commit 06b21ab793de17aaba715c59d2fc2e4c6b77a7b4
parent 156cacee2340e62c0b4a8da506c47f83b82faa79
Author: Shimmy Xu <shimmy.xu@shimmy1996.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2020 21:31:11 -0500
New post: TIReD: A Personal Rating System
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diff --git a/content/posts/2020-07-17-tired-a-personal-rating-system.en.md b/content/posts/2020-07-17-tired-a-personal-rating-system.en.md
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++++
+title = "TIReD: A Personal Rating System"
+date = 2020-07-17T21:30:00-05:00
+slug = "tired-a-personal-rating-system"
+draft = false
++++
+
+As the pandemic gives me a change to look through my backlog of movies, shows, and books (read: anime and manga), I started to consider establishing a personal rating system to ease up writing (hypothetical) reviews.
+
+
+## Guiding Principles {#guiding-principles}
+
+Typical rating scales feature 10 or more levels, which is in my opinion way too wide a range to choose from, not to mention those featuring a 100-point-scales. Even the most common 5-star system gets cumbersome fast as soon as we take half-stars into consideration. What exactly differentiates a 6 from a 7 or a 4.6 from a 5.1? Higher granularity could be useful in aggregated ratings, but not so much from an individual reviewer's perspective. I much prefer the approach [s1vote](http://s1vote.com/) took: give the users fewer but more distinctive levels to pick from.
+
+My anecdotal evidences show that most online ratings converge around the 70% mark, a rating just as safe and useless as [predicting a 40% success rate for anything](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/06/29/this-one-quick-trick-will-allow-you-to-become-a-star-forecaster/). In other words, the lower half of most rating scales are underutilized: how often would you rate something one-and-a-half-star instead of just one? Besides, more often than not, I read ratings and reviews to find out about good shows, not the bad ones. It should be sufficient to only focus on "the better half": why would I sit through the entirety of a bad show and take the effort to give it a rating anyways? Think there is no half-star in Michelin.
+
+Summarizing the quality of anything with a single metric seems unfair. I want the rating system to be more expressive, capable of conveying the different aspects of a show that I find enjoyable. At the very minimum, an opinionated pick should be distinct from something with a more general appeal.
+
+
+## Rating Methodology {#rating-methodology}
+
+Enter the TIReD scale! The following uses anime/tv shows as the example here, but much of this methodology also applies to other art forms. A show is scored in the following categories, with sum of points forming the final rating:
+
+| Category | Range |
+|----------------------------------|-------|
+| <strong>T</strong>angible | 0-2 |
+| <strong>I</strong>ntangible | 0-2 |
+| <strong>Re</strong>visit-ability | 0-1 |
+| <strong>D</strong>iscretionary | 0-1 |
+
+Tangible aspects of a show include visual style, animation, soundtrack, CG quality, special effect, etc. To put it simply, how physically well-made a show is. Starting from a score of 0, a show would be scored a
+
+- +1 if the show is overall attractive to watch and either has very few shortcoming (perfection) or utilizes unique ideas/techniques to great effects (genius);
+- +2 if its physical quality/way of expression alone would be sufficient reason to watch the show, even if it gets a 0 in all other categories.
+
+Intangible aspects include story, character building, plot pacing, popular culture reference, etc. This quality should be relatively medium independent, i.e. I would enjoy a faithful recreation of the story in other art forms at least just as much. Criteria for scoring is similar except for remakes/adaptations with an clear intent to follow the original and when I have seen/read the source material: scoring would be based on the source material's intangible score adjusted downwards by 1 point, with at most extra 1 point adjustment based on quality/difficulty/effect of the remake/adaptation with in the range of 0-2. For instance, a mediocre retelling of a +2 story should only be awarded at most a +1. Remakes and adaptations probably have an easier starting point than original contents, so I wanted to adjust for "how good the show could have been", provide an answer to "should I still see this if I've seen the original", and pick out the "watch this instead of the original" shows.
+
+Revisit-ability, as the name indicates, represents whether I would want to revisit/rewatch the show later. This correlates more with my own taste or nostalgia. Think cult classics but with a one-person following. However, in event of remakes and adaptations, this point should generally only be rewarded to the best version of the work in my point of view.
