Review System Updates

moozooh said:



Not to discredit your point (which I generally agree with), but isn't SingleH a she?

Wehzy said:
New review system is awful. I dont even write reviews but i dont wanna scroll through a bunch of angry text just to see the review raiting. Most reviews are just pointless hate anyway. And the emoji's.. what is this? Facebook?

:L

Tiffanys said:
That being said, moving the scores back up to the top for actual usability of the system isn't all you need to do. If there are going to be changes to the review system the single most important change beyond that would be to get rid of the way it currently chooses which are shown on the main anime page. Currently it's the reviews with the most votes which are always the first reviews posted which many a time are even preliminary reviews that didn't even watch the entire show and unfortunately no matter how many hundreds of reviews are posted those same crappy ones are the ones stuck there on the front page forever.

What I suggest is rather than the most voted on reviews for a show instead you have it show one recommended, one not recommended, one mixed. Each chosen randomly out of the pool of all reviews with those scores, if they're available. If they're not then show another of whichever of the other two have the most review types. And if it's only praised or panned then in that case you can just show those types of reviews at random. This method I think would be the most fair to any given series. Though in the spirit of fairness it might actually unfairly give exposure to bad takes.

So if you consider that then perhaps the most truly fair might be to just pull 3 at random every time an anime's page is loaded. Not the top ones, not even any specific type, just three of the total pool of reviews completely at random. This would give the largest possible exposure to the largest possible pool of reviews.

Gippy said:


Good. Everyone was getting tired of KANLen09 and RebelPanda pre-writing walls of text, then posting them up 1 second after the show ends to monopolize the main page of each seasonal anime were clearly doing it for the clout.

RebelPanda said:
I do not post reviews for hours, sometimes a day after finishing an anime so I can evaluate the ending. That is a lot more than most seasonal reviewers do. You can check the date and time reviews were posted and compare it to the finale airing time on the forums.

Manaban said:
the fact that someone is unironically trying to say they post their reviews for "hours after it ends, sometimes a full day later" as a self-defense against accusations of rat racing, like this is any amount of time to wait at all, really shows how mental the whole situation surrounding seasonal reviews is on this site

moozooh said:

I don't see anything RebelPanda is supposed to defend himself against.

Manaban said:

the fact that someone is unironically trying to say they post their reviews for "hours after it ends, sometimes a full day later" as a self-defense against accusations of rat racing, like this is any amount of time to wait at all, really shows how mental the whole situation surrounding seasonal reviews is on this site

Manaban said:
Full stop, said and done, don't care what your take is.

moozooh said:

For the record, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm agreeing with you that this situation is indeed mental and RP shouldn't have to feel guilty over it. I guess I should have clarified that.

But good job with a douchy response regardless. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Gween_Gween said:

why is rp even lying about it, he has posted reviews before watching the final episode lmao acting like he has some integrity, everyone does that

pinkhorizon said:


I'm not a reviewer, although my account isn't very old I've been reading MAL reviews for about 10 years now, pretty much since I was 7, this is the first time I'm ever making a forum post because I'm just that peeved. 

I don't care too much about the perspective of the reviewer since they're the minority and although they're being screwed over, I'm mainly focused on my perspective because at the end of the day this inconveniences people like me the most (referring to quantity here, well established, good reviewers are important and are arguably affected more but there aren't that many of them, we're talking about the masses here), the people who might not have a MAL profile picture (or even a MAL account) who use this website to make an anime list to keep track of shows and use the review section to see if a show is worth their time or not and many other equally important things that I'll get into later. 

I overuse parentheses.

I'm going to be addressing literally everything you said here (lmk if I missed anything after you're done reading) but not in the same order of what you've said so please bear with me, I'm terrible at writing but I'm doing my best so this post is going to be disjointed and might not flow very well. I'm singling you out only because I personally think that everything you've said here is the best the people on your side of the argument have to say so take that as a compliment.

Please keep in mind that this is in good faith, if my tone says otherwise just blame it on poor word choice, I know I might come across as overly blunt but I again have to emphasise my inexperience, the target audience for this post isn't even you specifically but everybody who has an opinion on this update in general.

The whole "Recommended/Not Recommended>Score Number" thing you said at the end is actually rubbish, the difference between scoring something a 7 and scoring something a 10 is the difference between Naruto and Monster, the number does a GOOD job at quantifying the enjoyment/satisfaction of the reviewer and this is why literally reviews of every medium be it music reviews or movie reviews all use numerical scoring (most commonly on a scale of 1 to 10 or something equivalent). Ask the average music twitter user what their 10s are and they’ll bombard you with great albums, a numeric score is really common and not exclusive to reviewers, go check out Rate Your Music for example.

