that there is validity in this argument but a skew based on a fan base tends to be much greater when the number of responses is low. Dark Knight has over 1.5 Million ratings. Yes, a good chunk of them could be die hard fans, but there will also be offsetting low ratings by people who hate the genre, disliked the film, and/or people who didn't even watch the film. The law of averages kicks in to reduce the amount of skew as a result. Could it be skewed towards the high side because of rabid fans, possibly. The question is then by how much? and, does it even matter?

The biggest problem that I see is how people use ratings, as you aptly point out. They work well when being used to provide suggestions based on what you have watched and rated highly. The do not work well if your are just looking at the ratings and trying to figure out whether you will like the film or not. They also do not work well in determining the "best film ever", simply because that is way too subjective and is based on more criteria than just enjoyment and popularity.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[gstoddart]

Is this your first day on the Internets?

Yeah, absolutely, I just bought my first internets today at the corner store.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Ichijo]

Nearly all ratings are voluntary, and so suffer from self-selection bias... This sort of bias is so endemic to online polling that it's hopeless to try to correct it.

In the USA, the electoral college prevents regional factions from having undue influence in elections. In Australia, they achieve the same goal by requiring everyone to show up at the polls. So it seems the self-selection bias problem has already been solved in multiple ways.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[BlackHawk-666]

I definitely read through the comments for movies I'm interested in, but not quite sure about. It becomes a bit of a crap-shoot, but usually I just err on the side of watching them, and am only occasionally disappointed. Worst case, I watch 30 mins of something terrible - but honestly, that's rare enough to not care. Best case, I discover an indie classic or off-beat film I really love :D

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[aaaaaaargh!]

IMDB used to be good except for the fact that you couldn't use the scores to compare different subgenres, of course. However, during the past two or three years their reviews became worthless to me. My guess is some viral marketing agencies have installed hundreds of sock puppet accounts. Or, perhaps just a lot of people who have no clue about cinema have opened accounts there.

What hasn't changed is that a movie below 5 generally sucks, though, so for that it's still useful.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Xtifr]

The big problem with Netflix's ratings is that people don't understand them. Which confounds the data. I often give very different ratings on Netflix than I do on IMDb, because I use my personal tastes for the former, and more objective criteria for the latter. Take The Godfather. Objectively, a brilliant film, with outstanding acting, writing, directing, editing, cinematography, etc., etc. A lot of people consider it one of the best films ever made. On IMDb, I wouldn't give it less than 8/10, because I recognize its fine qualities. On Netflix, though, I can't give it more than 2/5, because it's not the sort of movie I like or want to watch, and 3 or higher means "I like it". I admire it, but I don't like it. I understand why people like it, and agree with the reasons for the praise, but it's not to my tastes.

(Of course, this also happens on IMDb, in reverse.)

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[Dutch Gun]

Interesting observation (and I share your opinion on The Godfather). I think this is actually the primary difference between critic reviews and user reviews. A critic (hopefully) tries to objectively measure "what is the quality of this film", while a user review is simply "how much did I personally like this film". I'm betting that very few people try to rate like a critic.

Honestly, I think that's fine, since that gives us a few different views of the movies. Also, it presents an interesting measurement of any potential disparity between the reviewer and the general audience member.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[dargaud]

I think one very good way for IMDB to correct for that bias would be to force their users to rate AGAIN their movies after 1~5~10 years. This way the 'this is the most hyped thing since sliced bread' factor goes away and you are left wondering why you gave a 10 to a movie you've never even watched a 2nd time and can even remember.

Re: Ummm .... duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called an animation you crotchety old coot. Cartoons are silly and set to classical music. Not all animations are cartoons.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[wonkey_monkey]

Right.

I mean, it couldn't possibly be that other people's opinions are as valid as yours.

Re:Ummm .... duh?

[tehcyder]

Like Dark Knight or not, it was a wildly popular movie

You might as well just look at the box office receipts to judge popularity. In any case, there is no connection at all between popularity and quality. From Wikipedia the five highest grossing films of all time are Avatar, Titanic, Jurassic World, The Avengers and Furious 7. All but Avatar are crap, and Avatar itself is not that great.

Automated Shilling

[Anonymous Coward]

People really don't understand the extent of how much automated shilling is happening on major websites. Almost every single major company these days has easy access to software that will abuse online comment systems and online voting/rating systems to promote their product.

Go look at the major subs at reddit when any new movie is released and 90% of the comments will be blatant marketing garbage made by bots that upvote each other.

Read the actual reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I always read a sampling of the actual reviews, rather than going purely off ratings. We all have different tastes. Sometimes the things a reviewer points out about a movie as why they hate it are the very things I enjoy.

Re:Read the actual reviews

[internerdj]

Or just ignore the reviews. I can't count the number of times that I've enjoyed a "terrible" movie.

Re:Read the actual reviews

[goarilla]

But dare you name them ?

Re:Read the actual reviews

[internerdj]

My biggest offense is probably Elektra. I actually paid money for the dvd and I do enjoy watching it.

Re: Read the actual reviews

[gmiller123456]

Fight Club. But not because the movie was horrible, but because I expected it to be horrible. When it turned out to be fairly descent I enjoyed it a lot more than movies I expected to be good. I've had similar experiences with others, but that one stands out in my mind because I it was so different from what I was expecting.

