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When I rate things it's usually an "overall" rating, rather than weigh one dimension disproportionately. Which is why I would almost never grant a 5-star rating to something. But I'll dish out 2, 3 and some 4s regularly.

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That is only you, I can't use that information. Like you might be taking into consideration "Special effects were 3 on their own". Whereas my Mum would never even consider that as a thing which influences the rating.

I understand that. It's not perfect and I don't think the assumption is that it was but more that overall people as a group will smooth those rough edges. In other words the majority will compensate for the minority who use the ratings system differently.

For all the faults of the old system, the new one is even worse. Like Pandora, I'll probably just never rate things or mostly just give them a down vote if they don't crack a threshold of goodness.

Which is fine, because the recommendation engine should be using your history, not someone else's. They gave it a 5, you have it a 1. They will see recommendations for similar movies and you won't.

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