I usually find that most votes on movies or series are fanboys or trolls, even when movies or series that not even released yet there are usually already a dozen of votes.
I know that sometimes people can watch something as a premiere or before the release, but that’s not the case for the majority of the votes before the release date.
I would like to see an option to filter them out, not asking to be on by default but have the option to get a more “real” rating from people that is most likely to saw the episode/movie. Even when the votes could be a lot lower that not filter out.
I prefer a blank heart with no rating than some magic number from fanboys or haters on an unreleased media.
Even if that is there before the release date. After the release date those vote will still be counted… I don’t think you can combat fanboys or trolls like that. Also, the fanboys are outweighed by the haters. Or people who vote higher before of the “score being too low”, or the other way around. So I think it evens itself out.
They also show N/A ratings for entries that have been rated by less than 50 users. Which might work for popular releases here on Trakt, but not in general. For some of the stuff I watch… nah. N/A rating indefinitely haha.
Examples: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 (am I really the only person on Trakt who has watched and voted for it? RIP!) / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12
And these aren’t even obscure titles. In the Netherlands they’re popular. (the Dutch ones at least)
Actually in the Netherlands that movie is already released, since yesterday!
Maybe there’s more countries where the movie is already available. Though I don’t know how many votes that would cause.
(me i’ll wait a while before i go see it, until it’s less crowded now with the Coronavirus, or go during the day on friday or something)
i already said to be an option in settings. to ignore. never said to prevent the votes.
so the site keep working like it is now but people that dont want to see garbage ratings on unreleased titles could activate the option in settings to ignore those votes.
Man I would love for something to be done about all those people who rate something before it’s even come out. Like, what’s the point. It goes against the idea of the rating system. It’s supposed to be based on your opinion of it, but you haven’t watched it, so how can you know what you think of it. It’s like those people that tell you something is bad without even watching it.
Take Tenet above as a perfect example, this is mentioned as shouldnt already have ratings/votes, but this movies has already been released across Europe, various places in Asia and others
Trakt has a Release Date of 3rd Sept, why should ratings/votes not be valid for this and classed as garbage in your words
Apologies in advance for the long post but I wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of this problem. And I have included what I believe will fix the problem.
The problem is that it is impossible to tell if someone has watched it or not so it is not a good idea IMHO to make assumptions.
For instance:
Trakt as much as it hurts me to say this is… not perfect. Many times due to TVDB or TMDB having wrong dates or no dates at all and when you do update it it does take time for Trakt to update. (Have had problems in the past with air dates not updating for quite some time but that is a separate topic for now.)
Depending on the theater they often let their employees watch the new movies before they come out to avoid being spoiled by the audience.
There are theaters that screen blockbuster movies way in advance of the official release date. (There is a local theater that I know of that consistently does this.)
Early test screenings by the production companies.
The Tenet example, happens quite often and sometimes there is no release date for the first airing on TMDB/TVDB anyway.
Also this happens quite often with TV shows because TVDB requires the release date of the country that the production company runs out of, even if it was aired in another country first. Take for instance Victoria Season 3 the show aired it’s third season in the US on PBS months before it aired in the UK on ITV. Victoria (British TV series) - Season 3 - Wikipedia
But as it was created in the UK that is the dates that TVDB went with. (Was a whole discussion over at TVDB, nothing changed. Please lock season 3 of Victoria - TVDB Forums )
Not endorsing but movies do also get leaked onto pirate sites before wide release.
While not many people do watch movies before it is released mainstream it does happen more than you might think.
As I have mentioned before on the old forum the amount of people actually rating before something is released does not really affect the average on movies. Usually ends up being less than 0.5% of the total votes and I have never seen more than about 200 votes usually. Most films have less than 10 votes.
The movies on the first 5 Anticipated pages(Data pool of 190 movies) with over a 100 votes there are… only 8, of which 4 have already had theatrical release(same problem as Tenet).
*averages, votes and plays subject to change
Ava 672 votes* (Released in Hungary on July 2, 2020)
Tenet 491votes* (Obviously because people have watched it in other countries)
Blood Machines 128 votes*(It has been at many film festivals.)
Possessor 108 votes*(It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 01/25/2020)
That leaves us with 4 or 2.11% of movies with more than 100 votes.
Shazam 74% 16.7k votes, 281k watchers* (Chose because for a recent DC superhero movie this has the second lowest number of votes, second only to Green Lantern.)
To put this into perspective if these movies were released and the early votes where added to the average how would this many votes affect a rating then? (Keep in mind this is based on the idea that these movies could perform about the same. I also rounded to the nearest hundredth.)
Avatar 2 would be at 78.00% with 48,090 votes, so 0 points change*
After We Collided would be at 67.65% with 2,171 votes, so +1.65 points change*
The Flash would be at 74.00% with 16,828 votes, so 0 points change*
Mulan (2020) would be at 79.89% with 12,125 votes, so -0.11 points change*
In all fairness (But however very unlikely) that in the most extreme possibility everyone rates a movie as opposite as possible to what the movie would normally average out to, I did the math for that as well.(So if it was going to be 100% after release but early voters all voted 0 hearts what would be the result?)
Avatar 2 would be at 99.60% with 48,090 votes, so -0.4% points change*
After We Collided would be at 60.80% with 2,171 votes, so -39.2 points change*
The Flash would be at 73.44% with 16,828 votes, so -26.56 points change*
Mulan (2020) would be at 79.18% with 12,125 votes, so -20.82 points change*
I do think that this is a very unlikely result though.