Re: Read the actual reviews

[Triklyn]

my two, probably devil, and constantine. not terrible, but i always feel guilty about liking something that

m. night and shia lebouf touched respectively.

Re:Read the actual reviews

[NewWorldDan]

I think the trick is to find a reviewer that makes sense to you. You don't have to agree 100% with him*, you just need to understand why he likes some movies and not others.

(* a note on pronouns: my preferred critic is a dude, so I used male pronouns)

Only movies ratings?

[tomhath]

Is any rating on the internet not suspect? I sure don't trust any, especially if there's money involved.

Re:Only movies ratings?

[doublearon]

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1098/

Re:Only movies ratings?

[Infiniti2000]

Everything is suspect, including /. moderating.

Re:Only movies ratings?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://xkcd.com/1036/

or

https://xkcd.com/937/

Re:Only movies ratings?

[Archangel Michael]

I believe that to be true of 1-5 scale ratings. Not enough granularity. 1-10 scales are better, and 1-100 are even better. I think granularity creates better reviews, because not every movie is a 100. But a lot of movies can be 5 stars.

If you think about it this way, 5 Star ratings are divided into 20% ranges, 10 star is 10% ranges, and point scoring is 1%. 20% isn't anywhere close to accurate.

Re:Only movies ratings?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's similar to Slashdot's book ratings system:

10 - Run, don't walk, to the bookstore!
9 - Buy only if you are particularly interested in the subject.
8 or less - Avoid this book like the plague!

Re:Only movies ratings?

[The-Ixian]

This exactly.

Star ratings are hogwash.

I am convinced that when people do star ratings, they mindlessly hit 1 or 5 just to get "rate me!" nag crap out of the way.

The only thing that matters even a little is coherent customer reviews. The problem is that most people don't really take the time to speak about their likes and dislikes. So really, even customer reviews are pretty much worthless.

Re:Only movies ratings?

[The-Ixian]

I would say -5 to +5 would be a better system.

That way you can capture people's DISLIKE of a thing as well as their LIKE.

An all positive number system is just ridiculous.

Re:Only movies ratings?

[AK Marc]

The problem is the mismeasure of the system. What do the stars measure? The experience of everyone who has seen it?

But that's not the same as the experience of the person who hasn't seen it. Would the "average" remaining people agree with the pre-screener critics? Siskel and Ebert was a good predictor for my mother, but not anyone else I knew. She pretty much 100% liked every 2-up movie and hated every 2-down movie. But her experience is not typical. Most people are more split from the critics.

And it's not just the pre-screening critics, but the opening weekend viewers. The first weekenders to go see the new Marvel movie may not be representative of the remaining population.

But it all goes back to the first question. What are the stars trying to measure? A useful measure is whether a random person would like it. But they are based on a metric that's never been linked to that outcome.

Why is it I sense a doctoral thesis coming out of this? Who's up for it?

Re:Only movies ratings?

[Triklyn]

... granularity in this context is ridiculous, it's like saying, we're going to make sure each tooth on our chainsaw is sharp as a surgeon's scalpel.

hey, what's the difference between a 75 point movie, and a 76 point movie?
a movie you rate at 76 today you'll never rate at 77 or 75 on another day?

you're talking about the extremely subjective and saying it's not accurate enough. :) some critics grow to love movies they had panned in the past, as they get more miles under their belt. How do you judge a movie that you both love and hate, sometimes co-currently?

A single number is inadequate to represent how one person feels about 1 week -12 years of another person's work, and granularity really isn't going to fix that.

I suggest that you find a critic you agree with, and just listen to his or her thoughts on the latest offerings.

Let me get this straight...

[Ukab the Great]

So I can't trust everything I read on the Internet AND I have to apply critical thinking skills to determine whether a source of information, especially one possibly beholden to financial gain, is trustworthy?

Re:Let me get this straight...

[willworkforbeer]

So I can't trust everything I read on the Internet

I know, right? Can't trust nothin' no more. Some people even post online under fake names. (Not me of course, the Workforbeer's are traditionally honest folk, always have been, always will be.

- Will

Re:Let me get this straight...

[truck_soccer]

Well, since you've asked: Never. We do generally take offense to really stupid comments made by unfunny asshats though. Keep it up, son. Your dad must be very proud.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[gstoddart]

Know what's astounding? People need to be told this.

And that is why those people calling from "the Microsoft" or all of those other scams are still doing it. Because people apparently lack the ability to know this.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

How long before the LGBT community takes offense with the phrase "Let me get this straight..."

It won't necessarily be the LGBT community, most LGBT people I know are cool.

It'll be some some brainless jackass SJW like Laci Green; she'll label it "problematic" and before you know it there'll be a shitload of people screaming about how the phrase "triggers them" and "enables micro-aggressions" and "promotes a cis-centric view", etc etc etc.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Well, since you've asked: Never. We do generally take offense to really stupid comments made by unfunny asshats though. Keep it up, son. Your dad must be very proud.

In all fairness I'd have to say that the vast majority of LGBT people I know are cool and don't freak out over silly stuff like this.

A lot of SJWs, however, would likely see this as an "discriminatory issue" and they'll be the ones to suddenly make it a "problem that must be dealt with".

