Not Signed In - login
0 films ranked
Register for a Free Account
Bookmark Criticker!
Your Profile
All Your Rankings
Generate TCIs
Your Best TCIs
Your PSIs
Your Kumpels
Starred Reviews
Your Wishlist
You
Search

Archive for the 'Criticker' Category

Forum Watch: When Criticker Guesses Wrong

Published by
mpowell
at September 3, 2008 in Criticker and Forum Watch. 1 Comment

Being self-righteous pricks, we often trumpet the fact that Criticker is an insanely accurate recommendation system — dead on-target almost all the time — knows people’s taste in film better than they do themselves — possibly the greatest, most important website on the internet — just utterly pwning all over the place… all these are phrases which escape our sneering lips daily.

But, truth be told, Criticker doesn’t always get things right. And the users in our forums have taken it upon themselves to sniff out those times Criticker guesses wrong. User djross started this topic a couple months ago, and it’s quickly become one of the most active in the forums.


Criticker’s never wrong: you didn’t REALLY like Road to Wellville, admit it

There’s a lot of interesting information in this thread. Ang Lee’s films seem to be among the most frequently overrated by Criticker. And our intrepid forum users have discovered that when a PSI is wildly off the mark, it tends to be overly optimistic.

Have you encountered times where your PSIs have been completely different than your actual scores? Then head over to the forum and join in the discussion!


Update Film Information Automatically

Published by
mpowell
at September 1, 2008 in Criticker and Enhancements. 1 Comment

You’re aware of the usual drill… You discover that Criticker doesn’t list Sylvester Stallone as one of the actors in Rocky, and want to help correct the oversight. What next?
1) You write out a forum post detailing the omission
2) One of us notices your post
3) We process the update
4) We notify you over the forum

Those are a lot of steps for a simple thing like adding Sylvester Stallone to Rocky. And now, they’ve vanished. From now on, when you discover such an omission or mistake in our film information, you can make an update which takes effect immediately.

You can update film summaries, years, actors, directors, screenwriters, genres, trailers, and alternate titles. Your change will automatically go into effect and you’ll be credited with having last updated the film information.

Of course, any system which allows users to automatically update information is potentially dangerous, which is why we’ve taken steps to secure it. For example, you gain access to this feature only after having ranked 50 films. That should help hinder troublemakers who sign up only to make trouble. And admins are able to quickly back out any change. Further, we have the ability to revoke the privilege from any user — and we will use it without mercy, should the need arise.

But so far, the need hasn’t arisen. We quietly introduced this feature on Friday and, since then, have processed over 400 film information updates — 100% of which were valid. You guys rock!! A week ago, that number of updates would’ve taken us hours upon hours.


ThingsYouNeverKnewExisted.com

Regenerate TCIs Whenever You Want

Published by
mpowell
at August 21, 2008 in Criticker and Enhancements. 0 Comments

Some of you have already noticed a new feature we silently introduced yesterday, the TCI List page. Here, you can see your 50 most recently calculated TCIs and generate more. It is kind of a complement to the PSI List page.


Hey MajorTom — you have great taste!

On the TCI List page, you’ll be able to see where your newly-generated TCIs fall into your top 1000, and how many films in common you have. We think this is going to be especially useful for new users to Criticker, as well as anyone who ranks a bunch of films.

Take notice that this isn’t replacing the automatic nightly regeneration of TCIs — just acting as a complement to it. If you don’t want to use this tool, it won’t affect your recommendations.

If you find any bugs or problems, please let us know!

Apple iTunes

New Feature: IMDB Link

Published by
mpowell
at August 20, 2008 in Criticker and Enhancements. 2 Comments

We’ve added links on most film’s information pages, which lead directly to the IMDB entry.

This was a quick little improvement that a lot of users have asked for. This will help you get further information that we don’t have in our database. The links are available for the great majority of films at Criticker.


Buy New! Toast 9 Titanium

Merging of Actors, Directors & Screenwriters

Published by
mpowell
at July 22, 2008 in Criticker and Enhancements. 0 Comments

Over the weekend, we introduced an enhancement to the way we store and display actors, screenwriters and directors.

In the past, these three types of filmmakers were kept separate in our database. This made things easy for us, but wasn’t the best way to go about it. For instance, users had to do 2 different searches to see all the films Clint Eastwood has starred in or directed. Likewise, there is no reason that the biography or profile picture for “Eastwood the Director” should be different from “Eastwood the Actor”.

Also, we used the opportunity to change the Filmmaker Page, so that you can regenerate and sort on PSIs, rather than just film year. You have to regenerate before the sort, because the PSIs can quickly go out-of-date.

As is the case with all new changes, there will probably be issues we didn’t catch. Some of you already have alerted us to a couple, and we appreciate that. Keep bug reports coming… and I hope you like the new enhancements!


New Feature - Your PSIs

Published by
mpowell
at May 14, 2008 in Criticker and News. 5 Comments

Criticker now offers a way for users to view all of their PSIs and regenerate new ones.