I consume a decent amount of reviews, not just anime ones. Literally everybody from the biggest individual (music) reviewer on the planet (referring to Anthony Fantano here though most other individual reviewers are included as well) to Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Rotten Tomatoes use numbers for their reviews and it's been this way for decades because it’s good, it works and it has stood the test of time, so please understand that you and people like you are ironically the loud minority with no self awareness, the top reviewers are the most passionate ones and have been doing this for years. If they’re unhappy that’s a red flag.

I wanted to see how bad the new review system was so I checked out the front page review section of "Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai" since I remember the front page reviews on that were on the negative side and boy was I shocked when the front page reviews were incredibly positive, I'm all talking 8s and above and they all had an ok amount of likes, a couple hundred to 1k. I then sorted the reviews by most helpful and that's where the familiar, based reviews with way more most helpfuls, (like a few thousand more) and they came in with WILDLY different scores. I tried this for a few other shows and I noticed that all the front page scores were so much more positive and I quickly realised why.

Either the algorithm is biased towards pushing positive scores to the front page or it failed to take into account that not as many people make negative reviews unless they're super passionate. It's definitely one of them and that's a fact. Most people literally just give the reviews they like a helpful and call it a day. Think I'm making shit up on the spot? No, I tested this. I went back to Bunny Girl, filtered the reviews to show recommended reviews only and there were 20 pages. I then filtered the not recommended ones and there were only 3 pages. If this isn't typical corporate indifferent incompetence then I don't know what is because I, a layman, knew this would be a bad idea yet the people who made these changes are disconnected enough to actually go through with it. I think they've reverted the changes for now, the front page is back to being sorted by most helpful but just understand that reviewers and review readers alike both had a very good reason to be mad, saying they don’t while dismissing them as a “twitter circle” isn’t right. I hate the changes and I don’t use twitter or interact with anyone on this site so here’s your first (of many) exceptions.


This paragraph might seem a bit off topic but I'd just like to say this moving forward, it's relevant. I'm paraphrasing stuff I've heard before. Reviewing is neat but it's more than just helping people curate and have an easier time figuring out whether something is worth their time or not (which is very important). A review doesn't tell people what to think but helps give them pause and make people actually think about why it is they like or dislike the things that they like and dislike and it's also an expression of oneself through taste, reviews can be very creative, passionate and again make you think about things you might not have thought about the show otherwise. This is why individual reviewers can be popular, because they treat it as a craft and are really good at it.

I know I said that I don't plan on focusing on the perspective of the popular reviewer too much and a part of that is because I'm not a reviewer myself but despite that it is important and relevant to address them because this update is demoralising for them and that's bad for me because that means the talented, well established reviewers might quit or just care less which means a drop in overall MAL review quality.

Perhaps there are some twitter circle reviewers but even then you are completely dismissing the extremely talented, passionate and meticulous reviewers on this site who are getting screwed over for no reason. I'm going to use my personal favourite reviewer on this site, SingleH as an example, he probably takes reviewing more seriously than anyone else on this site and boy is he crazy good at it (check out his deleted Psycho Pass 3 review for example, it's on his profile page). Here's what he had to say about the changes:

"Trying to dismiss and discredit the current state of the reviewing community on MAL in an attempt to justify these changes just makes you look sad. Over the course of the last six months especially, the mods have been extremely diligent about punishing cheaters who use bots and sock accounts to boost their numbers. Anyone who has a personal following or a consistent record of high “Helpful” counts did not cheat these things into existence. They worked for months—or in my case years—with little recognition, purely to improve their craft and slowly but surely earn a reputation like real adult men and women. No one who writes reviews seriously or with any semblance of effort does so solely out of a desire for blind self-satisfaction. They do it to reach others and to show themselves, and removing any competitive means of reaching the top fundamentally destroys any reason to expend effort. This notion that anyone would be as genuinely satisfied with themselves seeing their review on the front page based on a partially random algorithm that filters out all dissenting opinion as they would had they actually earned their place among the top four in a free marketplace of ideas is completely dystopian and psychotic to me. “If you’ve got a problem with the world, change yourself. If that’s a problem, close your eyes, shut your mouth, and live like a hermit.” -Motoko Kusanagi. If you get no attention, and you’re sick of those who do, then write your own reviews. Prove your own arguments. Galvanize support. Fight back. Don’t just go b*tching and moaning to Mommy and Daddy, who I guess in this case are the MAL mods. The removal of competition is something only a privileged, sheltered, immature child would desire."

He's based, god bless his soul.


