The quest to rescue the IMDb lists

[Torgo]

The main difference is: one category of films is extremely well regarded in a multitude of countries / all over the world by a large percentage of the population while the other category is generally extremely well regarded in its home country and considered mediocre or worse in most of the rest of the world.

No matter how often one brings up that argument, the people who refuse to get it will never get it.
Under this circumstances, well, 3 Idiots and Eskiya have exactly the same reputation as Forrest Gump. *sigh*

[tommy_leazaq]

I'd love to finish IMDb 1910s list (Currently seen 12! woohoo!). But just found out no one has finished the list. The problematic film seems to be The Children in the House. Is the film unavailable or something? If so, can we blacklist this film from this list or the blacklisting is always based on the number of ICM checks? Then can we increase the threshold to the number of the second least watched film right now (which seems to be 37).

If it is available, anyone can share online links? Considering it is from 100 years ago copyright should not be a problem right?

[PeacefulAnarchy]

I'd love to finish IMDb 1910s list (Currently seen 12! woohoo!). But just found out no one has finished the list. The problematic film seems to be The Children in the House. Is the film unavailable or something? If so, can we blacklist this film from this list or the blacklisting is always based on the number of ICM checks? Then can we increase the threshold to the number of the second least watched film right now (which seems to be 37).

If it is available, anyone can share online links? Considering it is from 100 years ago copyright should not be a problem right?

The film is on DVD: http://www.amazon.com/Children-House-Go ... B0030GOEKS The 1910s list is the only imdb list not filtered by ICM checks, so it has no threshold. I suppose we could make it have one, but the problem with the list is a different one than the others and I don't think enough people watch 1910s films for there to be a reasonable cutoff that makes any sense. The whole list is a shambles because of few imdb votes and across the board vote stuffing that imdb never cleaned up. Unlike the others where the issue is some films being unreasonably high with concentrated, or sometimes non-existent, viewership, here a bunch of films were voted down which is why half the films on the list have a 7.0 or below rating.

[tommy_leazaq]

If every other list has a threshold, we should have one for this also however low might it be.. Would 50 be a reasonable threshold? We'd only lose 3 films. (The Social Secretary - 43; Facing the Music - 37; The Children in the House - 17)

I know people here don't rate this list at all and couldn't care less about it, but I'd really like to finish it. A Platinum on a 1910s list sounds so cool..

[Lammetje]

If every other list has a threshold, we should have one for this also however low might it be.. Would 50 be a reasonable threshold? We'd only lose 3 films. (The Social Secretary - 43; Facing the Music - 37; The Children in the House - 17)

I know people here don't rate this list at all and couldn't care less about it, but I'd really like to finish it. A Platinum on a 1910s list sounds so cool..

I care about this list too. I have seen twelve films as well, which means that of all official lists I have my highest user rank on this one.

[Torgo]

If you ask me, give the people the low, reasonable threshold. Fans of IMDb lists have suffered enough at this point. ;)

[Cippenham]

If you ask me, give the people the low, reasonable threshold. Fans of IMDb lists have suffered enough at this point. ;)

Yes that's a good idea, some more people may then work on the list.

[Boaradin]

So I did a little research on 1910s list - my suggestion is to put threshold of 100 check, then majority of those movies with fake votes will be sorted out and movies that really deserve to be on the list will take their places on it.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

So I did a little research on 1910s list - my suggestion is to put threshold of 100 check, then majority of those movies with fake votes will be sorted out and movies that really deserve to be on the list will take their places on it.

The problem is that in this list the fake votes aren't being added to obscure films to boost their ratings, the fake votes were added to most of the popular films to lower their ratings. Also only 56 features from the 1910s have 100 checks. Already only 78 films are eligible for the 1910s list, so reducing it that low would seem inappropriate. The cutoff would become an imdb rating of 6.6. At that point may as well just take the most voted/checked films.

