Star Distribution: How do YOU do it?

[ANTDrakko]

Hello all. I'm starting to become a bit confused as of late. Not because of how the star rating works, but how people actually rate the videos.

Case at hand, of course, is my latest video. To avoid being accused/flamed that this is a shameless promotion, I'm not going to provide a direct link to the video. However here is what confuses me:

I've gotten nothing but good feedback on this video. Thats great. However, I would really like to have people tell me what they DON'T like about the video so that I can learn better and try and improve my editing and/or choice of video that much more. However, my star rating (at the time of posting, 3.45 I think with 20 stars, very small.) tells me that there is obviously something people don't like. I'm cool with having a low star rating and all, but when people say "Its great" and their star rating says "Its not", I get a bit confused.

So how is this happening? Are people lying (Lets hope not >.> ) ? Do people just put 3s to wipe out their "need to be rated" list? Should I really even care?

I'm pretty proud because another one of my videos, which, to avoid flaming I shall not link nor mention, has well over 1000 stars and a 4.02 star rating. Should I not be that proud anymore?

So let me know what you think about this whole ordeal and if its happened to you. Thanks again, and if this is irrelevant, feel free to lock it Admins ^_^.

~Seen

[Kai Stromler]

However, my star rating (at the time of posting, 3.45 I think with 20 stars, very small.) tells me that there is obviously something people don't like. I'm cool with having a low star rating and all, but when people say "Its great" and their star rating says "Its not", I get a bit confused.

I'm confused as to how a 3.45 is "low", when the average is supposed to be 3 and actually floats somewhere around 3.3. This is still an above-average video.

In general,

Do people just put 3s to wipe out their "need to be rated" list?

yes, and

Should I really even care?

no.

another one of my videos.... has well over 1000 stars and a 4.02 star rating.

The video in question uses Trigun and a musical artist whose style is in line with the great bulk of the videos represented by the most-used music list. The current video uses a polarizing artist (love or hate) and a much less-exposed anime title. It's no secret that a lot of .org users rate largely on their preferences in source material rather than on the editing; for the situations involved, the scores on both videos are above average and perfectly good. There's really nothing to get bent out of shape over.

--K

[Beowulf]

Star averages are brutal. Thats pretty much the only thing consistent about them. Other than that, it all depends on the person giving them. I think a lot of people give out star ratings based on if they enjoyed the video rather than how good they thought it was. For expample I don't enjoy most of the romance videos I see but I gave DW's Glory of Love 5 stars because it is obviously an excellent end-product and achieves what it set out too. It shouldn't really matter if you loath the end product in my opinion, but rather how well the video achieved what it set out to achieve. Thats very different than "how much did I like it".

What people think is a good rating can change too. For me a "meh" score is 2 stars, but for others I'm sure its 3 stars. Some people don't ever gives 1's and some people give them out like water.

If you have 1000 stars averaging above 4, you've definitly done something right. No matter what bullshit is within the system, its still functional and gets more functional everyday. An average above 4 is very tough, unless its a comedy video.

[Zarxrax]

When you have less than a few hundred stars, the value really doesnt mean anything, because not enough people have scored the video for it to start leveling out. Also, its VERY rare for a video to score over a 4.00 star average. Anything above a 3.5 or so should be considered pretty good.

Also, there can be a difference between star scores and what people will tell you about the video. Maybe the video is very well put together, has good editing, but its just BORING? People are of course going to tell you that you did a good job on it, but then when people give it star ratings, you would likely not get very good ratings because people just don't enjoy watching the video. But thats just one of many possible explainations.

In the end, don't worry about numbers. They mean VERY LITTLE about the actual quality of your video.

[ANTDrakko]

However, my star rating (at the time of posting, 3.45 I think with 20 stars, very small.) tells me that there is obviously something people don't like. I'm cool with having a low star rating and all, but when people say "Its great" and their star rating says "Its not", I get a bit confused.

