If your mean score is below 6 ...

@LostSpectre Still explains nothing, what is enough? how much is enough? You have to provide some objective definition like in a "Textbook for Weebs", or "Guidebook to using MAL" it is written "6 rating average is reserved for 200 average days, with at-least 20% of the list have to be from the bottom, 10% from X genre.....etc", "5 is for 400 days average, with at-least 30% from the bottom, 3% X genre, 10% from Y genre..etc"....Provide me that, then I guess I can maintain my rating like that so that it reflects accurately, otherwise there's no other way to know what my rating should reflect as you clearly don't know me personally.....

Your subjective view of 'enough" brings nothing to our discussion, when you want to establish an objective framework, you have to provide objective grounding for that....

Most people on this site, like OP, seem to ignore the bottom half of the rating scale, as if 1-5 were actually below zero. Most users you can probably subtract 5 from their score and then double it to get a more reasonable ratings distribution (or just subtract 5 and take the difference as a rating out of 5).

This is why I prefer Anilist's emote ratings over a numerical system. It gets down to the core of, "Did I enjoy this, was I indifferent, or did I dislike it?" Though I don't have the type of brain damage that will generate discomfort from rating two shows a 7 when I liked one slightly more than the other. It always cracks me up when people demand a 20 or 100 point ratings scale so they can continue to produce granular ratings in the 6 to 9 range of the scale instead of just appropriately adjusting their ratings criteria.

@valico If you watch anime that you're actually likely to enjoy, then the bottom half of the scale should only be for outliers.

@LostSpectre I'm not sure how a person can actually achieve this unless you go into a show already having committed to a specific score range. I primarily watch shows I think look interesting and am excited about.

Outlaw Star was a show that checked all the boxes of a show that I'd like, except the story turned out to be completely directionless and the entire show was just a bunch of tonally inconsistent nonsense. One of my most antipated shows recently and I basically hated it. Ergo Proxy was another one which I was very excited about going into and found it to be complete drivel.

On the contrary, Run With the Wind was a show I was so-so on going in, mostly didn't like the first half and ended up loving by the end. Likewise, All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku seemed like a fun show, but I went into it assuming it would be middling at best. Turns out I think it's very funny and enjoyable.

On top of all that, there are shows I do enjoy, but I don't think are particularly great. Black Lagoon was an enjoyable watch. but there were plenty of times I felt like it dragged on or the characters were a bit too over the top. Or .hack//Sign was a show I liked working through, but felt it was overall a bit too slow. Flame of Recca was a cool, exciting battle series, but it was nothing special among its peers.

@TaifSux Think for a second about how much anime exists, and you can quickly deduce that 100 days isn't even scratching the surface. Are you really going to tell me that a few months watched worth of anime is significant enough to reach a mean score of ~5.0 to reflect the (assumed) average score of 5/10 for any given anime? Clearly, even at the most generous of estimates, you're 3x (likely closer to 5x) under the amount needed, hence why I simply dismissed it as "not enough".

@LostSpectre As I said, that's pretty much your subjective thingy, there's no objective metric to set that "enough" barrier, if someone thinks there's a "enough" barrier in fiction based on sheer numbers to acquire the badge of proper judge of defining what's average or what's not, and this sheer number in the only metric of that then I have nothing to say to him, may he himself reflects on his experience first...

Put it simply, Even for total newcomers, If someone find something average, it's a 5. I value opinions of these peoples more as they are honest, than lying to own feelings or showing the lack of standard...

@TaifSux Huh? We're talking about mean score, and the average score of any given anime. That has nothing to do with scoring a specific anime a 5/10. For your mean score to be an accurate reflection of this supposed 5/10 average (for all anime) then naturally you would need to have a very large sample size, and that's why we can easily discount a mere 100 days. Technically, you could have a 6.0 average MAL score (not personal score) for your watched anime, it's just less likely the smaller your list is. Also, your dropped anime (that's over the threshold) counts towards your score, so that will give you a lower number than it otherwise would be.

