Why do so many users really care about ratings in the 1st place knowing how inconsistent the system really is on MAL?
| It's come to my attention recently that all scoring and ratings are basically beyond subjective on MAL. There is no official standard that all users have a consensus on even with a blatant official metric system put in place nor does the site enforce it. Users are basically free to rate and score as they please. Either way it still seems a large majority of users on MAL are oddly obsessed with how Anime is either rated or scored even knowing how flawed the system is. Does seeing an Anime title that has a high score make a user enjoying it more? Does seeing a title with a low score make users enjoy it less? Who really knows? As stated in the title, why do so many users really care about ratings in the 1st place knowing how inconsistent the system really is on MAL? |
ColourWheelJan 8, 2022 7:05 PM
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| Because they are stupid fanboys/girls, that's all. They need recognition that they have watched "important anime" and their favorite is "the best ever".And MAL gives room for that "illusion". |
"The Slave is the have-not, the oppressed one with nothing to spare. But because the Slave is in that despairing situation, having nothing, it can kill the Emperor !" |
| Maybe they're bored of seeing Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood staying at top spot everyday |
  I play BanG Dream! Girls Band Party Garupa EN ID: 10759829 Garupa JP ID: 36753163 |
| I think it might have to do with those less acquainted with the site/just looking for recommendations on what to watch next. I've gotten to the point where I just don't care for MAL score I'll just watch whatever show looks good, but there was a time where I wouldn't watch anything less than a 6.8 cuz the community saw it as a "bad series" so maybe people just fuss cuz the score was "inflated" or "less than it deserves" because that could alter an outsiders perspective of the series before watching it |
| My poor signature was removed because it “took up too much space” |
-Mention- said: Maybe they're bored of seeing Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood staying at top spot everyday that hit on a personal level NGL 😂 |
| My poor signature was removed because it “took up too much space” |
| No I think most users don't know that the rating system is consistent and that's why they watch only the high rated stuff I also used to care about the ratng system before but after watching Jujutsu Kaisen ,Tokyo Revengers, MHA etc I stopped trusting the rating. Actually most of my favorite anime are not even in the top 500 or top 1000 |
MantronJan 8, 2022 7:11 PM
| Scores aren't random numbers. They are data, they need to be interpreted: for example, a 7.7 score of a very popular, recent and non-controversial anime doesn't have the same value as another anime with the same score but unpopular, old and/or controversial. Fakes and bots ruin this valuable data, but I'm not gonna cry if FMAB fans will keep on cheating to keep their favorite at the top. Is it so hard to take a probabilistic approach? Higher score = higher probability of being good, even if this probability is never going to be 100%. I dislike or find just average about 60% of the top 100, but I'm sure that there are way less than 40% of good anime outside of it. I also want to remind everyone that the anime rated above 8.00 are just 5% of the total entries on MAL. If most of your favorites are among them, don't say that scores are irrelevant. |
| I for one like to see my favourites at lower ratings. I makes me feel like I have unique taste when I really don't. |
  『ᴅᴇᴍᴏɴ-ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴊᴜᴅɢᴇ ᴏꜰ ꜰɪʀᴇ』 Then her jaw slackened as she muttered out. [I... am the bi◼️?] ☽ † ☾ - ᴅᴇʟɪᴠᴇʀɪᴇꜱ- ꜱɪɢ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʙʏ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴᴛᴡɪɢ |
| If it's on top, they have pride. It's literally competitional reasons. |
| They want something to validate their taste "I think your favourite anime isn't as good as you think" "How can you say that? Have you seen its score?" |
| If you're a fanboy, please don't waste my time. Watch more movies, please. Perhaps, this is hell. |
| very important question, let us discuss politics. my stance? i have one word for you.......Virgins. |
| I see dead people |
| The higher score it has, the more exposure it gets. I have an agenda and want everyone to watch the anime I watch. |
