Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ratings

Where do those star ratings for movies in TV listings come from?

RotJ — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:08:27 -0800

Where do those star ratings for movies in TV listings come from? A lot of TV listings websites, channels, and menus have a 4-star ratings scale attached to movie listings. Where do these ratings come from and who decides how many stars are assigned to a movie?

The movie and TV show synopses are also identical for multiple TV listing services, so they must all be sourced from the same listings vendor.

Release the Stars!

mrhaydel — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:37:50 -0800

Where might I find a list of Publishers Weekly's starred reviews? I'm not always one to trust PW's judgement of every book I ever buy, but I will say that if I notice a book I'm interested in on Amazon has a starred review from PW, I'm at least a little more intrigued in reading it.

Which lead me to wanting to find a list of the books that PW has given starred reviews to, preferably one that's updated on a regular basis.

However, my Google-fu has failed me. It would seem that I could look through a number of reviews on PW's site, but, manually culling through them doesn't exactly get me what or where I want, not to mention the fact that I don't think they even allow (free) access to their archived reviews.

So, MeFites, does anyone know of a place out there to find such information?

Are there online reviews of Catholic parishes?

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:42:47 -0800

How can I learn more about Catholic parishes online? Is there a Rate My Catholic Church.com? Is there a way to learn more about individual Catholic parishes (in the US) - without going and visiting each one individually?

I travel a lot, and often want to attend Mass while traveling. When there are many parishes in an area, I would prefer to attend one that I feel more comfortable in. Is there a way to find out ahead of time things like how conservative/liberal a given parish is, how much they focus on social justice versus other issues, how welcoming they are to queer people, etc?

(Anonymous because some people I know would be bothered by the concept of some parishes being "better" than others.)

How can I help keep Pushing Daisies from being canceled?

photomusic86 — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:24:57 -0800

How can I help keep Pushing Daisies from being canceled? There is minor talk going around that my favorite show ever could be canceled for mediocre ratings, which can easily be attributed to the show's quirkiness and uniqueness This is the only show I have ever been truly excited for, and I want to help it. Any suggestions? And I am asking for your direct help: please watch it Wednesdays at 8/9c on ABC.

What sort of inaudible audio signal survives compression?

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:25:40 -0800

I recently became an Arbitron ratings person (which I'm not allowed to tell anyone, hence my anonymity). I'm supposed to carry a portable device that they say picks up "sound energy" signals embedded by participating radio and TV stations so they know what I'm listening to, even if the audio is compressed. What the heck is "sound energy"? Here's what really has me confused: This "sound energy" (their term) is inaudible to humans. But according to Arbitron, their gadget even pick up the signal on podcasts or streaming internet radio. But doesn't audio compression work by (among other things) stripping out all the inaudible portions of the audio? So what's left for the device to pick up?

And what kind of "sound energy" can be picked up by the device whether I'm listening on high quality speakers, or a tinny transistor radio? And the device doesn't even need to be near the speaker. They say that if my ears can hear the radio, even from another room, so can the device.

So how the heck does this thing work? Is Arbitron overstating the efficiency of their device, or is there some magic technology at work?

Olympic number crunching.

markkraft — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:02:59 -0800

How do you rate which country is "leading" in the Olympics? I ask this, because the latest figures are as follows:

Gold Silver Bronze Total
1. China 46 15 22 83
2. United States 29 35 34 98
3. Great Britain 17 12 11 40

results.beijing2008.cn

I assumed that the overall rating was based on 3 pts for a Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze, which would mean that China is at 190 points and that the U.S. is at 191 points.

So, what gives?! Is there something offficial out there from the Olympic Comittee -- or a historical example -- of how the rankings are reached? If so, who's in the lead currently by how much?!

Is there an equivalent of IMDB or Allmusic for books?

mairuzu — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:10:18 -0800

Is there an equivalent of IMDB or Allmusic for books? i.e. A site that lists all books written by a particular author with ratings, reviews, comments etc? English language based.

Slick shoes? ARE YOU CRAZY?

blueberry — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:51:31 -0800

Have American movie ratings, specifically the PG rating, gotten somehow weaker over the years? So I was on Netflix and came across the page for The Goonies...
Looking through the various customer mini-reviews I found a startling number of people saying how this shouldn't be a PG movie; that while it may have been a PG back then (in 1985), it would easily be a PG-13 by today's standards due to vulgar language and joking drug references (this despite PG-13s having been available back in 1985).

Is this right? Have PG ratings actually gotten 'weaker' (or perhaps "less tolerant" might be a better way to put it) in the last 20 years—that is, are the PG-rated movies that are made today able to show or say less than the PG-rated movies made back then could show or say?

