More useful ratings

An excellent suggestion.

IMDb does something like this when you look at a user's Activity Page (if they make their ratings Public). They adjust for an offset of the histogram: if my mode is a 6, and that user's mode is 8, it attempts to align "higher/lower" on a relative basis.

You could look at the rating by demographic of a film. It breaks up how men, women and different age groups rate a film.

Click on the number of votes the film has received, shown beneath the film's rating. This doesn't work on the app though.

There is some demographic breakdown available, but it's not enough. I want a smarter algorithm, like that used by Spotify to determine what others who like the same music as you listen to, and I want a global filter so that I can browse accurate ratings based on my preference without having to dig into each movie.

This is the answer I got from IMDB support:

"Hello,

We take measures ensuring the rating for a title accurately represents public opinion. As such, we sincerely appreciate you taking the time to reach out!

Review this link for more information: https://help.imdb.com/article/imdb/tr...#

For further help, reach out here: https://help.imdb.com/contact"

Not very helpful. Furthermore, the "weighted average" that IMDB uses makes things even worse as it reduces the impact of extremes, making everything converge towards the mean. Preposterous.

Definitely take a look at sites like Taste and Movielens.