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ColourWheel said: There is no official standard that all users have a consensus on even with a blatant official metric system put in place nor does the site enforce it. Rating system as follows: 10-Masterpiece 09-Great 08-Very Good 07-Good 06-Fine 05-Average 04-Bad 03- 02- and 01-Appalling/Offensive/Trash whatever. yada, yada, yada... Okay this is redundant, but this is a social site where people get together and bitch about what anime they like or hate. People are idiotic, disgusting and vile bags of bacteria, see below: Users come here for the "toxicity" of other users, meaning that it's for the "drama" and in that sense it's "entertaining". Official Standards? Yeah like people here have such a thing to follow, hentai alone should prove that. Enforcement? Uhm okay. Do you have a system that's better? If so, why not become an ADMINISTRATOR? Oh that's right. Why should one waste their time, not get paid and earn those 4k retirement benefits that don't exist... would I 4orking do that? It's just dedication, thanks ADMINS for being that which I can't be, whatever that may be. WTF? (Is my question) Why should a "free to use/public site", that's got an option to help support it through "users donations", need to be regulated? Sounds like some Nazi/Confederate/Federal Government shit if you ask me. So......... about that freedom of speech thing? Users are basically free to rate and score as they please. REALLY?!? HOLY MUDER4ORKING $#!T!!! Wow, you'd think that'd be the case with a "PUBLIC FREE TO USE SITE".... Either way it still seems a large majority of users on MAL are oddly obsessed with how Anime is either rated or scored even knowing how flawed the system is. Uh duh? People are biased/racist/opinionated all those things that "wrong", but that's who people are. How childish can one get, especially about advice that said: "DON'T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, IT'S JUST A FORUM". Remember that? If you can preach it, then you should follow it. 1-Does seeing an Anime title that has a high score make a user enjoying it more? 2-Does seeing a title with a low score make users enjoy it less? 3-Who really knows? 1-No. High scores don't mean squat, it's generalizing what's subjectively good to bad. 2-No. However, depending on the anime, I might "share" the same opinion. 3-Who really cares? I sure as hell don't. I don't give a 4ork, what people think really. Ratings are subjective, opinions are subjective. It's a biased system, which has biased ratings. Today must be a bad day to post. Some guys who get older may not watch HENTAI, but they'll watch CGDCT, which to me is creepy as hell, but then again what do I know. I'm being biased right now to say that former-users of 4chan are pedophiles, sue me, ANON! As stated in the title, why do so many users really care about ratings in the 1st place knowing how inconsistent the system really is on MAL? Personally, I don't, like I said before... I don't care. I know that people here make an issue out of it, because well, I guess it's better to bitch about something, than go out and rape, murder and all the good things that are "bad/wrong" to do. Last I checked, supposedly this was a country that's all about "freedom of speech" and shit like that, but obviously we still got these Nazi/Elitists/Hypocrites. I'm so glad I'm at my limit with life itself, I should've murdered myself sooner. I cannot understand how such a small stupid thing, can piss people off, this is why I consider alot of people to be "oversensitive pussies", because well... they are. Anyway, I love leaving long-winded replies to obviously easy to answer questions that take no real effort to answer, I just like typing and this place let's me practice, alot! For an easy answer to this question I recommend: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back Torrent it/Nutflix it/Youtube it (might be free with ads), or use Tubi. Anyway, that film answers alot of these simple questions. It's been awhile since I had something to bitch about for the hell of just doing so. Thanks :-D  RE:Creators-Aliceteria February To end this ridiculous farce. I find it funny that since I've been here and it's not even being a year, that I love this site and the idiots that come with it. I've found more people here that BITCH about anime and argue with each other over it, rather than WATCH it. This is why shut-in NEETS exist, but others do work and "have a life to live". I'm just an observer. Everyone should volunteer for open-heart surgery, it's better than sex. PS-By the way @ColourWheel, I finally finished "Urusei Yatsura" today. My "biased opinion", is that it's a 7. I had no expectations when I started it, but the remake, as they're calling it does bring up questions, but like people's opinions they're trivial. From the 100 episodes that they going to pick from, I've got a good idea of which one's they'll choose to redo. As I said to you previously, the series didn't pick up for me until around episode 100 anyway, leaving 95 after that and the last 2 episodes were anything but conclusive. Anyway, it was a "test" that went right, we did get Ranma 1/2, which I guess is an upgrade from Urusei Yatsura. I have no expectations and in all honesty, if it's to update the art/animation, that's fine, the old series was like watching Dragonball then Dragonball Z, seeing how the artist "improved" their style, which is something people here are too blind to see, despite them having eyes. Which is why I like older anime from the 70's-mid 90's. 2017 was the best year, in my opinion, give or take. Well, for people that say they enjoy something, it doesn't seem like it. It is what it is. F the world! - By Insane Clown Posse'. There, I re-edited it to be more "objectively subjective". |
