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Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings (fivethirtyeight.com) 184

Posted by Soulskill from the all-movies-are-great-except-for-the-terrible-ones dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Statistical news blog fivethirtyeight.com noticed some odd discrepancies in online movie ratings, which caused them to do some investigating. They found it was generally a bad idea to rely on such ratings, particularly from sites like Fandango. "When I focused on movies that had 308 or more user reviews, none of the 209 films had below a 3-star rating. Seventy-eight percent had a rating of 4 stars or higher." Further, "In a normal rounding system, a site would round to the nearest half-star — up or down. In the case of Ted 2 [which was displaying 4.5 stars], then, we'd expect the rating to be rounded down to 4 stars. But Fandango rounded the 'ratingValue' [4.1] up. I pulled the number of stars listed on the page of each film in our sample of 437 (with at least one user review), as well as the ratingValue listed on the page's source. And I found that Fandango doesn't round a rating down when we'd mathematically expect that ... Fandango.com's rounding methodology, even if it was just an innocent bug, is a good example of why you should be skeptical of online movie ratings, especially from companies selling you tickets."
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Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

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  • Very suspicious.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tonyyeb ( 4187219 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @10:26AM (#50743401)
    Ted 2 [which was displaying 4.5 stars]... Was that out of 100?!

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also remember that the minimum you are allowed to give on most sites is 1 out of 5, meaning even if everyone hated the movie it would have a "1". In other words people think of the "out of 5 stars" as a system of zero stars to 5 stars but in reality it is one star to five stars.

      Example:
      One person hates the movie and gives it "1"
      One person love the movie and gives it "5"
      The average is "3", which visually is not the middle,
      Despite only 50% of people liking the movie it appears as if 60% like the movie
      Also, s

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The biggest problem is that we're using an all-positive scale to capture positive and negative opinions. The results will never be interpreted correctly because that's a feature of the system. "How much did you like this movie: a little, somewhat, a good amount, quite a bit, or a lot?" It's Colbert's "Great President or the greatest President?" bit, only with the expectation of being taken seriously. The RT method at least addresses this, to some extent.

        But there's still a lot missing in terms of magnit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
      Ted 2 was actually 9 half stars, because no one could figure out how to rate it 0.

  • Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sandbagger ( 654585 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @10:26AM (#50743403)

    A friend is in the movie biz and his reaction to any criticism of the recent Star Trek reboots is Rotten Tomatoes is an objective measure. I can forgive him the logical error because he's in the industry and the financials are more important to him than say to you or I. So aggregated movie reviews that drive customer purchases to him indicate success.

    However, as far as I know, Rotten Tomatoes never publishes its weighting formula
    And it's opened by a movie studio.

    This seems to me perfect for abuse.

    • Re:Rotten Tomatoes I've suspected of Payola (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @10:45AM (#50743553) Homepage

      A friend is in the movie biz and his reaction to any criticism of the recent Star Trek reboots is Rotten Tomatoes is an objective measure.

      Well, in part you need to remember these reviews are done by the entire movie-going public, and not just nerds.

      So, it is entirely possible that you disagree with the movie-going public. But I don't think that means the reviews aren't honest.

      I'm pretty sure TFA even says that both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB consistently come out pretty close to one another.

      I trust both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, because I've actually seen movies which are terribly reviewed, and which should have been.

      But assessing your opinion of the Trek reboots vs the general opinion of them isn't really the point.

      • Rotten Tomatoes has a rating that is only from "critics" and a rating that is only from "audience." However, I feel there are other factors that go into these scores. The film After Earth has a Rotten Tomatoes critic rating of 11%. While the film probably did not warrant a 'fresh' rating (>=60%), 11% seems punitive, in my opinion. I wonder if the film critics had some kind of beef with the cast or crew and took it out on them in the reviews, as there are plenty of similarly poor 'Sci-Fi' genre films scor

        • That was a particularly poor film. While 11% does seem low compared to other horribly poor films with the same production values, it doesn't seem low if you remove production values as a component - since without those the film is total excrement.

        • At the end of the day, a review is a professional opinion.

