| Pretty much title, why do people put so much value into the general opinion for a series and/or its numerical rating? And especially why do so many of those criticize or praise series based majorly on that score? Can't we just watch things for ourselves and form an informed opinion? For example, I like a lot of things that are questionably rated, or at times even justifiably considered average or bad but I enjoy them and that's enough for me and I wouldn't have even checked them out if I cared about ratings or public opinion for them. |
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| why do people who claim dont care about ratings only have high rated favourites? |
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| If you search up anime stuff on google, the MAL top rating list is one of the most popular top results. All the noobs and outsiders will see the anime with the highest ratings and therefore increase the popularity of the anime as well. |
 plz @ me |
romagia said: Because of the way general opinion works they are more likely to like said things as well. That doesn't change the fact they could also like some lower rated things they may not experience IF they fall in the camp of not checking it if it's not publicly well accepted.why do people who claim dont care about ratings only have high rated favourites? 024 said: But then we have to assume most of the "rating elitists" are newbies and/or don't know any better. I do agree that newbies do, in fact, inflate the ratings, hell the way I use ratings to short my list in two groups marginally does the same thing, but I'm unsure if those rating elitists are just a vocal minority/majority of casual watchers who don't care to explore the media on their own although it's not unlikelyIf you search up anime stuff on google, the MAL top rating list is one of the most popular top results. All the noobs and outsiders will see the anime with the highest ratings and therefore increase the popularity of the anime as well. |
NCC-12999Dec 18, 2019 3:35 AM
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| Myself watch everything, so score for me is not really something I look for or what ranking a show have. The only thing I can't support is people doing fake accounts to lower and raising shows score. But if people out there only want to watch high rated show and then talk about them as they are second to jesus. Let them do that, even if it's hard to ignor what people think. That's the best thing. @024 +1 |
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Nillwas said: That was essentialy the reason I made this thread, I don't understand WHY someone would make fake accounts and/or bot just to inflate the MAL score of a series, but I digress, I agree with you, friend, if anything I'm glad people are passionate about their hobbies and anime is becoming more mainstream, and therefore more accepted, overtime.Myself watch everything, so score for me is not really something I look for or what ranking a show have. The only thing I can't support is people doing fake accounts to lower and raising shows score. But if people out there only want to watch high rated show and then talk about them as they are second to jesus. Let them do that, even if it's hard to ignor what people think. That's the best thing. @024 +1 |
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| They don’t. Well...unless they are severely skewed towards the bottom. The way MAL rates is still a bit weird to me seeing as there are too many factors where it can lead certain anime with too low or too high of a rating. Gintama immediately comes to mind as the top series which is consistently overrated (in the literal definition) along with the absurdity of its “sequels”. But, I will agree with the other comment on here that when noobs want to watch anime, MAL comes up near the top on many anime searches on google. And once you come in here, the natural thing to do is to look up the highest rated anime or the most popular...and well, in that sense, the ratings matter a lot. |
NCC-12999 said: Nillwas said: That was essentialy the reason I made this thread, I don't understand WHY someone would make fake accounts and/or bot just to inflate the MAL score of a series, but I digress, I agree with you, friend, if anything I'm glad people are passionate about their hobbies and anime is becoming more mainstream, and therefore more accepted, overtime.Myself watch everything, so score for me is not really something I look for or what ranking a show have. The only thing I can't support is people doing fake accounts to lower and raising shows score. But if people out there only want to watch high rated show and then talk about them as they are second to jesus. Let them do that, even if it's hard to ignor what people think. That's the best thing. @024 +1 It´s just as bad when people inflate scores of obscure anime just to give it attention. |
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| I think I've said this in another thread but ratings are good advertisment for a show to people who don't bother to look up reviews or even a summary of the premise. |
| MEA·MENTVLA·INGENS·EST |
Missaliensan said: I did not specify one or the other nor endorse either one so, yes, it is.NCC-12999 said: That was essentialy the reason I made this thread, I don't understand WHY someone would make fake accounts and/or bot just to inflate the MAL score of a series, but I digress, I agree with you, friend, if anything I'm glad people are passionate about their hobbies and anime is becoming more mainstream, and therefore more accepted, overtime. It´s just as bad when people inflate scores of obscure anime just to give it attention. |
