Best Ever Albums

Re: Rating System concern

arthur237 — Tue, 4 Aug 2015 18:00:39 GMT

Author: arthur237

Posted: 08/04/2015 22:00

And he has only been a member for 11 days!! (chrishansen69)

Re: Rating System concern

arthur237 — Tue, 4 Aug 2015 17:59:50 GMT

Author: arthur237

Posted: 08/04/2015 21:59

I have just found a user that has rated 21000 albums all at 100/100, what is the difference between this and a 10/100 average? For me I reckon this guy should be banned of spoken to just as much as someone who rates very low.

Re: Rating System concern

albummaster — Sun, 5 Jul 2015 16:28:43 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 07/05/2015 20:28

goeie-oko wrote:

This thread was created because platus (along with some other people) was manipulating the voting system to score points by rating albums they hadn't ever heard.

Now, in this very thread, platus stated

But, after looking through platus's ratings, I'm growing more and more suspicious. Sure, he's not rating every album a 15/100 anymore, the thing that seems to occur now, is he's rating most albums 30-45/100, this is probably a way of making it seem less suspicious.

...

The worst thing is he said in this very thread he would stop with all this fake voting, but as I see it, he has far from stopped.

Thank you for reporting and sorry for the delay in replying. He has been spoken to via PM previously about this & I'm going to contact him again to sort this out. The site rules state that people who try to game the site will be banned.

martintho wrote:

maybe every new member should be aided to understand from the very beginning that spamming will not only lead to deletion and site-banning, but it will also make one look like a fool.apart from that: let's keep things like they are. first things first: what this site is crying for and desperately needs is a tidier look.

Agree, that's a good idea. Everybody gets a link to the site rules when they register, but some people will always try to game the site regardless. It's a problem across lots of different websites and not just this one. Regards the last point, a site redesign is in progress but has been slowed down a bit due to my volume of work outside of BEA. I'm still hoping to complete this in the next few months (hopefully sooner depending on my workload).

Re: Rating System concern

goeie-oko — Sun, 5 Jul 2015 11:18:13 GMT

Author: goeie-oko

Posted: 07/05/2015 15:18

PanduArya wrote:

He=Me????????????

No, You=You, He=He?

Re: Rating System concern

Anonymous — Sun, 5 Jul 2015 09:32:53 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 07/05/2015 13:32

goeie-oko wrote:

PanduArya wrote:

I did the 'Rating 15+ albums in a day' thing. But that was because I have already listened to them before...
Don't put any suspicion on me, Nah.

Well, he rated 65 albums in a day so...

He=Me????????????

Re: Rating System concern

goeie-oko — Sun, 5 Jul 2015 08:24:25 GMT

Author: goeie-oko

Posted: 07/05/2015 12:24

PanduArya wrote:

I did the 'Rating 15+ albums in a day' thing. But that was because I have already listened to them before...
Don't put any suspicion on me, Nah.

Well, he rated 65 albums in a day so...

Re: Rating System concern

Anonymous — Sun, 5 Jul 2015 08:19:07 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 07/05/2015 12:19

I did the 'Rating 15+ albums in a day' thing. But that was because I have already listened to them before...
Don't put any suspicion on me, Nah.

Re: Rating System concern

martintho — Sun, 5 Jul 2015 05:52:36 GMT

Author: martintho

Posted: 07/05/2015 09:52

we are all concerned about spammers. i am, being one of the top raters, also concerned about ratings and i have seen how the top 20 songs for each artist has gradually/slowly improved as each song has gained more ratings. what causes the spamming: the urge of getting on a higher level. what is the easiest way: all fields but moderater contributions. that leaves us with three options imo. 1. user reaches higher levels in time, that is, knowing my own history of not being understood at all in this forum; user reaches level two after lets say three months etcetera. 2. oh, forget about it already. now i see how stupid my idea was in the first place. but someone mentioned something in the direction of honour or gentleman/womans agreement. maybe every new member should be aided to understand from the very beginning that spamming will not only lead to deletion and site-banning, but it will also make one look like a fool.apart from that: let's keep things like they are. first things first: what this site is crying for and desperately needs is a tidier look.

Re: Rating System concern

goeie-oko — Fri, 3 Jul 2015 14:16:10 GMT

Author: goeie-oko

Posted: 07/03/2015 18:16

I was browsing through some albums, and I noticed a user rating it very low. Now, I remembered there being a thread about this very subject and that very user before (this thread). The user that I'm talking about is platus.

This thread was created because platus (along with some other people) was manipulating the voting system to score points by rating albums they hadn't ever heard.

