What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

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90sCoffee
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What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by 90sCoffee »

I started rankings with an /10 but that seemed too hard because it felt weird to give a bunch of films an 8 or 7 with no difference (there's no decimals) so I ditched that quickly and went to 100 which felt too daunting. For a while I settled at ranking out of 20. This worked good for the films in the 16-20 range but I'd end up lumping too many in the 14 or 15 when there was a huge difference between them so I switched back to 100.

/100 felt good for a bit but it got too hard to distinguish between a film ranked a 75 vs 77 vs a 79 vs an 80 vs 81 vs 83, etc.So I tried simplifying it a bit and using only increments of 5 so it became 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95 which did make it easier to rank but my tier 7 completely disappeared and it went form 8 to 6 which annoyed me. So now I'm using a hybrid where they're still mostly in increments of 5 except in the 70s where I have a 73, 75, and 77 so that I get a tier 7 back. It's not ideal either and now I have no tier 4 lol but at least on the top, they seem to work better and are easier to rank.

I know a lot of people are gonna say, who cares it's just rankings and arbitrary numbers but it obviously does make a difference to the PSI recommendation score you get back which is a feature actually worth using.

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

Post by BillyShears »

After resorting to the tablets I assign them a score out of 100 which I've given to both Caligula and Shoah.

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

Post by djross »

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Last edited by djross on Thu Jul 20, 2023 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

90sCoffee
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by 90sCoffee »

djross wrote: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.


Darn that's a really fine scale above 90. I only have like 40 films I've seen ranked 90ish and above so that wouldn't work for me as well and I've only seen a handful of bad ones below 50ish and most of them were waaay back so I guess I'd have to figure something different out. I'd always have trouble between a 99 vs a 98 in the case of the one above though it's a cool system.

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

Post by BadCosmonaut »

KalltKaffe wrote:...it felt weird to give a bunch of films an 8 or 7 with no difference (there's no decimals)...


I think this is how many if not most people would feel about the 1-10 ranking system if they were to think about it in depth. But I think the root of the problem isn't the 10 point system, but rather how most people utilize it. I believe most people tend to overuse the higher end of the spectrum (7-10) and underuse the lower end (1-6). Do we really need 6 points to distinguish between bad movies?

It's just like how professional video game reviewers will give an 8 to an average game, a 9 to a good game, and a 10 to a great game or better. So basically any video game 7 or less isn't worth playing or outright sucks. I think many if not most people use this same system for movie ratings...where 7 is the average, 8 is good, 9 is great, and 10 are the best.

The problem with this, in my opinion, is that this allows only 4 rankings (7-10) for average or better movies, and allows 6 rankings (1-6) for everything less than that. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't we use 6 rankings to distinguish good movies and 4 rankings to distinguish the bad? So that's the scale I switched to, which is roughly this:

10: Masterful in the best ways
9: Fantastic and masterful in some ways
8: Fantastic
7: Great
6: Good
5: Decent
4: Not quite decent, or bad, or a genre or style I don't usually like (such as romance) / also this is the default b movie score
3: Bad plus the people who made it need to be insulted a little
2: Notably bad and the people need to be insulted even more
1: Terrible in the worst ways and maximum insult to those who made it

A 7 is still great, not "basically average or less" like how I think most people see 7. Even a 6 is still good to me. Even a 5 is an average movie that I would recommend to some people. A 4 can be something I would recommend to certain people, since 4 is my default b movie score, which (if your expectations are in check and if you like b movies) can still be worth watching.

Since adopting this scale, I've always felt like I had enough rankings to distinguish good movies from each other. Basically my 4s and 5s are other peoples' 7s or so. Under my scale, 5+ for regular movies (and 4+ for B movies) gives me more than enough room to work with. And 1-4 is more than enough to distinguish bad movies from each other, especially since 4 can also just be genres I don't care for anymore such as children cartoon movies or romance.

So before anyone switches to higher than a 10 point scale, I'd suggest trying mine out. It might just be enough for you.

Edit:
I think it's worth adding that under my ratings system, my movie ratings look almost like a perfect bell curve. I've ranked more movies a 5 than any other number. Second place is 4/6, and so on.

90sCoffee
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Re: What ranking scale are you guys using/recommending?