To take Children in The House as an example. Its rating is fake, but it's not inflated. It only has a 7.0, and that's because it was vote spammed at 7. A 7 wouldn't be enough to make the list if it weren't for all the films voted down. The real fundamental problem is that Cabiria or Posle smerti or Blind Husbands have 6.6 or 6.7 ratings because they were vote spammed at one. They're all inaccurate ratings. The ordering on the list is already meaningless. In short, if you trust the imdb ratings to be accurate, then no cutoff is necessary, if you don't then the list is meaningless regardless of the cutoff because all the films have broken ratings.

[Torgo]

But .. but .. people wanted to work on the list.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

But .. but .. people wanted to work on the list.

They can work on the list, I'm not advocating for its removal (though given everything I wrote I probably should). All the films exist and are available. I'm just saying once you start down the rabbit hole of trying to fix it you're just unearthing even more even bigger problems with it.

[mjf314]

To take Children in The House as an example. Its rating is fake, but it's not inflated. It only has a 7.0, and that's because it was vote spammed at 7. A 7 wouldn't be enough to make the list if it weren't for all the films voted down. The real fundamental problem is that Cabiria or Posle smerti or Blind Husbands have 6.6 or 6.7 ratings because they were vote spammed at one. They're all inaccurate ratings. The ordering on the list is already meaningless. In short, if you trust the imdb ratings to be accurate, then no cutoff is necessary, if you don't then the list is meaningless regardless of the cutoff because all the films have broken ratings.

Why would anyone spam 7-votes? I can't imagine what the purpose would be (but from looking at the ratings, it's obvious that you're right).

[Cippenham]

But .. but .. people wanted to work on the list.

They can work on the list, I'm not advocating for its removal (though given everything I wrote I probably should). All the films exist and are available. I'm just saying once you start down the rabbit hole of trying to fix it you're just unearthing even more even bigger problems with it.

I will resist the temptation to compare this to any other situation..

[joachimt]

Also only 56 features from the 1910s have 100 checks. Already only 78 films are eligible for the 1910s list, so reducing it that low would seem inappropriate.

But .. but .. people wanted to work on the list.

Torgo, the fact above posted by PA clearly proves it's pointless to set a minimum number of ICM-checks, right? At the moment we've got a top50 out of 78 eligible titles. You don't want to reduce it further, do you?

[Chilton]

Well I guess it's time to finally change every IMDB list to an ICM list instead

[PeacefulAnarchy]

Also only 56 features from the 1910s have 100 checks. Already only 78 films are eligible for the 1910s list, so reducing it that low would seem inappropriate.

But .. but .. people wanted to work on the list.

Torgo, the fact above posted by PA clearly proves it's pointless to set a minimum number of ICM-checks, right? At the moment we've got a top50 out of 78 eligible titles. You don't want to reduce it further, do you?

To be fair, it wouldn't really be a worse list, just one that is fully based on popularity and name recognition rather than mostly. It might be less meaningful, but the films themselves may end up being better, so I do understand the desire to change it, I'm just not convinced it's appropriate.

[tommy_leazaq]

To take Children in The House as an example. Its rating is fake, but it's not inflated. It only has a 7.0, and that's because it was vote spammed at 7. A 7 wouldn't be enough to make the list if it weren't for all the films voted down. The real fundamental problem is that Cabiria or Posle smerti or Blind Husbands have 6.6 or 6.7 ratings because they were vote spammed at one. They're all inaccurate ratings. The ordering on the list is already meaningless. In short, if you trust the imdb ratings to be accurate, then no cutoff is necessary, if you don't then the list is meaningless regardless of the cutoff because all the films have broken ratings.

Vote spamming/stuffing is there in every list. Do you think The Dark Knight's ratings is a fair distribution? I'[m not sure why do we need to worry about the fairness in voting anyway.

The very idea of having the voting threshold is to let more people complete this lists, and saving people from Turkish comedies and Bollywood melodramas. Why the pursuers of 1970s lists should enjoy the privilege and a pursuer of 1910s is left high and dry? It just doesn't seem fair that every other list has some sort of threshold while this has none, which prevents us to get a platinum on this list.

