I tried to tag a movie as one that I “recommend” and was shown a message saying “You’ve already recommended 50 items.”, I assume this is a new cap put in place for some reason because my recommendation list has 154 items in it.
Is there no way to raise this cap? I don’t understand why its not higher like any other list because 50 seems fairly low.
I’ll have a blog post about this hopefully tomorrow. Basically, we want recommendations to be for your top movies and tv shows only. Think of the top 50 items you’d want to watch on a desert island. We’re of course open to feedback around this, but we initially screwed up by having no limit.
I just ran into the new limit on recommendations. Personally I think you should grandfather your paying customers to a little more. Since my list already had 121, now, apparently all I can do is delete. You just made trakt a lot less useful to me.
I wrote a basic blog post about Recommendations.
The limit is for all members and isn’t different for VIP vs. standard. This should have been limited to start, to really make you pick and choose what you’re top 50 all time are.
After thinking about this I’ve decided to stop using recommendations completely because its useless to me and I’ll just use a personal list until some developer randomly decides to limit those as well. The idea of limiting the feature to only allow 50 items is more annoying than creative. I either recommend something or I don’t, having to constantly manage a list of 50 “best” items is not worth the trouble.
I posted the same, but my topic will be deleted in 19 hours because some godforsaken reason. So, yeah, you’re not alone. I copied my 121 Recommendations into a list and will add to that until someone decides to limit that, too. Then I will move on to Betaseries or something else.
As a reminder, we are PAYING for this.
How are recommendations substantially different from a list for you? I’m curious since I have basically ignored recommendations since I didn’t ever really see much point to them, but you seem to feel strongly about this. I guess it’s one less click to put something in recommendations versus another list.
FWIW there is a limit on items in a list, it’s 10,000, though you can make unlimited lists.
Fundamentally, there shouldn’t be a difference but this website wanted to make it a thing and then decided it was something else entirely. It was also nicer just being a single click as you mention.
I have no issue using personal lists at this point but if they keep restricting things I can’t say I’ll use any of it for much longer. I just wanted a place to list my favorite media with a score and scrobble Plex.
Concur 100% sunnytomato.
…and as a reminder we are paying for these restrictions.
There are many places I can make my “list of crap I think you should watch”. I want the list without spending a ton of time on it. Stuff makes the list or does not. I try to rank within the list, I try to keep the list within reason, but alas, I am beyond someone else’s decision of “within reason”, despite the fact that I am paying for this. Scrobbling is the only thing keeping me here, so odds are good they will bollocks that up soon enough,
We appreciate all the feedback and take it all into consideration. Recommendations was launched too early, that was a mistake on our part. It should have been limited from the start and more clearly labeled as a BETA feature.
Once recommendations are more prominently featured on your profile, we’re hoping that makes the feature more interesting. The iPad app has an early look at how this will look. We also use these recommendations to power Trakt discovery and recommendations (website dashboard + app home tab).
Here are some other features that compliment lists.
Saved Filters. After applying advanced filters (movies, TV, calendar, search) you can save those filters for quick access in the sidebar. This might replace the need for maintaining a personal list. The API also provides these saved filters, so apps can use them too. The Trakt app get an update to pull in these saved filters as cards on your discover tab.
Smart Lists. This is a new idea we are considering. Basically it would allow for automatic updates to a list. It’s similar to saved filters, but the starting point would be your own data. This is very much a work in progress, but something we are considering.
@Starminder your previous post was merged into this topic, so it’s likely the old one being auto deleted.
Personal lists and the watchlist have limits imposed to prevent some of the abuse we were seeing. The free limits work for nearly all Trakt users, and the higher VIP limits offer an alternative if someone needs higher limits. These huge lists consume server resources, so we imposed limits and also re-coded the website list page to improve performance.
Unpopular opinions but I think it’s good the recommendations are limited. I would even say a more strict limit. Maybe 10 or 20.
I think of it more as an all time favorite list.
What are really your favorite shows or movies. Rated 11 out of 10 ;-). Not everything you rate 7+ please thanks.
I would even like something such as what last.fm has. A song you can add as “current obsession” which clears after like a week or something. For Trakt a movie or show. Or maybe one movie and a show!
Alongside the favorites(recommendations).
I copied my recommendations into a standard list that I will use and then deleted them. This feature is now completely useless for me despite being what I used most until now.
Is it maybe an idea to up the limit to 100-200 items for those people who have more to recommend?
In this discussion i see multiple people who say they had a recommendation list with that range of items.
Just an idea.
Indeed. Again, what’s the point, really, to use the mixed (now limited to 50) recommendation list for people having a top 100 movie and similar lists. It renders one or the other pretty useless, or at least redundant. The concept was flawed from the very beginning, as I stated earlier, but nobody listened. If the basic idea was to be saved, there needs to be more changes to it other than item count restrictions.
I recently came across this 50 Item limit and would say it seems needlessly small. If you say very, very broadly that films and TV programmes have been made for about 75 years, to limit user recommendations to a mere 50 choices out of what must surely be millions of options across the two medium seems rather parsimonious. At the very least, users ought to get 50 for Film and 50 for TV.
I would politely suggest that perhaps the issue lies in the choice of name; there are many things I would “recommend” as worth a watch that I have rated as 8, 9, or 10 out of 10, but that isn’t the same as something I would choose as an absolute elite, top tier selection that I could happily watch again and again should I ever find myself stuck in the middle of the ocean with nothing but my media library for company. Hence why I was surprised to run into this limit.
Maybe you should turn the limit off for Recommendations and have a new tag/feature/list called “Desert Island Choice” that is restricted to 10 movies and 10 shows and appears where the Recommendations currently does on our profile pages…
Clarification about how this recommendation system works…the things you choose to add to your 50 recommendations is what trakt uses to find you movies and shows that will show up in your recommendations (based on other users who have similar recommendations)?
So it has the dual purpose of finding you, the user, recommendations to watch, but also adding to the pool of information trakt has to try and help other users find recommendations? Is that how that works?
I agree about the issue being with the choice of name.
I think the feature should be called “Favourites” rather than “Recommendations.”
Favourites are obviously always going to be limited to a select number, whereas recommendations aren’t usually something that are necessarily finite.
This is a very good point and we are considering renaming the feature. What does everyone else think about renaming and would that be more clear?
The idea is we want a finite list of the tv and movies that you really love, and we purposely want it limited to 50. If you watch a new item that you love, we want the decision of replacing one the existing favorite items.
I would support that.
Maybe an idea for a new feature though to actually also allow recommendations. Not something you add to a list, but if you’ve watched something, give the option to add a recommendation to something you also watched. And also add a comment about that why someone who would enjoy the item you just watched, would also like this other show or movie you’ve seen in the past.
Like what myanimelist.net and anidb.net offer, example:
lifeiscrazy's Profile - Recommendations - MyAnimeList.net
+1 for the renaming!