Re:Let me get this straight...

[alvinrod]

Do we really need to start perceiving whether people who might perceive something as a slight actually will? If you want to complain about people being overly politically correct and getting bent out of shape over something inconsequential, at least let them get bent out of shape about it first before whining about it or you end up looking just as petty.

Re: Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least my dad isn't my mom, and my mom isn't my dad. ;)

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Archangel Michael]

It was funny. Because you took offense to a joke, kinda proves his point. Which makes it even funnier. Nicely done, if that was your intention.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Triklyn]

i don't trust a man who will work for just any beer.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

shut up man, if you say its name you draw its attention.

now go outside, spin 3 times, and spit.

we may yet be in time to shove this genie back in its bottle... ...RIP robin, you will be missed.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[AK Marc]

He has no sense of humor, but his answer is correct. I don't see lefties getting all twisted over "sinister".

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Triklyn]

no, because you're at fault if you tread on someone's feelings even unintentionally.

the left is eating it's own, and has been for a while. Even prominent lefties are walking around on tiptoes watching what they're saying, because they'll get crucified if they accidentally offend someone's sensibilities, and aren't penitent enough.

Microagressions... yeah that's a thing apparently.

I was on the left, until he left left me.

Bad Center

[Anonymous Coward]

The prible is not necessarily the ratings, but rather that the average rating (both mean and median) are artificially high, around 80 or so out of 100. This means pretty much any movie will appear to be good so someone not familiar with the formula. It's childish, and reminds me of when men rate women and just about every woman is a 9 or 10, when in reality those 10s would be excessively rare.

This also applies to video games and just about any rating online. And any site where people can log in the rate will have an innacurately high number of extreme ratings (1 and 10 stars) because people simply don't understand things like standard deviations or even averages.

"especially from companies selling you tickets."

[Anonymous Coward]

especially from companies selling you tickets.

Duh? Name me any situation (movies, software, music, cars, etc) where it isn't hysterically stupid (and to an obvious in-your-face degree) for reviewers (or their publisher) and sellers to have any sort of relationship.

Fandango reviews are for the kind of people who get their software from "app stores," i.e. pretty much the stupidest people that you will ever meet.

None of this means movie reviews are a bad idea, nor does it mean that buying tickets from a website are a bad idea. You just don't use the same fucking website for both things.

You knew this since you were 5 years old. You knew this when your parents or grandparents got a copy of "Consumer Reports" before shopping for anything expensive. The only time you don't know it, is when you make a conscious effort to become a stupider person (i.e. whenever a new iPhone or XBox comes out), presumably in the interests of world safety.

No Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no fix for this. A good movie is subjective. Some times a bad movie is good when viewed through the right lens. A great movie might be reviewed poorly because the reviewer didn't understand some aspect, or might have had a bad day. Some people love sci fi, and hate romantic comedies, etc. Watch the trailer, compare that to your mental map of what the lead actors and directors have done in the past, and make the choice for yourself. If a friend says they hated/loved the movie, ask why. Add that to your mental map.

Re:No Fix

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

I always liked the movie Starship Troopers because I saw it for what it is, an action/sci-fi/parody of military thinking/military logic taken to the extremes. The actors do a good job in their roles, the special effects are top-notch (for the time it was made) and the tongue-in-cheek humour of the story made it clear that the director didn't agree with the point of view of the book's author.

Re:No Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a similar experience with Battlefield Earth. I saw it for the first time about ten years after it was released. I had a great time laughing at how outrageous the whole thing was.

MST3K made some horrible movies good.

Re:No Fix

[goarilla]

clear that the director didn't agree with the point of view of the book's author.

Why is "Starship Troopers" somewhat alike Tom Clancy ?

Re:No Fix

[moeinvt]

I liked it enough so that I'll watch it again sometime, but what really pissed me off was that they went the cheap route by completely ignoring the suits/uniforms the troopers were supposed to have. As you probably know, they were supposed to have some sort of super combat suits. Instead, the "mobile infantry" in the film is only "mobile" because they're able to friggin walk around! Lame, lame, lame!
If they want to make a parody of the society in the book, fine, but they shouldn't have stolen that title if they were just going to leave out the sci-fi technology that was fundamental to the story.

P.S. I wouldn't attribute the POV in that book and the society therein as a reflection of Heinlein's personal views. He was all over the map in his fiction and to an extent, in his real life political views.

Re:No Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

In the director's commentary, he made it clear that he felt the book was fascist and that his movies was meant to be anti-fascist. Even explicitly stating where he was showing "Facism BAD". The commentary was kinda comical in itself for how adamant he was.

Re:No Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The director didn't even read the book. That makes it rather hard to pitch it as an insightful parody of the author's views.

What it was, was a decent sci-fi B-movie which didn't deserve to be within a mile of the name Starship Troopers.

Trans fat

[Anonymous Coward]

0.1 grams of trans fat equals 0 trans fat. Even 0.9! Because it's not >= 1, then, hey, it's still technically not a one.

Asylum

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

If you see "The Asylum" in the credits, you know it's automatically a one-star movie, maybe two stars if they had a better budget.

I do have to say though, they did a really amazing job with Z Nation and I hope Netflix gets the second season soon.

