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Comment by nollidge | Hacker News Reader

> That's the mass taste.

I seriously doubt that. Just because it's what the available data show doesn't mean that that's the popular taste. If you surveyed 100 people who have seen both The Avengers and Godfather Part 2, I highly doubt a majority will regard the former as a better film than the latter. People are in different moods when they rate films, older films don't get rated as often, the scale with which an individual rates different films may be wildly non-normalized...

Website idea[0]: show two random movies, ask them if they've seen both, and if they have, ask the user which one's better without prescribing what "better" means. Repeat 1 trillion times. I'd be much more willing to trust differential data like this.

[0] - not going to call it a startup idea, because I have no idea how it would make money.

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>"I seriously doubt that."

I think you'd be surprised. Though, I also think you'd be hard-pressed to find people who have watched both films (I've only seen one, and it isn't The Avengers). And there's a reason for that: most people don't want to watch a three-hour, epic drama from 1972. Ask people who haven't seen either film which they'd rather see, tonight, and I'll bet they choose The Avengers. Why? Because if you haven't seen GF2 by now, it probably doesn't interest you. So on some level, these rankings speak to the current Zeitgeist.

I can't understand the vitriol directed at these rankings. Sure, there is a definite bias towards modern films in the imdb rankings, but it is what it is. I don't think that it's any different than some crotchety old movie critic telling me which films I should like best.

The fact of the matter is, there is no objective measure of "best". Scan these comments. I can find examples to agree with and disagree with in nearly every single one. But they are all saying the same thing: "This list is wrong!" Based on that, I don't think you or I would have any more success curating a list of movies. This list is as good as any.

Anyway, great tool.

> Website idea: show two random movies, ask them if they've seen both, and if they have, ask the user which one's better without prescribing what "better" means. Repeat 1 trillion times.

http://flickchart.com

Would the two movies be from the same genre?

For example, I would have a difficult time deciding which of the two - "The Secret in Their Eyes" or "Gladiator" - is better.

Having played with the site for the past 20 minutes now, the by far most difficult thing is choosing between two horrible movies. I really wish there was a "they're both equally horrible" button.

That's really neat. It's quite addictive to rank films that way. Annoyingly hard in some instances. The only thing I think is lacking is some way to get a reminder about the plot; when you're talking about movies seen more than a couple of decades ago ...

A "would like to see" button would be useful too.

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