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| They DON'T matter, at least not for me. I never let a anime's rating influence whatever i'll choose to watch it or not, i have a lot of anime i'm genuinely interested in watching in my ptw list, most are below a 7, some below a 6 and even a few below a 5! I only draw the line if they are like below a 4, then you can guess that it's quite literally TRASH. It makes me sad that some people would draw that line as early as below a 8 or 7.50, or even below a 7.00, as i have found good anime scored below a 7, such as Cheer Danshi!!(i rated it a 8). And, what Romagia says is not always true, 3 of my favorites are scored quite low, Karneval is rated 7.24(I gave it a 10), Servamp is rated 7.05(I gave it a 10) and Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru is rated a 6.88(While i gave it a 9) |
 My Shoujo, Josei and Female targeted anime adaptations starting from 2017+ stacks: Part 1: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/9181 Part 2: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/9195 Part 3: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/9225 Part 4: https://myanimelist.net/stacks/9280 |
Maneki-Mew said: I think the way they are they work ok enough for people who care about them, or for newer viewers to quickly find something that's generally liked, like @Theo1899 said. But the mere existense of a rating system creates SOME people who are going to use the ratings as a basis for their opinions, although maybe that's just an innevitability of human nature.They don't. I'd prefer, if they were a small number in the corner, so people, who care could look it up and others could ignore it, so they aren't influenced by it. I only take them into consideration, if they are like <6.30, there it becomes fishy. |
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| Honestly I don't know why people care about ratings, personally I don't. I don't care about reviews either even though I read them occasionally. If I'm interested in something I'm going to watch it anyway, I only rate anime I have actually seen and most of the time I do that when I finished the whole serie (or season). That's been said I value my time so I talk about things I love I don't have time and most of all the energy to create fake accounts to rise or low anime popularity (I think it's dumb anyway). My advice is -> watch what catch your attention and don't mind the ratings |
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| "Why do ratings matter?" They don't. Only my personal ratings matter to me because I can decipher what eventually I meant by them. Also they could serve as reminder what I thought about certain titles that I have already forgotten. |
| i’m more likely to watch a show with high rating/popularity than one that gets more hate than praise. obviously your opinion can differentiate but that’s the truth |
| because statistics lol i mean science is all about statistical significance too anyway |
| The rating is just a number, but it's still the first thing I look at when I decide to watch an anime or not. It's definitely good stuff from the trash MOST of the time. Most people don't have the time to dig for gold in the trash, and that when the rating coming in. Ranking is a part of this world, like it or not. But hey, you do you. |
| ♬ Nothing's gonna change my love for you You ought to know by now how much I love you One thing you can be sure of I'll never ask for more than your love ♬ |
deg said: While that answers why ratings exist in the first place it doesn't answer why some people swear by them, although there's way too many variables and reasons for that, I guess, as shown by most of the replies herebecause statistics lol i mean science is all about statistical significance too anyway |
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alshu said: "Why do ratings matter?" They don't. Only my personal ratings matter to me because I can decipher what eventually I meant by them. Also they could serve as reminder what I thought about certain titles that I have already forgotten. I couldn't say it any better and I absolutely agree with you on that one. |
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NCC-12999 said: deg said: While that answers why ratings exist in the first place it doesn't answer why some people swear by them, although there's way too many variables and reasons for that, I guess, as shown by most of the replies herebecause statistics lol i mean science is all about statistical significance too anyway ye and the MAL rating system is not that extensive enough since as you said there suppose to be many variables at play i like the rating system of AniKore from Japan if i remember right they rate 1 to 5 stars each anime by each category of story, visuals, audio, enjoyment |
deg said: That'd actually be much better, honestly. Many reviewers already give a series scores based on those different areas then use an average of those (which is even then flawed on mal since we can't use decimals).NCC-12999 said: While that answers why ratings exist in the first place it doesn't answer why some people swear by them, although there's way too many variables and reasons for that, I guess, as shown by most of the replies here ye and the MAL rating system is not that extensive enough since as you said there suppose to be many variables at play i like the rating system of AniKore from Japan if i remember right they rate 1 to 5 stars each anime by each category of story, visuals, audio, enjoyment |
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| The ratings dont matter. Its just in human nature (i guess) that you want a thing you like to succeed. But especially i dont care for MALs ratings since many many people on this site (more than on most other sites i use) dont even use the full rating scale and give 50% 10/10s. Rate how you wanna rate but because of that i dont even take the rating of a show as a indicator of quality anymore. I rate how i rate and i dont care if the things i like have a mean score of 5 or 9. My ratings matter to me. I mean Arthouse is basically non existent on this site. |
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| The rate system here is made by users so I can't consider it very helpful anyway (it's not made by critics who works in the system). The thing that bothers me the most is you can't rate single aspects of the anime/manga, if you want to do that you need to write a review. I also don't know if the people who rate things have watched/read the whole thing or they got bored and dropped it ... |
