User ratings – The story behind The Shawshank Redemption

Among all movies at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) The Shawshank Redemption has got the highest average rating. The movie have got 9.3 of 10 after 997 950 voters have give its opinion (checked in the summer of 2013).

It’s interesting to see how the rating is distributed and you can see it on the picture below:

user ratings

When people are voting in the way of contributing to an already existing ranking they often choose ratings that influence the average rating instead for just give the vote that represent their opinion. Like for example if the ratings are 6 of 10 and they think the movie deserve 8 of 10 they give it a 10 of 10 in the attempt to influence. Even if The Shawshank Redemption rating at IMDB may be the perfect example the 1 and 10 ratings are assumingly overrepresented, especially the 2,3 per cent on 1 ratings as a reaction to the high average rank.

Perhaps more surprisingly are the demographic breakdown of the same movie, see picture below:

user ratings demographics

The consensus is kind of big between ages under 18 (9.5 of 10) and over 50 (8.8 of 10).

GreatestMovies.org doesn’t make use of user rating. That is not because anything is wrong about it, but because you can already find a tremendous source of it at the movie site mention above. It is also based on an assumption that many people will find value in estimations of movies from one or a few persons with backgrounds of film studies and who watching movies in the perspective of a film critic.

None of the solutions must be the best way; the important thing is that you should be able to find different kinds of movie sites that present movies to watch.