Crusader_8's Blog

Dec 26, 2017 1:21 AM
Anime Relations: Net-juu no Susume
If you read all this then please comment below your thoughts! Much appreciated :)

I recently submitted a suggestion in the suggestions subforum regarding the current ratings guide, and how changing the words on what each number in the scale describes would have a potentially large and positive impact on how MAL users rate their anime. However the post has gone unnoticed (not even so much as the typical "this idea can't be feasibly implemented" comment) so I am essentially copy-pasting it here for reference.

I think it would be an easy and effective change and would like to hear people's thoughts on it. I thought of the idea as I was comparing someone's anime list to my own and saw how some of my favorite shows had pretty low scores. I had to reflect on my own list for a while, with thoughts such as "did I think this show was THAT subpar?" It occurred to me that the reason why my ratings were that way is because MAL's system essentially suggests you assess the quality of the show (using words like fine, awful, masterpiece) and that I was therefore trying to objectively rate the shows regardless of my enjoyment. Most of the anime blu rays sitting on my shelf are 5's and 6's if we go by MAL's rating guide. I also noticed that on occasion MAL users will comment on users whose average mean score is above 7, suggesting they either have low standards or only watch things that they already know they love. Another thing I noticed is that 10's are either too easily awarded (suggesting users are already scoring based on enjoyment and not quality) or rarely awarded at all (many MAL users take the guide words to heart and use their rating to assess the quality of the show).

I tagged this as being related to MMO junkie because I think this anime best showcases why I think users should rate based on enjoyment rather than quality. That show clearly has a lot of issues that will most likely keep it in the "anime flavor of the month" zone like Kiss Him Not Me was, and so its average rating on MAL will heavily dip accordingly. I know more than a few people who watched this and laughed every step of the way, only to scroll down the score options and hesitate selecting a score which represents how much they loved the show. Which makes no sense to me - we have rating guide words which suggest we assess quality, but then a title's overall rating and rank is represented as a popularity thing. If the end result is popularity-based anyway (not to be confused with the literal popularity ranking MAL also does for their titles), why don't we just change those words next to the 1-through-10 options to guide users into telling the site how much they liked it? This will especially help users who are looking for recommendations - people tend to look for shows they'll enjoy and not masterpieces, so it would better serve them if the scores reflected overall enjoyment of a series instead of how man people thought it was a masterpiece.

Anyway, sorry for being long-winded, the following below is what I submitted as a suggestion.
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The guide words for the various rating scores (masterpiece, great, very good, etc) tend to be misleading for various reasons -

1 - What person A thinks is a masterpiece isn't the same as what person B thinks is a masterpiece

2 - "average" for many would either be a 7 or under a 5. Average ratings for many users is way above 5 and can suggest the average is at the very least "good". Then you have the other side of the coin, with some users who believe the average quality is really bad except for the ones they enjoyed (you see this a lot with either fans who believe all old anime is bad or fans who believe all new anime is bad).

3 - most people aren't going to watch stuff they suspect they'll find to be horrible anyway, unless they're paid to or it's a part of their social media presence to watch and review stuff.

So I suggest a simple solution: instead of guide words which ask the user to evaluate their perceived quality of the title in a way that doesn't translate well to others, change the guide words to transform the rating system into a scale of how much the use enjoyed or disliked the title.

How this addresses the above issues:

1 - we're no longer unintentionally calling things masterpieces, and we're no longer getting false impressions that users think their 10-rated shows are flawless (I mean, there isn't such a thing as a flawless title anyway.) Overall the ratings will be much more sincere and honest, because giving something a 1 would no longer be a quality appraisal but rather a statement of how poorly one received it.

2 - addressing issue 2 would yield multiple benefits. First, in that scenario which many users rate almost everything a 7 or better, we can look at individual title lists and better gauge a user's tastes more honestly. For instance when we notice that a user consistently gives shounen low ratings, we can now assess that data as "they just don't enjoy shounen as much" instead of entrenching ourselves in "why do you think [these critically acclaimed shounen] are bad?" Second, since one of the primary reasons to rate titles in one's list is for personal reference, it allows users to better track their own ratings. i.e. my list suddenly becomes a tier system of my most enjoyed shows to least enjoyed shows. Easier to rate shows that way than struggling over which ones are masterpieces (yes Im repeatedly using that word as an example lol)

3 - while implementing this change may not compel users to watch shows they're sure to heavily dislike, we can expect to start seeing more honest low scores due to low enjoyment or entertainment value. We will also see some shows which are popular but have middling scores to be rated higher, because tbh most users enjoy shows which are often considered objectively bad. And it's okay if we do - that's why I think ratings should be an appraisal of personal enjoyment and not an assertion of perceived quality (or lack thereof).

A big question which I don't have a sure-fire answer for would be "why make the change at all?" And while I am confident in this change being able to improve the MAL user experience, I concede that it is a valid question. In my view it is a worthwhile change for not just the reasons I stated above, but also because a part of the MAL user experience is to recommend and seek recommendations for new things to read and watch. We are often engaged in such dialogue in the forums, and looking through the top anime/manga lists. Taking a bunch of subjective assessments of being a masterpiece or being average and converting it into a collective opinion of popularity doesn't translate so well. We can infer quality from such score averages but we cannot always infer enjoyment of such titles (i may have implied before but it bears saying that there are plenty of current reasons current MAL scores don't imply personal enjoyment). If we change those guide words and ratings system to something along the lines of "how much did you enjoy this title," the averages in the "top" lists will be a more honest and accurate aggregation of how titles are subjectively perceived by users.

While I doubt this is the best possible explanation of my idea (I'm writing this in the wee hours) and I doubt even more that it will convince anyone, I have a strong conviction that the site's user experience can benefit from the change. Thanks for reading the whole thing lol
Posted by Crusader_8 | Dec 26, 2017 1:21 AM | Add a comment
It’s time to ditch the text file.
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