Re:Asylum

[The-Ixian]

LOL or what's the other one? Studio 4 or something?

It is interesting to see this knock-off market really take off.

Consumers and content resellers are so desperate for new content that this is clearly an increasingly big void to fill.

I remember years ago I was an eMusic.com subscriber (when their subscription system wasn't such a deceitful money grab), I started seeing a whole lot of "tribute" albums... I thought it was a pretty clever operation. Get around licensing / royalty costs and at the same time increase the amount of content available. Brilliant.

Here's a better reason

[wonkey_monkey]

Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

Because enjoyment is subjective.

Don't trust anything on the internet

[Nyder]

I just don't trust anything on the internet by default.

Lazy

[PopeRatzo]

Crowd-sourcing opinion is a bad idea, unless you really want to like what other people like. If you have that kind of need for validation, then go ahead.

Better to find a handful of thoughtful reviewers whose opinions you trust.

Re:Lazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Crowd-sourcing opinion is a bad idea

Having been burned twice by businesses with over 100 five star review on Yelp!, and no negative reviews (not even in the filtered reviews) I concur completely. In fact, I now know to stay away from anything that's rated too highly.

Make your own mind?

[truck_soccer]

I need approval from the herd before I am allowed to form an opinion.

Re:Make your own mind?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that we're looking for herd approval, we're trying to improve the odds of spending money wisely. I can't watch everything, so when I finally get a night out I would like to see a good movie - if something is receiving uniformly bad reviews from critics and audiences, I probably will skip it as there is a good chance it isn't very good and another movie playing would be more worth my limited time. Back when I was much younger I watched every movie (or so it seemed...); I just don't have that kind of time and money anymore (as much as I want to) and try to be pickier in my selections, and seeing what other people think is just one of the criteria used in making a selection.

Ratings means nothing because people are idiots

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

"The story was great, the special effects were great and all the actors were great, but I hate actor XYZ so I'm rating this movie 1 star."

Re:Ratings means nothing because people are idiots

[CanadianMacFan]

"The actors sucked, there was no story but the special effects were amazing - * * * * *"

Re:Ratings means nothing because people are idiots

[moeinvt]

I don't disagree that people are idiots, but I find it hard to believe that people are going to enjoy a movie, then log in to a web site and rate it a '1' because they hate a certain actor/actress. Looking at IMDB ratings, I think the idiots are much more inclined to go see a movie, say "Wow! That was awesome!" and give it an instant '10'. Check out "The Martian" for example. It's only been out a few weeks, but it's now #129 in the Top 250 and has received a '10' rating from 19,500 users/idiots. A perfect '10' as if the movie was flawless and could not be improved upon in any way whatsoever? Yes, idiots they are, but that doesn't mean the rating is "meaningless". I'm actually surprised at the wisdom of the crowd on IMDB. Even now, their "Top 250" is a fairly decent list of good movies.

IMDB is not bad

[future assassin]

I noticed any movie with a score lower than say 6.8 is going to suck and not just because I or someone didn't like the style of movie, its just bad. On there you can usually tell the fake reviews when they are posted very early.

Re:IMDB is not bad

[Xtifr]

But some bad movies are great! :)

I agree, though. IMDb's ratings are better than those on most sites. (The only other site I pay much attention to is Rotten Tomatoes.) But even so, I've found cases where I disagree with the general consensus.

Rating something only raters have a look at?

[stiebing.ja]

Doh, which normal person would have a look at some rating of some foreigners before entering the cinema? These ratings are from raters for raters, so why do they take the effort to manipulate...

Online rating sites get manipulated?

[Chris Mattern]

I am shocked! Shocked, i tell you!

Rotten Tomatoes

[BillCable]

Rotten Tomatoes is the gold standard for movie quality measurement. Accept no substitutes.

Seriously, if someone is relying on Fandango to tell them if a movie is any good, they deserve to watch dreck.

Ratings

[ledow]

Ratings tell you - at best - how popular a movie is. Not how good it is. Same as the music charts. It has no correspondence to even sales figures, really. Measuring "sales this month" as opposed to "overall sales" is pretty much a nonsense if you think of it, if the person doesn't already own that product.

Ratings are about what's popular, what other people are liking now. For many, that's ALL they need to know because that's what they base their opinions on and then discuss with their peer group. For others, it means nothing at all.

I *GUARANTEE* you that if one of my school friends "recommends" a page to me, that I'll have no interest. I *GUARANTEE* you that the films that my friends or family like do not intersect in any meaningful or predictable way with my own personal preferences. It's just that simple.

However, I refuse to subscribe to the "You have to watch it first" kind of argument if that means parting with any money whatsoever. If I have to watch it to know whether or not I'll like it, I'm not going to pay to do so at the cinema on or DVD.

But it is possible, via trailers, reviews, ratings, comments, research and the necessary pinch of salt, to work out whether a movie is one you'll enjoy. You can still be wrong, but you can get a good indication.

I think the same of Steam's review system, There are game on there I love that get slated and games I hate that get 10/10 and Mostly Positive reviews. It doesn't affect my decision to buy or not. Give me a demo, though, or a gameplay trailer and that will help sway me one way or the other.

