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Am I the only one who thinks MDL ratings are inaccurate?

ASTER

@burhaa aadmi  right in point

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Floki

@burhaa aadmi 

Except they are not just overvalued. How can ratings be accurate if noone is using the scale properly or at least the same way. Check my post to understand how this is a big issue (more specifically on MDL).

If you have people that starts rating from 6-7 (stating the content is terrible), then you end up with inaccurate ratings that do not reflect the real opinion of these people. Many of them will tell you they feel bad rating anything under 6, so they overrate on purpose which is the same as being inaccurate.

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burhaa aadmi VIP
 Floki:

@burhaa aadmi 

Except they are not just overvalued. How can ratings be accurate if noone is using the scale properly or at least the same way. Check my post to understand how this is a big issue (more specifically on MDL).

If you have people that starts rating from 6-7 (stating the content is terrible), then you end up with inaccurate ratings that do not reflect the real opinion of these people. Many of them will tell you they feel bad rating anything under 6, so they overrate on purpose which is the same as being inaccurate.

None of that invalidates my post. It just reinforces that ratings are utterly subjective, always.  There can never be any rules on "accurate" ratings, because whatever feels right for an individual IS right for that individual. That's why it's pointless to expect and/or hope for some mythical and utterly unachievable "accurate" rating system. MDL ratings are not school exams with a standardised marking system.

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Floki

Except it does invalidate your point, because your point was that it wasn't inaccurate while it is. I also suggested how to improve the current system to push users to rate something properly. A simple word and an emoji could help more than you think and remind people what each rating actually means.

It is not about making it perfect because this is impossible. Using extreme isn't making your point more valid, if anything it proves you believe there is no room for improvement. The current system is broken and leads to most content being rated between 7 and 9.5. People are using less than half of the scale not because it's what they believe the content is worth but because they feel bad rating it what they think it deserves.

While they are not school exams they exist to give the community a tool and a way to rank content. Also to help them see what might be worth watching or not based on their own preferences. Giving up on it just means it is useless while it does not have to be. 

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burhaa aadmi VIP

No, my point is that the whole concept of "inaccurate" is wrong when applied to subjective ratings


It is NOT POSSIBLE to have "inaccurate" ratings just as it is NOT POSSIBLE to have "accurate" ratings. 

Synonyms for "accurate" include "correct", "true" "right" etc. S

Synonyms for "inaccurate" include "false", "wrong" incorrect", etc. 

RATINGS ARE SUBJECTIVE. If you don't know what THAT word means, look it up.

Because they are subjective they can NEVER be either accurate OR inaccurate. 

 "A Drama is airing" - objective statement, it can be accurate or inaccurate. 

"A Drama is finished" - objective statement, it can be accurate or inaccurate. 


A Drama is awful, 3/10 - subjective statement, neither accurate nor inaccurate.

A Drama is AMAZING 10/10 - subjective statement, neither accurate nor inaccurate.


Every person's opinion is valid, and that includes not just their opinion on the merits of a Drama, but also their opion on how to score a Drama. It is ALL subjective.

MDL scores are the averages of many SUBJECTIVE scores, there is nothing remotely OBJECTIVE about them, nor was there ever meant to be.

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Floki

Please read again since you are missing the point. Also being frustrated does not give you the right to be condescending or disrespectful. If anything it proves you cannot defend your point without being insulting which says more about you than anyone else here.


I will say it again, you are wrong because the rating system is supposed to represent people's opinion. How they feel about the drama is irrelevant if they cannot use the rating to express their opinion accordingly. I just had another example of someone who hated a drama so much they felt like it was a waste of time. They also mentioned having to watch it at 1.5x speed because of it. Guess their rating of the drama for something they hated that much (their words)... a 7 out of 10.

Now I don't make rating systems but they are supposed to be universal, which is why they are used everywhere for about everything. Just like words, numbers do mean something. A 7 out of 10 is not supposed to represent something you hate so much that you couldn't watch it.

Now if your argument is that they can rate however they see fit, that is exactly what leads to have an inaccurate rating system.