Any problem with having a threshold at 50? So what if there is only 78 eligible films. As long as there is 50+ eligible films, it should be alright.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

To take Children in The House as an example. Its rating is fake, but it's not inflated. It only has a 7.0, and that's because it was vote spammed at 7. A 7 wouldn't be enough to make the list if it weren't for all the films voted down. The real fundamental problem is that Cabiria or Posle smerti or Blind Husbands have 6.6 or 6.7 ratings because they were vote spammed at one. They're all inaccurate ratings. The ordering on the list is already meaningless. In short, if you trust the imdb ratings to be accurate, then no cutoff is necessary, if you don't then the list is meaningless regardless of the cutoff because all the films have broken ratings.

Vote spamming/stuffing is there in every list. Do you think The Dark Knight's ratings is a fair distribution? I'[m not sure why do we need to worry about the fairness in voting anyway.

The very idea of having the voting threshold is to let more people complete this lists, and saving people from Turkish comedies and Bollywood melodramas. Why the pursuers of 1970s lists should enjoy the privilege and a pursuer of 1910s is left high and dry? It just doesn't seem fair that every other list has some sort of threshold while this has none.

Any problem with having a threshold at 50? So what if there is only 78 eligible films. As long as there is 50+ eligible films, it should be alright.

This is different for two reasons. First of all, a majority of 1910s films are affected not just a few, and the issue is as much films being voted down as the handful being voted up. Second, because there are so few votes in the 1910s, the vote spamming makes up more than half the votes on most of these films, meaning that the ratings are all corrupted. Also, much fewer people watch 1910s films, so the margin of error on a cutoff is much larger and much harder to overcome without exposure. 1910s features are enough of a rarity that a cutoff makes it that much harder for anything to appear on the list that isn't already on the list, which doesn't apply to the other imdb lists.

Why do you want to be saved from Children in The House but not Going Straight or Gretchen the Greenhorn ? The imdb ratings for all these films are equally valid or invalid.

I agree there's something wrong with the list, I just don't see how this proposal fixes anything other than getting rid of this one film that is available on DVD but doesn't seem to be online.

Note: I'm not refusing to consider a cutoff, I'm just asking for better arguments that take into consideration the uniqueness of the voting patterns of the films in the list and the fact that there are already very few films eligible for the list. Explain why adding an ICM cutoff makes this a better or more representative list.

[Nathan Treadway]

Oh dear God! Looks like the Bollywood mafia has figured out IMDB's formula...

[Fergenaprido]

Oh dear God! Looks like the Bollywood mafia has figured out IMDB's formula...

No, imdb changed their formula somehow. I've got some data on my laptop at home I can post and explain. It's definitely something on their end, based on which films showed up and which didn't.

[xianjiro]

So, does the fact that I've seen 21 of the films on 1910s mean I care more or less than others? I'm working on it as part of the rotation and considering it's only 4 films away from Bronze, it should stay near the top of my list. Might get bronze in the next couple of months if another shiny penny doesn't catch my attention. (Right now I'm about getting ranks on everything but TSZDT under 400 - Zombies I'll be happy with 500, but not sure when that might even happen - people be competing on TSZDT!)

Yes, the IMDb derived lists (decades and genres) are all pretty problematic though I think the documentary list is probably the one I trust least.

If the Mods offer an easy 'fix' to 'improve' the 1910s list, I would most likely support it. However, given that most of us know the issues with IMDb lists, it's just not worth making anyone's life miserable over.

To be honest, I see the IMDb decade and genre lists as great jumping off lists for new users - 50 titles and often very well-known, easily available titles at that - makes it much easier for a newb to wet the DVD player a bit (or I'm sure find online if they wear an eyepatch and have a parrot on the shoulder and say "arrrrrgh" a lot).

If one wants a better quality list representing the silent era, we do have two others to choose from.

