Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

The 5-point scale has a simplicity to it.
5's are great, must-watch for the genre. 4's are good. 3's are mixed, with the good slightly outweighing the bad; they are for fans of a series/genre. 2's, most people should avoid but may have a tiny niche for people who are hardcore enough fans of that niche. 1, avoid altogether.

My main issue with the 5-point scale is that there are a ton movies which are better than 3/5, but not quite a 4/5. How exactly would you rate a 7/10 movie on a 5-point scale?

Proponents of the 5-point scale might retort by ask me what exactly is the difference between a 2/10 vs. 3/10, and mention that the 10-scale has too many increments on the lower end.

But the difference is that 7/10's come up more often than 3/10's.

If we were to watch every movie that existed at random, it might be a normal distribution bell curve with an average of 5/10, and maybe just as many 3/10's as 7/10's.

But we have selection bias. We tend to watch movies that are either acclaimed, culturally significant, popular or at least pique our interest. So, if we look at the average rating of all our movies, it might actually rest in the 6-7 ish range.

Simple solution That's how we do it here at MoFo.

Need more fine tuning? Try this: +
or this -

That's still a ****ing 10-point scale. Just halved and with decimals. :D :) ;)

I have a better idea. Why don't we do a 1-point scale with
0.1
0.2
0.3
...
0.9
1

Let's just have 10 increments, yet call it a 1 point scale.

(edit: im being playful, not mad <3)

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

You are correct, though I'm not sure why you're (seemingly-sorta) mad about it.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

The reason to do 10-point with half-steps is because it takes up less visual space and is easier to represent with images.

All scales are a balance between precision and convenience. You could do zero to a million but at a certain point there are diminishing returns.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

We're not in disagreement. You're discussing how to visually the increments. I'm only discussing the amount of increments.

Some reviewers that essentially have 3 increments (i.e. buy/try/pass or good/okay/bad).

Some have a 20-point scale. 10's with 0.5 increments.

Some have a 10-point scale with 100 increments, who will inevitably come into a situation where they admit they actually liked the 8.4 movie more than the 8.6 movie, and those few decimal points could vary based on mood and what day they review it.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

Yeah, I think that last post is pretty important: the more precise the scale, the more tiny variables come into play, which means even if someone has a 100-point scale, in practice it ends up being closer to a 10-point scale anyway because of that fuzziness.

I guess we're all just sort of guessing, but I think 10-point is the sweet spot, and mostly avoids the problem of rating drift based on temporary circumstances.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

All those considerations are easily swamped by people's differing ideas about how to rate things, anyway.

Can anyone honestly say the last movie they watched was a 3.2 and not a 3.3 etc? I don't think movie opinions can be mathematically fine tuned like that. Which is probably why Siskel and Ebert At The Movies tv show gave the films they reviewed either a :up: or a 👎

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

Psssst

We have an 11 point scale, as we allow

Base 11 ftw! ;)

Right. Everyone's rating system means something to them, so even if everyone is using the same system in theory (5 popcorns, a rating out of 10 stars, etc) there's still nuance to it that varies by the individual. I don't think it's so much about the system as it is how that person interprets that system.

I've seen people write reviews that make it sound like they enjoyed a movie almost exactly as much as I did, but their score is different.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

As a Finn, I prefer the five-point scale for movies (with or without halves). The reasoning for this is our school system where, for the first nine to 13 (depending on your choices) years, a ten-point scale is used, but with a caveat: the scale only goes from four to ten, with four being a failure. I've noticed on various Finnish forums that people have difficulties using the whole ten-point scale and naturally tend to only use grades from four to ten.

On the other hand, movie reviews have traditionally been on a five-star scale, and there's no mental block to using the whole range. So, using the five-star (or popcorn) scale with halves is not exactly the same as a ten-point scale.

As for the actual number of possible ratings, I'd say anything from three to ten (or eleven, if you count the zero stars) is fine. More, and things get too convoluted or less, and there's no way to distinguish garbage from mediocrity.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

From 1 to 10 is the perfect scale (which translates to from 0.5 to 5 with halves)

I mean, a 100 scale? How the hell do you decide a film is 67/100 and not 68/100 or 66/100?

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

I could not handle a 100 point scale. Attempting to rate films with that scale would be hell and I imagine that determining a film's rating would involve me changing my rating numerous times until I settle on something. Except, my rating would likely change the next day. A 10 point scale is more my speed.

I've always done a ten point scale because of repetition. Dating back to joining RT in '04.

Right. And also, my feelings about most movies tend to sway about a half-point one way or the other on any given day. I don't think it's a great use of my time deciding if something is a 73/100 or a 74/100, because by the next day I might score it 10 points lower or 10 points higher.

Any rating I give a film is a general ballpark about how I felt about it.

I grade my students on a 1 (basic)-2 (progressing)-3 (mastery) scale and I love it. No more fiddling over whether a piece of writing is a B or a B+.

It doesn't matter what my rating system is because my system doesn't mean anything. I've given movies I like less than movies I don't like that much before. I've given clearly perfect films 4/5 and clearly imperfect ones 5/5. I have reasons for all of this, but they are personal, and on a movie to movie basis. They aren't meant for anyone else and they are barely even meant for me.