Now, in this very thread, platus stated

platus wrote:

Anyway, I won't use the rating system for my personal purpose in the future and use a separate list.

But, after looking through platus's ratings, I'm growing more and more suspicious. Sure, he's not rating every album a 15/100 anymore, the thing that seems to occur now, is he's rating most albums 30-45/100, this is probably a way of making it seem less suspicious.

Now, you might say, maybe he just has different standards, and he thinks of lots of music as bad and deserving of a 30/100 rating. However, the thing that really caught my eye, is how frequent he was rating these things. For example: on the 14th of June, platus rated 45 Elvis albums. 45. If that wasn't enough, on that same day, he also rated all 6 Sun Kil Moon albums and 15 Byrds albums. All on the same day.

Another example: on the 28th of June, platus rated 41 Miles Davis albums, 9 Nas albums, 16 Roy Orbison albums and all Manu Chao albums.

I mean, look at his profile, it's so obvious. I could still give you tons of examples, like how he rated 25 Sonic Youth and 10 Lenny kravitz albums also on the same day, but I think I've made my point.

You could say that maybe he just rates in bursts, that he listenes to albums, than after a while he rates them all, but, these dates are way too close to each other, usually about a week or so, and I don't know anyone who can listen to that many albums in one week, especially not all by the same artist.

So, there is of course the possibility I'm wrong, and I see that, but, I've never seen so much evidence for system manipulation in my life.

The worst thing is he said in this very thread he would stop with all this fake voting, but as I see it, he has far from stopped.

Re: Rating System concern

albummaster — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 04:06:59 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/12/2015 08:06

Defago wrote:

I don't know much about coding beyond VBA, but if you need help with the algorithms/math I'd be more than glad to help.

Hi Defago, you're welcome to post here a bit more detail about how you think this could work. We could all then provide a bit of input to see how the system might end up working. There are a couple of things in my mind that make this quite complicated (possibly more will spring to mind further down the line).

The biggest issue is that each time a user rates an item, their personal average could change. Do we then have to modify the average rating for all the items they've already rated (possibly thousands) because their new personal average is different? One good thing about how things currently work is that only the rating of the current item is modified which means the database isn't hammered each time a rating is added & it makes the site more scalable.

For users with only a few ratings, we could perhaps use the site average to normalise their score as there won't be enough data to calculate a reliable average.

Re: Rating System concern

Defago — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 20:23:32 GMT

Author: Defago

Posted: 03/12/2015 00:23

albummaster wrote:

If a rating is left on an album that is outside three standard deviations of the item average, the rating will not be included in the average (which uses a trimmed mean). This is to help counteract exactly this kind of behaviour. However, if a few people do this on each item, then it might be possible, on items with a low number of ratings, to manipulate the site. There are site rules against this, and it's easy to identify the people that are doing this because their ratings will have a higher standard deviation than regular users.

However, the aspect I really don't like here is people spamming the site with artificial ratings, albums they may never have heard, just to bump up their points, so I'll investigate each user mentioned in this post and take the appropriate action (this may involve mass deleting their ratings or banning people).

For everybody else, a far better way of gaining points (than spamming the site) is to join in with the data administration and help ensure the site is a reliable source of information. Most of the users here with the highest number of points are also active with data admin. Personally, this is the biggest kind of contribution people can make as an accurate & up-to-date site benefits everybody.

I like Defago's idea & I'll look into doing something like this. I think the reason this was avoided before was to try and keep things as simple as possible.

I don't know much about coding beyond VBA, but if you need help with the algorithms/math I'd be more than glad to help.

Re: Rating System concern

albummaster — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 12:30:40 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/11/2015 16:30

koner1 wrote:

Ok.

Here are some that I've noticed and seen others have concerns with:

http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=576#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=804#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=801#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=9933#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=9114#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=18297#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=2976#ratings

These are only the ones off the top of my head that I can think of. Thanks.

Thanks, just been through those & identified a few suspect accounts which have now been banned.

Re: Rating System concern

koner1 — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 11:14:32 GMT

Author: koner1

Posted: 03/11/2015 15:14

Ok.

Here are some that I've noticed and seen others have concerns with:

http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=576#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=804#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=801#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=9933#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=9114#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=18297#ratings
http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?t=2976#ratings

These are only the ones off the top of my head that I can think of. Thanks.

Re: Rating System concern

albummaster — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 04:08:57 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/11/2015 08:08

Please post a link to one of these tracks and I'll investigate IP addresses etc to see if any gaming is going on.