+
+Discretionary point should be awarded sparingly and only when a show doesn't already achieve full scores in all other categories, making the possible maximum score 5 instead of 6. This is used as an adjustment for shows that I feel the current rating system doesn't do it justice. Common situations where this applies include but are not limited to:
+
+- categorical superiority: best of its kind;
+- quality in spite of subjective limitations, especially for older shows or those with a tight budget.
+
+
+## Format {#format}
+
+A TIReD rating is recorded as `X=T/I/Re[+D]`. For instance:
+
+- a show scoring 1 in tangible, 2 in intangible, 0 in revisit-ability, and 0 in discretionary would be recorded as `3=1/2/0`;
+- a show scoring 1 in tangible, 0 in intangible, 0 in revisit-ability, and 1 in discretionary would be recorded as `2=1/0/0+1`.
+
+
+## Self Q&A {#self-q-and-a}
+
+Some fragments of thoughts that I came across when designing TIReD.
+
+**Q:** How should tangible points for books be awarded?
+
+**A:** I'd say it's how good the writing is at face value, i.e. is it "literature" worthy. While I not really confident in my ability of identifying great works, but at least something like _Harry Potter_ is not +2 material for sure.
+
+**Q:** How should world settings built up in previous/related works affect the rating?
+
+**A:** World building actually fits into both revisit-ability (if the system/world is interesting and makes me want to read more about it) and intangible quality (whether the characters are memorable).
+
+**Q:** Should discretionary point be awarded only to works that achieve full mark in at least one of the first three categories?
+
+**A:** Probably not, some seemingly not-so-impressive works really show the passion/devotion/love/good faith of the production team. There are shows whose existence alone is a boon for its fans. Just elaborate the reason, no need to pick a specific category for this extra point.
+
+**Q**: How did you come up with the name "TIReD" (and name for the categories)?
+
+**A**: The first category to have a concrete name is revisit-ability. From there on it's mostly just playing around with words and initials. I almost settled on "TIRD", but ended up deciding against it thanks to [Urban Dictionary](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tird). Besides, not everything is sh\*t. 😜
diff --git a/org/2020.org b/org/2020.org
@@ -447,3 +447,70 @@ DigitalOcean上DNS记录的记录ID也可以通过[[https://developers.digitaloc
*** 繁星若尘
回到IndieWeb的问题上：越来越黑的域名系统和链接失效使基于HTTP的URI的稳定性难以保证。但是，如果我们使用IPFS或IPNS地址作为URI呢？简直完美！我们通过由数学而非FBI警告所控制的地址获得了（理论上可以永久持续下去的）对静态网页的稳定分布式访问。消除拥有服务器的需要还降低了拥有个人网站的门槛。HTTP协议已经存在了29年，而IPFS仅存在了5年。我不知道IPFS在接下来的24年中是否还会继续存在，但是如果是的话，我希望我们会看到一个或许更加混乱，但更加健壮、充满活力、多彩的在线世界。
+
+* TODO TIReD: A Personal Rating System
+:PROPERTIES:
+:EXPORT_HUGO_SLUG: tired-a-personal-rating-system
+:END:
+
+** DONE en
+CLOSED: [2020-07-17 Fri 21:30]
+:PROPERTIES:
+:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: 2020-07-17-tired-a-personal-rating-system.en.md
+:EXPORT_TITLE: TIReD: A Personal Rating System
+:END:
+
+As the pandemic gives me a change to look through my backlog of movies, shows, and books (read: anime and manga), I started to consider establishing a personal rating system to ease up writing (hypothetical) reviews.
+
+*** Guiding Principles
+Typical rating scales feature 10 or more levels, which is in my opinion way too wide a range to choose from, not to mention those featuring a 100-point-scales. Even the most common 5-star system gets cumbersome fast as soon as we take half-stars into consideration. What exactly differentiates a 6 from a 7 or a 4.6 from a 5.1? Higher granularity could be useful in aggregated ratings, but not so much from an individual reviewer's perspective. I much prefer the approach [[http://s1vote.com/][s1vote]] took: give the users fewer but more distinctive levels to pick from.
+
+My anecdotal evidences show that most online ratings converge around the 70% mark, a rating just as safe and useless as [[https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/06/29/this-one-quick-trick-will-allow-you-to-become-a-star-forecaster/][predicting a 40% success rate for anything]]. In other words, the lower half of most rating scales are underutilized: how often would you rate something one-and-a-half-star instead of just one? Besides, more often than not, I read ratings and reviews to find out about good shows, not the bad ones. It should be sufficient to only focus on "the better half": why would I sit through the entirety of a bad show and take the effort to give it a rating anyways? Think there is no half-star in Michelin.