Mind your business, Sir!


They wanna swim against the current and hyper-criticize everything they see, for attention online or invent their own scoring system that nobody cares about, even if they spam it, in here?

Let them do it. It's funny.
Their Threads are annoying, tho.

@LostSpectre We are in fact talking about mean score and it's very much natural have that mean score even with a lower threshold, I already said what I have to say in this regard in my earlier replies, specially my first comment in this thread...

Still, a final and short TLDR - Mean Score is nothing objective, there's nothing accurate or inaccurate about it. It varies person to person, only hinting that person's overall standard. There's nothing about approving or dismissing here as mean score says nothing about the taste, reasoning or watching habit of that person.

Any other opinion than this, let's agree to disagree from here.

A lot of good things have already been said here, so I don't have too much to add, but:
I'll just say that my mean score is currently a 5.45 because I truly consider a 5 "average" as opposed to "bad", as I think most people do here on MAL. There's the issue (not meaning a negative problem, obviously people can rate however they want) of most people here considering 7 to be their "average" or saying "Yeah that anime was alright, I liked most of it" and giving it a 9 or a 10.

Whereas, by treating a 5 as "average", meaning, not necessarily bad but just unremarkable, something that makes me think "Well, that definitely was an anime, at least.", it means that I'm much more selective with my 7s, 8s, and especially 9s and 10s. (I only have ten 9s, and three 10s, currently). I truly want to try and use the whole scale this way.

My criteria (you can check it in the spoiler if you don't want to dig into my profile), is based around a mix of pure enjoyment/emotional resonance and trying to think more completely and holistically about what I watch. With this criteria, the majority of the anime I've seen (for me) fall into the 5 to 7 range, with a lot also being in the 3 to 4 range. But this doesn't mean I hate anime at all! It just means they didn't compare to anime I've watched and rated more highly.



I just feel more comfortable admitting that, compared to other anime I've seen, this anime was truly just "average" or, compared to other anime I've seen, this anime really left a deep impression on me. I just want my scores to reflect that rather than giving something a 9 or even a 10 simply because "I liked it/it was good enough" or "the studio worked hard on it, so..."

But also, this is all just subjective at the end of the day, hence why someone out there has probably rated one of my 10s or 9s as a 2 or even a 1. So, I try not to think about it too hard, or worry about other peoples' scores too much. It's all for my own indulgence after all. (Even if seeing someone say "that anime was okay" and still rate it a 9 will always make me raise an eyebrow.)

People claim 5/10 is average, but in reality, we "never" choose average- not when better options exist.

If you can choose between a soggy meal that’s been in your fridge for 2 days and a freshly cooked Wagyu steak, and you still go for the soggy meal-

then it’s not about “understanding the scale” it’s about having no standards.

@TaifSux Since you keep glossing over the main point without addressing it, my assumption, based on what you've stated, is that you believe a 5/10 accurately reflects the average anime score (among all anime) and that is the basis for my entire argument. If you did not mean to imply as such, then naturally my argument would not apply to you. Otherwise, I don't understand where you get this idea that you're the one rating correctly while others are overrating.

@Ishitateso I think it would be clearer to people if they thought of 5/10 as mediocre, because that's more or less what it is. Technically, this isn't quite a "bad" score, but it's very much an unremarkable one, of poorer quality than you should ultimately strive for, given how much good anime there is to be seen. For the reasons you stated, it's also important to remember that a 5/10 is only proportional to 44.5% of the scale, and not 50%.

@GarouWolf A 5 is literally "mid" and a 6 is basically "decent" what are you talking about?

@LostSpectre Extremely shallow thinking in my opinion. Almost all series are 5 or 6 in reality, very few should go above that. There is beauty in the normal and average, without them it is impossible to appreciate the really special ones.

It boggles my mind how people dishes out nines and tens for any series they marginally like at the moment, or most likely they are just following a bandwagon. I try not following them.