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Bar graph visual ratios


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rti9



Joined: 08 Jul 2007
Posts: 1241
PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:38 pm Reply with quote
selenta wrote:
woelfie wrote:
Obviously, I can't say "seen all". Would that make my opinion less valid that that from the few dozens of people who had the courage to wrestle through the whole bunch, well knowing that they will not alter their opinion (be it good or bad) of the series ?


I'm pretty sure Dan has said that 'seen all' and 'seen some' are valued the same, as they should be. The belief is that the rating reflects the user's current opinion of the show, and as they watch more or finish it, they will keep it updated. It's too much work with little to no meaningful importance to keep track of how much of a series each user has seen to influence the value of their vote, absolutely unnecessary. So yes, if you've seen enough of a show that you are comfortable rating it, then the 'value' of your vote is just the same as anyone else's.

I couldn't agree more with selenta and woelfie. Not watching a whole series, for whatever the reason (utter disgust, not being able to find the rest of it, just not motivated enough) sends a message just as important as someone who watches the entire thing. What should be asked is what do the programmers want from the graph?

Dan42 wrote:
rti9 wrote:
A question to add to Dargonxtc's that might help explain the bar graphs: does a vote given by someone who selects "seen all" and a vote given by someone who selects "seen some" have the same value?

They are worth the same but I would like to change that. Or at least reflect this datum in the graph. In the most complex case, imagine that the graph would become 3-D, with a "number of episodes watched" axis. Then you could see how the opinion distribution changes as people watch more episodes. e.g. people tend to rate "masterpiece" after episode 1, "good" at the halfway point and "awful" after finishing the series. But a 3-D graph would be too complex so I'd have to find a simpler representation for this data.

Weighting ratings by the number of episodes watched would bring lots of problems:
- ratings of bigger series would become even more distorted than what they are now because only fans of particular shows and liars would select "seen all"
- All bad ratings would be under suspicion of not being true because not everybody would watch over 200 episodes just to say something is bad
- Spammers would gain more power because they would obviously always select "seen all".
- The website would have to keep track of all shows still being aired because soon people will start complaining that others are voting with "seen all" although the series hasn't finished yet
- Expecting people to remember exactly how many episodes of older big tv series they watched is asking too much

Soon someone will suggest to rate animes episode by episode. And that is just too much hassle. Asking newcomers to be critical about the first batch animations they watch and veterans to remember every single chapter of every single series they have watched is mission impossible.

Following text from the Encyclopedia Suggestion List thread:
Dan42 wrote:
cardcaptormanda wrote:
So, on to the suggestion. Another well-known anime encyclopedia-ish site allows (and encourages) its users to make two different kinds of ratings. There is a rating for series you have not yet completed, and a rating for when you have completed a series. Both ratings are displayed on that anime's page, but this way, people who have judged the anime as awful or great too early don't effect the "real" rating. I think, if possible, ANN's encyclopedia should really have a system like this is place.

We already have a system like that. Before rating a title, you have to put it either in your "seen some" or "seen all" list. And I don't see the point of keeping two ratings for an anime. Once you've seen all of the series, move it to "seen all" and change the rating if you feel like it deserves to be changed. So the information is right there in the system but... we don't use it when computing ratings. Because...

cardcaptormanda wrote:
Putting the rating of someone who has seen two episodes and someone who has seen the whole series in the same place and giving them the same importance just doesn't make sense to me.

In the end the difference between those two views is not statistically significant. Even if we were to introduce some algorithm to distinguish between "seen some" and "seen all", the end result would be almost identical. Even though we use some pretty aggressive filtering when computing the weighted average score, only 115 titles have a difference of more than 0.5 between (non-filtered) arithmetic average and (filtered) weighted average.

As selenta said, "It's too much work with little to no meaningful importance to keep track of how much of a series each user has seen to influence the value of their vote, absolutely unnecessary."
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rti9



Joined: 08 Jul 2007
Posts: 1241
PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:35 am Reply with quote
I was wondering if a brief explanatory warning of how the rating system works could "educate" the users and force them to distribute more evenly their ratings.

Maybe something like this:
tempest wrote:
When user's spam the system, be it masterpiece, the opposite,or something in-between, they're trustworthiness goes down the tube.

+
Dan42 wrote:
Ultimately, you have to remember that the purpose of the bar graph is to be fair to the people who view the page, not to those who vote.
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