rating only 8-10 actually makes sense

Huss said:
rating only 8-10 actually makes

i used to make fun of how many people do not use the rating at full scale. after many months and discussing with various people i came into conclusion that rating dont fucking matter. what matters is your whole opinion about the show of cons and pros and other stuff i am lazy to describe. of course not all opinions are good since they can be nothing of substance. but then again a test of an art is not how we can explain it through words, but our affection for it. i realized that rating stuff i dont like actually do not matter for me because i would forget about them later. only postive stuff remain in mind. of course one can still remember a bad experience. cant deny that. stuff that werent bad and had some good time with but are not that great are forgatable to me most of the time. it is only stuff that are very very good that i remember. i keep back and fourth and change my ratings for stuff but what remain mostly at the top are those i love. what is the point of rating again? i kind of forgot? why do you rate stuff? i am having an anime inner weeb crisis right now.

Magnif-Steiner said:
Incorrect. This is just the mindset of a weeb coming full circle. Of course ratings are objective and thus only using 8-10 on a system that utilizes 1-10 is absolute nonsense and desecrates the notion of objectivity in marking art altogether.

Also fuck objectivity

Huss said:
there is nothing called objectivity in anime opinions

Strazdas said:
Hello, I am rather new here (literally made an account today) but i have 11 years of experience rating variuos movies/shows, including anime on IMDB. With over 7000 ratings in my list i think i can bring some insight into the rating scores, as i too have explored the phenomenon called "7 is average".

See, on IMDB the average score ever submitted is 7, when logically it should be 5 in a 1-10 scale. So why does that happen? I think it happens because people watch what they enjoy, instead of watching shows at random. If i read a description of a show and know i will not like it, then i will probably not watch it to begin with, and not having watched it - i wont rate it. Thus i am more likely to watch a show i enjoy and more likely to leave a positive rating rather than a negative one. Extrapolate that to entire userbase and you got rating inflation like theres no tomorrow.

Another interesting thing i noticed is that you end up with higher ratings in genres you dont enjoy than in those that you do. Sounds strange, right? Well, its not really. In genres you dont enjoy you will only watch this genre if the show is very good and comes so highly recommended you will break your usual pattern for genre choice. Thus it is very likely to be highly rated shows only that gets to that list. In genres you like you are more willing to experiment, give new, odd things a try, and not all of them are good, so you end up with more bad ratings in genres you like than in ones you dont like.

To finish, i think ratings are very interesting subject and i wish sites would be more open with the data they have. Theres a goldmine on sites like IMDB and MAL that they keep locked up hiding under "vote manipulation" as if it somehow stops it.

Skifteri said:


Have you even heard about this?....

Different people=Different Taste/Opinion (:

Itkovian said:
i saw a review for masamune-kun no revenge which said that it wasn't worth investing time in and that it was mediocre, and which then gave it a 9. out of 10. this is, as they say in france, "le rétarded". i don't care what your personal explanation is, if you do this, you're a dumbass and your ratings shouldn't affect the total.

Strazdas said:


I would agree that in general this is a bad practice, but sometimes that is just a person being honest. For example there is a movie called Transylvania 6-5000. It is a bad movie with bad production value that i would suggest anyone that isnt a fan of a monster genre to avoid entirely. It is also one of my favorite movies that i rated 10. You need to be a fan of the genre to even get the jokes in the movie, but if you are you may end up loving it. Sometimes you end up loving something you know isnt good, so a review like that would be a honest one, since reviews are for other people, ratings are for yourself.

Itkovian said:
the review didn't say "it's mediocre but i personally loved it". it just said "it's mediocre". there were even subsections for stuff like the art, where the reviewer said "I'm usually not one to criticize an Manga for its artwork, but this one has some major issues." and then...in the subsection for art...gave that art with "major issues" a 9/10

katsucats said:
I don't care how you rate anime for personal enjoyment, but I do believe it serves as evidence of your judgment. If we're having a discussion and I see that you only rate 8-10, unless you can explain why you did (e.g. not "I only watch what I enjoy"), I'm just going to assume -- rightfully -- that you don't really know what you're talking about. How can you when you don't know what you dislike?

Strazdas said:


I would agree that in general this is a bad practice, but sometimes that is just a person being honest. For example there is a movie called Transylvania 6-5000. It is a bad movie with bad production value that i would suggest anyone that isnt a fan of a monster genre to avoid entirely. It is also one of my favorite movies that i rated 10. You need to be a fan of the genre to even get the jokes in the movie, but if you are you may end up loving it. Sometimes you end up loving something you know isnt good, so a review like that would be a honest one, since reviews are for other people, ratings are for yourself.

Huss said:

everything i i give high score is something i consider good. i wont say it is bad or anything.