I've wanted "Grey Goo" since I first saw it. They did a free weekend this weekend, so I installed it. I'm pretty Meh about it now. But I wouldn't have known that without playing it, and wouldn't have bought it based on the Mostly Positive reviews alone.

Prison Architect, on the other hand, I thought was going to be rubbish. And then I played it. And now I can't stop. And no doubt reviewers and other players think just the opposite.

But, sorry, movie ratings are worthless. Ratings are worthless and ratings of something that you have to pay to prove them wrong are even worse. I've never paid them any attention. At least with a bit of music you can tell if it's going to be good for free, legally, before you buy it.

This is why people follow particular reviewers...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

This is why people follow particular reviewers, like Siskel OR Ebert back in the day.

I was surprised this morning...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when I checked out the weekend movies. Several of them were sufficiently unknown to me that I checked the MetaCritic number.

It seemed quite a coincidence that several came out to an 81% rating. Which sounds to me a lot like a four-star rating that could be rounded up to a 4.5-star rating as described in the post. I guess our natural inclination to distrust the ratings of someone who is trying to sell us something may be correct in this instance.

People are horrible at rating things

[Daetrin]

Aside from the rounding thing i suspect this is more a combination of (reasonable) bias and people sucking at rating than some active attempt at deception. ("You have attributed conditions to villainy...")

If someone goes out and sees a movie or plays a game and thinks it's awesome they're much more likely to go online and rate it highly, possibly 4 stars but more likely 5 stars (because people tend to extremes, especially when feeling emotional.) If someone sees a movie or plays a game and thinks it sucks they're much more likely to go online and lambast it, giving it 1 or 2 stars. (I believe 2 stars is the popular option for people who want to appear as if they're giving it a fair shake.)

How many people go see a movie, decide it's kinda mediocre, and feel really compelled to rush online and tell everyone about how they really don't feel much one way or the other?

Compounding this is the fact that, despite all the jokes to the contrary, the average person isn't stupid. Most of us have some kind of idea what kind of movies we like and are able to make a fairly reasonable guess as to how much we will enjoy an upcoming movie. And most of us choose not to spend money going to a theatre to see a movie we don't like.

So for new movies, the ones for which the ratings have the most financial impact and are the most closely watched, most people go to see it because they expect to enjoy it, and most of the time they're right, so they give it high ratings. And if they're _wrong_, they're probably going to be pretty pissed about it and may give correspondingly bad ratings. There are probably also a lot of people who go to a movie expecting it to be decent but not outstanding, and their expectations of decent mediocrity are met. But they're not going to bother taking the time to submit a rating like that.

I would expect that the majority of mediocre ratings would come at least a year after a movie's been out, when people have the chance to catch it on TV or online or rent it for a lark. There are lower expectations and less investment and therefore people will give something random a try and be okay giving it a median review. And if it's an online system, especially one that will make recommendations based on your ratings, the threshold of effort is low enough that the promise of some (minuscule) reward is enough to provide the motivation to leave a mediocre rating.

Re:People are horrible at rating things

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the people who collect reviews in-person outside theaters are biased. I saw Star Wars Episode I during a midnight showing on release date, as soon as the person handing out the review cards saw me walking out of the theater with a disgruntled look on my face she walked away and would not return to the door she was previously posted at until I left.

Re:People are horrible at rating things

[Anonymous Coward]

Compounding this is the fact that, despite all the jokes to the contrary, the average person isn't stupid.

Said like a stupid person.

Obligatory XKCD

[sjbe]

Star Ratings Meaning according to XKCD

Even honest ratings skew high

[DavidHumus]

Not to dispute that a site like Fandango will lie for money, but for the data from the Netflix challenge several years ago - where they made available an anonymized sample of peoples' movie ratings - the mean was 3.8 (https://www.igvita.com/2006/10/29/dissecting-the-netflix-dataset/), not the 3.0 one might expect for a random distribution over the range 1 to 5.

Upon reflection, this makes sense as people don't watch movies randomly - they watch what they think might be good and avoid what they think will be bad. I know I had trouble thinking of a movie that I had watched that I would rate 1 (except for "The Master of Disguise" to which I took my daughter when she was very young).

Re:Even honest ratings skew high

[Xtifr]

Yeah, I've noticed that my ratings on Netflix skew well above three. I'd like to help train the system better in my dislikes as well as my likes, but I'm not really willing to rate movies I haven't watched, and there's a lot of movies I'm not interested in watching.

They do have an "I'm not interested in this" option, though, so that probably helps. But it's also probably not reflected in their star ratings (nor should it be).

Whoah, hold on there, cowboy

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Wait, you mean someone on teh intarwebz might LIE?

Say it isn't so!!

Bambi Sucks 1 Star

[Anonymous Coward]

Bambi sucks! It was all cartoony and shit and there was zero in it for scifi fans to like. They didn't even have a single car chase in the whole movie. I'd give zero stars, but they don't let you give less than one star.

1 Star - Bambi sucks.

Likert scales

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of rating systems use Likert scales which are useful when ratings are distributed across the extremes (symmetry), my guess is there are a lot of ratings in the middle of the scale (2 to 3 stars, etc) and fewer ratings at the bottom of the scale

Is there a "skewness" value for movie reviews?

