So the post isn't about confessions -- it's close enough!
If I havent’ yet bludgeoned you, my fair readers, to death with biographical details (see my new and improved About Page), you’ll need to know the context of this story: I try to start every day with at least one episode of anime. It keeps me from falling too behind, andit helps my probably never-ending quest to get better at Japanese, as languge-acquisition works better when you’ve just woken up or are just about to go to sleep.
Yesterday thekittymeister was here for breakfast, and as we sat here, waiting on the tea to steep, I decided to dig into my old “mean to watch” files for a first episode of something. I didn’t want to watch Hayate s1, which we’re watching together, thekittymeister dislikes Shin Mazinger Z &c., and I forgot that we’re also watching Ouran and Genshiken. So, into the files I went, and lo! I found like six episodes of Rental Magica. Oh yeah, my thought was, I meant to watch that over a year ago, didn’t I?
One episode and a great conversation about what makes harem tropes, magic high school tropes, and Tenchi Muyo later, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to watch any more of the show itself (I mean to give it one more episode, so if you’re a rabid Rental Magica fan, relax — for now).
It did make me think of something, though. I wondered what I ought to rate RM on MAL, if I do — sometimes I don’t rate shows I don’t watch enough of. If I dropped it, you may assume my “rating” is low. It made me realize my tastes have changed, even if ever so slightly. A few years ago, or last year even, I might have liked RM more than I did yesterday. Maybe I would have liked it quite a lot.
In telling thekittymeister about some of the tropes involved (specifically, the eyepatch that — I called it! — hides a working eye that’s magic), I recalled Venus Versus Virus. I don’t believe I blogged about it much, but I enjoyed that show, what, two years ago? Just about, I think I watched it the same summer I watched Black Lagoon. Anyway. Even then I realized VVV wasn’t a great show, but I liked it. A quick trip to MAL shows me I rated it a six out of ten. But here’s the important bit: RM is probably just as good, but I like it less. I would like Venus Versus Virus less if I watched it now.
Changing taste isn’t weird, and not what this post is about. Not really. It’s about something similar though, the ret-conning that goes on in our minds all the time. With an altered set of tastes, I look back on an experience that was (if you’ll forgive the simplification) a set experience of, say, 6/10 (you see what I did there, I’m sure). Now it’s 5/10, maybe 4/10? I haven’t traveled back in time, I’ve just changed as a person.
Now, to use MAL’s arbitrary system some more — exclude the idea of ratings as a way of letting other people know whether they may or may not enjoy the show. Take the rating system as a personal one, not a public one. Should I change my rating of VVV?
Vote for no: it entertained me as much as it did, no questions asked. The time I spent watching it was qualitatively 6/10 time, despite how it would not be such right now.
Vote for yes: my opinion of the show, on its own, has changed.
You see where I’m going with this? How much of this whole debacle hinges on the work itself, and how much of it on me, on my subjective views? Long time readers know my answer: it’s all me, baby. But MAL, and other such services/sites/concepts, most of them fostered online, freezes in time, objectively, a subjective slife of our life that then remains, unchanged, throughout the ages. When that was the thought-out musings of great (or not so great) minds, it didn’t matter all that much. And because of the way novels/essays work, even if a thinker’s opinion changed over time, there was a new venue for that opinion — Joseph Campbell didn’t just keep re-writing Hero with a Thousand Faces all his life (though some of his more cynical critics claim that is exactly what he did, but I mean this literally; they’re all different books).
But now these services, such as MAL, give us one place to put our thoughts, and as they change over time we must either efface the old one, which negates its purpose as a record-keeper, or attempt to make work-arounds. I could conceivably review shows on MAL when I finish them and then, if I change my mind about them, write a second review, and date-stamp both.
This may seem out of character, but I don’t have an iron-clad (or less so) thesis to present. I’m just marveling at the status of our thoughts in an environment that limns them as concrete when they are as malleable as they ever were. Remarkable. And in that light I have to turn, again, to my header. What is it, exactly, to “like” something?
Tags: MAL, rental magica
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Your post title reminded me of this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v469/kanarazu/qyhmjt.jpg
Do you think that MAL, or anything that attempts to keep a record of how we arbitrarily assign numerical values to the things we consume would benefit from a timeline? So anything we rate would take on a more qualitative, temporal dimension more than the potentially-polarising absolute we make it out to be today.
@Owen S Haha. Nice.
Also, yeah, that would be pretty good, at least as a start. I genuinely don’t have an answer to the disconnect — in fact, there are probably a lot of people who don’t even notice it. But a timeline might be a good idea. I’ve been wanting MAL to have an option to see my shows watched list temporally, from now backwards. The ratings could incorporate there, perhaps. Or not, that seems to have as many problems as it fixes. Hrm.
I agree that MAL needs more chronological ordering options. But then, were I in charge of MAL, its geometry would be decidedly non-euclidean.
For my part, I suppose I’m somewhere between your yes and no votes, odd though that may seem: I’ll change scores to keep track of my changing opinions, but I usually restrain myself from changing them by more than one point, so there’s still some trace of the enjoyment I got out of the thing (or didn’t) however long ago I watched it. On that note, it also might be nice of MAL kept track of every score you’ve given each show/manga/whatever, so you could have a record of your shifting preferences and opinions in hindsight. Really, though, my way of doing things might just result in a more confused system of rating that’s even less help to other people than the other, more definite two; given that, for me, a 5 could mean “the initial experience was a 4, but, in hindsight, it doesn’t deserve to be down there with the other 4s,” or it could just mean “it’s between the 6s and 4s, quality-wise or personal enthusiasm-wise or both,” my ratings cease to mean much at all.
tl;dr I don’t like numeric ratings.
