| Main Points Please read through this entire post to prevent the spread of misinformation. I am happy to announce it's finally here: Our new scoring system to discount votes made by rating troll (aka duplicate) accounts! This system has been in planning for 6 months. Before Chihayafuru 3, before Ishuzoku Reviewers. For 10 years prior to this, these accounts were dealt with by admins via the Illegitimate Accounts thread. The scores for all entries will be recalculated over the next 7 days. During this time, please note that scores and ranks will be fluctuating for anime/manga entries which do not meet the following:
Top 50 Charts Anime It's long been suspected that up/down votes approximately equal themselves out for most Top Anime, and this is confirmed after recalculation. All scores in the Top 50 change by less than 0.10
There is a little movement in the Top 10, mainly due to the scores all being very close together. Manga The Top 50 Manga show more changes in scores than Top 50 Anime.
A bit more movement in the Top 10 here, but again, mainly due to the scores all being very close together. Series Most Affected After we first decided how to define illegitimate (duplicate) accounts from legitimate, we then applied that method to the entire anime database to ensure there wouldn't be any big surprises. From this data, I pulled entries with score changes of >0.10 and sizable member counts (>10k). These scores were recalculated again on January 31 and are presented below. Half of these entries are movies or OVA related to typically up/down voted main series, and show much larger changes due to their low member count. Aside from the very obvious Chihayafuru 3 score increase, we see the continued trend of the Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu downvoting being corrected as in the Top 50. Other series we already knew were hit by rating trolls (e.g. Symphogear XV) also appear here, giving confidence that the system is working well. Vote Brigading Last week, a YouTube account posted a video instructing 1M+ subscribers to go to MyAnimeList, register an account if necessary, and vote Ishuzoku Reviewers a 10. This was followed by a second YouTube account, also with 1M+ subscribers. When an individual leads an organized voting raid on a website, instructing his followers to vote yes/no/10/1/5/green—and 15,000+ votes of that specific value come in less than 12 hours, the entry's score has been compromised due to vote brigading. If you post in this thread saying that this is not vote brigading, that Ishuzoku Reviewers was not vote brigaded, or initiate any other circular arguments relating to the voting brigade (and YouTube videos made in the last week about it), you risk receiving a trolling and/or spam ban. You had 50+ pages in the series discussion board to argue about it. That topic is not to be discussed here. This thread is about the illegitimate (duplicate) account system and should focus on that. To combat vote brigading, we must have two systems at work:
When the voting rush first began, I looked for a cache of the entry, and found this page: If you compare the data on this page with the day this post is being written (February 10), you get a distribution graph that looks like below. Applying our rating troll system with our correction for vote brigading, we then get a weighted score of 7.57—nearly identical to the score from January 31. The score is not frozen or forced to ~7.6.
Pingu in the City will also have its score adjusted for the vote brigading it received in 2017, moving from its current 8.43 to 6.80. Likewise, Pingu in the City (2018) moves from 7.80 to 6.68. Summary
Finally, the rating troll scoring system is not fixed, done, never to be looked at again. We anticipate malicious individuals will continue to try to break our new system and create even more accounts to manipulate votes in the future. From here, we will be monitoring for usual changes in scoring patterns and will attempt to deal with illegitimate accounts before they grab a foothold. If they do manage to get past us, we will attempt to correct it as speedily as possible. Entries will still be vulnerable to YouTube voting raids due to the participation of legitimate user accounts. If new entries receive organized voting brigades, we will apply the second system to these entries (to readjust their scores) and will inform the community that we have done so. Please let Ishuzoku Reviewers be the last of it. Thank you to everyone who took the time to report illegitimate accounts over the years and to give suggestions on how we might fix it. And thank you to the community at large for waiting patiently until now. Edit: I thought the "Series Most Affected" titles would update on release, but seems they can take up to ~7 days to adjust as well. Chihaya should update faster since its still airing. Edit2: Fixed some typos. |
KinetaFeb 12, 2020 8:28 AM
| Thank the Lord! It's been a stressful and frustrating weekend, but hopefully it'll get back to normal again now. I should watch the show now. It looks kinda fun :3 |
