Increasing the minimum rating

[Boltzmann]

Ratings lower than 50/100 are almost exclusively used for haters to childishly pull down the average rating of an album. So that is why I would argue that 50/100 should be the lowest possible rating one can give.
Another simple reason for it is that 50/100 should be the middle rating, but it just is not. A 60/100 to someone’s lifework is already an insult, a rating like 75/100 seems much more like the ‘middle rating’ (i.e.: the rating that says “it’s not good, it’s not bad”). Of course that depends on the person, but I think it pretty much is in compliance with the average.
Maybe setting the minimum to 40/100 would be sufficient, so that people still have some room to personalize how they rate albums, but I’m certain no one seriously goes below that (only to hate).
I wouldn’t honestly give an album lower than a 60/100 rating unless there is really something wrong with the production and it sounds like there has been put no effort in the album. But you almost never encounter such an album, so it won’t get enough ratings anyhow.

I’m curious what you all think.

[albummaster]

Most people only rate between 70 and 100 but ratings outside of three standard deviations of the average are discarded on BEA to minimise the impact of troll votes. If 40 became the new zero it doesn't really change anything as people would still be voting within a defined scale (and some albums *are* genuinely awful and deserve a very low score). FWIW, YouTube & Netflix decided to move to using a thumbs-up/down scale as a lot of people had trouble applying subjective scoring to their videos (this is a interesting post from a few years back but the same applies anywhere and just describes a flaw in the whole process).

[Boltzmann]

First of all I don’t think this site has the same problem YouTube had. People on YouTube simply never used the star system to rate, but always as a thumbs up. Here it is clear that people take it seriously.
But it is also clear that this site is filled with like-minded people and scares off anyone with a different taste. And the measures that you describe taken against troll votes only increases this problem.

See, once you have a very un-diverse group of people, the trolling can become a collective thing, based entirely on the prejudice that that specific group has. So with this measure you in fact just make sure that this majority is the only group that can troll. This means this majority group will have a monopoly at deciding what’s good and what not and the opinions of individuals with a different taste gets marginalized by calling it trolling and by the fact that their few high ratings of an album can’t weigh out the army of trolling 5/100 ratings of the majority. This will frustrate these people and they will go away and scare off any new visitors which don’t agree with this majority group (they would open this site, see what is decided to be the best albums by this site, laugh their asses off and go away). As a bonus it also creates this illusion of the opinion of the majority being the truth; if you like a particular album and see that it gets an overwheimg amount of 5/100 ratings and there being very few voices that state the opposite (because they’ve all left), you start to believe that you must be the dumb one and stay silent or decide you don’t want to trigger the majority and (again) stay silent, which further intesifies the illusion that the majority is right, further marginalizing the voices of others. The result is a site that consists exclusively of a majority group (which may have started out as 60% but is now at least 90%) and a couple of stubborn, resilient people like me. This process already happens naturally outside the internet; we don’t need to amplify it.

Now this problem of an elite forming is of course not unique to this site. It happens practically everywhere, because taking action against it basically means sending a middlefinger to the literal majority of the people on the site. But it is the only way to prevent your site of becoming a cringy stereotype (which it already is).

Now you might think ‘if you don’t like the community, just go away’, but this site is not merely a community, it claims to strive to collect as many opinions as possible to come to a compromis. That’s very clearly not what is happening at the moment. Plus I just like how this site works and I wish it was accessible to everyone.

[albummaster]

I don't entirely agree with you. 0,5,10 ratings etc they will only be discarded if they are outside 3 standard deviations of the average (in practice, this is quite rare). If this didn't happen, the site opens itself up to gaming where people deliberately low vote an item to try and manipulate the rating towards what they perceive it should be or to make sure that another album benefits from the low rating (this has happened before here and it happens elsewhere). The majority of people do not do this, but the site has to have some mechanisms to prevent ratings from being abused (there are a number of users who have 1000s of 0-10 ratings and these people seem not to be judging the quality of an album but are just providing a rating to manipulate the average. The same person might rate one album a zero and another 100 with such a large disparity it does not seem normal behaviour.

I'd like to think users on BEA cover a broad music spectrum and just because one album has be top of the list doesn't mean that other albums cannot be spoken about in good terms and I think most of the debate here is about discovering those 'lesser known' albums or back-catalogue items rather than the albums of the moment. I'd hate to think people are being disparaged just because they bring something new to the table as this site has always tried to be open to everybody.

[Boltzmann]

This three-standard-deviations rule only makes sure that beloved albums get protection. I’m saying every 5/100 rating is out of spite. Even if a lot of people think it should get that rating. A 5/100 rating just means “this rubs me wrong, let’s pull the average down”. Let me tell you why:
The minimum and maximum rating are there for a reason. The maximum rating should have as positive a connotation as the minimum rating has a negative connotation. That is only possible if the minimum rating is as far from the neutral rating as the maximum rating. Now we should estimate what the neutral rating is. It would make sense to use the average rating that an album gets as the neutral rating or the average rating that a person gives to an album (but they’re probably about the same). I don’t know what that number is, but it’s certainly not 50/100.

[albummaster]

BEA uses a Bayesian average, not an arithmetic mean, so a neutral value is already built into the calculation. Extreme values either end of the spectrum don't influence things to the extent that you might imagine. The sole aim is to minimise the impact of gaming to protect the integrity of the site and make the site as useful a resource as possible for everybody.

[Boltzmann]

It still leaves room for an elite to pull down albums, but anyway, thanks for your time.

[DanielNunes93]

I can not believe I'm reading this! It's a insult I do not like an album just because it's someone's life?

Following your idea, I have about 2500 rating here at BEA, if I give 75/100 to albums I hate and give 100/100 to those I love...a 25-point difference between an album that gives me headaches and an album that changed my life? What am I going to give to average albums?

Unfortunately now we live in an era that if someone does not like a piece of art, it's a troll of the internet! No, I have as much right to give 05/100 to an album as give 100/100!!