Huss said:
what if i only score stuff that i enjoy, but do not score stuff that i dont like?

katsucats said:
That means you've watched a bunch of anime you don't actually like, but you, for whatever reason, didn't feel like adding it to your list, right? Then I would ask you to name some anime you don't like. If you can't, then you're not telling the truth, period. If you don't want to, then you aren't interested in a discussion that puts your ego on the line, which means you're much more likely to just make up stuff, troll, or play devil's advocate, and I wouldn't be very much interested in discussing anything with you past the 2nd response.

Gator said:
So if I understand you correctly then you drop everything that isn't at least "very good"? Seems kinda extreme to me.

Huss said:


oh it has to be good or more at least. what is good for you is not good for me. same with opposite, so it is not really extreme. if something is boring i drop it, even if it is a movie

Gator said:

So that means that you are not statisfied with the MAL scale at all? Else a 7 would be good and a 6 would be fine. I just wanna know why you stop at 8 and not below.

Personally I can't understand why you wouldn't use the whole scale if possible. I mean you could define a 1 for you as "barely good" and you would have a lot of numbers available to rate everything you don't drop. With only 3 numbers it just seems like nothing really stands out.

Though I never drop anything new I start watching and people don't understand me either.

Striker-3649 said:
We rate animes because the rating shstem is there and its free lmao

Huss said:
you see I sometimes watch something bad or something that is boring. I refuse to rate such shows because I feel like it is pointless to rate those bad shows. most of the time I just drop them, so it is not fair to rate them since I haven't seen them all.

SadMadoka said:

Those are all phenomenal anime. You might as well not score anything if you're incapable of comprehending (or unwilling to discover) their greatness.

Huss said:
"how dare you have an opinion"
what..

SadMadoka said:
Sure, this is different, but the same principle applies: you're making judgments based on ignorance, tantamount to (or in your case, literally, given what you posted) claiming something is outright bad, while the vast majority of those who have actually watched the things you didn't would vehemently disagree.

katsucats said:
Sorry -- and this has been discussed ad nauseum -- but you're ignorant if you think you need to watch an entire show to have an informed opinion about it. It's like saying you need to eat an entire dish to describe how good it was, even though the first bite was so burnt, it gave you cancer.

Secondly, I don't speak for OP, but it doesn't matter if the vast majority disagree with an opinion as long as it's reasonably supported. Popular opinion does not make things fact. If that were true, Justin Bieber would be more talented than Miles Davis, or Liszt.

SadMadoka said:
Your food analogy is entirely different because, for the purposes of this argument, the food will taste the same for each bite. Episodes of an anime series, by contrast, can vary dramatically, including plot twists near the end. You literally don't even know what happened in the later parts you didn't see (unless you cheated by looking it up), so your opinion is by its very nature based on ignorance, and thus not informed enough in this context.

SadMadoka said:
When I talk about informed opinions here, I am referring to experiencing everything that happens; not merely having some degree of knowledge about it.

SadMadoka said:
My definition (again, in this context) is clearly less loose than yours. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an informed opinion as "a belief, judgment or way of thinking about something based on information." However, it's pointless to use such a broad definition in this discussion, because otherwise you could say that anyone who reads something as simple as a synopsis paragraph, without ever watching a single episode, has an informed opinion. I'll acknowledge that it comes down to what one considers adequate knowledge; I just happen to use completion as my own benchmark.

SadMadoka said:
Your second point is valid, but also missing the point: the most well-regarded anime on MAL have a better likelihood of being higher quality in general, given their track record. They've already been put through the stringent process of assessment by the community at large. It's true that these opinions are ultimately subjective and not a reliable gauge of what any given indidivual will prefer...but we're not talking about someone forming an opinion after finishing something; we're talking about someone refusing to finish it, and consequently forming their opinion based on a woefully incomplete experience.

SadMadoka said:
Let's use an anime we both love as an example: Steins;Gate. If someone watched the first episode, dropped it, scored the show a 1/10 out of pure spite, and told the world about how they think it's an atrocious abomination not worth watching, wouldn't you conclude that this individual does not have a very well-informed opinion and that their appraisal is based on (among other things) ignorance of the events in the subsequent episodes?

SadMadoka said:
If others want to listen to those who haven't seen something rather than those who have, that's their loss.

SadMadoka said:
You can pretend you're sufficiently informed about an anime you haven't finished if you want, but don't expect everyone who has actually seen it to take you seriously.

SadMadoka said:
Your food analogy is entirely different because, for the purposes of this argument, the food will taste the same for each bite.

SadMadoka said:

But lol... I'm not telling you to not have an opinion; I'm saying your opinion of an anime is practically useless if you have not even watched (as in finished) the damn thing in the first place.