What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

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philamental
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by philamental »

mattorama12 wrote:
For me, it's not like I can definitively say that The Cabin in the Woods is a 77/100. However, I can say that I like it more than Shame (76) and less than Rope (78). My ratings are not permanent and not perfect; it's always a moving scale. But by comparing two to each other and adjusting regularly, you can start to get finer measurements than just 1-5 or 1-10 scale.


Fully agree with this. I have a personal 10 tier system evenly spread over the 100 point scale. I watch a film and consider how it made me feel and it's easy enough to identify which of my tiers it should go into. Then I start a new process of where I should place it in that tier. I usually have a good idea whether it fits in to the high, middle or low end of the tier but the defining factor is that I compare it to the films I've already rated around the mark I'm thinking of placing it as mattorama12 said. It feels like a really organic personal process, I'm not sure how others don't understand it.

Luna6ix
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by Luna6ix »

philamental wrote:
mattorama12 wrote:
For me, it's not like I can definitively say that The Cabin in the Woods is a 77/100. However, I can say that I like it more than Shame (76) and less than Rope (78). My ratings are not permanent and not perfect; it's always a moving scale. But by comparing two to each other and adjusting regularly, you can start to get finer measurements than just 1-5 or 1-10 scale.


Fully agree with this. I have a personal 10 tier system evenly spread over the 100 point scale. I watch a film and consider how it made me feel and it's easy enough to identify which of my tiers it should go into. Then I start a new process of where I should place it in that tier. I usually have a good idea whether it fits in to the high, middle or low end of the tier but the defining factor is that I compare it to the films I've already rated around the mark I'm thinking of placing it as mattorama12 said. It feels like a really organic personal process, I'm not sure how others don't understand it.


I third this philosophy. I use a 0-100 scale by increments of one. It's difficult to rate things on a scale like that unless you rate movies as relative to one another, since I've seen a few thousand movies, it becomes necessary to have such a fine scale.

It's easiest to display this if you think about what it would be like if i used a 1-10 scale. This would mean, if all the movies were evenly dispersed, that I thought over 300 movies were of exactly the same value, they would get the same score, i then, should not be able to point to any one and say that it was better than another, but this is not the case, therefore I have to use a finer scale.

VinegarBob
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by VinegarBob »

Luna6ix wrote:
philamental wrote:
mattorama12 wrote:
For me, it's not like I can definitively say that The Cabin in the Woods is a 77/100. However, I can say that I like it more than Shame (76) and less than Rope (78). My ratings are not permanent and not perfect; it's always a moving scale. But by comparing two to each other and adjusting regularly, you can start to get finer measurements than just 1-5 or 1-10 scale.


Fully agree with this. I have a personal 10 tier system evenly spread over the 100 point scale. I watch a film and consider how it made me feel and it's easy enough to identify which of my tiers it should go into. Then I start a new process of where I should place it in that tier. I usually have a good idea whether it fits in to the high, middle or low end of the tier but the defining factor is that I compare it to the films I've already rated around the mark I'm thinking of placing it as mattorama12 said. It feels like a really organic personal process, I'm not sure how others don't understand it.


I third this philosophy. I use a 0-100 scale by increments of one. It's difficult to rate things on a scale like that unless you rate movies as relative to one another, since I've seen a few thousand movies, it becomes necessary to have such a fine scale.


Perfectly reasonable, all of this. I feel though that the finer the scale gets and the more you're comparing films with one another the more it comes down to what mood you're in at the time. Also it can be quite tricky to compare how much you like one film relative to another when the two are so different from each other. So I tend to just assign a rating on my scale and leave it at that. However it is quite interesting to then go back and look at the rankings and see what films end up in the same bucket. For instance I just had a look at my 75 bucket and there, sitting next to each other are Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Post Tenebras Lux :lol: Do I like them both equally? I guess...it really depends on my mood at the time I'm asked. They're both as good as 75 and not as good as 80, so they have 5 points of ratings to swim around in together to account for my mood at any given time. ;)

djross
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by djross »

djross wrote:
Thu Dec 08, 2016 2:36 am
I use a thirty point scale, which works very well for me:

0, 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100

A score of 50 represents a "bare pass" and a score between 91 and 100 indicates a masterpiece. I find that fine distinctions are only really important in the uppermost reaches.
As of today, I have switched to finer distinctions for the 70 to 90 range:

0, 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100

In other words, I've switched from a thirty-point scale to a thirty-six-point scale.

CosmicMonkey
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by CosmicMonkey »

I use a 40-point scale, increasing by increments of 2.5 (rounded up) - e.g. 75, 77.5 (78), 80, 82.5 (83), 85, 87.5 (88), 90 etc.

A hypothetically completely average film scores a 70. Films in the 70s are above-average. In the 80s are good and above 90 is exceptional.

Scores in the 60s are below average.

A bad film, that's still mostly watchable to the end is a 50. If at any point watching the film felt like a chore and/or I felt like I had to force my way through it, it scores below a 50. Bad films that are still "passably watchable" are in the 50s, those that are not are in the 40s and below.