+
+Summarizing the quality of anything with a single metric seems unfair. I want the rating system to be more expressive, capable of conveying the different aspects of a show that I find enjoyable. At the very minimum, an opinionated pick should be distinct from something with a more general appeal.
+
+*** Rating Methodology
+Enter the TIReD scale! The following uses anime/tv shows as the example here, but much of this methodology also applies to other art forms. A show is scored in the following categories, with sum of points forming the final rating:
+
+| Category | Range |
+|----------------------------------+-------|
+| <strong>T</strong>angible | 0-2 |
+| <strong>I</strong>ntangible | 0-2 |
+| <strong>Re</strong>visit-ability | 0-1 |
+| <strong>D</strong>iscretionary | 0-1 |
+
+Tangible aspects of a show include visual style, animation, soundtrack, CG quality, special effect, etc. To put it simply, how physically well-made a show is. Starting from a score of 0, a show would be scored a
+- +1 if the show is overall attractive to watch and either has very few shortcoming (perfection) or utilizes unique ideas/techniques to great effects (genius);
+- +2 if its physical quality/way of expression alone would be sufficient reason to watch the show, even if it gets a 0 in all other categories.
+
+Intangible aspects include story, character building, plot pacing, popular culture reference, etc. This quality should be relatively medium independent, i.e. I would enjoy a faithful recreation of the story in other art forms at least just as much. Criteria for scoring is similar except for remakes/adaptations with an clear intent to follow the original and when I have seen/read the source material: scoring would be based on the source material's intangible score adjusted downwards by 1 point, with at most extra 1 point adjustment based on quality/difficulty/effect of the remake/adaptation with in the range of 0-2. For instance, a mediocre retelling of a +2 story should only be awarded at most a +1. Remakes and adaptations probably have an easier starting point than original contents, so I wanted to adjust for "how good the show could have been", provide an answer to "should I still see this if I've seen the original", and pick out the "watch this instead of the original" shows.
+
+Revisit-ability, as the name indicates, represents whether I would want to revisit/rewatch the show later. This correlates more with my own taste or nostalgia. Think cult classics but with a one-person following. However, in event of remakes and adaptations, this point should generally only be rewarded to the best version of the work in my point of view.
+
+Discretionary point should be awarded sparingly and only when a show doesn't already achieve full scores in all other categories, making the possible maximum score 5 instead of 6. This is used as an adjustment for shows that I feel the current rating system doesn't do it justice. Common situations where this applies include but are not limited to:
+- categorical superiority: best of its kind;
+- quality in spite of subjective limitations, especially for older shows or those with a tight budget.
+
+*** Format
+A TIReD rating is recorded as =X=T/I/Re[+D]=. For instance:
+- a show scoring 1 in tangible, 2 in intangible, 0 in revisit-ability, and 0 in discretionary would be recorded as =3=1/2/0=;
+- a show scoring 1 in tangible, 0 in intangible, 0 in revisit-ability, and 1 in discretionary would be recorded as =2=1/0/0+1=.
+
+*** Self Q&A
+Some fragments of thoughts that I came across when designing TIReD.
+
+*Q:* How should tangible points for books be awarded?
+
+*A:* I'd say it's how good the writing is at face value, i.e. is it "literature" worthy. While I not really confident in my ability of identifying great works, but at least something like /Harry Potter/ is not +2 material for sure.
+
+*Q:* How should world settings built up in previous/related works affect the rating?
+
+*A:* World building actually fits into both revisit-ability (if the system/world is interesting and makes me want to read more about it) and intangible quality (whether the characters are memorable).
+
+*Q:* Should discretionary point be awarded only to works that achieve full mark in at least one of the first three categories?
+
+*A:* Probably not, some seemingly not-so-impressive works really show the passion/devotion/love/good faith of the production team. There are shows whose existence alone is a boon for its fans. Just elaborate the reason, no need to pick a specific category for this extra point.
+
+*Q*: How did you come up with the name "TIReD" (and name for the categories)?
+
+*A*: The first category to have a concrete name is revisit-ability. From there on it's mostly just playing around with words and initials. I almost settled on "TIRD", but ended up deciding against it thanks to [[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tird][Urban Dictionary]]. Besides, not everything is sh*t. 😜