Forum - View topicHow do you do define the ratings?
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ShadowTrader
 Posts: 231 Location: NJ |
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I'm not sure with how much scrutiny people on this website rate anime, but I feel like the site managers have done a poor job of defining ratings. Everyone out there has a different opinion of what a masterpiece is or which anime fall into that category, but I strongly feel that most users use the rating system as an opportunity to promote their favorite anime, instead of accurately reviewing it for other fans.
The best solution I think, is to set up definitions of ratings, and more then just "exquisite beyond words." Even a sticky with detailed definitions would help minimize the noise. For example, if the definition of masterpiece was something like: "Overwhelming plot, beautiful art, choreographed music, superb voice acting, and outstanding character development that invokes the widest array of feelings and leaves you speechless at every possible moment. Sure to be a classic for decades and bring enjoyment to future generations." Wouldn't these kind of definitions help users to really define which category an anime falls into? In this manner we will have less deviation in ratings and get a more accurate picture of the publics' opinion. |
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woelfie
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 380 Location: Belgium |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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I disagree that we need lengthy descriptions for the rankings. If people understand in their own mind what the difference between excellent and masterpiece is, they understand it. If they don't care, then they would ignore more explicit definitions anyway. There's also the inherent conflict - on a personal level even - as to whether a rating is based on quality, enjoyability, or some combination of the two. No matter which one you choose, there will be others who disagree, so this ambiguous compromise we have right now seems to be the optimal solution.
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ShadowTrader
Posts: 231 Location: NJ |
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I guess it was kind of selfish of me to try to get a better understanding of the communities' opinions. So lets just leave it at that, thanks for your posts.
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rti9
 Posts: 1241 |
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??? Both links provided by wolfie are excellent. They show the two sides of the ratings system; the system itself and the user's perspective. I hadn't read the second one and it is extremely interesting. I always wanted to ask a couple people how do they rate to try to understand the overall ratings better. I totally agree with Dorcas_Aurelia on why the system has to be this way. The text provided by ANN with the ratings is succinct and subtle. The lengthy description you provided is too specific. It would be unviable to write definitions for the grades in between masterpiece and worst ever. |
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ShadowTrader
Posts: 231 Location: NJ |
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Yea I realized that too after I read through the links...
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Dramatis Personae
Posts: 88 |
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Interesting |
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rti9
Posts: 1241 |
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Some time ago I also thought that there was something wrong with the rating system. The grades were most of the time disturbingly high. At first I thought that the main reason was that many people refuse to rate anime that they haven't seen completely. That alone should take a significant chunk of the lower grades. But after reading wolfie's second link I finally noticed that I overlooked something stupidly obvious. I'm among fans. To the overwhelming majority, it makes sense to not rate almost anything below weak (3). They are so passionate that the average anime to them is either good (7) or decent (6). Literally. Below is some data I took from today's ANN's Top Anime list:
10 - 9,0 : 0001 8,9 - 8,0 : 0192 - 06,7% 7,9 - 7,0 : 0888 - 30,9% 6,9 - 6,0 : 1254 - 43,6% 5,9 - 5,0 : 0441 - 15,4% 4,9 - 4,0 : 0075 - 02,6% 3,9 - 3,0 : 0017 2,9 - 2,0 : 0001 1,9 - 1,0 : 0000 1,0 - 0,0 : 0000 By deciding not to grade most titles bad (2) or worse, the users have compressed all ratings upwards. It is not a big problem since their grade hierarchy remains. Ratings are less evident though. The numbers make much more sense if a love/hate perspective is applied. Modern day society views as normal to love several things, but to rarely hate. Therefore when about to rate a title, I imagine them fundamentally asking themselves "do I love this?" or "do I hate this?". I now feel like the outsider from Kino's Journey The Tower Country episode. |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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Consider, also, that many of the worst anime are filtered out by the nature of commercialism. People don't want to watch bad entertainment, so it is far less likely that a truly horrible show will get made to begin with. Furthermore, as most of the users here do not live in Japan, there is another barrier that poor quality series will not overcome: liscensing (and to a lesser extent, fansubs).
