Rotten tomatoes changes public assessment system

Shabana Arif

Rotten Tomatoes decided to remove the possibility for fans to comment and "rate" the movies via the "To see" feature of the site before their release, in order to prevent users to reject movies that they did not know. seen again.

The change is part of a redesign of the site that aims to "more faithfully and faithfully represent the voice of the fans, while protecting the data and public forums of [Rotten Tomatoes’] against the bad actors," explained a recent update of the blog. The update reads as follows: "As of February 25, we will no longer indicate the percentage score" Want to see "a movie during its pre-release period. could you ask this question? We found that the percentage of "Want to see" the score is often mistaken for the percentage of "audience score."

The blog also recalls that the percentage of "audience" "is the percentage of all users who gave a positive rating to the movie show with 3.5 stars. higher and is only displayed when the movie or TV show is out. This is the user version of the Tomatometer or Review, which displays the percentage of positive reviews, but is often misinterpreted as an average score.

It is likely that the changes were introduced as a result of a prolonged negative response to Captain Marvel on social media.

"Unfortunately, we have seen an increase in non-constructive contributions, sometimes to the limit of the lag, which, in our opinion, harms our readership," the blog continues.

"We decided that it was better to turn off [the pre-release comment function] at the moment.Do not worry, fans will always have the floor.After the movie is out, the audience can leave a note and comments like they have always done it. "

The percentage of the" To be seen "score will be removed during the length of the preferred period of a movie. Instead, Rotten Tomatoes displays the total number of users who voted that they would see the movie. For Captain Marvel, this number is currently about 17k, against 4.6k for Shazam! or 10k for the Avengers: Endgame farther away, which may explain why Rotten Tomatoes found its displays of deceptive percentages. "

With regard to Captain Marvel, the latest MCU film will be released in cinemas on March 8, 2019. Twitter's initial reactions are positive.

Editor's Note: The article's title was descriptive originally the ranking function as "user reviews" ". We have changed it for the official term of RT in order to avoid any confusion with the site 's audience score.

Shabana is an independent writer who loves JRPG, wine and not finishing games. Follow her on on Twitter and on Instagram.