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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

#281

Post by [deleted] »

ProAm wrote: post #86
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 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.

[deleted]

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

#282

Post by johnny22 »

SyneRyder wrote: post #255
bluntfang wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I watch netflix, I use the stars as a measure of if I would enjoy something. I don't think most people use stars as a measure of "quality" because when they browse movies, they are looking for something they enjoy, not something that's high quality that they might not enjoy.

I've had this argument with my (tending towards elderly) parents while introducing them to Netflix. They don't understand rating for enjoyment, and keep rating for "quality". They'll watch a show, absolutely hate it, but give it a 4 or 5 star rating because "it was well produced and the camera work was good, but it isn't the sort of thing I personally like to watch". I'm worried about the thumbs up/down, as Netflix h…

interesting. I always rated for enjoyment.

I thought that Neflix made it pretty clear that the ratings were used to choose which content to show me. So I should only rate based on what I'd actually like to see.

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

#283

Post by kartickv »

CaptSpify wrote: post #200
bluntfang wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are an anomalous user. I'm not sure why you're OK with rating 1-5 stars but not a thumbsup or down. I think you're just upset because they are changing.

I like giving weight to my vote. 3 stars = "not a bad movie, but wouldn't recommend" 4 starts = "decent movie, would recommend" 5 stars = "great movie, would definitely recommend" A binary choice doesn't have any weight to it.

I don't think there's a need for weight since there are many reviewers. The weight is the percentage of people who thumbed it up.

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

#284

Post by kartickv »

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…

That may be true from your point of view as a rater, but from mine as someone deciding whether to watch a movie, I want you to condense your thoughts down to a yes or no by assigning an appropriate weight to each factor. Was the acting so bad that it ruined the movie despite the good cinematography?

For example, I found Mirror Mask enjoyable and would recommend it. They dreamed up and brought to life a fantastical world full of magic and wonder. The visuals are excellent. The story is mediocre, so you should watch it with the right expectations, but watch it nevertheless.

The ability to distill something complex and multi-dimensional to a clear conclusion ("enjoyable and I recommend it" in the above paragraph) is a sign of clarity of thinking and expression. If you can't do that, I'll go by other people's ratings.

Remember that the goal isn't to accurately capture one person's opinion, but to help potential viewers decide whether to watch it.

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

#285

Post by karlshea »

extra88 wrote: post #279
karlshea wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go to your ratings page and scroll down so they all load this worked for me (paste into console) ratings = []; jQuery('li.retableRow').each(function (i, row) { ratings.push({ id: jQuery(row).find('.title a').attr('href').replace('/title/', ''), title: jQuery(row).find('.title a').text(), rating: jQuery(row).find('.starbar .personal').length }) }); then JSON.stringify(ratings) Or for CSV: ratings = ''; jQuery('…

That's the streaming site page which has less information and other problems (follow the link).

I pulled mine from https://www.netflix.com/MoviesYouveSeen. I did notice a bunch that just said MOVIE but that was just a handful. My ratings page goes back to 2005 and I'm not subscribed to the DVD plan anymore.

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

#286

Post by kartickv »

bcbrown wrote: post #270
curun1r wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Netflix doesn't weight those ratings any more highly than the 5-star ratings of someone who rates nearly everything as 5 stars. Is that fact or speculation? It's a common recommendation technique to find the mean rating for a person, and use that to normalize. Normalized score = (actual_score - mean_score + 2.5) for a 5-point scale, for example. I have no insight into whether or not Netflix does something similar,…

Doesn't normalisation assume that a person who rates everything five-star has low standards? It may just be that that person rates something only if they're really (un)happy.

Imagine two people watched 100 movies, and assessed them the same way, say that 20 are five-star, 20 are four-star, 20 are three-star, and so on. The first person rates all 100 movies, but the second one has a habit of writing a review only if he considers a movie excellent. Then your algorithm will wrongly discount the second person's ratings.

Is this true in the real world? Have you found different people to have different habits, like rating everything vs rating only good movies vs rating only bad movies?

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

#287

Post by kartickv »

stromgo wrote: post #164
Schaulustiger wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more a reaction to a usage pattern of their star system. YouTube abandoned their five star rating system citing that most people voted only 1 or 5 stars with almost nothing in between. [1] I'd guess a vast amount of Netflix users do the same. [1] https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-r...

YouTube is partly to blame for this. Since YouTube reported the average stars, if you saw a 4-star video and thought that it should be 3-star, then the optimal strategy was to vote 1-star to pull it down as fast as possible. If instead YouTube had reported the majority option (and publicized that fact) then it would have incentivized people to vote what they truly think.

Your suggestion has its own problems. Imagine two videos with a majority rating of three stars. Say 60% of raters have rated it that. But one video has the remaining 40% one-star, and the other has the remaining 40% five-star. Your algorithm will ignore this data, showing a completely wrong result that both videos are equally good.

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

#288

Post by kartickv »

curun1r wrote: post #148
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…

First, few people will put in effort into understanding their friends' psychology and habits to use Netflix effectively. We shouldn't optimise for such users.

Second, I don't know whether individual ratings should be normalised as you say, but the final rating that's displayed should be normalised. For example, the app stores should have 20% of apps rated five stars, 20% four stars, and so on. This will make the ratings more objective and easy to understand. If the average rating is 4, then an an app rated 4 is merely average, which is counter-intuitive.

(Perhaps normalised within a top-level category, like Productivity and Games)

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

#289

Post by sethammons »

CaptSpify wrote: post #200
bluntfang wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are an anomalous user. I'm not sure why you're OK with rating 1-5 stars but not a thumbsup or down. I think you're just upset because they are changing.

I like giving weight to my vote. 3 stars = "not a bad movie, but wouldn't recommend" 4 starts = "decent movie, would recommend" 5 stars = "great movie, would definitely recommend" A binary choice doesn't have any weight to it.

This. And based on my history of rating, Netflix had been pretty good at guessing if something will be 3+ stars. If they think it is 3 stars, I consider watching. If they think it is 4+, I tend to really enjoy the suggestion. Though, nearly every Netflix original is suggested at 5 stars, lol.

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

#290

Post by sethammons »

kartickv wrote: post #283
CaptSpify wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like giving weight to my vote. 3 stars = "not a bad movie, but wouldn't recommend" 4 starts = "decent movie, would recommend" 5 stars = "great movie, would definitely recommend" A binary choice doesn't have any weight to it.

I don't think there's a need for weight since there are many reviewers. The weight is the percentage of people who thumbed it up.

The current suggested rating is influenced by your history of rating, with weight given to how highly you rated it. There are shows that are suggested at 4 stars for my wife but at 2 stars for me.
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