It is not the rounding

[GuB-42]

No matter how the rounding is made, as long as it is monotonous, a 4.5 star will always have a better rating than a 4 star.
It is also obvious that ratings are relative. If 4-4.5 is average then so be it. Not very accurate but it gives you an idea.

The problem is who is behind the ratings. Shills are an obvious cause of bogus ratings, however, even honest reviews may be troublesome. A typical thing is that when looking at ratings, you are usually looking for the best. Conversely, reviewers tend to give 5 stars most of the time while punishing the movie they didn't like. As a result, you are more likely to find widely acceptable movies than really good ones. If you wondered why "The Shawshank Redemption" is on top of the IMDB 250 while you can think of plenty of better movies, you have your answer.

I don't trust any specific reviewers

[sjbe]

Better to find a handful of thoughtful reviewers whose opinions you trust.

Haven't found any yet, at least when it comes to movies. Seriously, I haven't found a reviewer yet that I agree with consistently. And frankly I don't really care about specific opinions. Basically I just want to know A) is the movie of generally good quality and well told and B) is the premise and story likely to interest me.

I've found Rotten Tomatoes to be an ok (though imperfect) proxy evaluation of general quality though it tends to overrate certain types of movies. For example Rotten Tomatoes tends to overrate animated movies for some reason. Animated movies (esp Disney/Pixar) that are merely good often get 90%+ ratings when a 75%-85% might be more appropriate. For instance Wall-E is a very good movie but no way in hell should it have a 96% - it just wasn't THAT good. 96% should be for stuff that wins academy awards for best picture. Frozen got 89% and even though it is wildly popular, I think its score is also far too high. It was an ok-good (60-75%) but not great movie. But I'm aware of that bias so I can adjust mentally for it.

  But Rotten Tomatoes isn't good at telling me if *I* will like the movie. There are some great quality movies that I find boring and some admittedly second-rate movies that I very much enjoy. I walked out of the movie The Aviator for example because it bored the crap out of me even though I'll acknowledge it is a pretty well made film and probably is rated appropriately on Rotten Tomatoes.

Re:I don't trust any specific reviewers

[PopeRatzo]

Seriously, I haven't found a reviewer yet that I agree with consistently.

You don't have to agree with a reviewer consistently. You only need to understand their frame of reference and trust their ability to think. This is why you get a handful of reviewers, and then decide for yourself. There was a guy who I read, Dave Kehr, and I know where I agree with him and where I don't. I know his preferences and his blind spots. But I know for sure that he's a film scholar and thinks carefully about what he says.

3/5 = "decent movie"? Uhhhh, No.

[moeinvt]

FTA:

"You decided to check out 'Fantastic Four' ... Fandango users thought it was good! Over 7,000 people had reviewed it, and it had an average of 3 out of 5 stars. This is going to be a decent movie."

This article must be targeted at people who would see a 3/5 rating for a movie and conclude that the users "thought it was good". I would interpret a 3/5 from 7000 users (or a 6/10 on IMDB) as an indication that the movie probably sucks. No way would I pay theater prices to go see it based on a 3/5.

A big budget Hollywood action flick like FF is likely going to earn 3 stars just for the special effects. It will get a few high ratings from people who went to see it simply for that purpose. People would generally know what to expect in such a film and those that would rate it '0' or '1' probably wouldn't go see it in the first place. You therefore need to expect a little ratings inflation because you're dealing with people who paid to see it, not a random sample.
On a side note, the 5 star system really doesn't have enough granularity. How can any movies earn '0's or '5's? That's like saying a movie couldn't possibly be any worse or any better and no other movie could possibly be worse/better. That makes no sense.
Even if the acting was lame and the plot was full of holes, I might give a movie a 2/5 for a few bright spots, but I would consider that a very bad rating.

Ebert

[sjbe]

This is why people follow particular reviewers, like Siskel OR Ebert back in the day.

I only found Ebert helpful because I almost always seemed to disagree with the guy. Nothing against him personally but whenever I watched the show I routinely found myself having a very different opinion if I had also seen the movie.

Re:Ebert

[Anonymous Coward]

A good reviewer will explain his/her preferences and explain their point of view with some context.

There are a lot of reviewers I follow regularly even if I don't agree with their overall opinion because their analysis is revealing, especially if they go in to the behind the scenes movie industry side of things.

The last Fantastic Four movie was bad, but the story behind it was fascinating. Supposedly it was originally spun as a rather dark movie with some very strong horror elements. The studio intervened very late in production and sloppily added some footage because they wanted a kid friendly avengers ripoff to sell movie tie-ins. (There is a real life burger king ad featuring the Thing that, if viewed beside the movie, makes for some disturbing social commentary) So the end movie is a confused garbage pile.

You can see bits of the old movie that are pretty interesting and provoking, but you'd never notice or appreciate them if you didn't know the story behind the movie production.

Re:Ebert

[Triklyn]

yeah, but you get to know their tastes and where you fall in line with those tastes.

Bonus points if they're hilarious.

Kermode and Mayo, look it up, it's very very good.

Why You Should Be Suspicious of All Online Ratings

[QuietLagoon]

There I fixed that title.

.
All online ratings and reviews are played with and are dubious, at best.

There are some good ratings/reviews, such as this review of a book of random numbers.

