3 ms·

My wife and I experienced the same disappointments on goodreads, and many of the same flaws exist in other media rating/cataloging sites. We're attempting to so

My wife and I experienced the same disappointments on goodreads, and many of the same flaws exist in other media rating/cataloging sites. We're attempting to solve this problem by creating a centralized collaborative media database that we always wished existed. Without any marketing yet, https://rate.house https://rate.house currently only has ~100 users, but we'd love to hear HN's input and know if we're heading in the right direction.

bscphil 7y ago
I think you've got a really nice design going on already, and basic features seem to work without JS, so that's nice. I also like that you haven't polluted it with ads (I'm far more likely to donate to sites that don't have ads). Two thoughts: 1. I think I would find a 5 star rating system too constraining. My opinions in most areas have more gradations than just 0-5. 0-100 would be entirely too many. I think IMDB's 10 point scale is really the main reason why I've stuck with that for movies. On the other hand I prefer to only thumbs up / thumbs down books, so I'm really not sure you can do anything about this in a way that would make everyone happy. 2. I think there's either a bug with your weighted average or else you're ranking using something like "we're 90% confident the true rating is at least x". But this confidence level seems entirely too high for the number of users you have on your site. For example Avengers: Endgame appears on #13 on this page: https://rate.house/chart/movie https://rate.house/chart/movie despite the fact that it has a rating of only 3.64. I would probably lower the confidence required for now, and if you 10x or 100x your users you can raise it again. 3. Would be nice to know a bit more about what features it has on the home page before signing up. Can I import my ratings from other sites? Can I export my data in some usable format like CSV? Can the information database the users create for media entries be downloaded by users? (Even IMDB offers this.) Can I get recommendations from the site once I've rated enough items? Can I get music recommendations based on my movie ratings? (That would be cool.)

bscphil 7y ago

I think you've got a really nice design going on already, and basic features seem to work without JS, so that's nice. I also like that you haven't polluted it with ads (I'm far more likely to donate to sites that don't have ads). Two thoughts: 1. I think I would find a 5 star rating system too constraining. My opinions in most areas have more gradations than just 0-5. 0-100 would be entirely too many. I think IMDB's 10 point scale is really the main reason why I've stuck with that for movies. On the other hand I prefer to only thumbs up / thumbs down books, so I'm really not sure you can do anything about this in a way that would make everyone happy. 2. I think there's either a bug with your weighted average or else you're ranking using something like "we're 90% confident the true rating is at least x". But this confidence level seems entirely too high for the number of users you have on your site. For example Avengers: Endgame appears on #13 on this page: https://rate.house/chart/movie https://rate.house/chart/movie despite the fact that it has a rating of only 3.64. I would probably lower the confidence required for now, and if you 10x or 100x your users you can raise it again. 3. Would be nice to know a bit more about what features it has on the home page before signing up. Can I import my ratings from other sites? Can I export my data in some usable format like CSV? Can the information database the users create for media entries be downloaded by users? (Even IMDB offers this.) Can I get recommendations from the site once I've rated enough items? Can I get music recommendations based on my movie ratings? (That would be cool.)