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| You're likely to discover more shows that have a higher rating, because that's how a normal person would traverse list of anime on MAL. That's the simple logic how we make choice. For example, you're buying something from Amazon, would you buy something with bad rating of 3-3.5 or something 4+, given that look and price is almost the same? There are other factors you may consider, like the seller and manufacturer. Same logic applies to anime. Evening assuming you're not paying to watch anime, you'll pick something from a big pile based on something atleast, like recommendation, or ratings. Most newbies won't have account on MAL or would be new or haven't added much to their list, for a long time. So they won't get recommendations. Also getting recommendation from a friend is a hit or miss, since people have different taste and you can't expect your friend to be a veteran weeb with good taste. So, in my opinion ratings matter a lot. I've been watching anime for 2 years and still I consider ratings when picking up an anime (along with reviews, studio, VA, Synopsis, etc). I was able to discover a show like Symphogear because the recent season had really good rating. A newbie or a casual anime watcher won't bother with anything other than ratings. Ratings didn't matter when TV was the only medium to watch anime. You'll randomly pick a show or drop it, but now there are many ways to watch anime, like both legal and cough ways. So you have to choose a show to watch, and ratings help to make the choice. |
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| From my point of view, scores count nothing. I can’t care less about them, so I rarely talk about them. |
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| I remembered when I was a newbie on this site I would look up anime to watch based on rating. Then I check the tag listed. Overall it's pretty 'fun hobby' boosting up your favorite anime for others to see. I think some people wants to see their anime get hall of fame status. I don't mind what rating but it is useful. New anime tend to give that nostalgia impact for newcomers and if it did give a good first impression then it's probably going to be listed as their favorite anime. |
Apparently ratings are important enough that:
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A møøse once bit my sister... |
NCC-12999 said: Because of the way general opinion works they are more likely to like said things as well. That doesn't change the fact they could also like some lower rated things they may not experience IF they fall in the camp of not checking it if it's not publicly well accepted. You're mixing up two things here. 1. The usefulness of scores, because as you say the way statistics and probability work higher rated shows have a higher chance of being liked by the people who are interested in them. That's why scores 'matter' - they're a helpful indicator of how likely you are to enjoy a show. 2. People's mentality towards scores. It's not the fault of the score if people don't know how to interpret it, don't know that they are only one indicator among many and take them too seriously at their face value instead of interpreting them in context and knowing when a low score can be ignore in favor of other factors or that a high score is never a guarantee and always implies that the show is rated highly by people who were already interested in the synopsis and genres. Basically the scores themselves are neutral, objective and helpful if interpreted correctly. They only are useless when people don't know what to do with them and expect things from them that they intrinsically can't provide, like 100% guarantees instead of just increased probabilities of liking something. That's why idk about them 'mattering' since that depends on the person and if someone chooses to ignore scores because they're too lazy to learn what they mean, they don't matter to them and if someone takes them at face value and thinks every 0.01 difference in score is a meaningful distinction of quality they will 'matter' way to much to them. I think the terminology to talk about scores should be 'usefulness' or 'helpfulness' and not 'mattering. Because they are intrinsically helpful indicators, but how much they matter is entirely up to how much an individual let's them matter in their personal decision making. I don't know why scores matter to people in unreasonable and irrational ways, but I know that anyone who let's them 'matter' in a reasonable and reflected way during their process of choosing what to watch profits from it. And the vast majority does, no matter what they tell you. Often the people shouting 'scores are irrelevant' the loudest are the ones profiting from them the most because the majority of their list consists of highly rated shows while they somehow manage to evade all the super low rated shows despite allegedly not paying attention to scores at all. What a convenient coincidence. |
AlcoholicideDec 18, 2019 8:49 AM
| I probably regret this post by now. |
