I get why they do this and it'll probably work out fine, but for me personally, it's going to mean I will rate a lot fewer movies/shows. In the past, I've rated pretty much every single thing I've ever watched on Netflix. On YouTube, I hit the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons on a very small fraction of the videos that I watch. That's just because there is no middle ground (and no 2 or 4 star ratings either). There's plenty of stuff that I enjoyed, but didn't love, plenty of stuff that I disliked, but didn't really hate.
Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
121–130 of 298 posts
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#122From the linked Variety article, "However, over time, Netflix realized that explicit star ratings were less relevant than other signals. 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." But the signal isn't just for Netflix; it is also for users, who might sometimes be in the mood for something silly and some…
I don't get it. Don't they already have the signal available to them of "did the user watch all/most of this video, or did they abandon it early" ? That seems like it does most of what they want, and thumbs up/down will add only very little information on top of that?
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#123As 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 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.
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#124From the linked Variety article, "However, over time, Netflix realized that explicit star ratings were less relevant than other signals. 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." But the signal isn't just for Netflix; it is also for users, who might sometimes be in the mood for something silly and some…
But I want Netflix to surface good documentaries as well as good silly movies. I'm more likely to watch a silly movie, so with this change my queue is more likely to be filled with silly movies, making me more likely to unsubscribe because it appears that Netflix only has silly movies. I watch more silly movies than good documentaries, but I pay for Netflix mostly for the good documentaries. I can get mindless pablum…
It's a good thing netflix created original programming, because I would have long ago been gone from netflix if they didn't have /something/ nobody else had. Their nonoriginal selection has gone to total shit. Even hulu is competitive with netflix's selection excluding originals
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#125If you have many reviewers, you don't need to get more information than thumbs up or down from each person. How much people thumbed it up is a good indicator. Star-rating can be too much detail, anyway: if you're comparing two shows, and one has a higher fraction of five-star ratings, but the other has a higher fraction of ratings that are four or above, which is better? Star ratings can be too much detail and cause…
I do find IMDB's ratings breakdown fascinating to explore, though. For example, you can look at the 50 Shades films or A Dog's Purpose or (especially) Gunday and have a pretty good idea that lots people are giving them bad ratings without having seen the films. (Their weighted average ratings are supposed to combat that, but they don't seem to be doing a very good job.)
Interesting point. Would polarised reviews make you less or more likely to watch a film (or download an app or whatever)? In other words, two items with the same average, but different distributions.
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The stars are not about "enjoyment" factor, they are about perceived quality I ignore ratings because of that. They don't mean anything and I am guilty. On Good Reads, I have given what is deemed as a trashy piece of writing 5 stars. At the same time, I have given Dune 1 star because the story was garbage. So what is this 5 star rating? Some people say it is the experience, some say it is the writing style, others…
When I rate things it's usually an "overall" rating, rather than weigh one dimension disproportionately. Which is why I would almost never grant a 5-star rating to something. But I'll dish out 2, 3 and some 4s regularly.
That is only you, I can't use that information. Like you might be taking into consideration "Special effects were 3 on their own". Whereas my Mum would never even consider that as a thing which influences the rating.
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#127If you have many reviewers, you don't need to get more information than thumbs up or down from each person. How much people thumbed it up is a good indicator. Star-rating can be too much detail, anyway: if you're comparing two shows, and one has a higher fraction of five-star ratings, but the other has a higher fraction of ratings that are four or above, which is better? Star ratings can be too much detail and cause…
The goal isn't to broadly determine which movies are good and bad; the goal is to make accurate predictions about which titles a particular person will enjoy. One good way to accomplish this is to pool users into cohorts of similar tastes, then suggest movies enjoyed by their cohort but not yet watched by a given user. The question is whether doubling the frequency of rating a title is more valuable than a slightly m…
Everything you've said makes sense, but I don't see it being contradictory to what I said.
If you decide you want a more nuanced understanding of what a given reviewer likes, I think it's better to evaluate different dimensions (Was it funny? Was it violent? etc) than shades of grey* of the same one.
* pun not intended :)
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#128I 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.
Does Netflix offer star histogram charts the way Amazon does? I don't recall seeing them. If not, there's no difference to a user between a 6.8/10 generated by thumbs and 6.8/10 generated by stars. They are already synthesized numbers, not just an average across all users or anything.
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your thesis is basically, ratings mean absolutely nothing, and how good something is should solely be based on how popular it is?
The problem as I understand it is that the "rating space" is multidimensional (a piece can be funny with great plot but bad writing compensated for by a great lead and awesome special effects although the set design was inconsistent) but all of this has to be projected into a 1-dimensional system. And the rub is that not everybody uses the same projection, which means the utility of one person's rating for another un…
A much more succinct way of making the point. Thank you.
Re: Netflix Replacing Star Ratings With Thumbs Ups and Thumbs Down
#130Amy Schumer's comedy special bombed so hard they're changing their ranking system? Total failure.
This system would arguably be more unfavorable to Netflix/Amy Schumer.