Hey Paveliko,

Thanks for the feedback.

Except that, it's GREAT!

I know, right!!?

First, I think you should allow rating submission based on any identification parameter (email, Facebook, tweeter, etc.).

I don't know if that's how I would do it but I have given the idea of non registered account voting a fairly large amount of thought. The more likely way would be that there's a method that developers can use to generate a unique token. This token is the id you would use to submit votes with. Should this user ever want to sign up for an account, there would be a place to enter this key so we could attach them to their account for them.

There would have to be some rules in place though and enforcing them is the hardest part. I've never had to worry about rating abuse much before because the only way to register is with an account and each account has to be verified. In this proposed scenario, making sure a single developer can't rate his favourite movie with a new token every second is tricky. This is the primary reason this feature hasn't been done yet.

I see it the weakest spot of TMDB is extremely low number of ratings.

It probably is. We have a great community and great contributors but ratings are and always have been hard for us get.

P.S. I've created a new ticket for this here.

Hi,

I know that insuring that there will be no misuse of the rating is not simple. BUT I believe that you should be more optimistic:) With such a huge community I don't think there will be many that will try to mess with the database. And if one or two will try I think it still worth it (in worse case scenario you'll have few movies with shifted rating)! As for today the situation is not much different when for most movies you have 1 or 2 votes which is still opinion of only few... Any case, you have to do some sort of identification.

I will gladly help (if you want) with developing an algorithm for verification. My programming skills are very basic right now - so help from me on this part is useless :)

I think the easiest way is to let the people sign up for a tmdb Account using their Facebook or twitter Account, that will make it much easier to gain more users and thus improve the number of ratings.

Hosam,

• GET /3/authentication/guest_session/new
• POST /3/movie/{id}/rating

just saw it :), epic work Travis, thanks

Travis, you are amazing!

Few noob questions (I'm developing android application that has option for users to rate movies):

1. Every time the user will rate the movie I need to make the app to ask for a guest-session or it's a one-time procedure during the session expiration period?
2. Do you remember guest-users by some sort of identification? I mean if the same user a minute later (or even month later) changes a rating for some movie will it be posted as additional rating or will it recognize his previous rating and change it?

Thanks a lot!

1. Every time the user will rate the movie I need to make the app to ask for a guest-session or it's a one-time procedure during the session expiration period?

No. You generate a single new guest_session_id per user and re-use this id over and over for that particular user. If you generate one but don't use it within 24 hours it gets deleted.

1. Do you remember guest-users by some sort of identification?

I think #1 clears this up for you. The guest_session_id is your unique id to reuse over and over per user (where user would be a user on your own app/device/install).

You want to try and keep them re-using the same ID since there will be a feature in the near of future where you can sign up for a TMDb user account, enter the id and then have all of the ratings you contributed attached to your account.

So I managed to write the code for the guest session request and rating post. Now I have couple more questions:

1. Why don't I see my rating right after posting (I refresh the movie data and nothing changes)? Does it take some time?

2. As part of testing my code I've posted a rating for a movie, then I've tried to change it several times. After few changes I've started to receive code 500 "Internal Server Error" for that specific movie.. I can rate another movie but not the first one... Do you know why?

3. How do I delete a rating?

Thanks a lot!!!

1- Yes I think it takes a bit of time for the system to propagate the rating you added.

2- I have no idea, Travis can reply to that more accurately for sure :)

3- There is no way to delete a rating for a movie. Just like any other website when you rate something, you can change your rating but you can't really un-rate something.

Cheers

Why don't I see my rating right after posting (I refresh the movie data and nothing changes)? Does it take some time?

On the API it will take some time, yes. You can check the website as it is real time and you will see the number of ratings go up.

As part of testing my code I've posted a rating for a movie, then I've tried to change it several times. After few changes I've started to receive code 500 "Internal Server Error" for that specific movie.. I can rate another movie but not the first one... Do you know why?

What movie and original rating value/new rating value are you trying to edit?

How do I delete a rating?

Like Hosam mentioned, you can't, at least not right now.

1. Got it, thanks.

2. I've tried 3 different movies. I will try to see if there is some specific value that makes the problem. I will update later on this issue

3. I think you should add it. Anyway, is it possible that I will give my guest session ID and you will delete all ratings made using this ID (for now it's only 3 ratings)?

Hi, I have no opinion on the session issue discussed previously, but I would like to make a suggestion on the way movies are rated.

All movies could be automatically assigned with 10 vote of 5/10 by default (I believe the technical aspect is not too complex), so any “unrated” movie will be 5/10 by default (not good, not bad) and will appear in the middle of the list, users votes will then add to these 10 default (or even replace it) and the average will tend to be representative of community opinion. That would not solve the number of votes issue, but it would avoid that some movies remain forever unrated and it would also temper the “passion” of the few first votes. Just an idea… Anyway, thanks again for the good job done so far.

Pavel,

I'm pretty sure I know what's happening. You rated some entries, and then the last rating that worked was a 0 wasn't it? Ever since then, trying to update a rating has failed? There's a bug that won't allow ratings of 0 to be edited. The reason this only came up now is because on the website it's impossible to vote a movie with a 0 and only 0.5. I've created a new ticket for this and will look at it this week.

If you pass along your guest id I can delete them. I will also have to delete the guest id but that's ok, you can just generate a new one.

Thanks.

Thanks Travis, I do use 0 in my app for movies a user deletes from his rating list.

BUT, after further investigation this is not what causes the 500 error. I get this error on fourth attempt to change rating after three successful rating updates (first is the actual rating and the next two are updates). Could it be some kind of time limitation? I didn't test what happens if I change the rating with time intervals.

These are 2 session IDs to delete all the ratings: 0c2c2953088f29c81db40d53c4b92d70 and 4292a57de5a94087ae0d0c9eb5f79daa

What status code will I get when I will try to use guest session ID after you delete it?

Thanks again, Pavel

I've made more tests. Today I received the 500 error after 5 or 6 successful updates (none of them was 0).

The major problem is that once I receive this error it's permanent for that specific movie....