Plus, people usually make an effort to choose series they believe they will enjoy. By avoiding the series that look overall bad or just not what one is looking for, the number of series that would receive low ratings are viewed less often. |
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woelfie
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 380 Location: Belgium |
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I don't agree with you here. Publishers don't look at quality, they look at what they can make the most money with. In the anime list that rti9 provided, there's Baccano! - unlicensed - at #21, and with aproximately the same number of votes, SD Gundam Force - licensed - at the very bottom.
Ever heard of John Waters ?
Are you joking ? People tend to be driven by marketing, not by quality. Even with all the movie critics, bad movies sometimes sell awfully well, while pure quality is overlooked. In the most simple sense, you just have to compare box offices for american movies with the prizes (Academy awards, BAFTE, Golden Palm, ...) they get (that is - of course - if you accept film prizes as a measure for quality). For anime, there is on ANN the most underrated and most overratedlist, being the anime that are quality but seen by very few people, resp. crap viewed by too many braindeads. "Wir habes es nicht gewusst" ? |
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Vortextk
 Posts: 892 Location: Orlando, Fl |
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I kindly disagree that movies and anime are so easy to equate here. Movies are consumed in mass quantities. People even know they're renting crap (I work at blockbuster), they just don't care. When you talk about the ratings solely on this site, a LOT more people have better ideas of what they're getting into then joe schmoe looking at "awesome ride", "pure adrenaline" on some terrible D- movie. With such a smaller community on this site than with movies in general over America, and discussions over tons of anime, I'd say that yes a larger percentage of people on ANN dig into the titles a bit deeper.
Of course people will always be led around on a stick to the next terrible piece of entertainment, I'm not saying they aren't, but there are tons of extremely low ratings on imdb.com and there has to be some reason why there aren't as many here. |
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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Come on now, I like John Waters. He's completely insane, but his movies are great fun.
You mean haben, but never mind -- I am more concerned with the expression "braindeads". Sure, the mass-appeal anime can be annoyingly simplistic and formulaic ("It's over 9000!"), but I take issue with calling the anime-viewing masses "braindead", just because they prefer simple fare. We can't all be intelligentsia. For every Thomas Pynchon reader, there must necessarily be 100 Tom Clancy readers. It's some sort of law of nature. - abunai |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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Bad comparison. Baccano is barely half a year old, SD Gundam Force has been around for over half a decade. It usually takes a little time for a show to be liscensed. Also, your argument of publishers looking for profit primarily doesn't disprove my argument that quality leads to popularity.
No, actually. And looking at the imdb entry, I've never heard of any of his films either. |
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woelfie
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 380 Location: Belgium |
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OK, forget Baccano. My example was to proof that poor quality series (like SD Gundam) get licensed after all (and a long time ago already), so the poor-quality-barrier is easily overcome.
Hey, I never said I didn't like him (I'm personal proof that people don't always look for quality), but I still wonder how he manages to make people invest in his truly horrible shows.
Shame shame shame shame shame shame shame on me...  (must have been very late that evening)
Don't take it personally, please. I'm part of the braindead, too, especially on friday evenings after a difficult week of working. And my unread stock of manga is big enough that I don't have time left to read Tom Clancy, let alone Thomas Pynchon. I just wanted to say that people don't avoid bad series, and they don't always do efforts to look for quality - neither do I.
Well, that argument of you wasn't really clear from what you said earlier, but in this sense, I support your claim... conditionally : it only leads to popularity if enough people can watch it, which is not the case if jewels are stored away because the publishers don't see any profit in publishing them. |
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HMMcKamikaze
 Posts: 189 |
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I definitely do think people avoid bad series, but it depends on how you watch anime in the first place. I watch fansubs in order to find shows that I like so that I may purchase them later because I would rather not spend money on something that I won't like. I'm sure the majority of people who watch fansubs will drop anything unfavorable right away and then move onto something else. I've also made a few blind purchases like Kino's Journey, Haibane Renmei and Paranoia Agent, and I liked all of them, but I read a lot of reviews and the opinions of others before I bought them.
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