• Feature Request

  • Please implement a better and more sophisticated rating system

dango789 This is something that I and others on the team have talked about before here in the forum many times, but it's not info that's observable to users, so I can also totally see where some folks are coming from when they complain about the "like" button being seemingly the only metric.

Except that we have a lot of data when it comes to scene performance, and I mean...a LOT of data. I can't overstate how much of a data-driven company SLR is. And the correlation between "Likes" and every other metric is direct: a scene with more likes will (on average) have more downloads, more time streamed, etc. etc. etc.

I've seen people make great points about "likes" just being a tool to remind them to check out a video later, or that likes are given just based on nothing else but a first impression of the scene or based on nothing but the performers/cast, or etc. etc. etc. And that all certainly factors in, but it doesn't change the data. And the data says quantity of likes = overall popularity of a scene.

Not saying likes = actual success of a scene. That's a lot harder to gauge. Cost of the scene, new subscribers brought in, and a hundred other factors.

      dango789 slr tracks every second of every video watched and that gives significantly better insights than a simple like button but it doesnt tell them WHY something is more popular than something else. to do that they have to draw their own conclusions based on the data and those conclusions can be totally wrong since correlation and causation are two entirely different things. being able to gather better feedback on the WHY is what a more sophisticated rating system helps with.

          spacepirate You're right that the insights aren't as accurate as a scientific experiment in a controlled setting with a sample size of thousands. However, we can pretty reliably identify trends.

          Imagine a performer with 20 videos from 5 different studios. Now imagine that in 18 of those 20 videos, the videos are among the best compared to other videos by the same studio, released around the same time. You can use either likes or total minutes watched as your metric.

          While I wouldn't say it's scientific fact, I'd be pretty confident to suggest that she's a popular performer. Of course, there is a very slight chance that each of those 18 videos were an outlier. Perhaps, there just happened to be a better director who filled in that day and didn't shoot for the studio again. Perhaps they featured camera angles that they don't normally feature. Maybe the setting/storyline was much better than the studios' usual ones. While you can't rule it out, I would argue that it's unlikely to happen 18 different times out of 20.

          If we extend this to genres and settings, we can be even more confident. There are probably thousands of teens vs milf videos that we can compare. For the same studio, same director, same camera angles, how well do teens perform when compared to milfs? What about if a scene features a nurse costume?

              dango789 there are countless factors that contribute to how well a scene is liked and some are of greater importance than others. the choice of female performer is almost certainly the most important factor and you could easily draw reliable conclusions based on the number of likes alone for something like that. but for other less important factors like the best camera angle or distance for a particular position it may be difficult or impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions even with a sizable library of scenes and detailed tracking of precisely what people are watching.

                dango789 One huge advantage of having a simple one-click feedback system is that you will get a lot more responses. And a larger sample size means more reliable data.

                Does anybody actually read what other people write? We already discussed above that a two tier system would be best. Simple likes for those who want to give a fast response, more detailed system for those who want to give detailed feedback.

                There is ZERO argument against that actually.

                justsomedude101 And the data says quantity of likes = overall popularity of a scene.

                Nobody here actually denied that...

                    dango789 While I wouldn't say it's scientific fact, I'd be pretty confident to suggest that she's a popular performer.

                    Of course you can identify the most popular perfomers, that's not THAT hard. Good luck with performers who haven't shot 20 scenes already. How do you measure the popularity of a newbie who has perhaps only shot one scene yet? Your system only works with a lot of comparable data and there often isn't that much data to begin with. Then your system simply fails completely.

                    So yeah, your system works for those who are already well established. Congrats for finding out that there are famous. Maybe that's the reason why they were often booked in the first place...

                        we are going to separate likes and dislikes for scenes and comments and show each separately.

                        I think we can implement advanced rating as it's an easy thing to do. It doesn't seem to get that many likes though

                          LordCrash That's a great question. Many of the highest performing videos are VR hardcore debuts after all, so it's important to be able to identify promising newbies. Luckily there are techniques for that as well.

                          1) Were they well received in softcore porn?
                          If they've previously shot softcore porn, how popular were they compared to other performers shot by the same studio? E.g. Agatha Vega and Eve Sweet both shot softcore videos prior to their SLR Original scenes. From those videos, there were already clear indications that their hardcore debuts were going to be hits.

                          2) Were they well received in 2D porn?
                          Have they previously shot 2D porn? How well received were they compared to other performers shot by the same studio?

                          3) How well received is their look in general?
                          You can use the method I previously outlined to get a sense of the characteristics the SLR audience likes. Teens vs milfs, blondes vs brunettes, natural vs enhanced etc. You can also look at the top performing videos and the types of performers featured. Then you make a judgement call - you take a calculated risk based their similarities to the best performing pornstars and general preferences of the SLR audience. After you release the video, you'll get data to confirm whether you made the right call.