| I'm sure this will spawn a civil discussion that won't result in further attacks or false reporting at all 👍 The transparent detail here is excellent and the system is clearly quite effective. Bravo 👏 |
| I'm so glad to see this finally come to fruition. MAL is and should stay a reliable resource for anime and manga fans. Cheers to more development in the future! |
p r o f i l e 👀 |
| Seems like it has less effect than I thought, but Chihayafuru's and Pingu in the City's scores changed a lot. Good job MAL, looks good so far :3 |
| Better late than never. At least the raids managed to introduce one positive addition to this site lol. |
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| Interesting. This came out faster than I expected. I'm interested in seeing how the system is going to be refined for future proofing. |
   大好き "I just want to be an ancient demigod loli" |
| Finally great news! (: I'm glad that Chihayafuru is back on track^^  |
| Great job guys |
Lelouch_Darsi said: Chihayafuru 3 still has a score of 7.45 for me That's why Kineta said in the very beginning to read the whole text. Kineta said: The scores for all entries will be recalculated over the next 7 days. |
| the top list is out of order btw (you're probably aware of this). EDIT: aaaaaaand now it's in order, lmao. nice work mal devs, kineta and luna (and others). good to see LoGH's rating fixed a lot, however before its recent trolling down to 8.99 it was at 9.10, it's back up to 9.07 which is close to where it should be but not all the way there. |
loghneckbeardFeb 12, 2020 1:45 AM
| Thanks, MAL mods! |
| Well, you did nice job. I truly think Ishuzoku reviewers is brilliant ecchi anime, but dishonest markup cheating is wrong, i agree with preventing blank account to have impact on votes. But... ep 4 of Ishuzoku was the greatest. it's score can't be lower then before imo. just a 1000-kun passing by. |
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| Great job everyone ^_^ Both in terms of dealing with the most recent crisis but perhaps importantly to finally fix the issues that have plagued the ratings for all the years I've been a part of this site PS: You wrote Ishuzoku as Ishukozu a bunch of times -.^ |
HaXXspettenFeb 12, 2020 2:00 AM
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| Excellent news. I'm glad to see steps being taken to set things right. This whole thing has been absolute chaos and it went on long enough. Thank you mods! |
| So basically, you just don't put the brigaded score into calculation, the ones after the funi stuff. |
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| I'm kinda curious how the algorithm works, but good job anyways. |
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| As a former MAL Scoring Progressions Admin, this is music to my ears. |
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tuanguyen said: I'm kinda curious how the algorithm works, but good job anyways. I hope that we will never know, else the system could be exploited again. Mod Edit: Removed quote of deleted post. |
ArdanazFeb 12, 2020 2:23 AM
| Thank you mods. Appreciate the work you have done to help get this implemented ASAP. |
| Great to learn this, and quite interesting to notice the big changes for the top 10 and top 50 (Kimi no na ha from 2nd to 7th, and almost all of the other popular or highly valued shows get a score increase). |
| Yeah, the issue was people doing it to meme the scores. Admittedly, I used to put 10/10 on Pingu and Bananya until I finished watching it to mess with the scores too lol. Mod Edit: Removed quote of deleted post. |
ArdanazFeb 12, 2020 2:23 AM
| Hopefully, this won't be considered a "circular argument", because that's anything you don't like: This system won't help anything, you're not making your scores more "legit", you're just being discriminatory and biased. This system is also very, very simple, and most likely will just embolden those that voted to make more "legit" accounts, which isn't very hard to do, since you can be permanently logged into MAL too without interacting much with it. |
Play League of Legends here! Autocrat said: Hitler was good, objectively. |
Wonderllama5 said: Cowboy Bebop is going down. I'm sad... I know it's only by 0.02 but still. lol Thank you MAL. then why did you watch 5 episodes of the show that you scored 1/10? Mod Edit: Modified quote of edited post. |
ArdanazFeb 12, 2020 2:24 AM
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| Great job, although i expected to see bigger changes in the top ten, looks like they weren't boosted as much as we thought, i was almost certain LotGH was gonna end up in the top 3 and SnK s3p2 wasn't as affected by downvotes as we thought. I'm glad Chihayafuru is finally getting the score it deserves(hopefully an ever higher one once if finishes airing). I also expected Aria to be one of the most affected ones. All in all great job. Diyeeshe said: Yep, i was certain FMA, Steins;Gate and HxH were gonna get hit hard with this patch.Funny how FMAB stayed at number one despite everyone crying about it. |