This is ultimately still a guideline though, there are a lot of films that don't fit neatly into these categories for various reasons and in those cases I just have to compare it to how I've scored similar films and judge what score just feels right.

I've experimented with my system quite a bit and I'm pretty happy with how it is right now. The result has been a bell curve centered around large cluster of films in the high 60s/Low 70s. I've recently been considering adding more granularity on that level to help smooth out the curve a little bit. Maybe change the "Average" film to a 69 (nice!), so that's there a more subtle difference between 68 and 70? The committee is still in session about it.

PrestoBix
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by PrestoBix »

I think the most important thing when it comes to this issue is making your brain adjust to a scale that works best instead of just creating a scale that feels natural to your brain. What comes naturally probably isn't what is best.

It seems to me that there are two things to consider in a rating system: getting the right level of precision, and communicating what the score means to another person. I think that around a 40 point scale is about perfect for precision. I've used a 100 point scale all my life, but there's a lot of dead space in the lower half, and this year I've started to experiment with a 40 point one to great success by collapsing the 100 point system into the 40 by giving more options to higher scores (I.E., 90 - 99 gets 8 spots, 80 - 89 gets 7 spots, 70 - 79 gets 6 spots, and so on).

If you are using IMDB or letterboxd, where you are forced into a 10 point scale, which I think is absolutely not granular enough, I recommend switching to a percentile rating, where each rating corresponds to a decile in your rating distribution. That is, that your 10 point scores should come out to an exactly even distribution as opposed to a bell curve. This will maximize the granularity of the 10 point scale, as well as make your ratings easier to interpret for those who are not familiar.

Just think week though, I have been considering whether I should just use an American school grade system, where the grades correspond to my 100 point score in a similar way that they do in the schools. Something like: 0 - 50 = F, 50 - 54 = D-, 55 - 59 = D, 60 - 64 = D+, 65 - 69 = C-, 70 - 74 = C, 75 - 79 = C+, 80 - 82 = B-, 83 - 86 = B, 87 - 89 = B+, 90 - 92 = A-, 93 - 96 = A, 97 - 100 = A+

I'm certainly of the opinion that it can be useful to use an internal system for your personal organization and a simplified corollary for communicating your feelings on the film.

ik55
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by ik55 »

CosmicMonkey wrote:
Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:57 pm
I use a 40-point scale, increasing by increments of 2.5 (rounded up) - e.g. 75, 77.5 (78), 80, 82.5 (83), 85, 87.5 (88), 90 etc.

A hypothetically completely average film scores a 70. Films in the 70s are above-average. In the 80s are good and above 90 is exceptional.

Scores in the 60s are below average.

A bad film, that's still mostly watchable to the end is a 50. If at any point watching the film felt like a chore and/or I felt like I had to force my way through it, it scores below a 50. Bad films that are still "passably watchable" are in the 50s, those that are not are in the 40s and below.

This is ultimately still a guideline though, there are a lot of films that don't fit neatly into these categories for various reasons and in those cases I just have to compare it to how I've scored similar films and judge what score just feels right.

I've experimented with my system quite a bit and I'm pretty happy with how it is right now. The result has been a bell curve centered around large cluster of films in the high 60s/Low 70s. I've recently been considering adding more granularity on that level to help smooth out the curve a little bit. Maybe change the "Average" film to a 69 (nice!), so that's there a more subtle difference between 68 and 70? The committee is still in session about it.
I may be tempted to switch from a 100-point scale (by increments of 1), to your 40-point scale by increments of ~2.5, which resonated with me.
I classify movies a bit differently though. Here are my quips:
WHY?...even bother (0-59), MEH (60-64), DECENT (65-73), GOOD (74-81), VERY GOOD (82-100)

I was wondering what were your 10 best TCIs?

With my style of rating, I find my TCIs to be quite high (20% movies in common, just recently active):
#1 --> 21.8297 104 titles in common
#2 --> 21.9128 103 titles in common
#3 --> 22.9812 118 titles in common
#4 --> 23.3548 101 titles in common
#5 --> 23.9433 123 titles in common
#6 --> 24.3866 222 titles in common
#7 --> 24.4775 178 titles in common
#8 --> 24.9888 223 titles in common
#9 --> 25.1833 245 titles in common
#10 --> 25.3226 155 titles in common
Even at 10% they don't go below 20.

As for my highest PSIs, none is higher than 85. Probably because I have only 8 entries, so far, rated above 90(?)

CosmicMonkey
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by CosmicMonkey »

ik55 wrote:
Sun Nov 08, 2020 3:02 pm
CosmicMonkey wrote:
Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:57 pm
I use a 40-point scale, increasing by increments of 2.5 (rounded up) - e.g. 75, 77.5 (78), 80, 82.5 (83), 85, 87.5 (88), 90 etc.

