Ratings: Ratings can be skewed and can completely misrepresent the actual quality of a movie/series

I believe IMDb user ratings are being misused and taken advantage of to boost up a Tv Show/Movie's popularity big time - more specifically with streaming and OTT booming big time in the past 5 years or so. In a country like India, where the demographic and population is huge and disproportionate in comparison to the world, I honestly believe users are being solicited to submit a good rating for an incentive.

Which is the reason I notice a lot of shows produced by TVF appearing in the top 50 and 100 while their quality on a global scale is just about good, and does not merit ranking about some really good quality shows. You may think this a perceptive opinion, but if you look at the top 250 or even the top 150 with a very neutral view, you will understand and agree.

I'm not really acquainted with the mechanism and filtering IMDb has for users and submitted ratings, but it's not very difficult to create a registered user and a frequent user who regularly submits ratings. This can be easily simulated. My only suggestion and request is; to make this listing really meritful, there should be some kind of review mechanism by a global panel of critics to validate and ratify exaggerated volumes of user ratings. Otherwise, this top 250 listing is very superficial and can be misguiding - specially when it comes to a neutral viewer with a very unbiased view towards content spread across the globe.

There is some really good content that gets pushed out just because of this loophole.