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Netflix Is Ending Reviews July 30th
goombah99 writes: Netflix is sending emails to subscribers announcing the end of user-authored reviews on Netflix. Past reviews are being archived. The stated reason is declining usage. This follows on the previous years' decision to remove range voting for user ratings (0 to 5 stars) and substitute a thumbs up/down approval voting system. One suspects that the former is an unintended consequence of the latter, since the purpose of people who write a review is to try to explain the nuances of their decision. An inexpressive rating system defeats that. It can be argued that approval voting has technical advantages in aggregating ratings for a recommendation engine as it doesn't need to normalize the biases in a rating system between different users and mostly heads off gaming the system with exaggerated degrees of rating. But evidently that was also a necessary component of the review process itself regardless of its utility for recommendation engines. The email that Netflix is sending users is short and to the point: "You contributed a review on Netflix within the last year. We wanted to let you know that this feature will be retired on July 30th due to declining usage. We appreciate you taking time to write a review. All of your reviews will be available at netflix.com/reviews through July 30th."
>"Now instead of everyone deciding for themselves what two or four stars means, people can just decide whether they liked the movie or not. It's simple. I like that."
I *hate* it. Because there are lots of movies I neither like nor despise... and there are movies I like and movies I really, really like. None of that can be expressed with a "like/hate" or "good/bad" 2-point scale. Plus, somehow, Netflix LEARNED what I liked based on realistic ratings (I rate EVERYTHING I watch). Now how are they going to do that? I will have no scale to know how certain they are I will "like" it or "dislike" it.
How hard is it to rate on a 5 point scale? We do it zillions of times a day at nearly every school in the nation...
5 = A = very best = Absolutely love
4 = B = good = Like it
3 = C = average = OK/Meh/mediocre
2 = D = not good = disliked it more than liked it
1 = F = worst/fail = hated it
Now, if it were a 7, 9, or 13 point scale, I can see why it might be more difficult than it is worth, overall. But really, a 5 point scale is the one that most everyone has used for many years throughout a significant part of their lives. Even if the definition of each rating slid a little here and there, it isn't so varying as to be useless.
Getting rid of reviews is yet another hostile move to the way many of us use Netflix to try and decide what to watch and help others.
Not a lot of alternatives. Amazon isn't much better, but they do spend a ton of money to be relevant and becoming an exclusive source of some popular shows, but that may not be sustainable. Everything I would be interested in seems to have an additionsl cost. I don't think Amazon would exist if it weren't for the pre-existing "Prime" userbase. Hulu has it's own major issues. Those are essentially the only effective subscription streaming services with a broad based appeal.
The biggest problem with Netflix isn't something they can control - they don't have access to content customers may want. It's like the old cable wars but with streaming services instead (ie, withhold your entire content and demand more money). So no, Netflix is not voluntarily dumping half of the shows just so that it can add it's own programming, instead it is adding it's own programming to make up for losing access to so much content.
The only thing I'm missing out on with Netflix is Doctor Who, and a few movies, and it's not their fault for that. I don't watch enough TV or movies that I can ever run out of stuff on Netflix.