(I guess it surprised me because I would've thought that if there had been any movement, it would have gone the way... that what was PG-13 then would have been thought of as a PG now.)

My only other thinking is that perhaps either

A: people are more aware today of what exactly earns a film a certain rating (certain words can be mentioned X number of times, if there can or cannot be references to drugs/sex) and are thereby thinking to themselves "Well, since it's PG I know legally they can't say 'damn' more than twice in a twenty-minute period", or

B: that perhaps these certain Goonies reviews were written by Netflix's various member-incarnations of Ned Flanders

aside, the Frattelli's were (SPOILER!) bastards, but was The Goonies really as bad as all that?

Which laptops will last, which will break? Online ratings anywhere?

salvia — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:47:58 -0800

Where can I find online laptop ratings about durability, repairs, or typical problems, the way Consumer Reports does for cars? I'm not interested in the reviews about the latest, greatest, and fastest. I want to know what laptop will let me do word processing, surf the web, and listen to music for the longest period of time without breaking.

Right now, I have a Dell Inspiron. The speakers stopped working. The earplug jack stopped working. The CD player stopped working. Then I hear another friend with a Dell Inspiron had their speakers stop working, and I started to wonder whether there were patterns in how, and how quickly, particular computers break.

What I want is a laptop version of Consumer Reports' Car Reliability Histories: "How well do cars hold up? Our reliability history charts give you the most comprehensive reliability information available to consumers, based on detailed ratings from 1998-2007" and lets you "find out which cars owners would definitely buy again." It has information like "jettas tend to have transmission problems" (I made that up).

Has this been compiled anywhere? Thank you.

I don't really feel like rating over 2000 mp3s all over again, so help me not have to do so!

Effigy2000 — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:52:32 -0800

I'm thinking of nuking my hard drive and reinstalling Windows XP. This means iTunes, which sits on my C Drive, will obviously be wiped and reinstalled. If I do this, will I lose all the star ratings and other individual settings I have for my mp3s (which are stored on another partition that I won't be wiping)? If so, is there some file in the iTunes directory or somwhere else that I could back up and add to my new iTunes installation so I don't have to individually rate every mp3 I have all over again?

ipod-to-itunes metadata syncing: help a girl out.

lockse — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:44:12 -0800

I rate my music on my ipod as I listen through it, and I'm trying to get several thousand ratings from the ipod back into itunes. It doesn't seem like itunes can do this for me. (That's stupid!) I found this script, which also has failed to work for me. Need help using the script, or itunes, or finding another alternative. The Synch script actually didn't work for me for weeks - i kept getting an error message after it ran for over an hour, and the operation wouldn't complete. But just this morning it completed, to my delight, so I closed and re-opened itunes, and then nothing - the ratings did NOT transfer into my library. SO I turn to you. Help a sister integrate portable metadata into her master archive! Am I using the script wrong? Is there really a way iTunes can gather my ratings from my ipod (without being entirely synced)? Is there another way?

Best Way to Organize/Display a List of Online Resources

andoatnp — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:54:05 -0800

Hosted (free?) CMS to contain a directory of online resources and organizations for a college student population. Is there something better than blogspot for what we are doing? Also, is there a way to allow people to rate each post? At work we are trying to create an online guide to showcase all of the online resources that our student population might be interested in. At the moment, we've been playing around with blogspot, where each organization gets it's own post, and we use tags to build a structure to make it easier for people to find what they are looking for. This isn't what blogger was actually built to do (we're not trying to blog) and I'm wondering if there is something as simple to use that would allow us to make this information easy accessible.

I haven't entirely ruled out using a wiki site, but I feel like it would be overkill for what we want. We are only going to have three people editing it and we want the display to be as simple as possible. Also, I'm not sure wikis would let us use tags the way we would like to and have people able to comment on each organization (i.e. post) the way you can with a blog.

Blogspot can do almost everything that we need, except I don't know how to do a rating system along with the tags, which we would like. Is there some type of plug-in/widget, service that would allow us to give people the opportunity to rate each post? Something like the 5 star system that all the video sharing sites have, but instead for individual posts on a blogspot blog?

[Right now we have the blogspot site up with the framework in place and lorem ipsum text for the organizations. Is it kosher to link to the site so people can have an idea of what we are trying to accomplish?]

Where can I find comprehensive ratings information for The Simpsons?

aftermarketradio — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:55:52 -0800

Where can I find comprehensive ratings information for The Simpsons? I have tried looking around for information on Simpsons ratings, but I have had trouble finding a definitive source for comparing the ratings throughout the year. Does anyone know of a good website with a searchable database for TV ratings?