          There are tons of movies the critics loved, but the public hated. Likewise, there's a bunch the critics hated, but the public loved. Then you get movies like Gigli [imdb.com], which everybody hated, and which IMBD [imdb.com] says i the 50th worst movie of all time.

          You take your tastes, combine it with the reviews of critics and any other sources, and decide if you want to see it or not. Then you figure out how you really thought about it.

          Critical review often has nothi

        • I wonder if the film critics had some kind of beef with the cast or crew and took it out on them in the reviews, as there are plenty of similarly poor 'Sci-Fi' genre films scoring in the 40-55% range, which seems more reasonable, but I would have expected at least better than 30%.

          More likely they had a beef with Scientology.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Ecuador ( 740021 )

          You don't seem to understand how the tomatometer works. Instead of it being similar to a 1-10 or star rating that gives an average over review scores, it is simply what percentage of reviewers were positive instead of negative. I find it quite easy to believe that only 1 out of 10 professional critics found the movie good overall. Now, rottentomatoes also averages the score of the same reviewers and for After Earth it gets 3.8/10. I suspect when you were expecting better than 30%, you were thinking somethin

          • Did you see Atlas Shrugged? Part I of that train wreck masquerading as a film production also got 11% from Rotten Tomatoes, which, in comparison, After Earth is a masterpiece. At the other end, I don't feel that Ender's Game deserved 60% (just coincidentally the lowest possible score to be 'fresh'), and not because it "didn't follow the book," (or maybe it did, it's been over 25 years since I read that book) but simply because it was not a very good flick. I do understand the Tomatometer rating as I have be

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Ecuador ( 740021 )

              Atlas Shrugged has one fourth the number of reviews, it got the 11% having just 5 critics like it. That's like a margin of error. Never mind the fact that they probably had less expectations than a big budget movie with acclaimed actors (but they did indeed rate it less than After Earth on average). And I did not like Ender's Game at all, but that is mostly because it missed all the important points of the book, I am sure the vast majority of the reviewers had never read the book and some might not even be

        • my method is to find a movie critic whose opinion makes sense to you, ie) valid criticism or praise that you can recognize. And trust in them to continue to make observations that you can agree with.

          Mine is Mark Kermode. He's an old lefty, and far too openly feminist at times, but very entertaining, and the very moment he described the poignancy of Four Lions was the moment I knew I could trust what he was saying.

          Him and Simon Mayo do a 90 minute show on fridays on the BBC radio thing. podcasts are avail

        • I've noticed a lot of people tend to be rather binary in their ratings. If they didn't like the movie, 1 star. If they liked it, 5 stars. I often think user ratings would be better off with a simple thumbs up/down. That is, did you enjoy the movie/game/whatever or not? 1 to 10 scales are particularly bad, because everyone has a different idea about what a value of 7/10 represents. By boiling it down to a binary decision for everyone, you eliminate the ambiguity of how the scale is interpreted.

      • I am a fan of the Original Mad Max movies (Mad Max, Road Warrior). Having perused the wonderful reviews of Fury Road, i decided I would watch it.

        As a movie it was passable, but not 5 Star great.

        I really liked the movie Avatar, except for the Fern Gully / Pocahontas plot lines it was fantastic experience. But I only would give it 4 stars (because of the plot), so something like Fury Road was at best (IMHO) a 2.5 It was fair, plot lines were fairly flat, characters were mostly one dimensional. I'm glad I didn

      • I've always felt that the way many people think about movie reviews is generally flawed. They seem to go to imdb or rottentomatoes and say something like "Oh, movie X got high user reviews. It must be a good movie." To me, what they should really be saying is, "Movie X got high user reviews. People who go to this kind of movie generally liked it." I think a good example of how these are different is the movie Jurassic World. It got 70%+ from both audiences and critics on rottentomatoes and more than 7

    • I was surprised to learn that @sandbagger is right: Rotten Tomatoes has been a subsidiary of Flixster since 2010, which was in turn purchased by Warner Bros. in 2011.

