Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply. I realize that my comment probably comes across as being quite personal, but it more reflects my frustration at the lack of insight into the Netflix Prize that exists in the blogosphere.
Here are some prime examples of people making lots of noise without any data or science to back it up:
There's actually very few people who have made genuine contributions toward winning the Netflix prize, as can be see in the winning team's final publications. They only list about a half-dozen key papers as references.
Anyways, I apologize for directing my comments specifically at you. I totally agree with your basic point, and this is a problem I've been spending a lot of time thinking about myself. My personal view is that explicit rating systems should be totally eliminated, in favor of using data gathered automatically, without asking the user to provide a subjective rating. I don't either have any evidence to prove that's better, mind you. :)
Here are some prime examples of people making lots of noise without any data or science to back it up:
http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/03/more-data-usual.h...
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/08/netflix.php
There's actually very few people who have made genuine contributions toward winning the Netflix prize, as can be see in the winning team's final publications. They only list about a half-dozen key papers as references.
Anyways, I apologize for directing my comments specifically at you. I totally agree with your basic point, and this is a problem I've been spending a lot of time thinking about myself. My personal view is that explicit rating systems should be totally eliminated, in favor of using data gathered automatically, without asking the user to provide a subjective rating. I don't either have any evidence to prove that's better, mind you. :)