Re: Owen: that picture slays me.
Good stuff. I had rewatched Macross Zero I was totally like: “WTF WAS I THINKING GIVING THIS A 6!” (I had since given it a 9) MAL ratings are going to be fluid at least to some degree.
Oh, the MAL numbers question. How you disturb me.
I think I stopped caring what my MAL scores were. I assign them almost by whim, I almost literally use a four-point scale, and I always look at them and think they are wrong, even (especially) when I feel they are right.
I think I use a relative assessment–in both the senses that “the average score for this title on MAL is 7.12 and I loved it so I will rate it [8,9,10] to give it a boost up in average score according to how well I liked it” and “the aggregate average MAL score across the board is 7.06 so I set that as “average” and go from there”.
I think, in the end, I just make them up. Although I really would like a timeline of my ratings of series, simply because that might be a nice way to track how my tastes have changed. Too bad it’s kind of useless if it only starts counting from now.
Any time these ratings post come up I just gotta bump melative, and the relative rating system. For one, it doesn’t deal with this issue of arbitrary numbers since its a dynamic rating system and users basically make their own rating levels and consider titles relative to one another, while the backend ties in all the users’ various ratings into something relevant system-wide.
Secondly, the site already compensates this history type thing in experience, where changing experience from Wishlist to Current to Paused to Backlogged to Marathon to Complete is all recorded historically. With a few flipped switches this historical and meaningful ratings easily becomes a reality… MAL list importer? simple (since relative rating is a superset of fixed-point… it’s a relative list with 10 levels is all), but pretty much everyone is dead set elsewhere.
Anyway, the strength of it comes from handling 14 major media-types (art, anime, dorama, blogs, comics, film, literature, light novels, manga, music, periodicals, the stage, tv, and video games) in a consistent manner… fundamentally it is a system built for rating, cataloging, thoughts, streaming, and media interaction history with a development entirely open to advancements and suggestions (personal developer much?).
@owen suggestion taken for melative. word.
@Pontifus http://akameta.com/style/instructions.html what about that.
Finally, Cuchlann, the whole idea is that ratings should shift around in time, but as a ball rolls, all other points on the sphere should be able to shift (all other ratings). Dealing with a fixed-point system is restrictive (see http://aloedream.animeblogger.net/archives/264). Here I can create new rating levels between levels and shift items around fluidly (http://melative.com/RyanA/r/music).
I can go all day, I’ve been on this notion since 2007. Simultaneously, I’ve been limited/sidetracked by full uni schedules and vagabondism.
@OGT
I think I use a relative assessment–in both the senses that “the average score for this title on MAL is 7.12 and I loved it so I will rate it [8,9,10] to give it a boost up in average score
I used to do that on AniDB. :/
Too bad it’s kind of useless if it only starts counting from now.
I’m sure the journey continues.
Hey, I do pretty much like OGT!
….Which means I have nothing constructive to say! Damn you, OGT, damn you and whatever tentacles, pseudopods and other appendages you used to write that comment with.
I tend to change my votes, well, often. They fly all over the place, they’re political material, really, as shown when the LOGH club collectively decided to counter the troll ratings of said show by voting LOGH a 1.
You like what you enjoy. You find good what you can identify with. You find bad what you distance yourself from. These sentences are probably false slogans made solely to look cool.
This. Numerical ratings in general are influenced by more than whether one liked or didn’t like a thing. For that reason, I don’t put much stock in them as far as figuring out what I might enjoy, but I find them interesting as social measurements. Re: Ryan, the social element is the main thing that catches my attention with regards to melative. If I’m trying to decide what to watch/read/etc. though, I’ll pay no attention to numbers (whether the scale is fixed or relative, it makes no difference) and look for written reviews.
@Pontifus, Well, the way the user’s do the rating uses a less numerical system (simply levels of comparison). The only benefit might be if you want to read another user’s review of who knows what, a Monet, or whatever and you wish to see how their tastes compare. These ratings provide an underlying and accurate method to see how one’s tastes are comparable (I say accurate since it allows users to basically make their own rating system, if someone trolls their ratings its doesn’t do any good in any system).
One example might be, say two users graded a title the same value on a 10-point service. Well when comparing on the relative list, there will likely be divergence. Each user should be able to see the equivalent rating of another user, on their own list (level).
And for reviews, well melative doesn’t really care about them, it could always be added, but I for one advocate reviews on blogs, journals, professional sites, etc. The way melative can help with reviews is through associations (bookmarks) in which a bookmark can be placed on a given title and labeled review. From that, users can sort of “digg-or-burry” the reviews category, essentially yielding some form of mass approval of various reviews (again no numbers except hits/bumps/whatever it shall be called). The same can be applied for the other association categories, such as audio, video, news, whatever.
[...] interpretations I’ve seen. It doesn’t fit inside my “good” frame, but I like it — my enjoyment of it is entirely visceral, and while I do enjoy my intellectualizing, [...]