      I never had much reason to question their weighting formula, though, mostly because Rotten Tomatoes has a good distribution of ratings from 0% to 100%, and because there is not much fine-grained scoring on each review, just "positive" or "negative".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Straif ( 172656 )

        As far as I know RT's weighing formula is simply the total numerical score given to a movie from reviewers divided by the number of reviewers. That's why their scores show all decimal points (6.4/10 or 3.1/10); there is no rounding. You can select which reviewers are included in their rating but it's still simple math.

        The freshness rating is another creature entirely and while quasi-related to the score, the reviewers are free to rate a movie fresh or not independent of the score they gave it. That's why

      • Rotten Tomatoes has been a subsidiary of Flixster since 2010, which was in turn purchased by Warner Bros. in 2011.

        But does Warner Bros. Pictures have any more influence over Rotten Tomatoes than it has over CNN [pineight.com]?

    • When Rotten Tomatoes shows a low score I generally agree that the movie sucked. Their audience scores that are around 60% are somewhat suspect.
    • I don't know what may or may not be going on at RT, but I know that they are the only reviews I really pay any attention to. I've found that in general, their ratings track fairly well with my own opinions after seeing a movie. If nothing else, it gives me some way to rank multiple movies I might be considering. I might have missed seeing Edge Of Tomorrow had I not stopped by RT (tom cruise was making it a no-go for me).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cshay ( 79326 )

      Rotten Tomatoes sure spammed the h*ll out of Wikipedia! How they managed to get away with that without being shut down by the powers that be is beyond me!

      Or maybe they caught the fancy of the same OCD autists who love the word "portmanteau" and they spread the spam far and wide... who knows?

  • Ummm .... duh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @10:31AM (#50743445) Homepage

    You mean people on the intertubes selling us stuff might not be honest about the reviews of the stuff they're selling us?

    IMDB, sure, I mostly trust them. Because a LOT of people review things on IMDB. Rotten tomatoes is an aggregator which includes a lot of sources. I mostly trust them to be independent and coming from real sources.

    But, really, ANY review site directly owned by a company trying to sell you stuff should probably a) be required to state their affiliation, and b) assumed to be engaging in a little corporate driven puffery.

    From the sounds of it, fandango (which I am admittedly not familiar with) is either more likely to give good reviews, or is deliberately skewing to better reviews to sell product.

    Are they uniformly rating all movies better (in which case they're just generally bad at reviews or too easily pleased), or if movies from specific studios get pushed up (in which case it's probably getting into a grey area).

    The problem with content on the internet is knowing who paid for it, and what other affiliations they have.

    Don't most video game sites also just give overly good reviews, often based on a product they've barely seen or have been prohibited from giving bad reviews?

    • Agreed.

      If the **data** _isn't_ open, then the propaganda and conclusions about the popularity (or lack of it) should be taken with a LARGE grain of salt and healthy skepticism about the validity of the data.

      i.e.
      * If the data isn't open, question the validity of the data!

      e.g.
      The only people who trust out-of-date and inaccurate data like the Nielsen Ratings are the people buying and selling broadcast licenses to cable companies.

      > The problem with content on the internet is knowing who paid for it, and what

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Exitar ( 809068 )

      Sorry, but I stopped trusting IMDB when the best movie in their Top Rated Movies was The Dark Knight.

      • Re:Ummm .... duh? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @10:59AM (#50743679) Homepage

        Well, look closely at that [imdb.com]:

        Ratings: 9.0/10 from 1,515,627 users Metascore: 82/100
        Reviews: 4,406 user | 636 critic | 39 from Metacritic.com

        When 1.5 million people say they liked it, the rating is saying "lots of people liked this film"

        Now, contrast that with Shawshank Redemption [imdb.com], which is currently rated #1 on IMDB:

        Ratings: 9.3/10 from 1,539,960 users Metascore: 80/100
        Reviews: 3,773 user | 192 critic | 19 from Metacritic.com

        At least they tell you how they got there.

        Like Dark Knight or not, it was a wildly popular movie, which brought a very well known graphic novel to the screen. It also got Heath Ledger an Oscar, if you place any value on that.

