Filtering "hatevotes"

[hhaamu]

Hatevotes is what I call it when somebody votes an '1' just because he/she thinks the anime has a too high rating in AniDB and wishes to lower it. Perhaps a more descriptive name for this would be "overrated votes", but that's longer to type. Examples of this behaviour can be found in every anime listed in the top 10, such as Kenshin OVA and FMA.

These, IMHO, skew the real rating too much, and to quote the Voting Guide: "This grade is reserved only for the worst cartoons. There is probably nothing as bad as this in AniDB."

What I propose is that if an anime is deemed good by the general public (average rating of 7 or more), the interface would forbid voting of these hatevotes, and the user would have to reconsider his/her rating to match his/her opinion better. I also propose clearing these hatevotes off the database, simply by nullifying the vote.

Another option would be a rating system similar to what the jugdes use in ski jumping: 5 judges, discard the lowest and highest value, ie truncated mean. This would both filter out (most of) the hatevotes and also the "fanboy votes." Either of these would IMO improve the accuracy of the ratings.

Comments, opinions?

(edit: fixed links, anidb.ath.cx->anidb.info)

[Skywalka]

We had this discussion in the past and it was denied.

I agree to that. People have the right to vote what they feel like. If they think that the particular Anime is "the worst" then that is what they think - how can you judge whether a 1 is out of pure spite or to rig the votings? Next thing you do is you get rid of all the 10s because those people clearly did not see all Anime on earth to be able to actually vote a 10 which would then be something gaming magazines for instance do - a 100 is practially impossible there on a percentage rating.

That ski-jumping example is impossible to do without putting a heavy load on the server I think, and additionally what's the use of that? Every 1 and 10 cancel each other out with in the end leaving some. Then you calculate the median which in the end gives you - yes you are right - the same result as if you hadn't done it, for that's actually what you do while calculating the median. Doh!

So really - what's the use? If you factor in that maybe for every anime the same amount of people vote idiotic then it levels out.

AniDB is user driven, so let's not get rid of the user's input, ok?

Besides - if you have 2000 users voting for an anime, all give it a 7 except about 10 or 20 who gave it a 10 or a 1, or even if they all gave a 1 - what's the difference?

You should encourage people to vote more instead. The more people vote with their honest opinion the lesser the "bad" votes count. It's like going to an election. If you don't vote, you make the minority vote stronger, so if you have extremists in your country like the fascists here in germany, most of the blame should go to the people who stayd at home. Another example would be those intellectuals who sat at home on their fat asses while GWB got elected the first time but whatever ^_^ I am getting carried away.

[Elias]

Besides - if you have 2000 users voting for an anime, all give it a 7 except about 10 or 20 who gave it a 10 or a 1, or even if they all gave a 1 - what's the difference?

Let see:
1. Kenshin: 71 votes 1 from total 1775
2. FMA: 44 from 1332
3. GTO: 33 from 1360
4. Juuni Kokuki: 26 from 918
5. Cowboy Bebop: 37 from 1935

It is a BIG difference. And if adding to it unknown number of votes 10 made only to change position in TOP it is quite annoying. I would not reduce right to place any vote, but i would have the right to see REAL anidb users average vote (without those fan-boys top-messing votes).
Now all animes from TOP are underrated and positions in TOP changing from day to day making top unusable.

Like for anime hint is required some number of votes, why not set some requirments for beeing counted to official average (there could be another unofficial counting all users - same as now), like:
- at least 20 permament votes
- at least 3 different votes (only 10 and 1 is not enough, some variety is needed)

[Elberet]

<joke> How about requiring users to have at least one approved review in the DB before they can cast permanent votes? </joke>

[Skywalka]

Correct me if I am wrong but what is the "big" difference you are talking about?

Kenshin's rating is 8.52. If you factor out the 71 votes you'd get a rating of 8.83. FMA has a rating of 8.92 which is reduced from 9.19.

The changes seem to be in a pretty similar area, about 0.3 points. Calculate the others if you like.

Like I said, the ratings are ALL affected and as long as there are as many bakas for every Anime AND everyone else votes what they really feel like, the votes are still valid. If you disagree that's fine, it's hard to mathematically argue about something you feel is plain wrong. But still I think every baka has the right to voice his opinion for _otherwise_ and that's what my point is, you'd have to get rid of ALL his votes.

That's right - why should that person who voted 1 for Anime he does not like be allowed to cast other, legitimate votes? He was just proven to be a user who has improper judgement. If he votes 1 for FMA he should _defenately_ not be allowed to vote 9 for gto, kenshin, juuni kokki or cowboy bebop because we _know_ he's baka.