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edneversleeps

Maybe the term “inaccurate” isn’t the correct word, since ratings are based on an average of how viewers rate them based on their own feelings and thoughts, but the OP’s question is a valid point for discussion.

Not every academy award winning show is well liked by everyone, but there must be some that most people like.

There’s a reason why there are professional critics, who rate shows, and even though they may rate differently, there will be more hits than misses as compared to having amateur viewers rate shows.

The OP is saying that the viewers here do not know how to rate shows properly, either because everyone is somehow scoring from 5-10 instead of using the 10 point system, or the viewers here largely follow their idols or what not.

Now we don’t know the reason, but it’s just that some of us here are noticing shows that every show, perhaps those we see for a fact have bad production been given high scores.

While we respect viewers’ opinions, there also must be some form of objectivity? Else just shutdown the rating system and only allow worded reviews.

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Floki

@edneversleeps 

Inaccurate is the exact word for what I described in my previous posts. Now if we put these members aside and look at the ones who do rate accurately based on their own feelings then that's a different "issue" an these ratings are subjective. Which is where burhaa is correct and that we cannot change.

There are no perfect solutions but there is definitely room for improvements. Some systems are more complex than others, like having filters based on if the show was completed or if the viewer had a more or less large amount content viewed in his history. Some sites also allow to filter top reviewers, people who give lenghty reviews explaining what they liked/dislike. 

If you give these tools to the community then they can sort the reviewers based on their own criterias. Like for example if I only want to look at people who reviewed a show that had seen at least 50 drama before, then it would make more sense to me based on what I value as a viewer/reviewer. We don't all consider the same criteras the same way, some of us will prefer to filter people who have seen 100 dramas before, or 200. Will it change how subjective their view is? Not really, but it can help you filter many problematic ratings out, and focused on what you consider a honest review/rating.

You are absolutely correct, the point of a rating system is to give a consensus. This consensus will give you an idea of what to expect and what content to prioritize, but it will not guarantee that you will like said content.  Still, if we cannot rely on the consensus for so many reasons then there is no point of having it displayed or available (like you said). Because in the end, it will not reflect anything but a melting pot of non sense mixed up with honest reviews.

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TimiZero
 Floki:
Guess their rating of the drama for something they hated that much (their words)... a 7 out of 10.

You got this wrong...7/10 is good rating elsewhere but not in MDL. People will consider anything below 8.5/10 in here as underrated already...LoL As ridiculous as it sounds, it is justified and acceptable to not liking a drama but gave it 7/10 in MDL.

In real world case this is like passing mark for national level exams. Lets say passing for Calculus could be as low as 30/100, but English could be 50/100, and some other easier subject can be as high as 70/100. Now change calculus, english and that other subject to RottenTomatoes, IMDB, MDL. 

When I joined MDL it was already apparent that this Site rated everything higher. It would be otherwise distorted the rating if you want to use IMDB standard in here. Guess those Kdrama with Oppa will get unreasonably high ratings but your non-Oppa drama you objectively rated got poor rating because you want to be as accurate as IMDB....haha

My point is numbers in rating are not definite. To you 7/10 is high but obviously that's not the case in MDL. Trust me anyone would afraid to start a drama if its rating is below 7/10.

There's no point in changing things now as it's always been like that since the very beginning. It's more like unspoken rule in MDL already. 

I totally agree with @Burha as there's no such thing as "accurate" in rating. What we actually need is reliable rating that's good reflection of what to expect from a drama, be it 8/10 or 3/10. What would you expect from 8 and 3 is more important than whether 8 or 3 is the suitable number or not.

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Mahizes
 bilan:

I feel like recently, with more users on mdl, the ratings are not as accurate as they used to be and have a more bias outlook. I used to be able to clearly judge a show by it's rating but now a show ranking above 8.5 is no longer rare. Everything seems skewed. 

Is it not possible to hide ratings until after a show has aired. It makes no sense for a show to be 9/10 when episode 1 came out a few hours ago. 