        If you expect such ratings to 100% match your own opinion, you have an over inflated sense of self importance. ;-)

        • Re:Ummm .... duh? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @11:54AM (#50744131)
          Nearly all ratings are voluntary, and so suffer from self-selection bias [wikipedia.org]. The measured ratings for general interest movie like Shawshank Redemption are typically lower than a special interest movie like Dark Knight (or Harry Potter, or Twilight, or Lord of the Rings) which appeals to a dedicated fanbase. The latter typically have a lot of fans who rate it highly just because it appeals to their group. That is, they rate it according to more lenient standard than they rate other movies, or they flat-out stuff the ballot box to try to get others to see it, to exaggerate the size of their interest group in hopes of encouraging more such movies to be made.

          This sort of bias is so endemic to online polling that it's hopeless to try to correct it. All you can do is keep it in mind when you see ratings, and decide that Dark Knight is probably really around a 8.7, not a 9.0. And Shawshank Redemption must be really, really good if it's holding onto the #1 spot despite not appealing to a specific demographic.

          I've seen some sites attempt to correct for this by assuming any "real" sample will be gaussian (have a distribution which falls on a normal curve). If the votes something receives are skewed away from guassian (e.g. clustered towards the high end), the site attempts to correct for this by skewing the score down. No idea how accurate or reliable that is, but it is being done in some places.

          If you expect such ratings to 100% match your own opinion, you have an over inflated sense of self importance. ;-)

          Rather than try to come up with one, universal rating which is implicitly applicable to everyone, Netflix's approach is probably more sensible. Depending on the movies you watch and the ratings you give them, Netflix builds up a profile of your preferences. They try to match your profile with that of other people who watched similar movies and gave them similar ratings, then makes recommendations based on what those other people watched. So if you hated Dark Knight, then there's a good chance you're not really into movies based on comic bo^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgraphic novels, and so will downrate them for you personally.

          This does raise some privacy implications, but on the balance I believe this is the more sensible approach to ratings. Giving up some privacy to greatly increase the signal-to-noise ratio of things like movie recommendations may be worth it in some cases. This also mostly corrects for self-selection bias, assuming your self-selection can be accurately measured.

          • Nearly all ratings are voluntary, and so suffer from self-selection bias [wikipedia.org]. The measured ratings for general interest movie like Shawshank Redemption are typically lower than a special interest movie like Dark Knight (or Harry Potter, or Twilight, or Lord of the Rings) which appeals to a dedicated fanbase. The latter typically have a lot of fans who rate it highly just because it appeals to their group. That is, they rate it according to more lenient standard than they rate other movies, or they flat-out stuff the ballot box to try to get others to see it, to exaggerate the size of their interest group in hopes of encouraging more such movies to be made.

            I agree that there is validity in this argument but a skew based on a fan base tends to be much greater when the number of responses is low. Dark Knight has over 1.5 Million ratings. Yes, a good chunk of them could be die hard fans, but there will also be offsetting low ratings by people who hate the genre, disliked the film, and/or people who didn't even watch the film. The law of averages kicks in to reduce the amount of skew as a result. Could it be skewed towards the high side because of rabid fans,

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            Nearly all ratings are voluntary, and so suffer from self-selection bias... This sort of bias is so endemic to online polling that it's hopeless to try to correct it.

            In the USA, the electoral college prevents regional factions from having undue influence in elections. In Australia, they achieve the same goal by requiring everyone to show up at the polls. So it seems the self-selection bias problem has already been solved in multiple ways.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xtifr ( 1323 )

            The big problem with Netflix's ratings is that people don't understand them. Which confounds the data. I often give very different ratings on Netflix than I do on IMDb, because I use my personal tastes for the former, and more objective criteria for the latter. Take The Godfather. Objectively, a brilliant film, with outstanding acting, writing, directing, editing, cinematography, etc., etc. A lot of people consider it one of the best films ever made. On IMDb, I wouldn't give it less than 8/10, because I rec

        • If you expect such ratings to 100% match your own opinion, you have an over inflated sense of self importance. ;-)

          Is this your first day on the Internets? Turns out access to a constant stream of information and interaction actually makes us dumber, less perceptive people.

