Movie Tab II

Okay I know you redo your rating for a 5 scale, but how does a movie you rate a 9.7/10 get bumped down to a 3.5/5? Because that'd equal a out to a 7 on the 10 scale.

*Sigh* MovieMan, don't question the differences in my ratings between forums.

I gave it a 9/10 on CMF.

Well, you originally put a 9.7/10.

Consider it a typo.

I edited what I just posted, MovieMan. Read it again.

Converting from the 10-scale rating system to the 5-scale rating system isn't an easy thing; sometimes, it defies mathematics. It takes time to adjust. I know I'm still getting used to the change.

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I guess I'm like the only one that doesn't mess their rating all around when going from the 10 to 5 scale.

I guess so, MovieMan. the 5-scale rating system is so much more compact that change in necessary, in my opinion.

Agreed, Swan.

I still use a 10 scale, divided into tenths, so I have 101 ratings, but trying to justify why one film gets a higher rating, based on tenths, can sometimes be a major Mutha.

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MoFo doesn't use a 5-scale rating system, but a 9-scale rating system. Converting a rating from a 10-scale to a 9-scale system should not be any problem. All you have to do i to dived the rating in the 10-scale system by 2. This will in effect merge the to lowest ratings in the 10-scale system into one rating in the new system, but since the left side of the scale always is less accurate and used than the right side, this should not create any big mix-ups or be any problem to speak off.

Since a 10-scale system is normally more heavily used on its right side, with an average rating rating well above 6 and a median rating of 6 or 7. This will say that any movie with a rating of 6 or more is recommended. A 9-scale rating system is also heavy on the right side, but not in such an extent as the 10-scale system. This is because a 9-scale system, unlike a 10-scale system, has a natural occurring middle value (in MoFos case 3). This is something one must consider when converting from a 10-scale to a 9-scale system.

Simple as it may seem, dividing the 10-scale rating by 2 will actually solve all these problems. It will give your new 9-scale rating system all the characteristics a 9-scale system should have.

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twofifty.org

Isn't a 5 point scale with halves the same as a 10 point scale?

Or have i not watched Pi enough times?

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Sorry but, what are you on about? What is this 9 scale system you mention. We don't use that. It's a 5 box scale, with half boxes thrown in for flexibility. Not counting the half steps, it's a 6 scale system, because zero is counted as a rating in our system, and people do rate films at zero boxes sometimes. If you do count the half boxes, then it's an 11 scale system, once again counting zero as a valid rating.

So:

0, .5, 1, 1.5 etc. would net you 11 possible rating levels up to a maximum of 5 boxes of popcorn.

Really, you can use any rating system you like. However, if you want reviews posted in the main section, though, you need to use the site's proprietary system of popcorn boxes.

Which I will now use to rate...

Eastern Promises (Cronenberg, 2007)



A really good film. I was slightly put off by some of the ultra-violence in the film, but I enjoyed it for the most part.

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Aye, Sedai's right -- the lowest rating isn't 1, but 0.

Anyway, I don't think a change is "necessary." You don't have to use the popcorn boxes if you don't want to, after all. We use them for User Reviews, so if you want your review flagged, just pick a 0.0 - 5.0 rating in addition to whatever else you care to use. Or pick a 0 - 10 rating evenly divisible by 2 and we can cut it in half for tagging. No big deal.

I encourage people to consider their ratings, but really, they should never be used as a substitute for the review itself, anyway. I often find myself obsessing over whether to give a a film a slightly higher or slightly lower rating, and lamenting the fact that neither seems to encapsulate what I think...but you'll always have that problem when you try to condense your opinion into a number. The important thing is that the review conveys your thoughts; the rating is just a rough shorthand.

Sorry. I thought 1 popcorn was the lowest value one could give. A system which could give a movie zero was in my mind to absurd to be true.

Uh, okay...why? Doesn't that offer a greater range of flexibility, which you've been suggesting we need? And why is it "absurd" to let people give a film 0.5?

Here's what I think is absurd: obsessing over rating scales and pretending there's an objectively superior way of doing it. Or blanketly declaring that that no film should ever merit less than a 1, and that every rating system should therefore restrict people from issuing such a rating.

Except that it isn't absurd at all. Not even a little bit. I think giving a film a 0 rating just helps to put it in that "Too awful to even consider watching" category...

Still, even without 0 in the mix, it still isn't a 9 level system, because there is still a .5 rating... Why half 1.5 or 2.5 available if you can't have .5, as well?

Not strictly abiding to the "divide the 10-scale rating by 2" mathematics, I simply found it difficult to make the conversion to the 5-scale system. I've been using the 10-scale system ever since I've been rating movies, so naturally, coming into something new, I'm questioning how to make the switch. Sometimes mathematics say "do this" but my brain says "do that." I didn't mean to start a debate.

I am not a big supporter of a tightly meshed rating system and I have never said that I want a system with greater set of intervals. I find tightly meshed systems unnecessary, abstract, unreliable and imprecise. The biggest problem with tightly meshed rating systems, if they are going to be comparative (which they have to be if they are going to have any value at all), is that their complexity and work intensity have an exponential relationship with numbers of movies added to the system.

Personally I am very fond of the 5- and 9-scale systems, because they are the easiest to give fixed sets of criteria to. E.g. for the 5-scale: very bad, bad, neutral, good, very good

It is not absurd to let people give a movie 0 or 0.5, but I find a rating system which starts on zero to be counter intuitive. Zero is an abstract in which the human mind isn’t very comfortable with. Most people can easily define the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. for you, but try making them define zero and you have a different tune. By comparison this is one of the reasons the “Runner-up”-system is rarely used when ranking contestants in a competition.

And where did I say that one rating system is superior to another? I mainly stated why dividing by two, in that case, was the best way of converting a rating given in a rating in 10-scale system to rating in a 9-scale system.

This argument could be used to forever advocate a greater and greater range. Why stop at 9 or 10? How about 1-100? I give The Dark Knight a 92.5:






It's not the 0.0-5.0 system that is especially "abstract, unreliable and imprecise." All such encapsulations are. The solution, then, is not to rely on ratings to encompass your feelings about a film, and to write descriptive reviews, instead. A rating will never be able to approach that level of precision, no matter the scale.

This is completely arbitrary. There's nothing about the number 5 that makes it easier to assign fixed criteria to than, say, the number 6; particularly when half-point intervals are allowed. On our scale, 2.5 is the center, rather than 3.

And it should go without saying that, if you rate a film a 3, you cannot reliably expect it to mean the same thing to them as it does to you ("neutral"). The odds of a given person assigning the same terminology to your ratings as you do are quite slim.

I'm not sure how your reference to a "runner-up" system has any relevance here, but regardless of that, I don't find the concept of zero to be terribly troubling in general, and certainly not when it comes to rating movies. It can be done relatively: if 1 is very bad, then 0 is even worse.

Or, if you insist on framing everything in broad, conceptual terms, then how about this: 0 is the absence of a number, and therefore a rating of 0 is the absence of any redeeming factor in a given film. Ta-da.

It is implied when you criticize the existing rating system, obviously. Criticism of any kind suggests that there is a superior way of doing things, or else it has no meaning.

*Sigh*

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