On the reliability of increasingly ubiquitous online ratings

[clong]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fan ... s-ratings/

There was a fair amount of discussion about this issue back when we were talking to the folks at iblist.com about the possibility of merging the two sites. Despite the fact that our book ratings system has never really taken off here at ibdof.com, I find this an interesting an important topic.

[CodeBlower]

Forgive the belated post - I've been away..

If the author of the article truly believed this..

Over 7,000 people had reviewed it, and it had an average of 3 out of 5 stars. This is going to be a decent movie.

.. they are without hope -- or they have more money than sense.

Generally, movie reviews are the only thing that people will bother posting a mediocre rating for.

On those, I generally pick a movie in that genre that I've already seen, find a reviewer whose tastes match my own, and follow their other ratings to find something new to watch.

For shopping, people really only give feedback if they really liked or really hated a product.

In general, I pay more attention to the write-up than the rating.