Phade wrote:There are some members who have score hundreds of vids and given them all the same score: some all 5's, some all 1's, some all 3's. Of the 3000 or so members giving star scores, only about 160 are affected by this rule.
Hopefully this will make the star scale more reflective of people who actually put thought into their scoring.
dwchang wrote:Whoa good point. I also think it should take into account averages given AND # of ratings...like someone who has a rating below 1.5 or something and 50+ ratings is probably doing something malicious. Then again, I guess it is possible to download that many bad videos.
Hmmm... well, we are in those 160 that received the nice email from Phade
I have to admit that having a star rate average around 1.50 should be enough to be catalogued as a "video basher", but let me explain the reasons behind this low scores.
First of all, I am very very critic: can't do much about that. This goes back to the times when I was giving out free reviews and hasn't really changed: when 5 is the average (2.5 in terms of stars), I can't see why I should rate 7 or 8 something that's just average.
This doesn't mean that I am not able to rate high: when the video really deserves it I am more than happy to give high marks (or stars). But honestly, of the nearly 20,000 vids that are registered on this site, how many are really enjoyable?
I'd say that we can divide them in the following percentages:
20% are really crappy
50% are just ordinary, average videos that I'll watch just once
15% are nice vids that I'll replay more than once
5% are the really good ones
Now, what makes a good video for me? First of all a
good, solid concept. I am really tired of videos made just for the sake of it, without any reason and any planning behind the music/anime combo. I understand that it's not possible to make a masterpiece out of every music video (I've made quite a few senseless videos myself), but a bit of careful planning it's needed if you want to deliver something that is interesting.
Another important point that is seriously understimated is the lenght of the song. If you want to make an 8:00 min video be my guest, but be EXTRA sure that you are going to make it enjoyable. The average attention span drops after 2:50, that's unavoidable.
Now, back to the star scale. I've downloaded quite a few videos that were popping up in the first places with high scores (like 4.80) and only 5 or 6 ratings: most of them honestly sucked (here are the first 1's).
Second, I have a taste for bad videos/movies/stuff, so sometimes I download them just for fun (here they go the other 1's).
Third, the scale doesn't give you much space when you have to rate a video. If there is a video that completely sucked, but had at least one or two nice shots, I'll still rate it 1 because I feel that 2 is too much for just a couple of nice edits. Maybe allowing half scores would help and will make scoring a little more precise.
Fourth, the carrot has given to everybody what they always dreamt of: cheap cheap hosting. This gave to a lot of people the great opportunity of finally sharing their work... but also opened the door to tons of crappy videos. Let's face it: almost everybody can make a music video with little or no knowledge if he/she really wants. Hell, how many times I've put another song on an existing video and found out that it works better than the original?!?
In the overall, I admit that I may have been a little too harsh in some cases... and with the stars it's even worst because there is no comment associated with the rating (hey, what about the option of adding a two liner to your star rate?

): in writing opinions I had the opportunity of fully explaining my scores.
Well, I hope that this explains a little bit my position: I do not give out straight ones just for the fun of it (hopefully this came out from my post

). If anybody has pointers, comments and/or rants, I am open to any discussion.
- Marco
You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.