Where did numerical ratings on works of music come from?

mikeyk — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:30:31 -0800

How long have we been numerically rating music and other art? Are there very early or trendsetting examples of critics using numerical ratings or star systems to summarize their reviews of music recordings? Did early examples use just numbers, or were icons ("Five blue stars!") in there from the start?

Doing some music history research, and was struck by this question. Thanks!

How, and how much, do the makers of TV shows get paid?

AmbroseChapel — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 15:32:02 -0800

How, and how much, do the makers of TV shows get paid? In a much-linked-to interview with the South Park creators, they say they have no problem with people downloading the show.

My first thought was, "but doesn't that cut into their profits?", but then I realised I hadn't the faintest idea how the creators of TV shows get paid for their creations, or how much. Or if it's even "profit" we're talking about.

Selling movie tickets is a business anyone can understand. It's essentially no different from selling potatoes. If people buy more tickets, the film earns more money*. Same with DVD sales. Sell a billion tickets at five dollars each, and somewhere along the line, $5,000,000,000 is changing hands. But how does TV work?

Does a TV series get bought outright for a flat fee, as in, Matt and Trey get a million bucks for a season of South Park and that's it, no matter how well or how badly it rates? And if it rates through the roof and the TV network makes extra money by charging advertisers extra, Matt and Trey get no more? But they use that as a bargaining chip next time around and demand two million? Or do they somehow get a financial share of the show's ratings success?

And what's the difference between something like "South Park", which is relatively cheap to make, and the creators can presumably do most of it themselves and deliver it as a finished product, and something like "Heroes" where a huge cast and special effects and location shooting mean that it costs millions per episode and the studio is making a big investment in your project before it can even get started?

_{* I'm aware by the way that Hollywood uses occult accounting methods so that no film ever makes a profit on paper and that just because you created a film that made a billion dollars, it doesn't mean you ever get a cent. That's not the point.}

Maybe it wasn't that good...

lpctstr; — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:44:02 -0800

Say you just come out of the theater and someone asked you to rate the movie. You say 9/10. But if someone asked you how a movie was 2 months later, you may say 6/10. I'm told there is literature that supports this - people are initially more excited right after an experience than when they think back to it 3 weeks later. Is there a psychology term or articles on this? I've searched for a while and had no luck. Am I using the right terms? I've searched for "initial excitement" effect and related keywords.

Dont let me loose my playcounts!!!

gergtreble — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:42:55 -0800

Save my itunes playcounts and ratings! Damnable windows has crashed! Well it had to happen. My laptop has crashed, windows wont boot. Oh the Dispair!

Im using Knoppix to rescue all the files I didnt have a backup of (thankfuly not many). And all is going swimmingly

But heres the crux of my question. Whilst im transfering files is there a way of rescuing the playlists, playcounts and ratings from my install of itunes? Is it as simple as finding the itunes DB file and saving it? Im sure there must be a way. Help me metafilter!

Family-friendly books and audiobooks?

rafter — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:16:34 -0800

Family-friendly audiobooks and/or book content reviews? (Have you read The Kite Runner? Never Let Me Go? Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell?) I'm going on vacation with my girlfriend's family and have once again been assigned the task of choosing an audiobook for the rental car. While it would be easy if it was just my girlfriend and I, her parents and 14-year-old sister complicate things. Last year's Life of Pi was perfect: hilarious, well-read, interesting, a "page-turner," and entirely appropriate for both kids and uptight adults. (As a bonus, the story was easy enough to follow that those in the passenger seats could nap from time to time.)

Ideally, it'd be contemporary fiction and something that everyone would enjoy (i.e. Harry Potter books would be out even if the sister hadn't read all of them). The books I listed on the front page are ones that seem interesting to me off the top of my head — but I have no way of knowing whether they contain sex scenes, excessive foul language, substantial drug use, et cetera. I'd say I'm looking for PG or light PG-13.

(Related: Is there any sort of MPAA-style ratings for books online somewhere? Even as distasteful as I find CAP reviews, such a super-specific breakdown of a book's contents would be perfect.)

I know that people of all ages read and enjoy Harry Potter. Just doesn't interest me, sorry.

AirCards?

AJ — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 02:02:01 -0800

AirCards . . . Has anyone done a real comparison of the features, peformance, and cost of the different cards and the diferent plans? I'm sitting in an expensive hotel paying an additional $10 for HS cable access per day. I've decided to get an AirCard but I'm not sure which is best.

