Am I the only one who thinks MDL ratings are inaccurate?

Any Ratings from Viewers are guaranteed to be inaccurate because of personal taste/preferences/prejudices/bias/culture/ignorance etc. There are many elements of human nature that factor in.

Let me ask you a question, if you needed a vital surgery, lets say open heart Surgery, would you let it be done by some random stranger you pick up on the Street? or would you want it be done by a learned Professional with experience and a degree?

That principle applies loosely to Movie/Series Critics. There are Professionals who have a trained eye for objective factors while most "normal" people do not and only judge by whatever their "gut" tells them (there are exceptions but rules are not made for exceptions).

So basically it is impossible to get public ratings where EVERYBODY can rate that are accurate in any way. If they are, they are more so by accident.

This is even more so with Dramas or other "emotionally driven" Entertainment Products. When you watch a Drama, whether you are Emotionally involved in it or not makes a HUGE difference. If you can "feel" together with the Characters, you will be inclined to forgive a lot more errors than if you watch it "rationally".

For example, I rated "Story of Yanxi Palace" with 5/10. However, the general consensus rates that Series as 9/10. So who is right and who is wrong? Nobody! The reason why I rated it lower is because I was invested and interested in the Characters for roughly 30 Episodes but after that there was a steep decline and I found myself no longer interested in watching it. Is that objective empiric truth? I dont know but it was true for me!

Dont expect public ratings to be accurate. You will be much better served if you consider them as some sort of "general guidelines". 

P.S. I am not even considering the fanboyism, trolling, paid reviews and other "underhanded" methods of manipulation. Those are also a part of the reason why public ratings can never be accurate.

We can debate till the cows come home. We can agree to disagree. That's what makes a healthy community right? I think we all agree that:

1. Ratings have inherent subjectivity
2. Ratings scales / descriptions can aid in helping users to discern and rate more objectively
3. MDL ratings appear skewed

However, we are not on the same page on whether
1. It is correct to say MDL ratings are inaccurate
2. MDL ratings appear skewed, but whether it is right to say that skewing is means the ratings are "inaccurate"

People use ratings for different purposes. Some to gauge the popularity of a show, some look at it to see if a show is worth watching.

I personally have stopped using MDL ratings to see if a show is worth watching because it is totally useless. If feeling it useless = it is "inaccurate", then it proves my point. That's my personal take opinion.

I think generally, MDL ratings show the popularity of a show rather than the quality of a show. Not everyone here agrees, but I think it's what trigger the OP start the thread.

1. If the rating is given by genuine users and not by bots and paid users or any management, then according to me you cannot call the rating of any site wrong. By doing this you are questioning all those users and violating their privacy(likes/dislikes) somewhere. 
2. some filter on rating and reviews according to your(individual) preference. may satisfy you to some extent.
3. Every person is biased in the eyes of others. 
4. Rating is the average of all users' ratings.

what i understand so far

• Rating needs description
• A filter should be available to an individual in which he can see the top results based only on the ratings and reviews of people who have similar likes or dislikes.
• Rating of unaired movies/dramas/episodes should be disabled.

 ASTER:

what i understand so far

Rating needs description
A filter should be available to an individual in which he can see the top results based only on the ratings and reviews of people who have similar likes or dislikes.
Rating of unaired movies/dramas/episodes should be disabled.

That sums it up. If we ever get there that would be a big step forward. I am not sure if they will bother change that aspect of the site though.

 Northern raveller:

I believe people need to get out of their personal likes and dislikes, prejudices to give a reasonable rating. Fangirl/fanboy mentality that aims to destroy the competition of their idol is one of the problems and it is not easy to find a way to deal with this problem.

While I agree with you, it does feel impossible to achieve. I am not even sure if posting an article would change anything since many do act this way as a habit. Still it's the responsibilty of the site to try to educate its community and if anything changes it will probably come from MDL first.

 HarryHoudini:

Sadly I cannot use "quotes" for some reason, maybe because my account is new. So I have to use more inefficient methods like "copy/paste". Sorry for the inconvenience! I will mark your quotes in Bold to make it more "comfortable" to read.

You need to select the text you wish to quote and then you should get the option. Not sure if it's the issue or something else but that's what most people struggle with at first as it's not super intuitive (compared to what we are used to).

 HarryHoudini:

Of course ones own rating is accurate for one self and since public ratings represent the Viewers own points, one could say that they are indeed accurate. However, there is still a distinction to be made between subjective and objective accuracy but more on that later.

One of the point I was trying to make since I joined the conversation was that some viewers do not rate the content based on what they believe it's worth. Instead some of them feel like it's below average or bad and probably worth 6 or less, but since they feel bad about giving this kind of rating they end up giving it a 7 (and still call it bad since their opinion on the content did not change). In this specific situation I don't think the rating they give is accurate, I believe it's inaccurate on all levels and this does not reflect their feelings (about the show) in any way.  

 HarryHoudini:

Fact is, those (and other) issues that I had, made me drop the series, even though for roughly 30 Episodes I was really hooked and liked it a lot. Looking through the other Reviews, you will notice that I am pretty much an exception and that the other Reviewers obviously did not have the same issues with it as I had. So while my Review was as accurate for me personally (I did drop the series, I genuinely got disturbed by it so much that I could not watch any longer...thats a fact for me), I really cant claim that it is accurate for others.

I don't necessarily consider your rating inaccurate, nor do I consider "their" ratings inaccurate. Many people are able to ignore inconsistencies or just focus on the fun factor. It does not make their rating more inaccurate, it just means they prioritize a different aspect and I am totally fine with that. For the matter I believe both your and their ratings are accurate as long as it represents what everyone is feeling about the content. Suspension of disbelief plays a huge part and we don't manage it equally as it is also based on personal preferences. I tend to be picky details but I won't necessarily rate a show badly because of some minor inconsistencies. If big plots do not make sense then I will find it difficult to rate it highly and might even drop it.