Having scores moved to the end of the review is OK, I kinda agree with you on this a little bit but only if the "Recommend/Mixed/Not Recommended" bit is removed from the front and used strictly for filters, it's really unneeded and draws too much attention away from scores and I've already established that scores are important, it's not just a trick weebs specifically use in anime reviews for shock factor. Trying to reduce backlash and toxicity from reviews is actually pointless, if people go to your page and whine about your review you, whether you deserve it or not, that's just how reception works, literally every reviewer/publication regardless of size or medium has to deal with this. If they're being toxic and taking it too far/personal, the MAL rules exist and although I haven't read them recently, I'm sure cyberbullying and being overly hurtful are against the rules so that's what the Mods are paid to take care of.

Haters who spew nonsense while being hyperfocused on scores are always going to exist, not everyone has basic decency and although we can't stop them we can ban them when they break the rules. Backlash is important even if you think the reviewer is in the right because that's how opinions work, the people who unironically think Demon Slayer is a 10 exist and we must simply deal with it.

Finding out who liked a review is nice, good feature, 10/10 although for some reason the feature is unavailable for me. Botting is cringe.

Now about reactions. The people who're unhappy with this change don't focus on them much because of how bad everything else is but I'll talk about it here. I think they're actually kinda cool, it's a good feature conceptually but I think they could tweak it a bit, it has some pretty glaring flaws and the Facebook aesthetic looks bad, they gotta beautify this. On to bigger issues with it. The "Love it" reaction is useless, the "Nice" reaction needs to be renamed to Helpful or something that isn't "Nice" and the, "Well-written", "Funny" and "Creative" options are good ideas but need to be done differently. Not too sure about "Informative" since well written exists and "Confusing" seems like a dumb idea.

Maybe revert the changes back to how it used to be with Helpful and make it so that if you found a review helpful, you could optionally pick one of "Well-written", "Funny" etc. This would only help with filtering and I think that's good enough, I know I'll often sort by creative or funny since I like the poems and other fun reviews. Making most voted count solely on helpful is logical and makes sense, the Mods destroying this and covering it up with cool reactions doesn't stop it from being a bad idea, they can make the reactions work without messing everything else up, the shift from Most Helpful to emojis is wild.

Now on downvotes. I know you didn't mention them but others did so I'l quickly gloss over them. They're a bad idea, anyone who's used reddit for a reasonably long amount of time knows that that place can be a cesspool, the best arguments can be downvoted to hell just because people disagree or don't like what you're saying or just general stupidness. Try mentioning questionable Chinese history in r/sino or go to the pro Russia subreddits and just read the stuff they're posting or just think about why MAL removed downvotes in the first place. Face it, weebs are far from the first things that come to mind when I think of decency and wit, especially on the internet. Downvotes don't make sense because they're DEFINITELY going to be abused, if you want to disagree with a review just give a Helpful to a review you think is good and let the most voted reviews get to the front page as god intended.


"Others have pointed out that people will now be less interested in reading reviews, this is good however, as the people who actually care about READING a review will take the time to read it and not just gloss over to see if they agree with an arbitrary number."

The number isn't arbitrary but this is 100% a good point. Maybe just keep scores at the end of the review permanently? I get where you're coming from 100% but the weight of "recommended" and "not recommended" vary greatly and it's annoying if that's the first thing people see, we're better off without it and just keeping scores at the end anyways. My opinion on whether the review is at the front or back is honestly really weak since this doesn't affect me, I just the reviews and as long as the scores are there somewhere, I'm happy. Do note that reviewers could also start the review off with something like “2/10, anyways…”. I don't support that though, mods could remove those reviews, score placement isn't the biggest issue here and if people do think it that it's absolutely devastating to their reviews, you're right, they are garbage reviewers.

I'm not a reviewer and I'm mad that the scores aren't at the top anymore because it inconveniences me and uselessly messes up competition. If some reviewer has a well written wall of text ready to be posted the moment an anime has finished airing then good on them.

To the mods: The intent behind this update might be good but the execution is hurting existing reviewers and readers alike. Figure something else out please. I don't know how flawed the previous Helpful system was but I am 100% sure that it's better than what we've getting now, ya'll managed to make SingleH quit, crazy.

If you have read everything, I just want you to know that I appreciate you taking the time to read my haphazard but passionate rant. Thanks.

--Kaori-- said:
While i can appreciate the effort MAL, this was a giant downgrade. This should've been done better and while am not on the forums, it sounds like ya'll didn't even bother to ASK the reviews and readers what WE wanted. You pride yourself on your site, but how can you say you truly care about us if you don't even bother to ask us for our input on features WE use? For the record, I like ya'll are trying to randomize the reviews on the anime main page, but how u went about it was imo, not as well implemented. It can be better. The rest? Not great and is just awful.