A per user option… this does seem like a reasonable approach. Just a checkmark that says “hide ratings on unreleased content”. I think that ratings should still be shown there if there is no release date because lesser known movies a sometimes do not have a date added to the site(perhaps not a large issue though). You as an individual would have the Tenet example to deal with, so maybe it hides only the percentage while still letting you rate something.
In Summary:
Unfortunately due to the way that Trakt gets its info and the fact that early viewings do happen and that the early ratings are usually not that extreme I do not think that blocking early ratings is a good idea.
So here are my suggestions…
A modification to @Sharkiller’s idea, just hide the percentage for everyone until the release date(unless there is none) while still allowing for early ratings. No satisfaction of seeing a rating drop/raise. If implemented highly suggest #2 as well.
A way to show you are interested/disinterested before release I believe would work well combined with #1 and divert spam ratings while adding a feature. You can still show your support or lack thereof without affecting the rating system poorly.
Forcing the item to be marked as watched if you rate it instead of the option that we have now in the settings page would also probably help solve the issue too. Or at least set it to default.
I found that the more votes that Trakt has after release the less early voting matters. So maybe find ways to get more users to vote on content.
An integration of all 4 I believe will fix the problem relatively well.
What are we classing as the release date that something is based upon, just going by the date in Trakt would be wrong, as that is only the release in one country, which is not the original release
If we look at Tenet again, which shows a release of 3rd of Sept
I woudnt want to see anything hidden for this because it is already out in many places
If i had been asked about this movie a week (ish) ago, then i wouldnt mind things being hidden as it hadnt been released anywhere
The only way i can see anything like this working is if Trakt is changed first, so release date is the initial release in whatever country that is
That would make Tenet 26th Aug (22nd if including preview of it), then work from that date
all the talk about release date problem is not a primary problem.
if someone think that is really important to see votes because a movie released 1 month earlier on some point of the world before the official release date, then DONT activate the option that im proposing.
people talk to much like is a change forced to everyone.
I believe Trakt shows you the release date of your own country for movies, so keep that the same but base the rating percentage on the first date no matter what country you are in. Right now TMDB has that info… Tenet Release Dates - TMDB
Trakt does not show you the release date of your own country for TV shows but goes by what TVDB has in it’s system (country of origin), TMDB goes by first aired. Nether has multiple release date options. I think when there is a conflict like this Trakt should go with the earliest date.
I understand and agree with what you are saying and think that your idea is a good one. Basically a option to hide the early ratings percentage when you want to and unhide when you don’t. You still get to rate. Here is a mock-up.
I can say that isn’t true. Tenet has a NL release date of August 27th, but I still see the USA release date. Same for Ava. Which has been released in NL for loooooooooong time. (30-07-2020 versus 25-09-2020).
Though that date isn’t added to TMDb, but still. The Tenet date is.
In my opinion, release date should be the first public (non festival) release. AKA the first time some people in any country are able to buy a ticket and go see the movie in a theater.
The problem with release dates is that they are often counted as the premiere at any festival, which is technically true, but then leaves a very select public of a few hundreds at most (and most of those are probably not on Trakt). So opening ratings at the premiere at Venise or Cannes, or Deauville, or Sundance, etc… still leaves the hater/fanboys crowd able to rate before viewing (not that they won’t rate without viewing anyways).
After that, you also could implement rating openings by geolocalisation. If your IP/phone appears to be in a country where the movie is publicly visible, then allow rating, else don’t (well that won’t take into account people that are obtaining movies by … different means and will see it before it’s been released in their country. But implementing geolocalisation authorization to rate could be fairly simple. Phones have it, and IP geoloc for desktop is, if note very precise, at least enough to locate the country the user is in. The only foreseeable problem with that method (apart from actually coding and implementing it ;), is privacy and GDPR concerns, but that can be easily bypassed by resquesting consent for it , and disabling ratings if consent is not given, therefore no location is provided. (you just need an error message, providing the possibility to activate geoloc if you absolutely want to rate).
As far as I now anyway Justin already resets ratings on release dates (at least for big releases, I know that was the case for the last Game of Thrones seasons).
And in any case all that work will come to naught because haters and fanboys will still skew the ratings one way or the other, and I’m not excluding the real possibility that they would use a VPN to rate anyway, so it’s back to square one :).
Basically moronic ratings are like locust swarms and hurricanes : very bad, happen periodically, can mitigate, but can not totally protect against
I know this was a topic in the old forum and I had my thoughts on that as well but overall I think there is no satisfying solution.
So I’d like to counter the problem with an alternative solution… maybe it is possible (don’t think it’s already an option) to disable visible ratings until one has watched and/or rated it. Toggle on/off in options. Though this way ratings are no indicator anymore if something is worth watching. I guess everything has it’s drawbacks.
Also what about an overall average Rating? So like Metacritics+IMDB+Trakt+Tmdb/thetvdb equals an average world rating (or something)…
But that might just be me being weird liking such idea
I just released some updates for this feature request.
By default, all unreleased items will have their rating percentage hidden throughout the website (eventually official apps too).
Global setting to display all ratings if you prefer the old behavior.
Items without a release date won’t be hidden (to deal with old TV episodes and specials).
Rating action still works on the summary page + apps.
As mentioned, the early ratings have virtually no impact on the overall rating once an item is actually released. However, hiding the ratings should help prevent some people from rating so easily and there is no visual benefit for them doing so.
I believe Trakt shows you the release date of your own country for movies, so keep that the same but base the rating percentage on the first date no matter what country you are in. Right now TMDB has that info…
