Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#141

Post by always_good » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:01 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #68

X86BSD wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha yes! Where the hell do these people learn that?? The other thing that annoys me with ratings in general, specifically places like amazon, is when people pan a perfectly good item because of some third party factor. "Item was great, but it came in a beat up box from the post office, I'm giving it one star." WTH does someone drop kicking your box have to do with the product?

I have to think that some of those reviews are just trolls. Bad reviewers will always be part of the system. You have to expect it. Netflix has tons of reviews that go "I turned this off before the opening credit sequence finished, worst movie ever!!!! -- 1 star".

IIRC there was a blog post on HN a while past that complained about it, and it seemed to be people that went with 1-star so that their review was potentially more visible.

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#142

Post by throwaway91111 » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

mr_tristan wrote: post #118

At no point do I recall Netflix promoting this rating system as anything but way to get better matches. The fact that so many comments are about losing a system for criticism, just confirms that it was the wrong metaphor to use in the first place. Perhaps they could bring back a "critical review" mechanism, but I'd guess it wouldn't affect your matches at all. And probably be mostly unusable on a TV anyway.

The issue is that their digital library is vanishingly small. I swear half the tv shows on there are Netflix original content from the last five years.

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#143

Post by coding123 » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

I'm going to guess they looked at things and found that 80% of the ratings were either 5 stars or 1 star. (edit - not that this is a good thing.. I'm guessing they could have carved out the 2-4 star ratings and did its own data analysis that probably provided much more nuanced information)

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#144

Post by throwaway91111 » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #77

jerf wrote: post #62

I think a lot of people are reacting here as if Netflix is moving from the only signal they have being the star and review system to the only signal they have being the up/down system, and thus confused as to why Netflix would throw away the vast majority of their rating ability. But that's not even close to true. In addition to it technically being up/down/no rating, we've got how long people watch the show for, how…

Yes, but the ratings aren't just for Netflix to use, they're also interesting information for users. This move seems very inward-focused: Netflix is thinking about the information it wants to get from users, but I wonder if they surveyed people about how much they want to see percentage-likes instead of stars.

I'm not looking forward to a world where I have to like "boyhood" and "pirates of the Caribbean" the same amount. What a joke.

Of course, Netflix solves this by removing the quality content....

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#145

Post by massysett » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #84

kefka wrote: post #2

And not only that, but also removing their existing collections of videos and replacing it with their "Made by Netflix" shows that mostly amount to shovelware. I'm about ready to drop them, just like they've dropped MASH, soon to be X-Files, and many many movies.

I support Netflix out of philosophy. I want to support media which is offered without restriction and most importantly without advertisement. Netflix goes out of its way to make sure it's as watchable as possible (sans being able to download their stuff without DRM, but I can't blame them for that, it's too risky for their business). I have similar reasons to support HBO. However, I will not send money towards FOX/Co…

After you hand Comcast your money, you can also watch their content on your phone or tablet, anywhere, both live and on-demand. You can also use the phone or tablet to access what's on your DVR. Comcast is actually doing a good job of making it quite easy to watch the content on any device.

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#146

Post by sweezyjeezy » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #134

pizzetta wrote: post #74

As I posted in the dupe: This saddens me. >Users would rate documentaries with 5 stars, and silly movies with just 3 stars, but still watch silly movies more often than those high-rated documentaries That's not incongruous to me. The stars are not about "enjoyment" factor, they are about perceived quality. I may have a go to cheap ice-cream and rate it 3-stars but rate a good affogato 5-stars and only have it once in…

They're optimizing the wrong metric. They should be optimizing "number of people who pay for Netflix". Instead they are optimizing "number of hours spent watching Netflix". Those two metrics are correlated, but definitely not fully. If I spend hundreds of hours a month watching meaningless action movies and TV on Netflix, I can cancel my subscription and save myself hundreds of hours and $10. I've got lots of other w…

How do you know what metric Netflix are optimising?

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#147

Post by wwarren » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #140

It's about damn time. 5-star rating systems are broken . A 1/2/3-star rating is effectively a dislike, and a 4/5-rating is effectively a like. In the big data sense, a deviation from a 1-star for dislike and 5-star for like is statistically meaningless. (and this is universal ; star ratings on Amazon Products and Yelp Locations have the exact same distribution ). The interesting part of this is what Netflix gains fro…

> star ratings on Amazon Products and Yelp Locations have the exact same distribution

Source?

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#148

Post by curun1r » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

yladiz wrote: post #70

I feel like star ratings, if just given in general, are pretty useless for anything that has multiple qualities. For example, maybe I like the cinematography of a movie but I think the acting is shit, or maybe I think the taste of the beer is nice but it's too acidic or sour and wouldn't work with specific foods because it's overpowering. Airbnb does this pretty much spot on, in that they ask for 1-5 stars for five c…

> I feel like star ratings, if just given in general, are pretty useless for anything that has multiple qualities.

This is only true when those star ratings are taken out of context. Individual reviewers can have completely coherent star ratings that are very useful for making determinations.

The golden age of Netflix discoverability, for me, was back when they added social networking features. I connected my account with many friends and family and was really able to get a sense for everyone's taste in movies. When it came time to discover new movies/tv to watch, I'd open up the ratings history for someone who's tastes I felt aligned with the mood that I was in. Some of my friends would only rate high quality content with 5 stars, others would typically rate mass market, mindless entertainment with 5 stars and others tended to include a lot more 5-star reviews within a certain genre. Over time, I got a feel for that and could use it to my advantage.

But when you remove that individual context and only aggregate 5 star reviews across a massive population who all view the 5-star scale in their own way, you get that uselessness that you talked about. Some people may reserve 5-star ratings for truly extraordinary content, but Netflix doesn't weight those ratings any more highly than the 5-star ratings of someone who rates nearly everything as 5 stars. This makes the ratings that Netflix displays meaningless. But that's only because Netflix's current methodology makes them meaningless, not because they're inherently meaningless.

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#149

Post by throwaway91111 » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

frik wrote: post #5

What's next. Just a thumb up like on Facebook? Rating is a hard problem. No system works universally well. IMDb (Amazon property) for example uses 10 stars, Amazon uses five stars. Facebook use thumb up ("likes"). Games ratings are often in percent 1-100% (summarized by metacritics.com and others). School systems around the world use A, B, etc or numbers like 1-5 or 1-6 for grades.

I can safely say up/down voting is pretty terrible across all social media. You end up with HN and Reddit: popularity contests. Meanwhile, popular movies are rarely the ones worth watching, and the top 100 movies on metacritic is a grab bag of (great) movies that probably don't fit your taste profile.

Meanwhile, I have to like all the things the same amount. This is just going to lead to me not rating the vast majority of mediocre content on the platform.

Why not let you choose as a user?

Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

#150

Post by sweezyjeezy » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

pizzetta wrote: post #74

As I posted in the dupe: This saddens me. >Users would rate documentaries with 5 stars, and silly movies with just 3 stars, but still watch silly movies more often than those high-rated documentaries That's not incongruous to me. The stars are not about "enjoyment" factor, they are about perceived quality. I may have a go to cheap ice-cream and rate it 3-stars but rate a good affogato 5-stars and only have it once in…

Netflix have said for years that the star ratings they gather are not actually very good indicators for their recommendation engines compared to implicit signals such as - 'did the user watch the show / film to the end?' If they still believe this, it seems fairly irrelevant what they use.