A better way to rate films

This seems useful, yet awfully much like another step on the slow path to legitimizing 'poor taste'.

That's a bit harsh, so let me qualify it. I actually rather agree with the division inherent in this and think it will resound with people, but I honestly believe that this is yet another step towards turning our society into idiocracy. It's the slow legitimization of appreciation for content that we acknowledge as garbage but consume anyway. I firmly believe that there is inherent social value in this garbage content remaining quasi-taboo - a social pressure not to like such things. Sure, most people will watch some anyway, or play the latest mindless shooter, or what-have-you, but so long as it's understood that most people will mock you for publicly liking this, the norm does not drift towards mindlessness - you still need to consume some legitimately good content, even if only to have something to talk about.

I don't mean to attack the site; I think it's a great way to slice into the recommendations game, and I do think a lot of people will get value out of it, and it seems like it may well succeed. I simply am afraid it's a net negative for our society in the long run (then again, of course, not launching is hardly going to reverse such a trend.)

Edit: Make that symptomatic of a net negative. I've thought some more and this is only giving an online portal to express the shift I talk about above, which has already been happening aplenty.

I think the alternative is people pretending to like things they do not. You can't force people to appreciate your brand of high culture by mocking them for not doing so. At best, the people you're trying to win over will publicly pay lip service. At worst, it will become more difficult for people like you to find things that you think are worthwhile, because the space will become polluted by people who don't get it. Let people like what they like.

I, for one, am not ashamed to say that I like stupid things.

I think this is why they have both ratings. A quality rating and a rewatchability. As the site appears to be in private beta I can't play with it directly, but I would assume both ratings are exposed when you look at a movie, which will help you decide if you want to watch it. For example, if I come home on a friday night and I want something light and enjoyable to watch, I definitely don't want to watch Primer no matter how good it is. I'd instead go for something with a high rewatchability score. But if I'm in a mood for a "truly good" film then I can go for the quality rating score and ignore rewatchability.

I disagree, I think there are plenty of social groups where this type of media isn't looked down upon at all. Same with shooters... ect.

If your goal is to chase immediate gratification (as many a person seems to do), you'll be better served by metrics that reflect this aspect of things, instead of deciding to spend time doing something you think will be immediately gratifying, and getting something else in return.

Good for society? Decidedly no.

Unavoidable because it better serves demand, I think probably.

At the same time... I think if these sorts of metrics become ubiquitous, people will become more acutely aware of the distinctions between quality and gratification value... so I don't think these things are only a symptom.

I guess then, it depends on execution. If you're combining both of these numbers into one single metric of "goodness", then you'll just be accomplishing Pahalial's point of "legitimizing 'poor taste'". If, however, you can expose this information separately and well, then perhaps it will add value.

Personally, I'd like to break down the "rewatchability" metric into more components, to really get at the heart of the matter, like others here have commented. Pace, quality, fun, emotional impact, length, genre -- these are the things that really matter. But now we're getting into movie geek territory.

Speaking of movie geek -- I can't believe you left out the most interesting thing in that blog post. Where can we see a breakdown of what movies are where in that scatter plot? I want to know what those outliers on the high quality / low rewatchability scale are!