Re: Rating System concern

koner1 — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 22:35:02 GMT

Author: koner1

Posted: 03/11/2015 02:35

So will this fix the tracks whose averages have been butchered by 15 different users rating them 5/100?

Re: Rating System concern

albummaster — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 05:59:53 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/10/2015 09:59

If a rating is left on an album that is outside three standard deviations of the item average, the rating will not be included in the average (which uses a trimmed mean). This is to help counteract exactly this kind of behaviour. However, if a few people do this on each item, then it might be possible, on items with a low number of ratings, to manipulate the site. There are site rules against this, and it's easy to identify the people that are doing this because their ratings will have a higher standard deviation than regular users.

However, the aspect I really don't like here is people spamming the site with artificial ratings, albums they may never have heard, just to bump up their points, so I'll investigate each user mentioned in this post and take the appropriate action (this may involve mass deleting their ratings or banning people).

For everybody else, a far better way of gaining points (than spamming the site) is to join in with the data administration and help ensure the site is a reliable source of information. Most of the users here with the highest number of points are also active with data admin. Personally, this is the biggest kind of contribution people can make as an accurate & up-to-date site benefits everybody.

Defago wrote:

What I propose is normalization at the user level - your visible ratings stay the same, but the real value the site assumes considers that user's average rating and rating variability as well. In such a way, we can have someone who gives 10/100 to everything and one who gives 100/100 to everything - both would be taken as "average" for each user and taken as a higher or lower value respectively. So people who very sporadically give 100s would have their 100s be more valuable than a 100 by someone who rates everything a 95.

I like Defago's idea & I'll look into doing something like this. I think the reason this was avoided before was to try and keep things as simple as possible.

Re: Rating System concern

albummaster — Thu, 5 Mar 2015 22:47:35 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/06/2015 03:47

Pavement415 wrote:

I found a comment spammer 😲 he's just copying & pasting the same negative review on every album. What won't people do for points....

Please let me know via PM who this person is and I'll deal with it. As for other comments on this thread, I'll also deal with those people & respond properly to the issues. I'm currently away from Spain and not able to be online as much as I'd like. I'll resolve all of these issues in a few days time once I'm back home & take the appropriate action for those people that are breaking the rules. In the meantime, just to make clear to people who might not know, one of the BEA site rules is as follows:

Code:

[8] BestEverAlbums uses a points system to determine the functionality that is available to each member. Forum posts, comments or ratings may be removed if they are deemed to be made to artificially inflate a member's score and/or are not adding to the discussion. Members who are found to be doing this on a frequent basis may be banned from the site.

Re: Rating System concern

Pavement415 — Thu, 5 Mar 2015 15:54:38 GMT

Author: Pavement415

Posted: 03/05/2015 20:54

I found a comment spammer 😲 he's just copying & pasting the same negative review on every album. What won't people do for points....

Re: Rating System concern

benpaco — Wed, 4 Mar 2015 22:14:36 GMT

Author: benpaco

Posted: 03/05/2015 03:14

platus wrote:

Dear All

I was not aware about the problems my 10/100 ratings were causing and it was certainly not intentional.

Actually I use the 10 quote as a reminder to check these albums further out.
Part of them I heard in the past, others are related to groups I like.
Originally I used the wishlist, but got confused about which albums I planned to a actually buy and others I just wanted to check out.

Ideally there should be an extra feature on besteveralbums: a "furtherto investigate" or even "viewed" (for the new albums) knob or something..

Anyway, I won't use the rating system for my personal purpose inthe future and use a separate list.

I wish you all a nice day

Hey man, sorry if anything I said came across rude. You seem like a nice person and like you're here for the right reasons. I used to use the "wish list" for bookmarking albums to revisit, that's what I found to be more effective, as it didn't impact the ratings. Enjoy your time here!

Re: Rating System concern

latenighttv — Wed, 4 Mar 2015 13:35:01 GMT

Author: latenighttv

Posted: 03/04/2015 18:35

Romanelli wrote:

I've said it before...the solution is to not award users points for ratings. Everything listed in this thread happens...and there are a lot of people who do things like rate and album an 85, and rate every track on that album an 85...and they do it a lot. Ratings are the fastest and easiest way to dishonestly amass site points. If it were up to me, I'd make them count for zero user points and see how quickly the shenanigans dissipate.

I think I noticed a user who had a bit of a dodgy track rating thing going on once upon a time but they deleted their track ratings a few months back.

Having said that, I just rated every track on T-Rex's 'Electric Warrior' 100/100 - because it's a 100/100 album. 😄 Some albums, imo, do eventually show themselves to have a certain level of quality throughout (be it good or bad)...