Under the “You” menu, you’ll now see an option called Your PSIs. This will bring you to a page which shows your 50 most-recently generated PSIs. Here, you can regenerate more on-demand, 50 at at time. If you want, you can filter the regenerations by genre, year and country.

Additionally, we’ve upgraded the “All Films” page, so that you can view and sort by all the PSIs which have ever been generated for you.

You might understand that it’s impossible for Criticker to keep all PSIs up-to-date all the time. PSIs can be affected any time a single user ranks a single film… consider: a single extra ranking might jump a user into your top TCIs, which would have a huge influence on your PSIs. Or it might drop him out. Keeping everything 100% up-to-date all the time is simply not possible — and wouldn’t be even if we had the world’s best server.

This is why we thought a user-initiated regeneration was the best option. Just keep pressing that regenerate button as often as you want — we won’t mind.

The Your PSI page, and especially the all-time PSI list, is functionality which many users have been howling for, and we hope it will greatly improve your experience at Criticker. Let us know what you think!

If it ain’t broke, it’s probably not complicated enough.

Published by
redpatriot
at March 4, 2008 in Criticker and Enhancements. 5 Comments

You know, I just got back from seeing There Will Be Blood. And it’s still on my mind. I was totally enthralled (Not a word I toss around, mind you.), and my head’s still buzzing from the experience. I can’t say that happens too often. And, usually, I have a set score in my head as soon as I get home, and I’m ready to plug it into Criticker. Granted, I think that ‘fresh from the movies’ score is always puffed up a little bit from the theater experience (I think I originally gave Live Free or Die Hard an… 88.), but of course, on a giant screen, any movie has more of an impact on the viewer. But with tonight’s film, I’m not sure exactly where I stand. At the moment, I have it at a 92. And when I wake up tomorrow, or am dying inside at work on Wednesday, or am scrubbing a food-caked pan Thursday night, I might have a more accurate score pop into my head. And until that happens, I think Criticker oughta pick up the slack. Perhaps there could be an option for “I’ve seen it, but remind me to rate it later, Mr. Indecisive!”, that appears as a little flashing button or something. If you’re like me, you tend to over-rate a film you’ve just seen, and it needs to be brought down a few notches after you’ve slept on it. You know, like when you go back to high school after getting a job at Target to let your coach know he was an idiot for cutting you from the JV football team.

Now, one thing I really dig about Criticker are its mini-reviews by other users. Most of you people have pretty interesting opinions (even if they are wrong), and are pretty damn wordy about it. Feel free to pat yourself on the back. What I don’t dig, though, are you people who say “Good movie.” for EVERY SINGLE REVIEW YOU DO. So, for you review star-hungry commies, I want a way to punish you. That’s right. If you put up a crappy review, I want a way to say “Your opinion stinks, sir, and I’d rather you shopped your ideas and pamphlets elsewhere!”. And those of you out there who’re doing this, publishing these lazy and repetitive claptraps to film, you know who you are. Feel free to poke yourself in the eye.

I recently watched I Am Legend. Instead of explaining how average that movie was, I’ll do something more educational: I’ll clue you in to the fact that there were two previous films made from the book it was based on. And the people I watched it with had no clue about that. What the hell?! Don’t they teach kids about Charlton Heston in school? The Omega Man was a great piece of 70’s style sci-fi that saw the atomic-holocaust-fearing movies of the 50’s and said, “It could still happen, and we have the low budget to show it!”. I never saw the Vincent Price 50’s version of the flick, but I heard him narrate Thriller, and I assume it has dancing zombies and laughing. The point is, though, is that Criticker needs to let you unwashed masses know that such films exist, so you can go back, watch these films, and wonder how the hell they picked Will Smith to star in the ‘07 remake like I did.

In a related vein, the same concept could apply to sequels. After First Blood, you have Rambo: First Blood Part II. Then Rambo III. Then just Rambo. Who in the monkey can keep track of all that? That’s right - Criticker. That way, when you rate American Pie, you have easy access to all 38 awful straight-to-DVD releases starring Eugene Levy. Poor Eugene Levy.

And, more than anyone, I have opinions about movies and I want to tell you why mine are right. The current Criticker user forums are fine, and they’re certainly an upgrade from where they were a short while ago. The current database format is phpBB, which is free, and certainly passable. However, any cool kid’ll tell you the way to go is vbulletin. Sure, it costs a little more, but it’s worth considering. They have a website and everything at http://www.vbulletin.com. VB is tons more powerful, adaptable, and has a lot more visual options than phpBB. Which brings me to my final suggestion - Criticker.com skins. Me, personally, I really dug the original look the website had, and if it was up to me - I’d go old school. Perhaps you graphical artists (those of you too fat to escape the desk chair in front of the computer) could design me an Ice Pirates skin for Criticker? I’m sure tons of people here would love a Star Wars skin. Certainly that’s within the powers of the almighty crew here. Especially if it’s God.

I have to go now. It’s late and I need a coke.

« Previous Entries