There ya go.

And honestly I don't think any "top 10" list on AniDB is worth anything because my taste is different. You are implying that the top 10 is something that should be cleaned and verified and that people are trying to change the outcome of the vote. Honestly you thereby change the outcome yourself, making the results kind of obsolete for they don't incorporate the opinions of all the users.

Additionally you might consider that people have different believes. If for instance an Anime would imply that a teacher is having an affair with a 15 year old male student, though in an 18 year old body, some people might find that offensive and vote the anime a lot lower than others - not because the anime is bad, the story is stupid or anything, but because they think that the story itself is offensive. That factors into the vote, and unless you can come up with a way to make everybody on AniDB vote the same way for all Anime you should not even think about cleaning up the votes. Because some people might not even give votes from 1 to 3 and 8 to 10 and just vote between 4 and 8. They also falsify the votes because they vote _different_. There are lots and lots of different opinions tallied in the general, overall score for an Anime and by factoring out some of them, you are altering the number and therefor making it invalid.

Now, if you simply mean you want to get rid of users who do not even think about how to vote - that might be a valid point - but there is no way to find out whether a vote is basically just a hate vote, a stupid vote, or a valid vote compared to other Anime the user saw and judged the now voted for Anime by. You'd have to find a way to get rid of bogus votes by putting in some crosschecks, a way usually used in surveys to get rid of bogus answers/surveyants by adding questions which's answers contradict themselves.

So unless you HAVE to vote 9 for Naturdo when you also voted 9 for Kenshin and you could cross check that, there is no way to alter the votes without falsifying them the same way the users who you think votes 1 maliciously.

Besides, in the end, you simply might end up with a list that has a couple of Anime switch places. What's the big deal here? You just proved me right that every Anime is affected. Maybe not always in the same way, but I repeat my statement - get more people to sign up and vote, just like those malicious groups/users do.

Final statement: I'd be in favour for changing the votes if there was a pattern visible, for instance a lot of new users voting low for a certain anime in a certain period of time. That would obviously be a campaign to ruin that Anime's overall score. Otherwise I'd say leave everything as is.

[Rar]

Something that slows down the register-vote-repeat (or at least makes it obvious) might be useful. I still wanna slap people who vote 1 for stuff of course.

Rar

[DonGato]

Kenshin's rating is 8.52. If you factor out the 71 votes you'd get a rating of 8.83.

IMO that's a big difference.

And BTW, it was denied or ignored?
That discussion started in an anime talk thread, it wasn't requested as feature IIRC. :/

Anyway, I would like to clean such votes as well.

[Elias]

Correct me if I am wrong but what is the "big" difference you are talking about?

Kenshin's rating is 8.52. If you factor out the 71 votes you'd get a rating of 8.83. FMA has a rating of 8.92 which is reduced from 9.19.

The changes seem to be in a pretty similar area, about 0.3 points. Calculate the others if you like.

Kenshin - i shortet TOP1: Rurouni Kenshin - Reminiscence, which has 0.33 difference, Rurouni Kenshin TV has only 12 1votes, which makes difference much smaller: 8.52 -> 8.61 +0.09

I calculated top 10 (what would be average vote if votes '1' would be removed). If it would be 0.3 for all titles, it would be not a problem, but this difference differs for each title:
1. 8.94 -> 9.27 +0.33
2. 8.93 -> 9.20 +0.27
3. 8.84 -> 9.03 +0.19
4. 8.81 -> 9.03 +0.21
5. 8.73 -> 8.88 +0.15
6. 8.71 -> 8.93 +0.22
7. 8.68 -> 8.76 +0.08
8. 8.65 -> 8.84 +0.19
9. 8.57 -> 8.71 +0.14

This makes real top 10 different (i didnt check next positions, but there propably are some titles which have higher average, but are dumped from
top 10 by those 1voters). And additionally: does none of the anime title deserves to be scored 9 or high? And if comparing titles which are affected by those 1voters (were sometimes in top10) and other titles the difference in votes would be less than should be (you do not see that some titles are really much better than others).

Something that slows down the register-vote-repeat (or at least makes it obvious) might be useful. I still wanna slap people who vote 1 for stuff of course.

If votes from those users were not counted to official average vote - would it be enough slapping?

[Skywalka]

yeah right, "totally".

Two pairs of Anime change places - 6th becomes 5th and vice versa, same as 7th and 8th place.

Sorry for asking, but what's the point? THAT is your "BIG" difference?

Wow.

