Request for raw data

[roshky]

Originally Posted by Guspaz

I just did a few searches, and came up with this: ~75% of series fall between 2.90 and 3.86. So the effective range for 75% of series is just 0.94! On a five-star rating system, less than one star range for the majority of series.

So that's my point; the current average rating itself is virtually meaningless. The rating alone as a hard number would be extremely useful, but using weighted percentiles could produce "ratings" that are far more meaningful than the current 0.94-range-for-75% ratings.

you have to consider that most people don't use the full 0.5-5 spectrum. if i'd have to guess, i'd say 2-5 is the real interval, which brings the 0.94 range to about 30%. sure, it's not ideal, but i don't think it's the worst situation.

anyway, if you're really willing do to this, happy codding :D ..hope you get a pm with the figures.

[Guspaz]

Errm, sorry, I meant to say "the rankings along as a hard number would be extremely useful"

I meant that adding the pure rank in addition to the average would be extremely useful, but that the rating would still of questionable utility.

I'm mixing up the words rating/ranking. It's a bit too late at night ;)

[mjf314]

It wouldn't be the same as rankings-without-ratings, because the range would be 5 (0-5)

If the ratings were all evenly spaced (and I think you were implying that they would be, correct me if I'm wrong), then the ratings would give you the exact same information as rankings. For example, you wouldn't know if an anime is close to passing another anime. You also wouldn't know if the avg rating is higher or lower than your personal rating.

I don't see what's bad about a small range. You can still compare two anime and see which is rated higher. If three significant figures isn't precise enough, then another can be added.

Edit: Btw when I said you have to look at them frequently, I didn't mean moreso than other websites. I meant that on any website, you have to get used to any rating system to understand what the ratings mean. On IMDb, for example, I know that under 6.0 is bad, 6.8 is average, 7.5 is fairly good, and 8.0 is great (in terms of the general opinion of site users). If you're not familiar with the rating system, then you won't know that. On Anime-Planet, it's the same. You have to learn what each rating means, and if the ratings were more spread out, it wouldn't change that.

[Guspaz]

Originally Posted by mjf314

If the ratings are all evenly spaced (and I think you were implying that they would be, correct me if I'm wrong), then the ratings give you the exact same information as rankings. For example, you won't know if an anime is close to passing another anime. You also won't know if the avg rating is higher or lower than your personal rating.

I don't see what's bad about a small range. You can still compare two anime and see which is rated higher. If three significant figures isn't precise enough, then another can be added.

Edit: Btw when I said you have to look at them frequently, I didn't mean moreso than other websites. I meant that on any website, you have to get used to any rating system to understand what the ratings mean. On IMDb, for example, I know that under 6.0 is bad, 6.8 is average, 7.5 is fairly good, and 8.0 is great (in terms of the general opinion of site users). If you're not familiar with the rating system, then you won't know that.

If you know that the rating is based on the ranking, it carries that extra information. If not, it provides a wider range to work with.

A user might know that 0.5 is bad, and 4.5 is good. But compare two series whose ratings are 3.25 and 3.75. Is that good? Bad? Average? The current ratings can tell you which series is better than another series, but not by how much (since the difference between them is meaningless).

I'll admit that a lot of what I'm arguing for can be expressed by simply including the numerical ranking.

It isn't necessarily a linear range (evenly spaced). They can be weighted. You could say 90-100% is 5 stars, 80-90 is 4, 50-70 is 3, 30-50 is 2, 0-30 is 1. But I'm just making up numbers here for demonstration purposes. You can weight your percentile-to-rating mapping.

My original point stands, though; I'm not demanding any of this is implemented, I just want the raw data to play with and see what the results are. The results might be useful, they might be useless.

[mjf314]

A user might know that 0.5 is bad, and 4.5 is good. But compare two series whose ratings are 3.25 and 3.75. Is that good? Bad? Average? The current ratings can tell you which series is better than another series, but not by how much (since the difference between them is meaningless).

With your system, maybe those same two series would be rated 2.8/3.8 instead of 3.25/3.75. It's still just as meaningless unless you're already familiar with the rating system.

In the current rating system, I'd say that 3.0 is bad, 3.4 is average, 3.7 is decent, 3.9 is good, 4.1 is great.

Edit: Btw just to clarify, I have no objection to you receiving the raw data, of course. Actually I would also be interested in the data.

[kenaniah]

After reading through the entire thread, I have to first of all applaud every single one of you who actually took the time to study the averaging system. I think I speak for everyone when I say that the average rating is merely half of the picture. It is incomplete unless you can measure that average rating against the ratings of other entries on the site (rank).

So then, why haven't we added that yet? We wanted to monitor the effectiveness of the averaging algorithm to make sure it was solid before releasing rankings into the wild. Rankings will come shortly. Meaning, as soon as sothis approves the updates I just made.

Attached are the screenshots of what it would look like (the popup text appears when you mouse over the stars image. You can't see my mouse in the screen shots, but it's there). If you like my idea, please tell let her know, because she's currently against showing the rankings as an image.

[mjf314]

I don't like the ranking images. It'll just confuse people. Just show the ranking as a number. Also, I'd prefer being able to see the avg rating without hovering (either put it next to the stars, or replace the stars; replacing the stars would be better imo, because then you'd also have enough space to list the number of votes).

[sothis]

moving this to completed as i dont think theres any action items for us right now (and at the moment we dont have data to give to folks)