A hypothetically completely average film scores a 70. Films in the 70s are above-average. In the 80s are good and above 90 is exceptional.

Scores in the 60s are below average.

A bad film, that's still mostly watchable to the end is a 50. If at any point watching the film felt like a chore and/or I felt like I had to force my way through it, it scores below a 50. Bad films that are still "passably watchable" are in the 50s, those that are not are in the 40s and below.

This is ultimately still a guideline though, there are a lot of films that don't fit neatly into these categories for various reasons and in those cases I just have to compare it to how I've scored similar films and judge what score just feels right.

I've experimented with my system quite a bit and I'm pretty happy with how it is right now. The result has been a bell curve centered around large cluster of films in the high 60s/Low 70s. I've recently been considering adding more granularity on that level to help smooth out the curve a little bit. Maybe change the "Average" film to a 69 (nice!), so that's there a more subtle difference between 68 and 70? The committee is still in session about it.
I may be tempted to switch from a 100-point scale (by increments of 1), to your 40-point scale by increments of ~2.5, which resonated with me.
I classify movies a bit differently though. Here are my quips:
WHY?...even bother (0-59), MEH (60-64), DECENT (65-73), GOOD (74-81), VERY GOOD (82-100)

I was wondering what were your 10 best TCIs?

With my style of rating, I find my TCIs to be quite high (20% movies in common, just recently active):
#1 --> 21.8297 104 titles in common
#2 --> 21.9128 103 titles in common
#3 --> 22.9812 118 titles in common
#4 --> 23.3548 101 titles in common
#5 --> 23.9433 123 titles in common
#6 --> 24.3866 222 titles in common
#7 --> 24.4775 178 titles in common
#8 --> 24.9888 223 titles in common
#9 --> 25.1833 245 titles in common
#10 --> 25.3226 155 titles in common
Even at 10% they don't go below 20.

As for my highest PSIs, none is higher than 85. Probably because I have only 8 entries, so far, rated above 90(?)
Glad I could help! My top 10 TCIs range between 15.8 and 16.3 (I set my minimum at 10%) . Yours do seem on the high side, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. It just means your taste in movies is a little bit more unique than most and that's why a website like criticker should be around.

livelove
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by livelove »

philamental wrote:
Thu Dec 22, 2016 10:40 pm
mattorama12 wrote:For me, it's not like I can definitively say that The Cabin in the Woods is a 77/100. However, I can say that I like it more than Shame (76) and less than Rope (78). My ratings are not permanent and not perfect; it's always a moving scale. But by comparing two to each other and adjusting regularly, you can start to get finer measurements than just 1-5 or 1-10 scale.
Fully agree with this. I have a personal 10 tier system evenly spread over the 100 point scale. I watch a film and consider how it made me feel and it's easy enough to identify which of my tiers it should go into. Then I start a new process of where I should place it in that tier. I usually have a good idea whether it fits in to the high, middle or low end of the tier but the defining factor is that I compare it to the films I've already rated around the mark I'm thinking of placing it as mattorama12 said. It feels like a really organic personal process, I'm not sure how others don't understand it.
Luna6ix wrote:
Fri Dec 23, 2016 2:30 am
I use a 0-100 scale by increments of one. It's difficult to rate things on a scale like that unless you rate movies as relative to one another
So you agree with me that it's not possible to watch a movie and pinpoint the ranking afterwards on a 0-100 scale just on its own, because feelings aren't such a precise thing. You can only indirectly rate a film with that much precision by comparing it to other films.

But here is the trap in my opinion, because these other rankings are sometimes a couple of years old. How do you compare a ranking of a film you just watched with another ranking say 8 years ago? Even if it's just 1 year, I repeatedly catch myself thinking "that movie was not so impressive" and would be tempted to lower the old score accordingly. Even if I rewatch just pieces of the movie to remind myself, most of the time I get this same feeling (that the movie doesn't deserve such a high score), because in my mind, a movie develops its full impact only if watched entirely and at one stretch. This impression can fade over time and even a second viewing might not be able to reestablish the same feelings one had at the first view (e.g. because the whodunnit part was not yet known to the viewer at first watch).

So you basically don't compare the current score with another movie's score but with your current memory of that movie or with what you think was your impression back in those days. These memories can change. So that's where I think this method has it vulnerability. At least for me. Your mileage may vary, but that's why it doesn't work for me on such a fine granularity level.

movieboy
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by movieboy »

These are my tiers

T10 - [74 to 100]
T9 - [71 to 73]
T8 - [70]
T7 - [69]
T6 - [68]
T5 - [67]
T4 - [66]
T3 - [63 to 65]
T2 - [52 to 62]
T1 - [0 to 51]

This isn't something I created explicitly. It just happened & if I had to rerate a movie I have already rated, then it almost surely falls into the same tier, even though I don't remember the ranges for T2 to T7 - I had to look it up to compose this reply. I don't even understand why it is so. Those are just the numbers which come to my mind for those movies & it's been so for 10 plus years.

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