For one thing - who really cares about which Anime is not first? It would have been an idea to maybe argue about the Top 10 because that's another logo that is displayed but then again if people really care about the Top 10 they have to visit the whole Anime listing and sort by rating and then they get the whole first page with roughly 40 Anime titles displayed - what's next? Arguing about making that list longer or shorter because right on the next page is an Anime listed you really like?

And moreover - what's the point? Do you really think you can narrow down all Anime to a number to compare them? I would rather go by genre and then rating so what's the big deal here?

I agree to only one main reason - users just registering to vote low on certain Anime - but you can get rid of those very specifically, demanding that ALL 1 votes to be removed is ridiculous and counterproductive.

[egg]

For those of you who want more reading: Slapping people who rate animes 1

[Skywalka]

Kenshin's rating is 8.52. If you factor out the 71 votes you'd get a rating of 8.83.

IMO that's a big difference.

And BTW, it was denied or ignored?
That discussion started in an anime talk thread, it wasn't requested as feature IIRC. :/

Anyway, I would like to clean such votes as well.

You might be right, I don't quite remember where it was. Could be.

Anyway, you have to change the numbers on all Anime, which results in a few Anime changing places, and that's no big deal.

Only Anime that are voted badly for in an unusal proportion towards the other Anime will get punished by not changing the votes.

Also I like to re-state my point. If you change the voting system especially those who want to rig the votings will find out how to punish an Anime. They'll vote a 2 instead, that's all there is to it.

You have to find the USERS who maliciously vote bad and ONLY do THAT, nothing else. But that would lead to a witchhunt and is kind of Nazi-like.

I really understand the whole thing but compared to the Anime review ratings notbody get's hurt here in any way. Good Anime are still at the top of the list so why fix something that is not clearly broken compared to spanning episodes and generic files? I know I just shot dead every possible discussion. Sorry. I was looking for a stunning argument

[egg]

More food for thought: 0000025: Avoid ghost accounts made for voting

For the record I am against filtering of votes from legitimate users, I added it to the hint because before temporary votes and blacklists some users marked anime they didn't want to be bothered with as 1.

If users were created just to make votes (although this may be hard to prove) then those should be handled in some way. Note, with the proposal above this may also affect users that had voted 10's on those anime, so the average votes could be lowered.

Also, another thing to consider. Maybe those users really did not like those anime, if they voted with your acceptable minimum (2 or 3), then the averages really wouldn't be that different. If everybody voted with your acceptable minimum though, what is the point of having a scale from 1 to 10?

All votes should be treated equal, if you don't like someone else's vote(s), get more people to vote. These things work themselves out after sufficient votes.

[gholovo]

Just pulling out a random comment:

And additionally: does none of the anime title deserves to be scored 9 or high?

Probably not.:

10 - Sugoi
This anime is something really big; it changed your mind, gave you a whole new perspective on life and broadened your horizons. If this sounds unfamiliar to you then you have yet to watch a truly sugoi anime.

We'd have to have a good number of people voting 10 to pull the rating above a 9, and very few people voting less. Since I don't think that the proportion of people who (according to the definition of a 10 vote) could rate an anime 10 is high enough to overcome the people who'd rate it as 7-8, probably no anime does deserve to be rated at a nine or above.

[Rar]

We had this discussion in the past and it was denied.

Yeah, I wondered how Skywalka had morphed this into a denied request, when it was just a slap and he was about the only person against it. I bet you look at his votes and they're all 10-s and 1-s.

At any rate, I think this probably falls into the good-idea-but-too-much-hassle pile along with other wonderful things (shadow files!) - so probably no exp gained. If the one-user-70-accounts-to-vote-10 thing happens a few more times though, some kinda slow-'em-down mechanism might be needed.

Rar

[Elias]

For one thing - who really cares about which Anime is not first?

And who votes 1-10 for animes to made them place little higher or lower in top? If top is so unimportant why placing it on main anidb page?

And moreover - what's the point? Do you really think you can narrow down all Anime to a number to compare them? I would rather go by genre and then rating so what's the big deal here?

But even when selecting animes by genre, those titles which are or were sometimes in top (problem with too much stupid votes rather affects only top) will then be allways over- or underratted compared to other titles, which were not in top (so there were not many fans of those or other titles voting 1-10 only).

I agree to only one main reason - users just registering to vote low on certain Anime - but you can get rid of those very specifically, demanding that ALL 1 votes to be removed is ridiculous and counterproductive.

I didn't demand to remove ANY of the votes, i only want to take average only from votes taken by 'trusted' users (where trusted can be defined by some requirments: number of votes, number of animes watched, how many animes has in mylist, how long user used exists in anidb).
In result it would propably remove most of those 1 votes, many 10 votes and some other. Result may be interesting and average numbers would then have better meaning to show valuable titles.