[Pretentious Hipster]

That 1910s list is complete garbage. The 2 silent lists are better but still lacking for that decade. The majority of films from that decade in my annual top 10 list are unofficial checks.

At least Birth of a Nation is not in the imdb list. Gives silents a bad name. I am in the minority for "liking" it but it's in a so bad it's good way

[Gershwin]

Oh dear God! Looks like the Bollywood mafia has figured out IMDB's formula...

No, imdb changed their formula somehow. I've got some data on my laptop at home I can post and explain. It's definitely something on their end, based on which films showed up and which didn't.

Looks like we need a new formula.

[Tasselfoot]

Oh dear God! Looks like the Bollywood mafia has figured out IMDB's formula...

No, imdb changed their formula somehow. I've got some data on my laptop at home I can post and explain. It's definitely something on their end, based on which films showed up and which didn't.

Looks like we need a new formula.

Man this is lame. It's only the Bollywood films, too... everything else stayed exactly the same, but they shot up the lists.

My suggestion to IMDb would be to limit any one country to 10k worth of votes. This would instantly prevent a movie that is only seen/liked in 1 country from appearing.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

Oh dear God! Looks like the Bollywood mafia has figured out IMDB's formula...

No, imdb changed their formula somehow. I've got some data on my laptop at home I can post and explain. It's definitely something on their end, based on which films showed up and which didn't.

Looks like we need a new formula.

This doesn't affect anything on the decade/genre lists, and there's no way we'll be editing imdb's top 250. It could also be temporary, the rankings of those films are already very different today from yesterday. It wouldn't be the first time imdb tweaked their formula like this and then went back on it.

[Fergenaprido]

No, imdb changed their formula somehow. I've got some data on my laptop at home I can post and explain. It's definitely something on their end, based on which films showed up and which didn't.

Looks like we need a new formula.

This doesn't affect anything on the decade/genre lists, and there's no way we'll be editing imdb's top 250. It could also be temporary, the rankings of those films are already very different today from yesterday. It wouldn't be the first time imdb tweaked their formula like this and then went back on it.

Yep. There was a day in October a few years back that documentaries showed up briefly, which was probably a glitch. This might be a similar thing.

In the past it seems like certain films were blacklisted from the Top 250 for whatever reason. Taare Zameen Par and Eskiya are the two most notable cases I can remember of being in the 100s in the list one day, and then off the list the next.

All of this new batch of films are from India, so it can't be an overall formula change, otherwise similarly popular films from Turkey and Pakistan would appear as well.

This is how it showed up when I checked this morning before work (about 12 hours ago)


And this is how it is now that I'm home again.


Since there's no consistency on which films show up, or even which rating or rank they have, I would guess that imdb de-blacklisted a number of films AND slightly changed their formula. The fact that the rest of the ranks didn't move around (they just all shifted down X number of spots) suggests that there wasn't a significant tweak to the formula. Let's sit on it for a few days and see what happens. Like PA says, they might abandon the changes just as swiftly.

And you can always complain to imdb directly

[ChrisReynolds]

No, imdb changed their formula somehow. I've got some data on my laptop at home I can post and explain. It's definitely something on their end, based on which films showed up and which didn't.

Looks like we need a new formula.

Man this is lame. It's only the Bollywood films, too... everything else stayed exactly the same, but they shot up the lists.

My suggestion to IMDb would be to limit any one country to 10k worth of votes. This would instantly prevent a movie that is only seen/liked in 1 country from appearing.

Even a simple weighting of US user votes to be equal to non-US user votes would sort this out.

Nothing can be done about the IMDb Top 250 list, but we should switch to iCM favourites/dislikes data for the calculated top 50s. It's clear that IMDb ratings are becoming increasingly unreliable, and it's only a matter of time before the Bollywood films start to crack our artificially imposed 1500 check limit.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Wait, THAT P.K. made it? The one that we made fun of a few months back and Lammetje used as a trolling avatar? Smfh

[beavis]

I'm all for having films that are actually good in top-lists, but you can't simply blacklist the entire film-output of a country just because their level of appreciation seems to be radically different from what you're used to. As a European viewer I also have a problem with a bias towards American culture and Hollywood cinema, as it is not entirely compatible with my tastes either... so stepping away from imdb for top-lists seems the only logical thing.