Recommended → Placeholder: Overall 7-10
Mixed Feelings → Placeholder: Overall 5-6
Not Recommended → Placeholder: Overall 1-4

^ This is imo, THE worst part of this update for me. I have PLENTY of anime I'd not rec that I've rated a 7.0 or 7.5, becus they're just average at best or there's other anime mroe worth ur time. I also find it VERY IRONIC one of the guide lines YOU MAL have set up is to NOT tell someone NOT to watch an anime (If that was done away recently my apologies) yet its OK for this system to put words in our reviews and our mouths by saying "Recommended" or further put words in our mouth with "mixed feelings" when there likely isn't any or FLAT OPUT SAY DON'T WATCH by this tag saying "Not recommended" when we might not actually be saying that (E.g. a short 5 or less min series such as a picture drama might get this rating but be serviceable and ok and not bad at all, but its short, not much to it so it gets a lower rating)

As it stands, the reviews and searching for reviews and trying to find outr if an anime is worth watching now is BROKEN... a LOT of people look to the score (Numbers) to help them determine if its even worth watching and I mean in the reviews themselves. OFC they'll also use other info from the review but still, those numbers are important and having to click (and scroll) each review is not ok just to see that number... I also include the number near the bottom anyway so this makes my reviewed look even less professional now (Not that I cared much about that but still, I DID try)

MAL, am not gonna waste anymore of my time on this post but PLEASE A) Change the system back and B) Ask everyone what WE want. Please even send a notification on our accounts on MAL so everyone will know about it and give it a month of feedback. Take it all into consideration. Hold polls, require forum posting if need be to keep bot spam down for the voting but tzake the feed back, then SLOWLY emplement the changes and adjust accordingly, vs. all at ocne so we can have the best exp on MAL.

Sincerely, someone who cares about MAL, occasionally reviews anime, and may not do any more reviews unless the system is VASTLY improved from what its now at or if it goes back to how it was b4 this recent change...

p.s. Forgot to say, remove the funny and confusing and related tags, those are basically gonna be the BOO button (Dislike button) and used by trolls and bots to down vote reviews' confidence, heck, just remove that altogether please as its not a good idea... I personally don't bother with stuff that has a down vote button...

thecescshow said:
This update treats people like dumdums that dont know how to interpret 1-10 scoring system. Just put the scores at the top instead of this "recommendation" tag. Giving something 4/10 doesnt mean that reviewer wont recommend this to anyone ever.

moozooh said:

It's mainly a problem for old reviews with inactive reviewers, though. You can edit your existing review and put any recommendation label on it regardless of the score.

--Kaori-- said:
I'm certainly not inactive (Well, till this update...) and if you think I''m going to bother going through 31 of my reviews just to edit each and every one just to change the tag it says then u'r very mistaken. That's another thing (The new system's tags and such) I'd have to THEN consider and I ain't got time to consider each and every one of them, much less IF I remember how i felt about each and every single one as u can't always write down how u feel about something, and sometimes u might recommend but also have mixed feelings or so on so if am not mistaken others have said u can only select 1 tag which is dumb but the tag itself is dumb to begin with and needs to be done away with.

--Kaori-- said:
the old system for reviewing was saying "Don't tell someone not to watch" which funny the 180 with this new system where it flat out says not to watch just in the form of "not recommended". But I digress, the point is I'm not even going to bother to edit and use the new tags/system to change my reviews, becus as stated, I may not recall exactly how I felt and don't want to tarnish my reviews but also becus this is MY stand against this new system. I refuse to use it, its bad. P.s. Its also not mostly a problem for old reviews, feel free to read what i said (and what others have said) about why its affecting many, if not most...

Satyr_icon said:
Funny how most people supporting this change are the ones that are constantly mad at reviewers for criticising their favourite shows and go as far as badmouthing and slandering them and inventing conspiracies such a "review cartel" (lmao). All just for daring to have their own opinions.

Sad that the website is being run for these kind of attitudes.

Ghost-Hardware said:
Hi everyone, I'm joining this discussion as someone who is unable to understand simple numbers. Can anyone tell me what a review score of '1/10' means? Does that mean the reviewer doesn't recommend what they watched? I'm such a dunce that I don't understand numbers that go from 1 to 10, and instead I need a text overlay straight out of a shitty website like facebook to ignore all nuance and to tell me exactly how to feel about a particular show.

Oh, I forgot to mention something; I think what myanimelist really needs is a bunch of emoticons so I can, for example, mark reviews I don't like as 'funny'. That's what those buttons are for, right? Screw responding to legitimate criticism with 'arguments'. What I need is a laughing emoji to tell the reviewer that I think they're a clown, and the same goes for those who I agree with. Let me spam that 'like' button for them real quick...

Manaban said:

You don't even know. The review cartel is using children as mules to deliver contraband upvotes to other members, knowing full well people are less likely to harm an innocent child. It's sickening