          Or in XKCD terms: Someone is wrong on the Internet. [xkcd.com]

          • Is this your first day on the Internets?

            Yeah, absolutely, I just bought my first internets today at the corner store.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      I agree that IMDB is reasonably trustworthy. But I'd also go to various newspapers to see movie ratings if I'm very interested. However the comments added to a movie on IMDB is sometimes more helpful than the rating - and it's often obvious when a comment is "too good" or "too broad".

      Also realize that this applies to all kinds of stuff, not only movies. And on other items the ratings can be downratings as well as upratings by paid posters to promote a certain product and demote another. This may be a freque

      • IMDB is a good indication of what the masses think. It's not a good indication of quality overall, since the masses are more an indication of popularity over quality. In fact, the more popular a movie is, the more bland and un-interesting it usually is. Appear to a wider audience usually means appear on a much more limited and conventional base.

        TLDR: Popularity is no gauge of quality.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          That's why the comments are good too.

          But realize that movies are there for entertainment purposes in most cases so if someone produces a movie that is "good quality" but nobody watches it because it don't provide entertainment, then it may not be good quality after all.

          • I definitely read through the comments for movies I'm interested in, but not quite sure about. It becomes a bit of a crap-shoot, but usually I just err on the side of watching them, and am only occasionally disappointed. Worst case, I watch 30 mins of something terrible - but honestly, that's rare enough to not care. Best case, I discover an indie classic or off-beat film I really love :D

    • IMDB used to be good except for the fact that you couldn't use the scores to compare different subgenres, of course. However, during the past two or three years their reviews became worthless to me. My guess is some viral marketing agencies have installed hundreds of sock puppet accounts. Or, perhaps just a lot of people who have no clue about cinema have opened accounts there.

      What hasn't changed is that a movie below 5 generally sucks, though, so for that it's still useful.

  • Read the actual reviews (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16, 2015 @10:39AM (#50743501)

    This is why I always read a sampling of the actual reviews, rather than going purely off ratings. We all have different tastes. Sometimes the things a reviewer points out about a movie as why they hate it are the very things I enjoy.

    • Or just ignore the reviews. I can't count the number of times that I've enjoyed a "terrible" movie.
      • But dare you name them ?
        • My biggest offense is probably Elektra. I actually paid money for the dvd and I do enjoy watching it.

        • Fight Club. But not because the movie was horrible, but because I expected it to be horrible. When it turned out to be fairly descent I enjoyed it a lot more than movies I expected to be good. I've had similar experiences with others, but that one stands out in my mind because I it was so different from what I was expecting.

  • Is any rating on the internet not suspect? I sure don't trust any, especially if there's money involved.
    • Everything is suspect, including /. moderating.

    • This exactly.

      Star ratings are hogwash.

      I am convinced that when people do star ratings, they mindlessly hit 1 or 5 just to get "rate me!" nag crap out of the way.

      The only thing that matters even a little is coherent customer reviews. The problem is that most people don't really take the time to speak about their likes and dislikes. So really, even customer reviews are pretty much worthless.

  • So I can't trust everything I read on the Internet AND I have to apply critical thinking skills to determine whether a source of information, especially one possibly beholden to financial gain, is trustworthy?

    • So I can't trust everything I read on the Internet

      I know, right? Can't trust nothin' no more. Some people even post online under fake names. (Not me of course, the Workforbeer's are traditionally honest folk, always have been, always will be.

      - Will

    • Know what's astounding? People need to be told this.

      And that is why those people calling from "the Microsoft" or all of those other scams are still doing it. Because people apparently lack the ability to know this.

  • If you see "The Asylum" in the credits, you know it's automatically a one-star movie, maybe two stars if they had a better budget.

    I do have to say though, they did a really amazing job with Z Nation and I hope Netflix gets the second season soon.

    • LOL or what's the other one? Studio 4 or something?

      It is interesting to see this knock-off market really take off.

      Consumers and content resellers are so desperate for new content that this is clearly an increasingly big void to fill.