SlimsithJan 8, 2022 10:25 PM
| @Slimsith who exactly were you quoting? Because it's seems completely out of context and there is stuff in that quote I clearly have never advocated or said before. It's seems more like someone going off in a long rant that was posted then deleted. This user must have real disdain for me in particular. |
ColourWheelJan 8, 2022 9:47 PM
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| Because the wide majority of this community is babies or man-babies, and if they don't see their favorites trumping all other anime in existence on the extremely fabled and objective(tm) MAL rankings, their insecurity will kick in and compel them to throw a tantrum and bitch about it with some other anime's fan, until they think they've kicked enough e-ass for their fragile ego to stabilize again. |
| because they are dumb ass fanboys and want their fave anime to be no 1. |
| No fucking clue really. This applies to everything. From games to movies. Feels like rather than just validation and its more for gloating purposes. |
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| If people don't care about the rating, then why should it exist? |
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| @Slimsith I apologize for the misunderstanding. The way you presented your reply by box quoting half of your post makes it look like everything written inside that box was something I previously said which isn't the case so it caught me off guard. |
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| Some people are hating for this, but cmon, the answer is obvious. It's human nature to want everyone to agree with you. If you like a show, you want everyone else to appreciate it or at least come to some sort of consensus about it. So yeah, it's sort of like confirmation bias. Why wouldn't you want a show that you consider to be the best to top? Or a show that's (in your opinion) overrated to not be one top? At the end of the day, the MAL system isn't even that inconsistent. It's great at filtering out outright terrible shows (below a 6) and pinpointing a lot of great or at least shows that are generally considered great (8 or above). It isn't perfect, but no rating system that bases its matter on something as subjective as taste is flawless. What MAL does is give you an idea of how good a show is generally considered to be. It isn't like any of the other sites like IMDB or Metacritic or rotten tomatoes are without fault. It does, however, give you a rather good idea of whether a show would be worth watching at just a glance. Just because ratings don't align with your opinion doesn't mean they are irrelevant or incapable. Their job is to represent how well-liked a show is in general. Of course, it does get inaccurate after a point, say after a score of 8.5, because by then, most people have agreed that the show is solid. It just comes down to the size of the fanbase, and minor flaws here and there, after that. |
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deg said: MAL should just use reaction emojis as scores like the reaction emotes of Facebook They did something like that for 2020's April Fool , and a lot of people didn't liked it at all. x) |
 "Genius lives only one story above madness." – Arthur Schopenhauer. "Stupidity is a talent for misconception." – Edgar Allan Poe. "I'm tired... and hungry." – Alexioos95. |
NotTaiga7 said: Hahaha. But well i admit seeing an anime surpassing FMAB is fun in some way.-Mention- said: Maybe they're bored of seeing Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood staying at top spot everyday that hit on a personal level NGL 😂 |
I play BanG Dream! Girls Band Party Garupa EN ID: 10759829 Garupa JP ID: 36753163 |
| I think it's pretty consistent, the top 50 have mostly been there since they aired or for as long as I can remember. Not a lot of fluctuation tbh. People having different tastes and preferences and rating systems and those being reflected in their scores balances itself out when enough people watch and rate a show. Statistics is pretty sturdy in that regard, as long as the sample size is big enough it makes little difference to the representatitiveness of the result if there's data in there that's biased towards one extreme or the other. It'll get drowned out and averaged out by the sheer quantity of votes/scores. I agree caring about the top 50 etc... is pretty dumb, but not because they're inconsistent but because they're an aggregate score of everyone on MAL and therefore by default representing every opinion, every hater and every fanboy including YOU already. If you don't agree with the aggregate score it just means you're in the minority on this one and should accept that. That's how average scores work, period. |