The audience tends to like everything easily

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Floki

@TimiZero 

And I have to disagree with you with almost everything you said, because I already explained how this is making it more difficult for everyone to differentiate what is worth watching. It shouldn't be this way and MDL isn't supposed to be some weird exception where 7/10 are bad ratings while the rest of the world consider it differently. More than that, it shouldn't be an exception if it makes things worse or more difficult to interpret.

If you consider a 7/10 a bad rating (even if for some odd reasons you or MDL does not have the same meaning in numbers as the rest of the world), then you will have a scale of ~5 possible ratings (even lower than that in reality since it's between 7 and 10 most of the time). This means that you will have all your content jammed between 7 and 9.5 (which is the case) instead of using a full scale to differentiate what is good and bad. 

Again, what is the point of having a scale on 10 if you use one on 5 (even though it is clearly displayed on 10 on the website)? At this point it would make more sense to have a rating on 5 than keeping the current one. And even then you will still have people who hate something give it a 3/5 instead of a 2/5.

Comparing oranges and apples when you talk about exams. But even then you get this comparison wrong, just because you "pass" an exam it doesn't mean you did good or that you will be accepted to better schools/jobs/internships. Passing just means it was validated based on success expectations, but a total of 30 points on 100 possible points, even if you pass the exam, is still a low score and should be considered as such. It's basically getting 30% of the exam right, and 70% of the exam wrong. Think of it in terms of percentage and it will be easier for you to see. MDL is an anomaly because a scale on 10 is supposed to be universal. And I really doubt they set this system up thinking only half of the scale would be used or that everything will be packed this way.

Now since everything is jammed between 7 and 9.5 you lose  any notion of nuance (nuance is important in critical thinking), making a lot more tricky to differentiate your content. You are wasting your potential as a review hub and it no longer helps your community the way it is supposed to. Ratings can vary a lot depending on the type of content, and it's not always because of the quality of it. As it was mentioned before, some people give good ratings only based on their favorite actors/actresses or based on kiss scenes. Many many people fast forward the drama to whatever interest them. Are they allowed to do this? Absolutely. Is their review/rating as valuable as someone who would watch the whole thing the way it's supposed to be watched? I don't think so. And this is a completely different issue than the inacurrate rating, because this part is subjective and people are allowed to enjoy their content the way they want. But that doesn't mean they should give a 7/10 to something that hated so much they had to comment how bad it was to them.

Of course there is a point in improving things. Are you saying that we shouldn't improve just because they have been messed up for a while? Just because somthing has always been a certain way, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make them better, especially when they are not used as intended. And there is almost no content under 7 because people are not using the full scale.. So how do you decide, based on a rating alone, if you should watch something between 7 and 8? That's the issue here, you can't possibly decide based on that alone because of the margin of error/people you don't trust to rate/whatever.

Again what I suggest would make things a lot better imho and it cannot make them worse. 

1. A word next to the rating, to describe what it actually means and based on what is universaly considered appropriate to descripte the rating.

A few examples (but it can be discussed):

  • 10 = Perfect/Masterpiece
  • 9 = Superb/Almost Perfect
  • 8 = Great
  • 7 = Good

2. Making a scale on 5 (a bit late for that), people would be "forced" to choose a rating that feels more accurate

3. Filters to sort top reviewers/watchers and calculate based on these people. Right now we have graphics, while it looks cool it doesn't do enough.

EDIT: After checking your profile I see you have your own "rating system". This means that people need to check your profile before they check your reviews/ratings to understand why you rate something instead of referring to standards or universal systems. This will make it near impossible for us to agree on this specific topic, because you are already biased to the point where you chose to do your own thing instead of improving/chaning the disfunctional one..

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TimiZero

Yeah yeah yeah...i lost my critical thinking guys...

Just joking okay!!

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Floki
 TimiZero:

Yeah yeah yeah...i lost my critical thinking guys...

If this is your answer then I assume you have nothing interesting to add? Not a big fan of pity parties, this isn't about you, this is about "inaccurate ratings". I never implied you "lost" anything, I said nuance was important. There is a big difference between the two and this clearly wasn't supposed to be about you as an individual, so I am sorry if I offended you in way, but you misunderstood my point.