| @Pullman sure scores matter as one of the factors for watching your next anime but when you compare it to other factors I can safely say scores don't matter at all. Like at first scores really matter because you have no other options (other than popularity which scores and popularity have some relations) but after watching idk 100-200 anime you have other preferences, at the very least you have discovered that you like "X" genre and don't like "Y" genre and now you stop caring about both of "X" genre and "Y" genre because you probably will enjoy an anime from X genre and don't enjoy anime from Y genre anyway. Yeah, still scores matter for "X" genre for priorities but aren't valuable as much as first. Not just the genre but also you have a perspective about some writers, directors, animators, etc. And definitely you will watch anything that your favorite staff created no matter how low the score is because there's a chance that you will like it. I think you were just saying that we assume a director have 2 shows now probably score is a matter for choosing what to watch at first but at last you will watch both of them anyway And fortunately humans are social creatures and also we have MAL. You can open the page of anime you like/don't like and read some reviews and there is a high percentage that one of the reviewers have the same thoughts as you (Review is maybe not a good example but that was what I done in the past and I think many new users do). Same goes for episode discussion and also AD. Finding people with a similar taste isn't that hard; You can easily see they favorites/lists and even if you're not shy like me or think you're a bother to them, asking for recommendations. Now it's obvious that the "chances" of liking his/her favorites/rated high anime/recommended anime is very high no matter what the score is and you will trust (at least I trust). And here even an anime with a higher score not necessarily has a priority to other anime. I think I'm repeating this again but as you watch more and more anime, the scores become more and more irrelevant because of being unpopular or being a short anime and I think you can explain this better than myself. My whole point was the first statement. Scores matter but when you compare it to other thing they don't matter at all. Ah shit I'm just repeating things sorry |
mhkrDec 18, 2019 12:08 PM
| Ratings don't really matter to me one of my favorite's Black Clover is at a 7.16 rating I rated it at a 10 I tend to like battle shounen so I rate those highly most of the time. |
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| It differs from person to person obviously. To me, playing the number rating “game“ is just all for fun. There’s no way I can sum up what an anime has meant to me or what was special or not special in an anime based on a number scale of 1-10. |
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| Because they help you not wasting Your precious Time and money. Only people blessed with a lot of these two can stop caring about it. |
Maneki-Mew said: deg said: because statistics lol i mean science is all about statistical significance too anyway Well no. To create reliable statistics, you need standardized data, but everyone uses the score system however they please. social science statistics are the same way though its no wonder its called soft science and have replication crisis now a days because its hard to objectify or standardized the human psyche but that is not stopping social science to still do it since its better than nothing at this point |
| Scores are important imo, it helps you to pick the anime you'll watch and hopefully it won't end up in a juge disappointment Many anime have an interesting plot on paper, but you realize are total trash when you watch them For example Gunjou no Magmell has a pretty interesting résumé, but it's a reaaaally bad anime and its score shows it You don't have to stick with the general opinion, of course, but it's a useful indicator |
| I don't really rely on the scores, but it's probably for the same reason accurate reviews are important. We don't have the time in our lives to watch (or even try) everything. So we use other people's opinions to gauge whether a series is really worth giving our time to give a shot. This is why it's important that they accurately reflect a series' quality as much as possible to avoid people deciding whether to watch a series based on inaccurate information. But the scores aren't really accurate in slightest most of the time, so they don't really matter, the end. |
| "If it's not big, it's only a bust," some guy on the internet |
| They don't matter actually, like at all. Unlike reviews which can explain the opinion of the writer extensively (and in other words, the reasoning behind the score), ratings don't give practically any information except for the fact "many people who watched it seems to have liked/disliked it", which isn't very meaningfull as an opinion on art can't be described in just a number. Also, since it's a number, if you have good feelings about a show you may rate it higher than you would do if you made a review to make an analysis of your opinion. In other words, as ratings don't give you any information of the anime except for a vague proportion of people who liked it in respect of who watched it, they don't mean anything in the end. Reading a review you may see if it may be closer to your tastes because maybe the reviewer said " X plot point was bad " but you are curious about if it's really true. |
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| It matters coz' rating leaves an impression on anime how much you loved it. |
| "When they're alive, you can enjoy watching them struggle. When they're dead, you can enjoy tearing out their guts. Tales are things you get to enjoy twice." |
| Yes, ratings matter cuz school idk. |
| All weebs creatures of the galaxy, hear this message. Those of you who listen will not be struck by western animation. You will no longer know hunger, nor pain. Your Anime have come to lead you now. Our strength shall serve as a luminous sun toward which all intelligence may blossom. And the impervious shelter beneath which you will prosper. However, for those who refuse our offer and cling to their western animation ways… For you, there will be great wrath. |
| there are tons of anime series in the world, so in the eyes of a new anime watcher they will be inclined to watch what is highly ranked because that is the safest bet to know which anime is good. even though everyone knows that MAL score literally means nothing(Chihayafuru S3, FMA:B, etc...) it still is the best and effortless guidline we have to know which is more often than not worth our time |
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