AlcoholicideJan 9, 2022 5:22 AM
| I probably regret this post by now. |
| They take it too personally and send people who rate bad or good scores some spicy threats. |
| People receive validation for liking something high rated. Try being a Berserk fanboy vs an Ex Arm fanboy |
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Nirinbo said: Scores aren't random numbers. They are data, they need to be interpreted: for example, a 7.7 score of a very popular, recent and non-controversial anime doesn't have the same value as another anime with the same score but unpopular, old and/or controversial. Fakes and bots ruin this valuable data, but I'm not gonna cry if FMAB fans will keep on cheating to keep their favorite at the top. Is it so hard to take a probabilistic approach? Higher score = higher probability of being good, even if this probability is never going to be 100%. I dislike or find just average about 60% of the top 100, but I'm sure that there are way less than 40% of good anime outside of it. I also want to remind everyone that the anime rated above 8.00 are just 5% of the total entries on MAL. If most of your favorites are among them, don't say that scores are irrelevant. Oh my goodness, finally someone actually sees that ratings can be interpreted probabilistically. I don't understand how most people can't see that their likelihood of liking something will typically increase with a higher rated show. It absolutely doesn't have to, but the moment things don't line up perfectly, they blame the system! |
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| You can answer your question by putting the words of your question into a different order. Why do so many users really care about ratings in the 1st place knowing how inconsistent the system really is on MAL? --> The system really is inconsistent on MAL Why dobecause so many users really care about ratings in the 1st place knowing how ?. This leads to inflationary rating, down voting, ganging up, bots, recency bias, rating rot and so on. It's all normal, any rating site suffers similar effects. MAL decided to not correct or normalize the raw rating data (other than known bot filtering). This is done by e.g. imdb or anidb and I personally prefer it over raw averages, but both approaches have pros and cons. On MAL the effect is particularly bad due to the fact that a lot of teenage males dominate it's demography. For biological reasons this species is overly competitive, subject to hype and ganging up, and testing their "power" for the first time. Rating manipulation is a perfect playground for that. As for "caring for rating", you need to learn to read MAL ratings and to augment them with meta-data and ratings from other sites. By themselves, MAL ratings are worthless for me to predict how much I'll enjoy a show because my shit taste is quite a bit off the main demographic's preferences. As a building block to an opinion, however, MAL rating is indispensable because precisely of he raw and mainstream nature of it's voters. |
inimJan 9, 2022 7:20 AM
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| I myself found scores somewhat meaningful to guess if I would like the anime, but only in broad range. If something is above 8 , I usually like it (with some exceptions). If something is between 6 and 7, it's usually mediocre (with some exceptions). If something is below 6, it's almost always bad. It's not perfect and not precise, but this scale has served me well. |
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| The desire to have a rating system that aligns with your own preferences is strong (at least to a significant number of people it is). If I could find a rating system that matched my tastes (even it is skewed upwards or downwards to my true scores) would mean I do not need to research good anime and would simply follow the scores of MAL. Issue here, and this gets on people tits are that some anime that a person rates highly is given a "trash" score while other shows that are lauded as classics by MAL are considered "rubbish" by said poster. It is this lack of consistency that grates people. If MAL consistently overrated or underrated anime then people could handle that by making simple adjustments. It is the lack of consistency is harder to manage as it creates a sense of unfairness that people take offense to. Well that is my theory as to why people challenge the rating system so frequently. That and the other fact that while MAL does attempt to define score ratings many people simply bother not to read it or is simply choose to ignore it. The rules therefore are mere guidelines as they are not actually enforced. Thus a 9 maybe a masterpiece to one person but is only very good for another. |
