Chart Manipulation

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RaineyWins




Age: 30
Location: Ireland
Ireland

  • #1
  • Posted: 05/16/2010 16:04
  • Post subject: Chart Manipulation
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This has just came to my attention, when I noticed the user "ChrisDread" in the fact that his average was rating was 24/100, then ffudnebbuh told me that over 600 of his albums were rated 5/100, examples of this; Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Madman across the water, Wish you were here, close to the edge,blood on the tracks, rubber soul, Boxer(national), aeroplane over the sea,exile on main street,, Born to run, animals, the wall, houses of the hole, my bloody valentine, let it bleed, freewheelin bob dylan, physical graffiti, blue, neil young decade, rain dogs, abbey road, revolver, bringing it all back home, sgt, pepper,"saxophone colossus", "wild innocent and the e street shuffle", "Lady in satin", "zen arcade", "Bridge over troubled water", "tonight's the night', "Fragile", "Otis blue", "Magical mystery tour"(all of the beatles albums), "Velvet Underground", "Psychocandy", "Bone Machine", "Let it be", "Swordfishtrombones" , "Rumours", "Pinkerton", "Layla', "This years model""Ramones"...

Surely no-one can hate all of these?

This also could be seen as being the opposite of the likes of RFNAPLES, but these albums are seen as the greatest ever, and thats why Naples rates them so high, as he takes into consideration influence etc..

So I think he is just rating the albums down so his favourite are in the top rated section?

I would like to know everyone else's opinion on this...
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albummaster
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Gender: Male
Location: Spain
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  • #2
  • Posted: 05/16/2010 16:33
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A few people have PM'd regarding this and I agree it is spoling things a bit but I think it is also a weakness in the system where one person can have such an impact.

I've always said that I'd prefer to keep things simple and using a simple arithmetic mean rating *is* very simple and transparent way of scoring the average rating, but also having seen now how the system can be abused, it now needs to be updated.

First, I think we need to adjust the average rating algorithm to take into account the *relative* rating of the member that is making the rating. e.g if your normal rating is 80 and you rate something as 5, you must hate something more than if your normal rating was 30 (the relative rating is different).

Second, I'm thinking that the current system is too confusing and we should reduce the number of rating increments from 20 to 10 and go for a 5 star system incremented in half-star steps (more in line with other websites) to make the rating system less confusing and easier to use and reduce the impact of people trying to game the system (the number of steps between the lowest and highest rating will be smaller).
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RFNAPLES
Level 8


Gender: Male
Age: 75
Location: Durham, NC, USA
United States

  • #3
  • Posted: 05/16/2010 17:28
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albummaster wrote:
First, I think we need to adjust the average rating algorithm to take into account the *relative* rating of the member that is making the rating. e.g if your normal rating is 80 and you rate something as 5, you must hate something more than if your normal rating was 30 (the relative rating is different).

Second, I'm thinking that the current system is too confusing and we should reduce the number of rating increments from 20 to 10 and go for a 5 star system incremented in half-star steps (more in line with other websites) to make the rating system less confusing and easier to use and reduce the impact of people trying to game the system (the number of steps between the lowest and highest rating will be smaller).


Show me the money--algorithm and steps. Keep it simple, Make it fun.
_________________
Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by RFNAPLES
Bubbling Under The Top 100 Greatest Mus...y RFNAPLES
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Mr. Shankly



Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Auburn, Washington
United States

  • #4
  • Posted: 05/16/2010 17:29
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albummaster wrote:

Second, I'm thinking that the current system is too confusing and we should reduce the number of rating increments from 20 to 10 and go for a 5 star system incremented in half-star steps (more in line with other websites) to make the rating system less confusing and easier to use and reduce the impact of people trying to game the system (the number of steps between the lowest and highest rating will be smaller).


That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like what Chris is Dread is doing is a classic case of tyranny of the minority. I'm not surprised by this pattern of sabotage and obvious disingenuousness. I always find it a suspicious (not to mention musically and historically ignorant) statement when someone says the Beatles are overrated.

Of course, there's an obvious measure of recourse members can do here if you think he's manipulating the stats, but it would be coming down to the same level...
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Mr. Shankly



Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Auburn, Washington
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  • #5
  • Posted: 05/16/2010 17:37
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[quote="Mr. Shankly"]
albummaster wrote:

Of course, there's an obvious measure of recourse members can do here if you think he's manipulating the stats, but it would be coming down to the same level...


I just looked at his album ratings. There is no question about it. He is obviously trying to sabotage the stats!
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albummaster
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  • #6
  • Posted: 05/17/2010 07:15
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I've PM'd the person and he's kindly asked me to delete his low ratings. He was very apologetic, so please nobody give him a hard time. I think, in any case, the system needs changing because it has now been proven to be open to abuse (I suspect he's not the only person to have done this, just on a bigger scale).

The ratings will soon be changed so that the granularity is reduced to a 10 point sliding scale (from 20) and all existing member ratings will be updated to reflect this e.g. an existing 75/100 will become divisible by 10 (80/100).

The ratings charts on this site will no longer use an arithmetic mean, but more likely a Bayesian average which will reduce the effects of outliers. IMDb use exactly the same method to rank their movie charts (e.g. http://uk.imdb.com/chart/top - notice the equation at the bottom) and many other sites do too, so it is a tried and tested method.
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ffudnebbuh
level 8


Gender: Male
Location: Boston
United States

  • #7
  • Posted: 05/17/2010 13:42
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The only thing that I am worried about is that I don't want people to feel that they can't express their opinions freely(which would be terrible)...if someone truly believes that an album deserves at 5/100, then they should feel that they can do that. As far as I know, this is the only time that this has happened although I am a fairly new member to this site. Maybe we should leave it the way that it is until it starts happening again?
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Kiki





  • #8
  • Posted: 05/17/2010 14:10
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If we can vote on this I would definitely go for the option of having 20 ways to rate an album.

10 would still be okay but 5 would make it far to limited. I tend to avoid magazines which have 5 different ratings for stuff
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Bork
Executive Hillbilly



Location: Vinson Mountain, GA
United States

  • #9
  • Posted: 05/17/2010 14:49
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an_outlaw wrote:
If we can vote on this I would definitely go for the option of having 20 ways to rate an album.

10 would still be okay but 5 would make it far to limited. I tend to avoid magazines which have 5 different ratings for stuff


I started out using a 5-level rating system and soon found that it was too limiting. Changed to 10 after that and have found no need for 20, however I do not find adapting a 10-level system to 20 for this site problematic at all. It's just a matter of ignoring all the 5-steps.
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albummaster
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  • #10
  • Posted: 05/17/2010 14:58
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We need to remove the possibility of the system being gamed by anybody else. Data integrity is central to the whole point of the site.

If you look at some other music sites, it is fairly common to just have a ten point sliding scale (usually increments of half a star). BEA are the exception at the moment as we currently allow quarter stars and this is a point of difference with some other sites. Let me say here though, we'd never go down to a straight five point system (for me, that is purely the domain of shopping sites).

A ten point scale might strike the right balance of allowing most people to accurately grade an album without comprimising too much accuracy. Together with a Bayesian average, data should be much more protected and every vote still counts. We are not discarding anyone's vote (unlike some systems where the scores can be topped and tailed to get to an average).

There are just too many steps from best to worst at the moment and it is now proven that one person can unintentionally cause mayhem (over 500 ratings by one person at less than 10/100). If we don't put anything in place to stop this, it is inevitably going to happen again.
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