But, for the most part, online reviews should be viewed with a good deal of skepticism.

Re:3/5 = "decent movie"? Uhhhh, No.

[nedlohs]

Anything with more than 2 options is too much granularity for a movie rating system.

Mr. Cranky

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reviews I trust: http://www.mrcranky.com/

His review of The Tigger Movie is pure gold!

You can stop earlier than that

[SuperKendall]

Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online...

Shh! Stop. Say no more. Right there with you.

In other news

[tom229]

the sky is blue and water is wet. More at 11.

TIL

[bobmajdakjr]

... that the law of averages does still function, that the internet is mostly wrong, that I hate everybody who isn't me, and that its best to just make my own opinions about things.

Influence within Time Warner

[tepples]

Rotten Tomatoes has been a subsidiary of Flixster since 2010, which was in turn purchased by Warner Bros. in 2011.

But does Warner Bros. Pictures have any more influence over Rotten Tomatoes than it has over CNN?

Re:This is why people follow particular reviewers.

[phantomfive]

I liked Ebert so much, I stopped watching movies altogether and only read his reviews of them!
Now I have to read wikipedia. Oh well.

Point of the article is not the individual reviews

[radarskiy]

The article isn't questioning the reviews themselves at all. It questioned Fandango's rounding method, which presents higher averages than other sites would with the same review ratings.

Product reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the same thing happen with product reviews, a ton of "its a great product, buy it" reviews, and a bunch of "its terrible, piece of crap" reviews, but very few reviews in the middle with actual details. Presumably the positive ones are from the seller or a PR firm for the seller and the negative reviews are from competitors. The fact that it may be catching up to movie reviews shouldn't be surprising. What I do find surprising is that this isn't prosecuted as some kind of fraud or false advertising. I guess the appropriate agencies are too busy doing "important" things, like going after firework manufactures because some drunk/high moron started a sentence with "watch this" and a lighter.

s/Movie//

[Balial]

There, fixed it...

Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[fyngyrz]

The reason I don't trust online movie ratings is because Dr. Who is popular. And Dr. Who is not something I can tolerate. In short, a large part of the populace's taste is not my taste, so those stars... meaningless to me.

And sure enough, there are movies I loved that got poor ratings, and movies I thought were utter tripe that got high rankings.

Same thing goes for Silkel and Ebert and that class of professional opinionators. Their taste is not my taste. So they can't be trusted by me.

With this in mind, a site's questionable rounding of 4.1 to 4.5... not even on the radar.

Re:Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[mwvdlee]

Probably the most reliably movie ratings are the recommendations given by sites selling DVD/BluRays, as they have a financial interest in actually providing accurate results.
Sites paid for by movie advertising have a financial interest in recommending whatever movie has the biggest advertising budget.

Re:Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's up for an Ask Slashdot thread on why Doctor Who is so popular?

Re:Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[fyngyrz]

I'd read that with great interest. :)

Re:Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[Jack Griffin]

In short, a large part of the populace's taste is not my taste, so those stars... meaningless to me.

I hardly ever read reviews for this same reason. Everyone has different opinions, so for this reason I find the whole concept of a professional critic ridiculous.

Re:Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

because scientists, engineers, and people who want to see themselves as scientists and engineers, love having their balls sucks as much as anyone else

and dr who is about sucking the balls of scientists and engineers while showcasing the diversity of today's england

Re:Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[tehcyder]

I hardly ever read reviews for this same reason. Everyone has different opinions, so for this reason I find the whole concept of a professional critic ridiculous.

Some people's opinions are more valuable than others. For instance, I know nothing abut Icelandic folk music, so my opinion on a recent song in that genre would be of negligible value compared to that of a music journalist. from Iceland.

Re:Some mod(s) will hate this, but....

[Jack Griffin]

But would it?
If that critic told you how awesome the song was, then you listened to it and it was crap, how much value have you gained? And if your friends and family also think it's shit then where is the value? I prefer a critic who thinks exactly like me. And so far, the only person I've found like that is me.

I Don't Trust Any Star Ratings

[sudon't]

I really don't trust any ratings done by "consumers" because the way I see people do ratings is, if they like it it, they give five stars, and if they don't like it, they give one star. Also, on seller sites such as eBay, or Discogs, it seems you're expected to give five stars to any seller who merely sends you the thing you ordered. Obviously, that leaves no room for a seller who goes above and beyond. If you give less then five stars, they'll flip out. I guess I can't blame them since that is the convention, now. Nevertheless, it makes the five-star rating system useless.
Another surprise for me was when I found out the ratings on Netflix weren't generated by other viewers, but rather by Netflix guessing what I would think, based on my watching history.

A Peter Travers quote - sure sign of a bad film

[cshay]

I always used to laugh out loud when I saw a quote in the paper about a film and it was from Travers. Pretty much that told me to avoid the film.

You can tell he's the critic of last resort that studios call upon when they have a bomb on their hands.

Re:3/5 = "decent movie"? Uhhhh, No.

[Anonymous Coward]

On a side note, the 5 star system really doesn't have enough granularity.

