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Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down

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

#151

Post by sweezyjeezy »

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.

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

#152

Post by minimaxir »

wwarren wrote: post #147
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?

Glad you asked!

http://minimaxir.com/2017/01/amazon-spark/

http://minimaxir.com/2014/09/one-star-five-stars/

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

#153

Post by bjarneh »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #39
bjarneh wrote: post #26

What I really want to avoid is the mediocre content i.e. 2.0 - 3.5 stars, very good and very bad can both be entertaining.. Now that mediocre content will be scattered across the two categories I really care about; I guess IMDB/Rotten tomatoes will steer clear of this ridiculous binary rating systems.

I've seen so much good content on Netflix rated at 2 stars or less. Movies and TV shows are way too subjective for user reviews to be used with any kind of reliability. Or maybe I just have low standards.

I also find the Netflix critics somewhat harsh, perhaps we are more critical from our sofa, then at the cinemas

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

#154

Post by ultrasandwich »

I've found some solace using Mubi, which has a pretty devoted film fan base that really puts thought into written reviews + star ratings. I almost always read a handful of these before following-through with a viewing. They also have a nice 1-in-1-out movie per day system which lets them theme films by event (Cannes, director birthdays, etc). Not for everyone, but it's out there.

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

#155

Post by karlshea »

M_Grey wrote: post #123
ProAm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are diluting the meaning of quality and instead are opting for a saccharine "enjoyment" factor. They are just trying to increase number of views for a poor quality library. This will mask how bad most of the content is and increase their numbers.

Or edge cases like me will get that little boost to just give up on Netflix. I already use them less than other streaming services, and I could always just turn it on and off again.

Honestly one of the only reasons I keep it is because I have so many movies that I've rated and didn't want that time investment to go to waste. I guess now that isn't going to be a factor.

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

#156

Post by lukeschlather »

Netflix's star rating system is really poorly designed. Of course people clicked on a thumbs up/thumbs down widget more. I used Netflix for months before I even noticed the star rating was interactive.

I wish they would invest in a quality star rating system like Amazon's, rather than dumbing down the UI.

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

#157

Post by bjarneh »

tgb wrote: post #34
bjarneh wrote: post #26

What I really want to avoid is the mediocre content i.e. 2.0 - 3.5 stars, very good and very bad can both be entertaining.. Now that mediocre content will be scattered across the two categories I really care about; I guess IMDB/Rotten tomatoes will steer clear of this ridiculous binary rating systems.

Isn't Rotten Tomatoes exactly a (aggregated) binary rating system?

Aha, I misunderstood, I thought Netflix was going to recommend movies or not based on that rating system, without giving us the background. I would still prefer something more fine grained though.

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

#158

Post by fmihaila »

The way I understand their explanation is that users tend to view the act of rating as a stronger endorsement than it actually is. In other words, users think their ratings are more predictive of what they would enjoy in the future than the implicit signals that can be derived from actual behaviour. Netflix concluded that it's better to boost the weak(er) signal by encouraging users to rate more. They will continue to use it on top of the stronger implicit signals to provide personalized ratings, which they will display as a percentage match as long as it's greater than 50%.

So their recommendations may actually improve.

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

#159

Post by s_m_mcguire »

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…

Accounting for your average person, who do you estimate is more likely to cancel: The person watching hundreds of hours of meaningless action movies and TV, or the person subscribing but rarely/never watching anything? By average I mean not prone to suddenly realizing they want/feel sufficiently motivated to spend those hundreds of hours on something else, or posting on hacker news.

Speaking anecdotally, the one (temporary) time I canceled was when I found myself in the paying-but-not-using category.

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