Thursday, January 20, 2005

Netflix Friends producing strange results?

Do you do this? Now that you're using the Friends feature, do you rate your movies differently, because you're aware your friends will be seeing your ratings? Cory Doctorow describes it in his article on "Metacrap" , how our self-consciousness affects how we rate things. The result is useless data.

I'm guilty. Because I am conscious of the influence I have when I rate a movie, I am very cautious about giving anything a five unless I unreservedly love and recommend it to everyone. I have very few movies I "hate" as well, because I'm conscious that I could be keeping people from watching it. Nearly every movie I rate falls somewhere in the middle between "watchable, but ordinary" and "very good, but not great"

3 comments:

  1. Honestly it has never occurred to me to do that. I doubt anyone rents purely on the strength of a recommendation, and even if they do, it's hardly the end of the world if you end up not liking the film in question. If do you feel really self-conscious about a particular rating, use the new "Your Two Cents" feature to clarify why you rated it as you did.
    --Manda

    ReplyDelete
  2. reminds me of the columnist who complained that after he rated a few shows
    it was apparent that his tivo thought he was gay

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have been thinking lately that my ratings are influenced by the pre-exisiting "average" rating that already exists before you put your rating.

    Also my personal ratings don't really correspond with their loves it/liked it etc

    I have a ton of 2 star rated films but that in most cases mean it wasn't a total waste of my time but I didn't love it.

    ReplyDelete