Vote normalization

[Andemon]

My personal opinion is that any user who hatevotes should be permanently banned and have his votes removes.

Whatever you folks decide to do, normalization or not, do *something* -- that top ten is out of control. Only two days there, and Samurai Champloo has already received 6 hatevotes, dropping it from 8.86 to 8.66.

Any fanboy who tampers with the usefulness of AniDB (...and top 10 could be useful...) deserves no mercy.

[Ultima]

I think every vote should count.

I almost agree. As I said at the beginning of this topic:

• Votes should from "legitimate users" should not be normalized, when enough users that vote, things will average out, every series has individuals that vote really high/low.
• Votes from dummy users created just to vote should be filtered out.
• IF votes are filtered and/or normalized then on the anime page, the raw votes average (the one without the filtering/normalization applied) should be listed as well.
• IF a user has their votes filtered there should be a clear indication on the myplace and myvotes screens with [a link to] the list of requirements to have their votes counted in the overall statistics.

So, although I agree all votes from regular users should count, I don't think it is fair for someone to create 100 users and vote 100 times. So what I propose is to make voting requirements to ensure that you have experienced enough anime to have a meaningful vote, something like the anime hint requirements. But, it is important that users know they are filtered and know how they can change that and raw results are displayed somewhere. Since the users would have to have a minimum number of votes and/or items in mylist it would make it harder for people who create multiple users just to vote...

BTW, you can't just filter out users/votes by email address. In some cases a user has forgotten their login and created a new one. Also multiple people can share the same email, my wife and I have different AniDB accounts (we vote differently), but we could have the same email address in there...

Yeah, of course users that create multiple accounts to vote should be filtered. Perhaps we should place a hard limit on the required amount of votes until a user's votes count - like say you have to vote on at least 30 anime, then your votes will count. You can still vote for anime, but until a user hits 30 votes, their vote won't be counted towards the anime. This is similar to anime hint where users that have voted on 50 or more are taken into account. Then, once you have met 30 votes then we can weigh votes dependent on how many votes they have accumulated. The more you vote, the more your vote counts, and vice versa. Ultimately, this encourages users to watch more anime and add more votes to AniDB.

[Rafal]

Are you suggesting that people aren't entitled to their opinion simply because they think the anime deserves a really low or really high rating?

No, people are always entitled to their own opinion, it's not like their votes will disappear or anything. It's the people who don't vote honestly we want to throw out of the equation, and shaving of the top and low 5% is one perhaps rather crude but effective way to do it. Ok, some honest votes will go as well but this gets balanced out in the end so that's why I don't think it's a problem. Also, your vote will always have an effect on the end result whether it gets thrown out or not, which is, I admit, at the same time also its greatest weakness. So, in short, although I realize this method is far from ideal and I would personally rather see the method proposed here earlier about setting certain rules before allowing people's votes into the count, I think it's at least better than doing nothing at all.

[Raptor]

making a mimimum vote needed would be a great idea.

Making the vote wight more depnding on the number of anime vote cast could be great too as normally peoples who have seen more know what at they are talking about more so logically should be trusted more. unfortunately it could have the perverse effect of making peoples vote for anime they have not seen completely just to make their vote value increase.

An other way could also be to average peoples score, meaning that if i normally vote low then my votes score would be increased by a certain % to reflect that i normally vote low. While someone who tend to vote high would see all of his vote become a bit lower to reflect the fact that he normally vote high. the problem thought is that if you stop watching anime that you dont like all that much then your votes will naturally be higher so your votes would be unfairly dropped.

But in the end lets be fair the animes suffering for hate/love votes are rather few and are normally those that are well known so its not that bad for most of the db. Also there is the graph vote that tells you much more that the average if you are really using this to choose the next anime to watch.

so any change to the voting system isnt all that important.

[Elandal]

Maybe the easiest way to fix ratings would be to discard all 1's and 10's before calculating the average

[Ultima]

Are you suggesting that all AniDB anime ratings be at max 9.0 (meaning it could never go past 9.0 since 1s and 10s are discarded)? Sorry, but that's just too funny

Edit: Come to think of it, why even have a 1 or 10 rating, just let users use ratings 2-9. Then the cycle will start all over again

[rowaasr13]

Sometimes I think that it is a good idea to ban and discard any votes of those suggesting ideas of filtering votes. They just care too much about Top10, so they can't be unbiased and objective.

