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Today when I saw this question What happened to IMDB to cause ratings to be skewed?

I got little confused and even posted one close-vote but it's in a good Q/A format but is it in our boundaries? I mean are we going to allow question on Movie websites rating patterns or other similar prospective. I am not against it and doesn't even offending/defending it but curious to know if we are allowing this kind of question or not. It previously holding 4 down-vote but I think it could be allowed but my other major part of brain thinks it should not. So what's community stake on it?

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I'm not a big fan of this question, but we've let other questions about IMDB fly before. I would say it just flew under the radar, but it's got 7 upvotes: are movie production companies hiring people to rate their movies on imdb

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  • I didn't even favor of that question too. But i arrive too late on this site to see that question before.
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Mar 29, 2013 at 5:32
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This question is in the same line as some of the questions about the availability of shows. To me this kind of questions is off-topic since they are basically support-requests about some arbitrary third-party website and not about movies and TV at all. We are not IMDb's, Netflix's or whatevermoviesite's support forum just because those sites are related to the topic of "Movies & TV" even if the respective questions aren't.

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  • +1, finally i got support for my old request.
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 13:02
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I don't think there is a major problem whether or not this is 'On Topic' or not - its kind of on the edge of what we ask questions about, but I don't see why it should be excluded.

I think the reason its collected a lot of close votes is because of its subjectivity. Its very hard to say what 'good' means to the broader population. The OP is saying the ratings are skewed - good movies are getting poor ratings etc - but that is subjective opinion.

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    But its specifically about Imdb rating pattern. So its not about any movie and tv show, rather then question target on a website. And i think its off topic.I am not sure about subjectivity
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 15:57
  • @AnkitSharma It's about movies and TV shows, it's just one level abstracted, since IMDB is a site devoted to movies and TV shows.
    – user209
    Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 16:02
  • @AnkitSharma - I'm in favor of keeping the scope of the site as broad as reasonable - probably one one end of our moderator spectrum on that point.
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 16:04
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I'm against "what's on Netflix", because it's like "What's on TV tonight?" There'd be nothing wrong with either of those questions in an ephemeral forum, and maybe StackExchange wants to do that. But if we're carrying over from the technical side, what makes StackOverflow so useful is that someone else far in the future will Google a similar question and find an answer.

So, "Is it raining today?" doesn't fit that.

Questions about IMDB I think can be useful—I was gonna come down on the "Yeah, let 'em in!" side—but they really belong in meta. I use IMDB all the time to look up stuff about movies, and it has its own quirks and tricks, but these are not questions about movies but about finding movies or learning about movies. Very meta.

Netflix I don't think has any meta value. It's awful for finding out about movies.

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    Meta is only about questions about M&TV and sometimes general SE issues. Its not about other websites. If questions about IMDB are allowed, it wouldn't be on Meta...
    – cde
    Commented Apr 8, 2016 at 21:08
  • If you have questions about IMDb... ask them on IMDb. They have their own forums for that very purpose and they're certainly more expert than we are.
    – Catija
    Commented Apr 10, 2016 at 16:37

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