kobayasanFeb 12, 2020 2:14 AM
Kobayasan said: Great job, although i expected to see bigger changes in the top ten, looks like they weren't boosted as much as we thought, [...] SnK s3p2 wasn't as affected by downvotes as we thought. I mean SnK fans also did the opposite. They cancel the other out in the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
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| I am really glad for the mods who had to deal with this extra workload up until now. Judging by the relative changes they have done a good job so far. |
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Diyeeshe said: That was never really in doubt. The only possible way it could've been dethroned was if the inevitable boosts for Gintama or LotGH could've caught up to it but that seemed quite a stretch to me (and honestly they didn't even get up as much as I thought they would)Great, glad pingu and reviewers are down to where they belong. Funny how FMAB stayed at number one despite everyone crying about it. Kobayasan said: It's more that they were all boosted and downvoted at the same time to some extent so it kinda balanced each other out somewhat alreadyGreat job, although i expected to see bigger changes in the top ten, looks like they weren't boosted as much as we thought, i was almost certain LotGH was gonna end up in the top 3 and SnK s3p2 wasn't as affected by downvotes as we thought. |
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| Wholeheartedly, this is amazing work. A lot of mods must have worked overtime for this. Seriously, good job mods. |
Cosmic_Penguin said: Symphogear XV was upvoted by bots from like 7.80 to 8.50 iircWait, people actually brigade for Symphogear and Aikatsu!? |
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| It will be interesting to see how the system deals with the Spring anime (SAO, Re:Zero, Fate Heaven's Fell, Kaguya - Yahari?), but even more with the Fall anime (SnK and Yakusoku no Neverland). I guess that if it survives having SnK (or another of these titles, but I think that Fate is the only other serious contender) getting into the top 5 anime, it will be safe to assume that it can deal with most attacks and score manipulations. |
gamers12 said: There probably is a variable that shows how long you've used the website. Are you making filter by IP? How you know if that is bot? |
tuanguyen said: I mean SnK fans also did the opposite. They cancel the other out in the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ HaXXspetten said: It's more that they were all boosted and downvoted at the same time to some extent so it kinda balanced each other out somewhat already Yeah, i knew Snk was getting boosted as well, even after the debacle, but whenever the top anime were mentioned there were a bunch of people claiming that if it wasn't for FMA SnK would be number 1, but its placement in the top 50 hasn't changed, although i was 100% sure Gintama 2015 and LotGH were going to end up in the top 5 maybe even top 3. |
Connortit said: Meusnier said: is the fate movie going to be that good im not trying to say its bad i just havent kept up with it since seeing the 2nd movieIt will be interesting to see how the system deals with the Spring anime (SAO, Re:Zero, Fate Heaven's Fell, Kaguya - Yahari?), but even more with the Fall anime (SnK and Yakusoku no Neverland). I guess that if it survives having SnK (or another of these titles, but I think that Fate is the only other serious contender) getting into the top 5 anime, it will be safe to assume that it can deal with most attacks and score manipulations. Well, I only watched the first Fate Heaven's Feel movie so far, but I keep reading everywhere that the last part is the best of the route, and since the first was already quite good in my opinion, I think that it was worth mentioning this title. Might be another Tenki no ko though. |
| whew that was a long time coming, glad for this development. I'm surprised Clear Card had a brigade?? I must have never caught wind of that, honestly didn't expect CCS fans to do so. |
gamers12 said: Their scores will not be weighted in the average score until a certain account age as been reached, I presume.Mayuka said: There probably is a variable that shows how long you've used the website. What if in one day hundreds new users decided to join? Are they not allowed to put scores? I understand if there is filter by IP. That is if those hundreds came not from hundreds different IP but from one, then yes ban them. Another suggestion to MAL. If they are not counting someones vote then they should be removed from user count on that vote. Final score becomes confusing and unnatural. Like with Ishuzoku Reviewers I calculated score and it should be 8,98 but it is 7.56 now. It clearly shows artificial manipulation. That is even worse than it was before. And is there some kind of list of blocked/ banned accounts? |
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