Still I don't believe that my opinion is more "valid" than others that aren't following the same approach to content.  But if I have a conversation about a show I will definitely express what I felt was done wrong. Additionally it will not prevent me from being able to see what was done right even if I disliked the show in the end.

 HarryHoudini:

The Third Point, "Then I think everyone is wrong so I will give it a 10 to compensate" is a interesting one. Interesting because you are basically admitting to post Reviews that are inaccurate (Therefore proving that Reviews are indeed inaccurate :)

To clarify I wasn't talking about myself. I've seen this behavior a lot and this was another point to add to ratings/reviews being inaccurate. I thought it was a good example, but I never gave a better or worse rating based on the average. I try to respect the scale the best I can and it feels more natural to me to do it that way. Depending on the rating I will engage in conversations to explain my point or challenge others. This also help to see things from a different perspective and if there is actually more behind their ratings and thoughts.

 phoenixfrost:

No drama scoring system open to the general public is accurate. Fans will tend to score dramas of their favorite actors up while antis will score them down. And it's also not accurate to say those two camps will cancel each other out since we cannot know whether fans will outnumber antis or vise-versa. In Chinese entertainment especially, there are netizens who are paid to blacken dramas or artists so their influence muddles the waters of drama scoring even more.

There are more discussions about this in the link below if you're interested:

https://kisskh.at/discussions/cuo-liao/121285-who-still-believes-in-douban/

I don't think it can ever become perfectly accurate but it's not necessarily a reason to give up on the system all together imho. There are many ways you can prevent influences, improve how accurate it is so it actually ends up meaningful.

There will always be people and groups that will do what they can to affect it, it's beyond anyone's control. But with an independent platform such as MDL there is still a possibility to keep it relevant.

 Floki:

The problem is that you are affecting the general rating of the show (and so are many other users, so don't take this personally). 5 is the average but if we go with your system then there is no drama or movie that is worth a 5 or below even if you dropped it or forced yourself to finish it. 

I know I'm so laaaaate on the topic but I'm new here and that's why I could give a view from a total outsider. I've never watch a k-drama tbh I come here from Devil's Plan/The Genius and I've seen 1 Litre of Tears last week as my first J-drama.

About what i quote I totally agree with this point because yeah, in to many website 5/10 is like so laaaaaaaame.
Hum, 5/10 isn't just basically mid-range ?  So it should be so~so, average or ok depending of people, but being one of the worst thing on earth make no sense from a standard viewpoint.

Also it means that people are using only 7 to 10 when there is also 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and even more with decimals. So why using only a part of it ?
Using a wider range can help to show real difference of love, and help to see what is better.

For exemple and by ignoring .5 if we take two shows.
All people are giving them 8/9/10 only. One is better than the other, but most people are giving it the same ranking because they are using not enough rating so both are given 9 from the same person because 10 is only for fav, and 8 only for good. One is slightly above 8, so it's 9, the other one is not fav, so still 9 (or okay 9.5).
 In the end one will be like 8.4 the other 8.6, which is a pretty small difference even though 75% of people would love the 8.6 more.

Now if people give 6/7/8 to the first one (which is fine (6) and good (7)) and the other one have more 7/8/9. At the end the first one will be like a 7.6 and the second one like a 8.3 and there is a big difference.
Obviously my exemple isn't flawless that just random number.

But it already create a larger margin between how shows can be rated and helps more.
Tbh as a total beginner I feel like a lot of shows are really high and it doesn't help me at all. Like I'm not confident about those ratings.
Coming from other website where 8 is already great, this one feels a bit different.
As a french we even have one of our biggest website which cumulate multiples mediums (videogames, musics, series etc..) where rating above 7 are already pretty good, 8 are like god-tier in their category and a 6.something could be really good too.
It became most a the time bad under 5, and between 5 and 6 it's like, if it's your genre go, if not try something else.

And it helps me so much everyday. Okay, I don't want to only count on other people rating, sometimes I have my proper feeling which is kind of different of most people but it's really interesting to show how people who don't give random 8/9/10 everytime think about something.

Seing those Hollywood "The Rock" movies at 4.5/10 and not 7 like if they were pretty good (it's fun sometimes with the brain off, I don't want to say I can't watch them) is pleasant. 

So yeah even the website I was talking put aside because it's an exception, I think it's hard to use rating from MDL for a beginner like me. I don't know what to see, where are bias, If the show is 8.8 only because younger people are happy to see a couple, if the other one is 7.6 because it's from Taiwan or whatever country which is not korea/chinese, I guess that older show have a negative bias compared to newer but I don't know how much (recency bias isn't only a MDL problem though), I don't know if some genre can have great grades easily even with a "not that great" tv show, and I can continue.

You could say that it's probably always overwhelming when you start a whole new world that you know nothing about and it's also true.
But in the end to come back on the subject, I think it's kind of sad how people are using only a little part of what they can and making 7 average. I love my 7, they are not meaningless 😢

Not really possible to see such a change,i transitioned from watching anime to only watching dramas around 8 years ago and 7-7.5 have always been the average in both MAL and MDL.
I also think the system isn't correct,if i were to add the western movies i have watched in lets say imdb,i would indeed use 5 as average.
Best thing to do imo is to either overlook/ignore ratings and rate in your own way or adapt to the system.I am doing both,i ignore ratings and rate 7 as okish and 7.5 as average.

Edit:Not to mention with the thousands of registered ratings in each show,it's impossible for a shift to happen since older shows will have a big discrepancy compared to the newer shows in ratings if 5 was to be used as the average from now on.