      I remember years ago I was an eMusic.com subscriber (when their subscription system wasn't such a deceitful money grab), I started seeing a whole lot of "tribute" albums... I thought it was a pretty clever operation. Get around licensing / royalty costs and at the same time incr

  • Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings

    Because enjoyment is subjective.

  • I just don't trust anything on the internet by default.

  • Crowd-sourcing opinion is a bad idea, unless you really want to like what other people like. If you have that kind of need for validation, then go ahead.

    Better to find a handful of thoughtful reviewers whose opinions you trust.

    • Better to find a handful of thoughtful reviewers whose opinions you trust.

      Haven't found any yet, at least when it comes to movies. Seriously, I haven't found a reviewer yet that I agree with consistently. And frankly I don't really care about specific opinions. Basically I just want to know A) is the movie of generally good quality and well told and B) is the premise and story likely to interest me.

      I've found Rotten Tomatoes to be an ok (though imperfect) proxy evaluation of general quality though it tends to overrate certain types of movies. For example Rotten Tomatoes tends

      • Seriously, I haven't found a reviewer yet that I agree with consistently.

        You don't have to agree with a reviewer consistently. You only need to understand their frame of reference and trust their ability to think. This is why you get a handful of reviewers, and then decide for yourself. There was a guy who I read, Dave Kehr, and I know where I agree with him and where I don't. I know his preferences and his blind spots. But I know for sure that he's a film scholar and thinks carefully about what he say

  • "The story was great, the special effects were great and all the actors were great, but I hate actor XYZ so I'm rating this movie 1 star."

    • "The actors sucked, there was no story but the special effects were amazing - * * * * *"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by moeinvt ( 851793 )

      I don't disagree that people are idiots, but I find it hard to believe that people are going to enjoy a movie, then log in to a web site and rate it a '1' because they hate a certain actor/actress. Looking at IMDB ratings, I think the idiots are much more inclined to go see a movie, say "Wow! That was awesome!" and give it an instant '10'. Check out "The Martian" for example. It's only been out a few weeks, but it's now #129 in the Top 250 and has received a '10' rating from 19,500 users/idiots. A pe

  • I noticed any movie with a score lower than say 6.8 is going to suck and not just because I or someone didn't like the style of movie, its just bad. On there you can usually tell the fake reviews when they are posted very early.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xtifr ( 1323 )

      But some bad movies are great! :)

      I agree, though. IMDb's ratings are better than those on most sites. (The only other site I pay much attention to is Rotten Tomatoes.) But even so, I've found cases where I disagree with the general consensus.

  • I am shocked! Shocked, i tell you!

  • Rotten Tomatoes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BillCable ( 1464383 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @11:09AM (#50743791)
    Rotten Tomatoes is the gold standard for movie quality measurement. Accept no substitutes.

    Seriously, if someone is relying on Fandango to tell them if a movie is any good, they deserve to watch dreck.

  • Ratings tell you - at best - how popular a movie is. Not how good it is. Same as the music charts. It has no correspondence to even sales figures, really. Measuring "sales this month" as opposed to "overall sales" is pretty much a nonsense if you think of it, if the person doesn't already own that product.

    Ratings are about what's popular, what other people are liking now. For many, that's ALL they need to know because that's what they base their opinions on and then discuss with their peer group. For

  • This is why people follow particular reviewers, like Siskel OR Ebert back in the day.

    • Ebert (Score:2)

      by sjbe ( 173966 )

      This is why people follow particular reviewers, like Siskel OR Ebert back in the day.

      I only found Ebert helpful because I almost always seemed to disagree with the guy. Nothing against him personally but whenever I watched the show I routinely found myself having a very different opinion if I had also seen the movie.

    • I liked Ebert so much, I stopped watching movies altogether and only read his reviews of them!
      Now I have to read wikipedia. Oh well.
  • Aside from the rounding thing i suspect this is more a combination of (reasonable) bias and people sucking at rating than some active attempt at deception. ("You have attributed conditions to villainy...")