[xianjiro]

I'm all for having films that are actually good in top-lists, but you can't simply blacklist the entire film-output of a country just because their level of appreciation seems to be radically different from what you're used to. As a European viewer I also have a problem with a bias towards American culture and Hollywood cinema, as it is not entirely compatible with my tastes either... so stepping away from imdb for top-lists seems the only logical thing.

amen!

[albajos]

I don't think they blacklist the movies, but they do have a formula of how many 10/10 of the total number of votes are "normal". So if someone overvote a film, the votes will be removed from the total ratio.

Just look at Oggieloves: 12 000 of 14 000 is 10/10 rating, but it is in the bottom 100 regardless

imdb.com/title/tt1520498

[xianjiro]

damned baby mafia!

[Fergenaprido]

I don't think they blacklist the movies, but they do have a formula of how many 10/10 of the total number of votes are "normal". So if someone overvote a film, the votes will be removed from the total ratio.

Just look at Oggieloves: 12 000 of 14 000 is 10/10 rating, but it is in the bottom 100 regardless

imdb.com/title/tt1520498

Oogieloves is a different case of vote stuffing. It jumped from about 3000 votes with a rating of 2.8 or something, to 10000 votes and 8.2 or something. It's slowly settling down, but imdb didn't remove the votes. Someone flagged it on their complaints board, but nothing doing. You can tell because the number of US users + non-US users doesn't add up to the total number of votes.

With the Indian films, I don't think it's vote stuffing, just different appreciation of films. Bollywood is very productive, and India is a populous country, so for me it's just a numbers game; Having 25-35000 Indians watch and vote for a film from India is fairly straightforward.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

the number of US users + non-US users doesn't add up to the total number of votes.

This is true for all films, imdb doesn't require you to give a country. It's not usually as extreme as with Oogieloves though.

[mjf314]

With the Indian films, I don't think it's vote stuffing, just different appreciation of films. Bollywood is very productive, and India is a populous country, so for me it's just a numbers game; Having 25-35000 Indians watch and vote for a film from India is fairly straightforward.

3 Idiots seems to be popular in other countries as well, not only India: #12 Douban (Chinese), #20 Sinemalar (Turkish), #174 Kinopoisk (Russian). It also has a good rating on Daum (Korean) but the Daum top-rated list doesn't seem to exist anymore.

[Nathan Treadway]

With the Indian films, I don't think it's vote stuffing, just different appreciation of films. Bollywood is very productive, and India is a populous country, so for me it's just a numbers game; Having 25-35000 Indians watch and vote for a film from India is fairly straightforward.

That's very likely the case. A lot of these Indian films I'd never even heard of. It's no dfferent than all the average (at best) superhero films ending up on there at some point, but, most of them have very little to no staying power. I think the only ones that are "safe" are Nolan's Batman films, mainly because they are being propped up by Nolan fans as well. The lesser of the Bollywood films will undoubtedly have the same fate, as they gain more exposure to people outside India.

(Please note, I'm writing this fully aware that whatever IMDb did, they've subsequently changed back, and the Bollywood films that entered recently are gone. It's more of a general observation.)

[Fergenaprido]

Did something change with the way the imdb lists are calculated? I just checked the imdb source for the family, list and it's no longer in sync with the icm list.

icm: https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/family/
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/search/title?lists= ... iew=simple

It's not just that different films appear, but the order is also different.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

The imdb lists besides the top 250 haven't updated in a couple of weeks. I think it's because imdb changed the formatting on the search page.

[MMDan]

Have they been updated since then?

[PeacefulAnarchy]

Nope I've been updating the imdb source filters, so if you click the source link on the lists you can see the updated version on imdb, at least.