Just how accurately can you determine a movie's quality? Take a list of 100 random movies. Now sort them from best to worst. Repeat the process a few more times. Now aggregate the data to make a comprehensive ordered list of all movies. You'll end up with inconclusive groupings that are always above or below other groups and a few outliers that can go either way at the boundaries. Nothing is gained from having significantly greater precision than the accuracy of the measurement. In fact, it can be misleading, leading you to believe that the result is more accurate than it really is. 2 or 3 levels is probably sufficient for something like movie ratings, maybe up to 10 if you can force yourself to be very objective. More than that though is getting into the noise.

Same thing with games

[Not-a-Neg]

Movie reviews/ratings should be treated the same way as videogame reviews/ratings, with a grain of salt. You only need to skim the limited amount of specific details present in the reviews to form your own opinion while completely ignoring whatever score the reviewer gave. Too many reviews, positive or negative, are tilted by the author's personal history with the medium or genre and will never match your own.

Netflix rating system rocks

[mea2214]

I've been with Netflix since 2006 and have watched and rated around 2000 movies so they have some idea of what I like. Most movies they list for me are below 3 stars and rarely will a film have over 4 stars. If Netflix shows me a movie with one star and I watch it anyway it's usually terrible. Not sure what kind of system they use but they did have a contest for people to come up with a rating algorithm many years ago. I really trust the Netflix rating when deciding what to rent.

It's 2015

[argStyopa]

It's 2015.

If people at this point don't understand that there are PAID individuals (by the thousands) who will fill forums with whatever you want, vote whatever you want on whatever online poll, and generally astroturfing the shit out of anything of any actual value whatsoever (and a fairly large amount of stuff that DOESN'T matter, as well), then they're so oblivious and stupid that they shouldn't be allowed to care for themselves, much less handle money or purchases.

A Better Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online Reviews"

FTFY

Re:This is why people follow particular reviewers.

[Triklyn]

mark kermode and simon mayo

the reverse is true at imdb

[bobjr94]

If you read the comments at imdb, they all say things like - this movie looks stupid im never going to pay to see it i would give it 0 stars if i could - ... Meaning they rated it but never watched it.

Everyone else here does realize...

[Anonymous Coward]

... that all online rating systems are abused, right? Even Slashdot's comment system. There is no more perfect way to control people than to feed them the appropriate data, and online reviews make this trivial when people are willing to trust the word of complete strangers.

I miss Roger Ebert

[Prune]

While, as is the case with any film critic, one is bound to disagree with at least some of the ratings a given critic gives to the movies he reviews, the golden skill of Ebert was that reading his reviews would tell you whether you would like the movie, not just whether he did. While I often agreed with his ratings, there were numerous times I didn't, and in those cases I knew that I'd rate the movie differently merely from reading the review, without having seen the film yet (and every time I did follow up by watching it, my expectations were confirmed).

The problem of anonymity

[waTeim]

These broad statistics like average rating and stars are really a throwback to a time when processors were too slow for techniques like cooperative filtering , which in this context, essentially uses people to recommend movies and movies to recommend people back and forth for a more accurate estimator. The system is simultaneously able to find people that like the same kind of movies based on a common set of features and movies that have those features. The idea being that if you're a person that has preferences similar to someone that has rates a film highly then you will tend to also rate it highly. But the problem for simple rating sites is that these advanced techniques require you to establish an identity to differentiate yourself from "the average" and contribute by rating, which can be tedious while systems like Netflix can probably do more by inferring you rating by repeat viewing, tendency to scan, etc. However, once identity is established, then even fraudulent types of behavior can be dealt with. It's surprising that imdb, rotten tomatoes, fandango, etc cling to such inaccuracies, but I could find no reference to such techniques, though admittedly I didn't spend a long time looking.

Never believe a statistic....

[MoarSauce123]

.....that you didn't fake yourself.

Do ratings, as is, even matter?

[martinfb]

What my neighbor likes or dislikes, may not necessarily coincide with my preferences. I have seen panned movies that were great, and highly rated movies sucked. If the ratings system in place now were less subjective, rather than objective (with the object being to accurately reflect quality of the acting, directing, writing (and storyline), and editing), I might lend some credence to a rating. Even so, ratings can mislead. How about replacing ratings with ACCURATE TRAILERS!

Re:3/5 = "decent movie"? Uhhhh, No.

[tehcyder]

Anything with more than 2 options is too much granularity for a movie rating system.

Three would work: thumbs up, thumbs down and meh. Which you could translate as worth seeing again, not worth seeing at all and OK to see once.

Re:This is why people follow particular reviewers.

[Wolfrider]

hollywoodbitchslap.com FTW. Comments are limited length and the site doesn't seem to be as active as it was a few years ago, but I still rely on it for reviews.

Re:This is why people follow particular reviewers.

[Triklyn]

:) did not pass my litmus test. Four lions review, kermode called it when he said it was elegiac and filled with pathos. a sense of poignancy. Some people only see comedy in that movie, I also saw a great deal of sadness, :) if a review site doesn't see sadness in four lions, it's not for me :)

Re:3/5 = "decent movie"? Uhhhh, No.

[Anonymous Coward]

5/5: BEST. MOVIE. EVAR.
4/5: I liked it, and I wouldn't mind watching it again.
3/5: I liked it, but once was enough.
2/5: I didn't like it.
1/5: WORST. MOVIE. EVAR.