    If someone goes out and sees a movie or plays a game and thinks it's awesome they're much more likely to go online and rate it highly, possibly 4 stars but more likely 5 stars (because people tend to extremes, especially when feeling emotional.) If someone sees a movie or plays a game and thinks it sucks

  • Star Ratings Meaning [xkcd.com] according to XKCD

  • Not to dispute that a site like Fandango will lie for money, but for the data from the Netflix challenge several years ago - where they made available an anonymized sample of peoples' movie ratings - the mean was 3.8 (https://www.igvita.com/2006/10/29/dissecting-the-netflix-dataset/), not the 3.0 one might expect for a random distribution over the range 1 to 5.

    Upon reflection, this makes sense as people don't watch movies randomly - they watch what they think might be good and avoid what they think will be

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xtifr ( 1323 )

      Yeah, I've noticed that my ratings on Netflix skew well above three. I'd like to help train the system better in my dislikes as well as my likes, but I'm not really willing to rate movies I haven't watched, and there's a lot of movies I'm not interested in watching.

      They do have an "I'm not interested in this" option, though, so that probably helps. But it's also probably not reflected in their star ratings (nor should it be).

  • Wait, you mean someone on teh intarwebz might LIE?

    Say it isn't so!!

  • No matter how the rounding is made, as long as it is monotonous, a 4.5 star will always have a better rating than a 4 star.
    It is also obvious that ratings are relative. If 4-4.5 is average then so be it. Not very accurate but it gives you an idea.

    The problem is who is behind the ratings. Shills are an obvious cause of bogus ratings, however, even honest reviews may be troublesome. A typical thing is that when looking at ratings, you are usually looking for the best. Conversely, reviewers tend to give 5 star

  • FTA:

    "You decided to check out 'Fantastic Four' ... Fandango users thought it was good! Over 7,000 people had reviewed it, and it had an average of 3 out of 5 stars. This is going to be a decent movie."

    This article must be targeted at people who would see a 3/5 rating for a movie and conclude that the users "thought it was good". I would interpret a 3/5 from 7000 users (or a 6/10 on IMDB) as an indication that the movie probably sucks. No way would I pay theater prices to go see it based on a 3/5.

    A big bud

  • There I fixed that title.

    .
    All online ratings and reviews are played with and are dubious, at best.

    There are some good ratings/reviews, such as this review of a book of random numbers [amazon.com].

    But, for the most part, online reviews should be viewed with a good deal of skepticism.

  • Why You Should Be Suspicious of Online...

    Shh! Stop. Say no more. Right there with you.

  • the sky is blue and water is wet. More at 11.

  • The article isn't questioning the reviews themselves at all. It questioned Fandango's rounding method, which presents higher averages than other sites would with the same review ratings.

  • There, fixed it...

  • I Don't Trust Any Star Ratings (Score:3)

    by sudon't ( 580652 ) on Friday October 16, 2015 @01:53PM (#50745267)

    I really don't trust any ratings done by "consumers" because the way I see people do ratings is, if they like it it, they give five stars, and if they don't like it, they give one star. Also, on seller sites such as eBay, or Discogs, it seems you're expected to give five stars to any seller who merely sends you the thing you ordered. Obviously, that leaves no room for a seller who goes above and beyond. If you give less then five stars, they'll flip out. I guess I can't blame them since that is the convention, now. Nevertheless, it makes the five-star rating system useless.
    Another surprise for me was when I found out the ratings on Netflix weren't generated by other viewers, but rather by Netflix guessing what I would think, based on my watching history.

  • I always used to laugh out loud when I saw a quote in the paper about a film and it was from Travers. Pretty much that told me to avoid the film.

    You can tell he's the critic of last resort that studios call upon when they have a bomb on their hands.

  • It's 2015.

    If people at this point don't understand that there are PAID individuals (by the thousands) who will fill forums with whatever you want, vote whatever you want on whatever online poll, and generally astroturfing the shit out of anything of any actual value whatsoever (and a fairly large amount of stuff that DOESN'T matter, as well), then they're so oblivious and stupid that they shouldn't be allowed to care for themselves, much less handle money or purchases.

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