What's the best method/software for storing/viewing ratings in ID3 tags for mp3s?

shinji_ikari — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 10:00:26 -0800

What's the best method/software for storing/viewing ratings in ID3 tags for mp3s? Hopefully somewhere out there in the Metafilter user base there are other people that are as anal as I am about something this obscure. I've got a collection of 9000+ mp3s that I rely heavily on being rated in order to build playlists. It took quite a bit of time to rate them all in the first place so naturally I'm quite concerned about making sure that those ratings are persistent. I initially rated them all in Windows Media Player 9 (I know, I know) mainly due to its easy of assigning 1-5 star ratings in the interface and the fact that it had a plugin that would write the ratings to the ID3 tag and then restore them to the media library if necessary. However, WMP10 doesn't seem to support that plugin and since WMP is otherwise pretty crappy (apart from its integration with allmusic.com) I'm planning on migrating back to the loving arms of Winamp. I've found some scripts I can use with ActiveWinamp to import the ratings stored by WMP9 into the Winamp Media Library so I seem to be set for the short term. However, long term I'm wondering what's the best way to make sure that I'm always able to use these ratings, independently of what media player I'm using at the time. It seems to be kind of tricky, since while the ratings field in the ID3 tag can have a value from 1-255, most programs that handle ratings seem to use the 1-5 star method and there are obviously multiple ways to map the values from the ratings field into a 1-5 star rating (the WMP plugin, not surprisingly, used a fairly non obvious approach). As a result, even when I examine the tags on the files in something like Tag&Rename the stored ratings don't show up. Of course this could also be due to the fact that each ID3 tag can have multiple rating fields, each rating tied to an id string (like an email address, for example) Some programs only seem to check for ratings that are associated with a specific string (for example in WMP it was "Windows Media Player Series 9") Basically the point of all that rambling is that I'm trying to find out if there's anything of a "standard" approach to storing ratings that will make them accessible in different programs without me having to write scripts or something to convert the ID3 tags to one style or another. Also, is there an ID3 tag viewer which will just allow you to see all the fields in the ID3v2 tag "raw"? Most ID3 tag viewers/editors I've seen don't always show every single possible field in the ID3v2 tag format, just the most common ones. I'd like to have a way just to quickly verify what's stored in the rating field in case I run into a problem with the rating not importing into some media player down the line.

Save my senile ipod

Could it be, El Guapo ... — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 07:14:15 -0800

My ipod (4G, 40Gb, monochrome, firmware version 3.02) keeps forgetting the ratings that I've given to songs. I'm trying to rate all of my songs. I have a smart playlist that contains unrated songs. When I start rating songs, I can see the number of unrated songs in the playlist. Then I rate 100 songs. The next day, when I refresh the playlist and go to rate songs, the songs that I rated the previous day are still in the playlist and are still unrated. Since I didn't connect to iTunes in between, I'm pretty sure it's an ipod issue.

It seems that I'm not alone:

http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?s=51ab3ee2e35b9ed03cc4ffc4d982eb2f&threadid=113108&highlight=losing+ratings

http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?s=51ab3ee2e35b9ed03cc4ffc4d982eb2f&threadid=71507&highlight=losing+ratings

However, I can't find any solution. I'm not sure if updating to the latest firmware (3.1) will help since I can't find a list of fixes.

Any ideas?

Online index of tv show ratings

rorycberger — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 16:12:00 -0800

I'm looking for an online index of tv show ratings (TV-MA, etc.) for various tv shows. Falling short of that, is there any sort of site that gives a guide to what offensive content may be in a given show? Ideally, I would like a place where I can go look up, for example, "The Shield" and see that it's TV-MA, and may contain coarse language, violence, nudity, drug use, and sexual conduct. I know this sometimes varies by episode, but a "worst case scenario" set of ratings would be fine. Also, the actual rating (TV-14, etc.) is less important to me than the description of which kinds of things are included, so if anyone knows a good site that keeps track of that (maybe a concerned parents type site or something) that would be great as well.

Manhattan realtor-rating website?

mert — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 17:43:15 -0800

Does anyone know of a website that rates realtors in Manhattan?

What's the best way these days to have multiple MT blogs on one page? Also, what criteria do you use to rate your MP3s?

keswick — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 21:46:38 -0800

Thursday Tech Two-fer:
(1) What's the best way these days to have multiple MT blogs one one page-- RSS or what? What's the best way to implement this?

2) What criteria do you use to rate your MP3s? For example, does a five-star rating mean all-time best of, best of the artists' work, best within a genre? What rating method do you find most useful?

Best Advice for cellphone & service (northern california)

keswick — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 19:53:05 -0800

I'm in the market for a new cell phone, and I'm trying to find some knowledgable reviewers (particularly of carriers and coverage). [more inside] Epinions used to be good, but it isn't updated much anymore. Can anyone suggest some sites with good (current) reviews?

Alternatively, can anyone recommend a carrier? I live in Northern California (read: two hours north of Sacramento) and the coverage maps indicate AT&T and Cingular have the best coverage for the areas I spend most of my time.