Glitches with song ratings - Suggestions - Forums : Best Ever Albums

HazeyTwilight
boyfriend in your wet dreams

Gender: Male
Age: 26
Location: Elmo Knows Where You Live

OK, whenever I look at an artist's album and at one particular song and I see it's rating for the first time, the average rating is 85/100 or higher. But when I look at it again after a few days, I see that it's now 81/100 or lower. I've seen this with quite a few albums. The first was Nas' Illmatic where the song Life's A Bitch was rated 85/100 at one point, then I saw that it was now 81/100, but then it suddenly change back to 85/100. I then saw Pinkerton and the song Pink Triangle was rated 86/100 at one point but it switched to 80/100 and now it's at 85/100. What's going on?!

Not really much of a suggestion but more of a problem with the system on my side.
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Jabapac

Gender: Male
Age: 36

Yeah I had noticed that to albummaster in a private message a while ago. and it happens because of the use of the inappropriate "3 Standard Deviation" formula which have been added months ago. and the "problem" actually contacts all kind of items (albums, songs, bands and charts) and not only songs; so yes I suggest to just remove it.

Mother Nature's Son

Gender: Male
Age: 31

What is the "3 Standard Deviation" formula?

Anyway, I've also noticed something weird about the track ratings of Lonerism by Tame Impala. Pretty sure that last time I checked, "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards", "Apocalypse Dreams" and "Elephant" were the three highest rated songs on the album and all three were "track picks". "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" is now the only "track pick" and, obviously, the highest rated song on the album, but "Apocalypse Dreams" and "Elephant" are now the two lowest rated tracks! Is something suspicious going on or is it just the rating system that is really, really, really flawed?
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"The Beatles, the greatest band known to mankind." - Bismah Mughal

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

IrishMusichead wrote:

OK, whenever I look at an artist's album and at one particular song and I see it's rating for the first time, the average rating is 85/100 or higher. But when I look at it again after a few days, I see that it's now 81/100 or lower. I've seen this with quite a few albums. The first was Nas' Illmatic where the song Life's A Bitch was rated 85/100 at one point, then I saw that it was now 81/100, but then it suddenly change back to 85/100. I then saw Pinkerton and the song Pink Triangle was rated 86/100 at one point but it switched to 80/100 and now it's at 85/100. What's going on?!

Not really much of a suggestion but more of a problem with the system on my side.

I'm not sure why this would happen. Taking the Nas song as an example, no ratings have been added to that song for a few days, and before then, none that would have affected the average by as much as you're reporting. I'll check to see what might be causing this issue (one possible reason could be if a user was banned, their rating would stop being included in the average, but with songs containing a large number of ratings the effect should be minimal).

Answering a later point, track picks are only highlighted if a song has a rating of over 85%, so if the average rating fell below this, it would stop being a track pick.

Jabapac

Gender: Male
Age: 36

albummaster wrote:

(one possible reason could be if a user was banned, their rating would stop being included in the average,

How is that and we are already facing the opposite? which is the problem of "not excluding" banned user ratings from the average!
It's all started just after using the "3 standard deviation".. I'm pretty sure.

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Jabapac wrote:

How is that and we are already facing the opposite? which is the problem of "not excluding" banned user ratings from the average!
It's all started just after using the "3 standard deviation".. I'm pretty sure.

Banned user ratings are not included, because often they are people that have been banned for having multiple accounts. If all their accounts are banned & they have all rated the same album, then the average will be affected.

I have seen some items rated more than 6 times by the same IP address using different user accounts. If that item had only been rated a few times before that user came along, when those banned user ratings are taken away, the average will revert back to where it was. For some items, this could lead to a big change in the average.

Jabapac

Gender: Male
Age: 36

albummaster wrote:

Banned user ratings are not included, because often they are people that have been banned for having multiple accounts. If all their accounts are banned & they have all rated the same album, then the average will be affected.

I have seen some items rated more than 6 times by the same IP address using different user accounts. If that item had only been rated a few times before that user came along, when those banned user ratings are taken away, the average will revert back to where it was. For some items, this could lead to a big change in the average.

Sorry but i'm afraid to say that you are wrong.
To make sure of what i'm talking about go and choose a Radiohead or The Doors item, because they are the most abused, let say "Morning Mr. Magpie" from TKOL for example, then try to count the 100s ratings from the song' rating list and compare it to the amount shown on it's own graph and you will see the difference. it's not the graph that flawed actually but the hidden "real" value behind the item.

And I noticed that to you before in a PM but maybe you forgot.

So, I guess we have now two problems:
1- The 3 Standard Deviation, the cause behind the bouncing in ratings.
2- The non-excluded banned users ratings.

JMan

Just out of curiosity, I use multiple computers to make my charts depending on which is available. Can two people from the same family living in the same house join the site not that anyone in my family would want to join...? I'm just asking because there could've been a case of apair of siblings or something that both tried to join the site and they got banned for it. I have no proof of this, but what if that happened at one point?

albummaster
Janitor

Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

Jabapac wrote:

To make sure of what i'm talking about go and choose a Radiohead or The Doors item, because they are the most abused, let say "Morning Mr. Magpie" from TKOL for example, then try to count the 100s ratings from the song' rating list and compare it to the amount shown on it's own graph and you will see the difference. it's not the graph that flawed actually but the hidden "real" value behind the item.`

Taking this item as an example, there are 138 ratings. Only 109 are displayed because the rest are from banned users. The graph shows 109 ratings which matches the figure indicated on screen. I think you're right, however, the banned user ratings look like they are still included in the final average even though they are not displayed on screen, and the final figure is wrong as a result.

I've now made a correction (this should be live in the next few hours, maybe sooner depending on caching).

Jabapac wrote:

And I noticed that to you before in a PM but maybe you forgot.

These types of PM are incredibly time consuming to respond to individually as they require proper research and investigation to look into the code and cross-reference the information etc, and I don't have as much spare time as you might think. It's not a case of forgetting, it's unfortunately a case of not having enough time to respond properly (due to having a day job outside of BEA).

Last edited by albummaster on 09/22/2013 20:29; edited 2 times in total

albummaster
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Gender: Male
Location: Spain
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JMan wrote:

Just out of curiosity, I use multiple computers to make my charts depending on which is available. Can two people from the same family living in the same house join the site not that anyone in my family would want to join...? I'm just asking because there could've been a case of apair of siblings or something that both tried to join the site and they got banned for it. I have no proof of this, but what if that happened at one point?

Other factors are considered alongside the IP address but I'm not about to give away this information as it has the potential to be misused.