Post by 90sCoffee »

Yeah you're spot on there BadCosmonaut. I actually was thinking the exact same thing last night so made a profile to try to rank using a similar system. Though I use 0 on the scale as well which is cheating I guess because it turns it into an 11 point scale but the 0-2 movies are the bad one, 3-5 are the decent ones, and it startes to get good at 7. Though psychologically, it's still hard to give a decent movie a 3-5 rather than giving it a 6 or 7.

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

Post by philamental »

For what it's worth, here's some thoughts on my own system.

Firstly my ratings notably skew towards the high end of the scale. This is because as I started to rate films on here, it was easier to recall and score good films than bad ones, plus I wanted to get some good film recommendations so it made sense to log 'what I like' more than what I didn't on this site. These recommendations mostly led to even more higher rated films being added to my ratings while also helping avoid watching 'bad' films. I understand this is a common experience for criticker users and it's only those who make the conscious effort to avoid this, or have been on the site for the best part of a decade that have the more desirable 'bell curve' model.

With regard my actual rating system. I'm on my 4th iteration in the two years I've been here (each a slight variation on the one before but each enough to re rate a vast number of films) and I think I'm settled on this one now. For the most part I use the full 100 point scale to rate how likely I am to 'want' to watch the film again. A score of zero meaning I wouldn't watch it if you threatened to torture my family unless I watched it, A score of 100 means I could probably watch it every week for the rest of my life, and a score of 50 means I'm pretty indifferent about watching it again. Of course there are additional factors that affect the final score but I have found that since refining this system the majority of films end up around the 40-70 mark, and this would produce a personal curve I would be happy with over time.

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

Post by lisa- »

i've changed my rating system many times over the years, starting out with something similar to djross and trying basically everything listed here. however, i've finally settled on a rather extreme version of what badcosmonaut was talking about. basically it goes like this:

100: best
90,95: favourites
80,85: masterpiece
70,75: exceptional
60,65: great
50,55: very good
40,45: good
30,35: decent
20,25: ehhhh
5,10,15: dislike
1: offensive
0: nazis and kkk

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

Post by livelove »

cross-referencing another discussion on the same topic:
:arrow: How granular are your ratings?

As to rewatchability:
philamental wrote:For the most part I use the full 100 point scale to rate how likely I am to 'want' to watch the film again. A score of zero meaning I wouldn't watch it if you threatened to torture my family unless I watched it, A score of 100 means I could probably watch it every week for the rest of my life, and a score of 50 means I'm pretty indifferent about watching it again.
In my mind watchability (likeability) and rewatchability are 2 entirely different kind of animals.

Movies which heavily feed off the viewer's not yet knowing the outcome (e.g. horror movies, movies with a big final twist, whodunnits, etc.) can be hugely suspenseful and enjoyable at first watch (high watchability) but don't lend themselves too much for rewatching (low rewatchability). I'm thinking of films like Brake or The Truman Show for example.

I have a spreadsheet with all my watched films where I note my scores for watchability and rewatchability independently of each other. The numbers don't correlate at all.

As explained above, some movies can be designed to have their maximum impact at their first viewing (and can be very enjoyable at that moment), while others can grow on you over time (when you study the actors' interaction or learn subtle new details at subsequent viewings).

Therefore I have 3 columns in my excel sheet:
1: my rating (how much did I like the film at 1st viewing?): 0-100
2: "rewatchability factor": 0-100
3: rewatchability score = rating * (rewatchability factor * 2 / 100)

The third column (rewatchabiliy score) determines how much I will (probably) enjoy a second (or subsequent) viewing.

Therefore high rated movies with a low rewatchability factor might end up being equally enjoyable at subsequent viewings as lower rated movies with a high rewatchability factor.

Of course, high scores in both categories are the desired combination.
Last edited by livelove on Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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

Post by livelove »

lisa- wrote:100: best
[...]
20,25: ehhhh
5,10,15: dislike
1: offensive
0: nazis and kkk


same here,
except that I give a rating of 0 (only) to films "soooooo bad that they are good" :)

(besides, I don't consider "offensive" to have any bearing on the rating. There are some excellent provocative/offensive films, just as there are bad ones.)

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