                              My main issue with the current likes are as discussed in a previous thread more that studios look at it and reject any criticism in the comments, because many people like it and few comment/complain so majority must be right. A single like-metric may give you the mainstream popular results but it also means it's the lowest common denominator result. If you want to target that it's going to be similar to TV where everything becomes shitty realityTV because that's what stats said is watched the most.

                              At least some better split-up way of giving a rating for different aspects of a scene would be great. At the basic minimum split up the regular likes for a scene and likes for each pornstar in a scene so popular models won't undeservingly cause high amount of likes as much on technically badly shot scenes.

                              Also I still believe a visual marker for having downloaded/watched a scene so people won't have to use the like-button for that would improve results. Pretty sure this is already tracked anyway.

                              And I agree with others here that some sort of additional feedback would be nice for scene specific things like story/direction, camera angles, lighting. Perhaps that way regular critique in comments will be taken more seriously as well. This is more to let studios know where to improve upon, not to determine what's the most mainstream popular thing.

                              dango789 You're missing the point. The question wasn't whether a certain girl is well received or not, the question is that a simple likes system gives you zero insight into what actually caused people to like or dislike a scene. So, you shot a scene with a new girl from whom you thought she would be pretty popular. Scene receives only medium likes range. So what's your conclusion based on the simple likes system? Was the girl not well perceived despite your market research in advance? Or was the girl well received but the scene was just boring? Or did the scene had technical difficulties and so people didn't like it despite liking the girl. Well, we just don't know.

                              It's a mystery to me why you defend the simple likes system so much when there are clearly better options on the table. A combination of the likes system with a more sophisticated rating system would be a win-win situation for everyone. It's simply non-sensical to be in opposition to that. Only argument against a system like that are the costs for its development and implementation. So I'd understand if @doublevr didn't want to do it. I don't understand that customers or fans are against it. If offers more while taking away nothing.

                                  dango789 Your system works for huge sites like Youtube, Facebook, etc. with a much larger dataset and not so well in a smaller environment where some girls only have a few scenes or if you don't want a bad director to film 20-30 scenes before you have enough data to find out that he does a bad job.

                                  Another problem is that this only shows you the taste of the mainstream, but doesn't work to find what works for smaller groups or fetishes, where the dataset is much smaller. For example I hate typical US-Porn and pick my subscriptions by authenticity. If a studio/site wants to keep me as a user they have to provide that kind of content regularly and not just the stuff the mainstream likes. You won't find out about people like me with some standard database queries, that only check for overall popularity, but I would tell you what I like with a better rating system. You may find out about users groups you didn't even think about when you created your standard queries.

                                    LordCrash The dangers are:

                                    1) We may end up making decisions based on unreliable data - a skewed data set with a small sample size.
                                    To illustrate my point, look at the number of likes compared to the number of comments below:

                                    Even the less popular videos consistently get around a hundred likes or more. But half the videos don't even have a single comment. The more complicated you make it for users to give feedback (e.g. by asking users to type a comment or by asking for 9 different scores per video), the fewer responses you will have. Your responses will also likely be less representative of the SLR community as a whole. It will gravitate towards those who spend the most time on SLR, or very likely mainly a few hardcore users.

                                    And there lies the risk - and it applies even more so to new models with just one video. What if you cast a milf and you only get 1 response from somebody who's not into milfs? Or what if one hardcore user hates your storyline/costume/camera angle but most other people couldn't be bothered rating? Now you are pressured to make decisions based on a very limited sample size.

                                    The alternative is feedback from hundreds or thousands of users. Better yet, if you have access to total time watched, you'll be able to see how well the new model/storyline/costume/camera angle performed across every single person who viewed your video.

                                    This is especially a concern for smaller groups/fetishes. E.g. @someoneX isn't into typical US porn but instead prefers studios that shoot more authentically. But users who prefer typical US porn are going to rate someoneX's favourite scenes poorly, even though they're not the niche that the studios are targeting. So now the niche studios get poor scores and are pressured to move away from shooting the scenes that their audience likes.

                                    Instead of relying on feedback from a few users who may not be into your niche, you can effectively filter out those who aren't your target audience using likes/total time watched. Those who aren't into foot fetish simply won't like/watch the video. But you'll get hundreds of people who do.

                                    Then you can check how your videos compare to others that serve the same niche. If others consistently perform better, what are they doing differently?

                                    2) It could clutter up the UI

                                    Final thoughts
                                    Anyway, you clearly have strong opinions about this as do I. I don't think there's much point discussing this further. As long as we take the reviews with a grain of salt and the UI doesn't get cluttered, then it's not a problem.

                                        dango789 There are imho easy solutions to prevent the dangers you mentioned:

                                        1. Don't change the way likes work today but add another feedback option.
                                        2. Don't force users to do a detailed rating.
                                        3. Make a new tab for detailed reviews so that it doesn't cluster the existing GUI.
                                        4. Don't show the results of the detailed rating until you gathered a minimum amount of results, e.g. 10 or 20.