Edit: Since you edited your post to say that you were just joking, then I no longer need to apologize ;)

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TimiZero
 Floki:
Passing just means it was validated based on success expectations, but a total of 30 points on 100 possible points, even if you pass the exam, is still a low score and should be considered as such.

That's basically the case for difficult subject and the percentage of the pass is decided from the distribution of the marks the students scored throughout the country. A pass is a pass no matter what the mark is. 30/100 for calculus for obvious reason is more difficult to achieve than 30/100 of english exams and therefore shouldn't be considered the same.

Yeah but I agree the analogy wasn't the best. But I just wanted to highlight the number itself is meaningless. In the case of MDL most people already aware of its higher rating. As someone in earlier post has mentioned it's safe to consider a minus 2 points of anything on MDL....if you want to compare it with standard scale of 10 ratings.


 Floki:
As it was mentioned before, some people give good ratings only based on their favorite actors/actresses or based on kiss scenes. Many many people fast forward the drama to whatever interest them. Are they allowed to do this? Absolutely. Is their review/rating as valuable as someone who would watch the whole thing the way it's supposed to be watched? I don't think so. And this is a completely different issue than the inacurrate rating, because this part is subjective and people are allowed to enjoy their content the way they want.

Yeah I don't agree with this group of people too. Some others easily rate a drama lower as well based on trivial and personal reasons (like moral value of character)...LOL Basically these are among the fangirls or boys and younger audiences. I believe there are many more people that make a reasonable rating in MDL. The problem is the "number" people chose for that rating itself, could be slightly higher than the normal one. 


 Floki:
EDIT: After checking your profile I see you have your own "rating system". This means that people need to check your profile before they check your reviews/ratings to understand why you rate something instead of referring to standards or universal systems. This will make it near impossible for us to agree on this specific topic, because you are already biased to the point where you chose to do your own thing instead of improving/chaning the disfunctional one..

Actually, I saw many MDL users have their own ratings when I first joined this site. So that's why I came up with mine and tried to adhere with it as much as possible. 

You must be wondering why I don't have anything lower than 5 in my list. That's because I chose my drama and I avoid what I hate.  I don't list down what I watched on TV (basically the Korean and Chinese)....which I rarely finish and able to watch fully without accidentally missed some of the episodes. 

I previously used to rated things I dropped as 3 or 4. But later I removed the rating as I mostly drop anything based on my personal value. So that lower rating was actually not objective but was the hate i have towards that trivial personal reason. 


 Floki:
Of course there is a point in improving things. Are you saying that we shouldn't improve just because they have been messed up for a while?

This is by itself is a subjective statement. I can agree and disagree at the same time...lol


 Floki:
So how do you decide, based on a rating alone, if you should watch something between 7 and 8? That's the issue here, you can't possibly decide based on that alone because of the margin of error/people you don't trust to rate/whatever.

I think @Burha has answered this indirectly.

 burhaa aadmi:
MDL scores are the averages of many SUBJECTIVE scores, there is nothing remotely OBJECTIVE about them, nor was there ever meant to be.

There are people rate at the extreme. The 1/10 and 10/10.

There are people like me who adjust the rating by increasing the value.

There are people who rate normally but still generous in their ratings.

There are people who utilize the full scale.

There are people rate based on emotion.

There are people who rate objectively like they are the judges of Academy Award...LOL

At the end of the day the scores are the average of the above. But for MDL the scores are slightly inflated so you need to know that before read the ratings. Like I said anything below 7 needs further "investigation" if you want to decide on a drama. 

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TimiZero

I forgot to write this but I understand the concern of small margin between 7 - 10. Yes that is true for individual rating as you can only have half point between the number, but as a whole the range between 7 and 8 is actually 10 points apart. I mean you have 7.0 up to 7.9 before reaching the 8. Then the 7 and 10 could have like 30 points in between.

Not to mention there are actually many dramas that's below 7 in MDL. But then again numbers of viewers who are actually rate the drama should be considered in deciding anything. 

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