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Thu, May 2, 2013 3:23 PM
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Ratings: Give the regular voter weighting to the regular reviewers
This was suggested by Surendra Mohan but needs its own thread as it could be very useful:https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topi... there is a concern that the weighting given to regular voters is being used for evil by a number of users by adding 1 star votes to films with a small number of votes, that they presumably think has a suspicious voting pattern, hoping to "correct" for any possibly "vote stuffing":https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/tags... highlights a problem with the system - the weighting "rewards" people for being able to hammer in as many votes as possible. While a lot of the regular voters are film and TV buffs merrily consuming media by the bucketload there is a small minority abusing the system, either just chasing the Top 1,000 Voter status (which you can see when you check your votes, even if you don't get a badge for it) or because they think they are some kind of champion, protecting poor old IMDB from nasty vote stuffers (even if I suspect that the algorithm already corrects for this, so the regular voter weighting leads to a double whammy downgrading of the weighted averageI believe that the weighting is still important, as it gives the votes of the most knowledgeable voters more significance which would help give a consistency to the ratings of films. So I wouldn't want to just get rid of the weighting but the score bombing is a problem that needs fixing.As the title says, the suggestion is to give the weighting to Top Reviewers or regular reviewers (the equivalent number people with the highest number of reviews, in the way the regular voters seems to be a larger group than the Top 1,000 Voters, even if it is the latter than gets flagged up on the voting breakdowns, which allows us to see if the 1 stars are coming from regular voters). This would have the effect of:* Rewarding the people who take the time and effort to write reviews explaining their ratings.* Making these votes visible through the person's review history, which has the effect that it can keep people honest (if, for example, someone tried to game the system to get their weighting back by adding in reviews copy and pasted from elsewhere, it' be easy enough to spot and report) - as I've argued for other suggestions:https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topi...* It would also remove the incentive for people to just hammer in these 1 votes - it no longer gets you the weighting and no longer has as much impact in cases of perceived vote stuffing.So win, win, win - the triple winner.Some have suggested only allowing people to rate films when they review them (as is done on Amazon) or at least only have them count if you have a review but I don't think that'd be very useful here (it'd be no more help in addressing the score bombing than this suggestion), it would cause a riot from users, it'd undermine the idea of the wisdom of crowds that powers the IMDB rating and it might actually make vote manipulation easier (as we see from the score bombing, in most cases you can only influence a score when the votes are low).There are a few things that need to be fine-tuned:* Should the weighting apply only to ratings where they have also added a review? or:* Should the weighting apply to all of the ratingsHowever, I'm sure staff can figure that out - the former would encourage more reviews but the latter would make the weighting work better if the aim is to try and get more consistency in the voting across a range of film and TV. Personally, I'd be fine with the second option, but if there was evidence of abuse it could be switched to the second one.
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3 years ago
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manu_1126883
4 Messages
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168 Points
8 years ago
0
dan_dassow
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8 years ago
One possibility I've considered suggesting is that users can only rate a film 1 or 10 if they write a review. If the review is simply random text, other user could report the review and have the rating and review deleted.
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doihaveto_givethis
3 Messages
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172 Points
8 years ago
* Weight toward Top Reviewers (or number of reviews a voter has written)
* Also weight toward the length of time a voter has been and IMDB member. Then we know they didn't just create an account to vote for one film.
* Do NOT assume that votes are padded either high or low, as you can't know that, and it's unfair when there's no vote-padding.
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bluesmansf
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8 years ago
And, yes I've had a couple beers...
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Peter_pbn
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8 years ago
0
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victoria_masina
7 Messages
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562 Points
8 years ago
6
dan_dassow
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13.7K Messages
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415.5K Points
8 years ago
I've liked your idea since you suggested it. It addresses a fundamental flaw with the current Top 1000 voters, providing an incentive to simply vote for a film rather than watch and thoughtfully rate it.
In addition to the Top Reviewers, we may also wish to consider the Top Contributors as part of that group. It would be reasonable to expect that someone who spends time to research, update and correct the data in IMDb would also rate films with due diligence.
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Peter_pbn
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259K Points
8 years ago
"IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. Various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at 'vote stuffing' by individuals more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it."
According to this, the intention is not to weigh a narrow group of voters higher than others, but to filter out abuse. One sure consequence of weighting votes by top reviewers is that you leave thousands of voters out of the weighting who use the voting system as it was intended.
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victoria_masina
7 Messages
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562 Points
8 years ago
Maybe we should put it in the suggestion box, well, make it a separate thread as an idea. I think Emperor should do this. I'm on IMDB for over 7 years but new to this get-satisfaction bb. Emperor would have more people being interested in taking a look at the suggestion and discussing it. :)
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Giancarlo_Cairella
Employee
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331 Messages
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40.2K Points
8 years ago
Let's just say that all good ideas about improving the rating system are carefully weighted (no pun intended) when we make changes.
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