[DonGato]

As I said... first remove stats on main page and don't add then anywhere.

[Rafal]

Sometimes I think that it is a good idea to ban and discard any votes of those suggesting ideas of filtering votes. They just care too much about Top10, so they can't be unbiased and objective.

I couldn't care less about the top10, I care about statistical integrity which applies to every single anime out there, not only the top10. Anyway, if you don't care about statistics or the top10, why would you even care about someone's votes being filtered?

[Elandal]

Removing the top10 list might indeed take care of the problem more effectively than any other measure.

Half of the top10 series are also in most users list. Naruto would make sixth if the tempvotes were permanent.
Of the four other in most users list, Eva's vote distribution follows the fanboy-curve (just not strong enough to make to top10 - at 8.53 it falls 0.08 short of the top10), but in that case I do even agree that it's quite controversial and thus both 1 and 10 could be justified.

With Samurai Champloo it's too early to say whether it's in top10 to stay - it doesn't have the fanboy vote distribution, but it's so new series that it hasn't even been able to start in the voting wars yet I haven't seen it yet, so don't know about how fanboyish it was.

Kumo no Mukou has a nice fanboy voting graph, but it didn't feel like one to attract a fanboy crowd. With the low number of votes as of yet it would easily fall victim to even a small hate-attack, dropping from the list with just seven 1's (assuming temporary votes become permanent as they are now). However, at it's current position it shouldn't need to worry about attacks much - it's far enough from the battlefield still. Entering the battlefield in it's current low votecount might be fatal though.

Juuni Kokki has strong enough votecount that it's not as easy a target as Kumo no Mukou. It's vote graph is a little more balanced than eg. Kenshin OVAs (which doesn't really take much), and it has lots of temporary votes still waiting - votes distributed far from the fanboy curve. I'm guessing it's in top10 pretty much to stay, always below the fanboy-battles, so somewhere in the positions 4-7.

GTO, placed fourth, seems quite strong title in top10 as it's there despite the clear lack of large fanboy crowd (only 20% more 10s than 9s).

Kenshin OVA has a very strong fanboy vote distribution and thus may seem a little weak - until you notice the number of votes. Even without troops rallying to support it's position with a few extra 10s it could endure a fairly strong hate attack and still stay on the list.

FMA (current leader) seems strong top10-title. It has pretty much everything: strong, large votecount, fanboy crowd, and ARC awards to attract people even if it wasn't the top10 leader.

Now, if we just had to surrender two places in the top10 list to fanboy battle it wouldn't be that big a problem. But, what happens when new fanboy-powered contenders arrive? Old titles are NOT going away, they have high votecounts and average ratings, so they will stay on the list pretty much forever.

[rowaasr13]

Rafal,

all those filters are supposedly to fight again fanboys right? But do you really think fanboys wouldn't figure out how to change their votes to be accepted into equation? You'll end up filtering only perfectly "legal", but marginal votes.

The only reason why I care is because my votes could be filtered. That's all. I don't want my votes changed/ignored/averaged in any way. If you don't like someone's else opion on anime you think is trash or masterpiece - go complain to UN instead of inventing schemes of making everything average.

[DonGato]

I think we need a mixture of things.

- No AniDB top10 stats.
- Don't count votes from people with less than X complete and watched animes in their list (X > 20 IMO).
- Don't count votes from people who vote everything 1 or 10 (maybe difficult to achieve).
- Don't allow voting during a period of time (you register, you need a month or two to be allowed to vote).
- And any other needed/useful.

[Andemon]

- Don't allow voting during a period of time (you register, you need a month or two to be allowed to vote).

The rest are good suggestions, but...
I wouldn't be here now if I hadn't been able to vote when I first found this site -- Anime Hint was what kept me here, and access to that required votes.

Doesn't seem like a good idea to make the site less useful for new users -- if they don't find the site useful enough, they won't stay.

[DonGato]

Then make it a short period of time (days, a week...) but I think it's good.

[Ultima]

Good suggestions everyone Though, I'm still in favor of having a hard limit on the required about of votes instead of a time period. If we set it at 30 or so votes, that should be fair right?