This is because without discussion, none of these things mean a thing. I might as well be rating some movies a pineapple and others a free range stove. Without the context of words, who cares?


As others have stated, everyone has different and personally idiosyncratic meanings for each of the possible numbers on their scale. So what can any of these numbers possibly mean to anyone else? The answer should be: nothing.


The only rating system I think has ever had any kind of value whatsoever is the thumbs up or thumbs down of Siskel and Ebert. Recommend or don't recommend. Still deeply useless in a lot of ways, but I at least know exactly what these ratings mean.


I look at this rating nonsense mostly as a way to skirt actual communication. It opens the door for more failure on the part of the audience. And if at the end of the day, all we can be bothered to do is throw a dart at some arbitrary number, and not accompany it with what you actually feel, I give that whole process a giant 2/10.

I think if you reconsider its merits, you might bump that up to a 21.785/100.

I use a 4 star review, which I was use to from my days of reading reviews in the Reading Eagle in the ‘90’s which often included Ebert reviews.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

I use 5 star scale. Most films are 3 to 3.5, not many make 4 and a 5 is rare.

It might be fun to use codewords instead.

"Sally, you performed poorly on the last quiz so I'm afraid I'll have to give you a Deathstalker. But if you study hard for the next one I think you can bring your average up to a Hellraiser."

Actually, they can. You just have to be that picky. Example: there was one tiny thing I really didn't like about American Beauty, but I admit it didn't really affect the WHOLE movie, just its respective scene:



But that didn't really affect anything else bout the movie, so... 99/100. Not gonna knock off a whole half star for that one.

Example 2: There was one moment in Takoma's Krampus nom that cracked me the hell up, but the rest was absolute trash, and that one moment didn't do anything to come into play again. So 1/100.

Since I've seen 2000 movies, I separate them by viewing each rating as a separate "league." And as the chart grew, 9.5/10 or 0.5/10 just wasn't accurate enough. I do this as a exercise in being more analytical.

I rate this code a solid Virgin Spring.

That's pretty funny, bro.

How did you determine that a laugh is worth one point? And, in this case, it was a really big laugh. How big does it have to be to qualify? And do chuckles get nothing? What about a bunch of chuckles bundled together?

Or with every movie are you just looking for there to be 100 different things you respond well to, and you count them as you go along.

Or are some things weighted different. Is a scare with two points? A deep philosophical point worth 5?

What I'm getting at is, no matter how analytical you think you are getting towards rating this way, it remains entirely subjective. Hopelessly so.

So not only are our emotional responses to a film deeply personal and sometimes to the point of near inscrutability, but so are the way we score them. It's a fools errand. And the bigger the pallette to rank them on (in this example, out of a hundred), the more open to the silliness of our own biases it becomes.

Of course it remains subjective. The entire rating system will always be that way. You can give a movie a rating while accepting subjectivity as an inescapable aspect of the human condition. This is because the rating system will always be based on the user's comfort as a collective of things one enjoys, things that bother one or the desired level of accuracy when translating said feelings to a number. The only way to be objective is to collect the opinions of all who see any movie into one average score, which is scientifically impossible. Websites attempt it for their user's, and RYM even has a "user weighting" including an algorithm that either strengthens or lowers a user's influence in ratings depending on their site activity level. But to gather the whole world"/'s internet ratings is impossible without lots of user's overlapping when being a part of multiple websites and rating the same movie.

Oh, ok. I thought you were claiming you had rating things down to some kind of science and I was just trying to figure how such a thing could be done. Because I literally pull numbers out of a hat for my ratings. Or get my cats to tell me how many meows a film is worth.

I don’t find it that difficult to rate a movie, however arbitrary it may seem. And no, I’m not claiming I have it down to an “exact science” (seriously?) and I don’t think anyone else was making that claim either.


As I said before, I grade on a 4 start scale and that grade moves up and down depending on the movie itself. There are many things that go into determining that final grade.

The only exact science in opinion is perfecting perception and the delivery of it therein. Essentially, the practice of detailing opinion to an exact science is essentially the same science as "knowing what you're talking about." Because of this, and the fact that no human being could know everything about any one broad field, the science of opinion is always subject to change when another subjective mindset makes a strong enough point to change the original opinion. This van also happen by learning something new about the technique of film or genre by watching yet another movie. Example: how necessary is character development in a movie like Tetsuo the Iron Man? Is it possible to make a movie that justified the complete lack of it therein,? Can you justifiably use SFX to tell stories? The beautiful thing about film is that there are so many kinds because of opinion and preference.

Re: Rating movies: 5-point scale vs. 10-point scale
 

I like a percentage scale myself in my reviews... but with MoFo having the popcorns, I found a way to incorporate my ratings.

0%
1-10%
11-20%
21-30%
31-40%
41-50%
51-60%
61-70%
71-80%
81-90%
91-100%

10 point for my IMDB ratings,
5 point for my Letterboxd.


I actually like the LB rating better.