| Getting Vietnam War flashbacks to Chihayafuru 3 and all the other bullcrap "rating wars" that MAL had a while ago. For the most part it's just seeking validation for your opinion and then getting way too into defending/attacking shows. A large majority of anime watchers are relatively new as well or watch relatively less anime compared to people like us who go through the trouble of making/posting on threads like these. So even if they know just how bad the roots-level problems are with the scoring system (which I doubt and OP may overestimate the general knowledge of these users) they got nothing better to go on than to take it at face-value. Like is anyone who watches anime part-time seriously going to go through and read every review of a show? Which also may be biased anyways? For my part I believe it's always a shitshow to find anything that's actually good based on MALratings since the aggregate scoring is so bad but it's always easy to find bad shows since a consensus on what's bad is far easier to collect. Violet42 said: I think they're interesting to watch, but there's one fundamental flaw that seriously undercuts them - people can rate after watching ONE EPISODE. fuck that. seriously fuck that. for TV series, you should have had to see at least three. if a show has a weak first episode but immediately picks up, which happens a fair amount, you might not know it by the rating, because it'll just start at 6.5 or something, and then it'll struggle to even get to 7 regardless of quality going forward. also I don't rate shows on one or a couple of episodes unless I hard drop them, and I don't know why anyone does and consider it kind of sus. I actually just came across this today and got a bit pissed. An anime that literally just started airing is pulling an 8.40 Like, yeah, the show might be good but most of that score is just hype and hype is never a good indicator of quality. |
 Latest reviews: Summer Pockets and Train to the the End of the World |
Violet42 said: I think they're interesting to watch, but there's one fundamental flaw that seriously undercuts them - people can rate after watching ONE EPISODE. fuck that. seriously fuck that. for TV series, you should have had to see at least three. if a show has a weak first episode but immediately picks up, which happens a fair amount, you might not know it by the rating, because it'll just start at 6.5 or something, and then it'll struggle to even get to 7 regardless of quality going forward. also I don't rate shows on one or a couple of episodes unless I hard drop them, and I don't know why anyone does and consider it kind of sus. It may seem that way, but there are a lot of anime that started with a very low score and then gained 1/1.5 points: Houseki no Kuni 7.0 Shirobako 7.1 Odd Taxi 7.2 Steins;Gate 7.4 Ascendance of a Bookworm 6.9 Kageki Shoujo!! 6.9 As for rating anime after one episode, I do it because I use the rating system as "6-10 = I like it, 1-4 = I dislike it". It's natural to have an opinion early on. |
raisin-kun said: Violet42 said: I think they're interesting to watch, but there's one fundamental flaw that seriously undercuts them - people can rate after watching ONE EPISODE. fuck that. seriously fuck that. for TV series, you should have had to see at least three. if a show has a weak first episode but immediately picks up, which happens a fair amount, you might not know it by the rating, because it'll just start at 6.5 or something, and then it'll struggle to even get to 7 regardless of quality going forward. also I don't rate shows on one or a couple of episodes unless I hard drop them, and I don't know why anyone does and consider it kind of sus. I actually just came across this today and got a bit pissed. An anime that literally just started airing is pulling an 8.40 Like, yeah, the show might be good but most of that score is just hype and hype is never a good indicator of quality. Forget the prospect of users even rating an entire franchise based on only watching one episode. I have seen worse where a large number of users will sometimes rate an anime before it actually even airs. |
ColourWheelJan 9, 2022 12:59 PM
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| To me, it's just pretty cool seeing something i really like getting a high rating. |
| My waifu is the most wonderful waifu. Mai Valentine. We're freaking out that we're running out of time, but to do what? Should i stop and think of that? Is there something i could do to slow it down? Live in a day for once, instead of watch it sprinting by |
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