I'm confused as to how a 3.45 is "low", when the average is supposed to be 3 and actually floats somewhere around 3.3. This is still an above-average video.

Meh, I don't really like to base my standards from the site's average. I think I kinda give myself high expectations in order to make my videos try and meet them.

When you have less than a few hundred stars, the value really doesnt mean anything, because not enough people have scored the video for it to start leveling out. Also, its VERY rare for a video to score over a 4.00 star average. Anything above a 3.5 or so should be considered pretty good.

Good point. I think I might just do that from now on, not care till the stars hit somewhere around 100.

Thanks everyone for replying. I appreciate the help and I feel a bit better about my star rating. Anyone else have any similar/conflicting thoughts?


~Seen

[Arigatomina]

I think of the star scale as the 'reviewability' score in opinions, and back when we had the suggestion section that recommended vids based on our star scores, it worked well to give out stars according to whether or not I'd like to see more vids of that sort. Sure, I might find an excellently executed vid, but if I'm going to delete it as soon as I'm done watching it, it's not getting above a 2 from me. I don't give scores on merrit - I give on whether or not the vid was worth the download time. If I keep the vid, it gets a 3. If I'll actually watch it again someday (and not just toss it to cd where it can gather dust) it'll get a 4. And if I keep it on my computer and watch it regularly - because I *like* it - it gets a 5. Vids that bore me to death or blind me to the point where I can't finish them (the ones I stop 20 seconds into the video) get a 1.

Most amvs for me get a 3 because I try to be a good amv-hobbyist and keep the excellent vids - even if I know I'm never going to watch them again and they'll just be taking up space on a cdr somewhere. I think 3 is an 'okay' score - it's not bad, and it's not enjoyable, but it's worth the download. A 2 means I don't want it and wish I hadn't taken 4-6 hrs to get it. That doesn't mean it's a bad video, either, just that I don't like it. A 1 is a bad video - I couldn't finish it and would rather watch Barney than be forced to sit through it.

I try to download vids that look like they'll interest me personally, so I do give quite a few 4s and 5s (more 4s, since I don't rewatch many vids). I think most people consider 3 average - not something they hate or particularly like. So a 'good' score to me is a 3.5 - that means out of two people someone didn't hate it (3) and someone liked it (4). Anything above that in the 3.8-4.5 range is doing something popular, whether it's the anime/song source, the genre (fanservice - character focus and/or comedy), or the effects (er...I mean editing skills).

Does it matter what score your vid gets? Only if you care whether or not random annonymous viewers enjoy your amv.

[AquaSky]

Three is my average; it's a video that's neither notably good or bad, something that I'm rather neutral on, may or may not want to see it again. A four is a video that I found well-made and enjoyable, one I'm likely to watch again. Five is excellent, one that had few or no visible flaws, a solid concept, and great sync. A two is for a video that seems like there was not much care put into its creation, or one with enough problems that I would not want to rewatch it. I've only given a few ones; I'm as prudent with ones as with fives. Major errors, no sync, or extremely poor visual quality - those are about the only instances in which I've given ones. I try to keep my distribution in mostly a bell curve, although it does lean more towards the 3-4 range.

[Castor Troy]

I usually don't give out 1's unless the audio and video are extremely bad besides the concept/timing of the video.

I've given 2's to pretty good quality video and sound amvs but with horrible timing and concept. That's usually the lowest I tend to give for videos these days.

[Castor Troy]

I've given 2's to amvs with pretty good video and sound quality but with horrible timing and concept. That's usually the lowest I tend to give for videos these days.

argh, i'm so out of it.

[Al'x]

I checked out the "all-time" star scale thing...

3.45 is pretty much "average" for star scale

above 4.0 is pretty much top 1 or 2 percent which is pretty darn amazing =)

on the other hand, getting a 3.0 is actually pretty bad... around bottom 5 percent... =\