                                            LordCrash Those solutions help with the UI issue, but they still don't solve the core problems:

                                            1) You cast a new model: a milf. It gets an average casting score of 3 out of 10. A grand total of 10 people voted - 7 of which aren't into milfs at all. The three others exclusively watch milf videos and were ecstatic. The studio decides to never cast the model again.

                                            This can also easily apply to other model niches.

                                            2) You are a niche studio that caters for a specific audience. Maybe you shoot realistic porn, like the ones that @someoneX likes. 20 people give detailed votes - 15 of which prefers typical US porn. The niche studio decides to stop shooting in the style that their original audience liked, and becomes more of a mainstream studio.

                                                dango789 whats the problem? if a new model got a low rating then she just wasnt popular with the majority of viewers. nothing wrong with that. if a model is polarizing then the studios would still be able to see that some viewers really loved her based on the distribution of ratings.

                                                    dango789 1) You cast a new model: a milf. It gets an average casting score of 3 out of 10. A grand total of 10 people voted - 7 of which aren't into milfs at all. The three others exclusively watch milf videos and were ecstatic. The studio decides to never cast the model again.

                                                    That's a possible but imho rather unlikely scenario since most people who are not into MILFs wouldn't watch and rate the scene in the first place. Usually people only rate the stuff they actually consume, no matter if it's porn or the stuff you buy on amazon. But for big mainstream studios it might happen that some models score lower than others, that's just the game. Some scenes have a lot less likes than other scenes from the same studio. So that's not a new idea, it's also happening, only with less detailed information available from the data.
                                                    And don't get me wrong, there are no automatic conclusions to be drawn from a detailed rating. You should avoid simple conclusions based on a single data point like "Model X had a low rating so we never cast her again." no matter which rating system you use. There can always be reasons why the model scored low. Your final conclusion should include all the data you might possibly have, including ratings, watch times, comments and of course also strategical thoughts like offering new content to the site that might now work that well with the majority of your existing customber base but might draw new people to your site.

                                                    dango789 2) You are a niche studio that caters for a specific audience. Maybe you shoot realistic porn, like the ones that @someoneX likes. 20 people give detailed votes - 15 of which prefers typical US porn. The niche studio decides to stop shooting in the style that their original audience liked, and becomes more of a mainstream studio.

                                                    Same as above, if you are a niche studio and people know that you are a niche studio there is a high probability that a huge majority of the people watching your content and possiblity rate your scene are people who are into said niche content in the first place. There is little reason to assume that suddenly people rate a scene like that who was never into the content in the first place. I'd say the chance that "review bombing" hits niche studios is even lower than for mainstream studios like SLRO since the more diverse your customer base the more diverse your ratings.
                                                    And yes, you can draw various conclusions from single data points, some might be wrong. A detailed rating is not a fix for everything but it improves the current solution since your conclusions based on likes are likely even further from the truth. For your example that would mean: Based on likes as a single data point you might stop shooting in that style while your content only received so little likes since the technical execution was rather lackluster. So you also misread the data and drew a false conclusion.
                                                    After all, it's incredibly easy to make false conclusion based on statistical data no matter what. But the more detailed your data is the closer you might get to the truth (while still being in constant danger of making false conclusions).

                                                        spacepirate The problems are:

                                                        • 10 voters cannot accurately represent tens of thousands of viewers and their preferences. Imagine if you went on the streets and asked 10 people if they preferred chocolate, strawberry or vanilla ice cream. You get 5 who prefer strawberry, 3 who prefer chocolate and 2 who prefer vanilla. The next day, you go out again but you get a completely different result.
                                                          It is dangerous to draw any sort of conclusions on such a small sample size. The scores are simply unreliable and will entirely depend on who just so happens to be voting on the video.

                                                        • Studios wouldn't be happy with low scores. It would negatively affect their brand to consistently score 3/10 even if their target audience was happy. So they will likely adopt more mainstream tastes (or whatever the tastes of the few who spend the most time on SLR are) and alienate their original audiences.

                                                        Anyway, I feel that we've reached a dead end here. I've made my point clear and don't want to prolong this any further. I won't be replying to this thread any longer.

                                                            dango789 Anyway, I feel that we've reached a dead end here. I've made my point clear and don't want to prolong this any further. I won't be replying to this thread any longer.

                                                            I think we had a good discussion here actually...

                                                            dango789 10 voters cannot accurately represent tens of thousands of viewers and their preferences.

                                                            That's why you should add the total number of ratings given. Same way you already show the number of likes today.

                                                            dango789 Studios wouldn't be happy with low scores. It would negatively affect their brand to consistently score 3/10 even if their target audience was happy. So they will likely adopt more mainstream tastes (or whatever the tastes of the few who spend the most time on SLR are) and alienate their original audiences.

                                                            Like I described above, that scenario is highly unlikely in the first place that studios get constant negative ratings from users who are not interested in their content in the first place. You can even put it like that: It's likely that only people who are really dedicated to the content of a specific studio will do detailed ratings. It's not like people just go through every scene and make bogo ratings. That might happen but I don't think it will seriously fuck up the numbers.