I'm shocked and disappointed at what's happened to the IMDB. The upvoting/downvoting brigades are spinning out of control. For example, in the case of Breaking Bad, there's a person with multiple accounts mass-flagging all the negative reviews and adding a fresh new batch of 10 star reviews. Anime series are shooting past classic television shows in ratings, and CBMs get 9s and 10s straight out of the gate. It's ridiculous. We need a replacement.
shareIt's not about upvoting/downvoting brigades. You have lots of great reviews that gave Breaking Bad a 10, but for some reason it's the most stupid ones the ones with hundreds/thousands of votes. Add to it that iMDB promotes recent reviews and you have all the useful reviews deep buried. You'll find quite some useful ones if you order by number of votes, though.
I think that somebody with access to some bot farm decided to have some "fun" mass-upvoting the most stupid reviews he could find in the page (and probably in other ones). The big problem here is that neither iMDB, RT or similar are doing shit to control bot farms, since Hollywood itself uses them to boost their content.
There ARE definitely brigades shilling for specific IPs; there's been discussion of it on other sites, even in the IMDB user reviews themselves. People are reporting that every time they keep putting a negative review of the show up, it gets flagged and deleted, then a fresh new batch of 10-star reviews gets posted.
This brigading has been happening for years now since Christopher Nolan fans deliberately hit The Godfather with one star reviews. There used to be a few exceptions; now it's widespread to the point of making the site a joke.
It is a biased site anyway. An older movie like Terms of Endearment is going to get only like 50,000 votes but movies from recent years will get 1million.
shareWhat are they supposed to do? Give old people a course on how to rate their favourite films? I see nothing biased here.
shareMaybe "Old people" who grew up depending upon the REVIEWS of others like Ebert still read the same kind of REVIEWS instead of giving a HOOT about whatever it is that some SILLY RATINGS websites have to say (that they also never visit or care about anyway)???
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Seriously, Why the hell should anyone give a damn what the opinion is of someone else that they don't know, and then take their word for whether or not a film or a show is good enough to watch or not?
The whole idea of depending upon a stranger's point of view is simply ABSURD.
People didn't personally know EBERT either, but at least he also built up a REPUTATION that was reliable enough to know his opinions were right most of the time.
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This is true, but it's not imdb's responsibility was my point.
shareThey should clamp down on the rampant targeted downvote/upvoted campaigns that have plagued the site since Christopher Nolan fans mass-downvoted The Godfather so The Dark Knight could win top spot of best movie of all time. Or maybe just get rid of user reviews altogether.
shareThat was funny as hell. People giving reviews to the God Father "Not as good as The Dark Knight"
shareI just mean that really young people are the main users on there so older films aren't going to get as many votes. Who's even to say the majority of people who rated Terms of Endearment are still on there?
shareThe problem is that the only viable review system is a system that lets you choose reviews based on your own preferences. I still find it hilarious how adults are downranking children's shows because the adult hates the show. Well, of course if you're an adult then you're not going to like the show... and of course if you're in one target audience you're not going to like something designed for a different target audience.
This is how Netflix does its recommendation system anyways, it groups people by shared preferences and recommends to you what others who have your preferences like.
I don't read reviews. Before or after. It's just not my thing. Never has been. But, I like checking the IMDb rating of a film that I'm unsure of. At least I used to.
Anything with a 6 & onwards is AT LEAST watchable. But yeah, I've noticed the downvoting/upvoting thing in recent years. It has probably always been the case but not on this scale. My first experience with it was the show "Orphan Black." The first episode hadn't even come out yet but the show already had a rating of 2.4 or something like that. I was like, wtf?!
As a huge ComicBook fan, this happens A LOT on superhero projects. You have something that literally just came out of is about to air an episode Tonight, having an abnormally high 9s score or in the low 1s. The IMDB scores have basically become a "war of the fandoms/IPs".
You have people attacking each other & fighting over things they have absolutely no stake in. All these big studios are making their millions & billions while y'all 'die hard fans' attack each other. They don't care one bit about "Fandom Wars". They constantly call y'all trolls & incels