Submission Guidelines

We ask that you please follow these guidelines when submitting ratings. Doing so will help insure that Movie Hurl provides the best possible predictions.

Thank you.

By definition:

• A user who does not log in is called a generic user.
• A user who logs in is called a nongeneric user.
• A generic user's submitted ratings are called generic ratings.
• A nongeneric user's submitted ratings are called personalized ratings.
• A nongeneric user's predictions are called personalized predictions.
• Generic users don't get personalized predictions, but they can see a movie's generic prediction, also called a movie's generic rating.

(1) You do not have to login to submit ratings for movies, but you do have to login to get personalized ratings, which should tend to be more accurate than generic ratings.

(2) The more personalized ratings you provide and the more people who contribute personalized ratings, the better the personalized rating system will work, so please consider participating...but even if you do not want to login, we would still greatly appreciate your generic rating submissions.

(3) If you are a generic user returning to rate new movies, please do not rate a previous movie again (don't rate the same movie more than once). Doing so will skew the generic rating for that movie. This is another reason to use personalized ratings since the reliability of the generic rating is hurt by other generic users who might have entered multiple ratings for a single movie.

(4) If you already have an account, please try to do not submit both generic and personal ratings for a single movie (try to not rate a movie while logged out and also after logging in). Your personal ratings will automatically be incorporated into the generic ratings and a duplicate rating would skew the results. However, if you have already submitted a generic rating and would like to submit a personal rating anyway, please go ahead and do so. I realize this sounds contradictory, but a duplicate rating will only harm the generic ratings while simultaneously strengthening the personal ratings for other nongeneric users.

(5) Note that personalized ratings can be resubmitted if you wish to change your rating. However, we encourage doing so only to correct mistakes in using the form, as opposed to making alterations that reflect a change of mind perhaps days or weeks after seeing a movie. Your immediate and initial reaction to a movie is more likely to be accurate than one colored by a longer memory.

(6) If a movie title has a typo or small error in it, please do do not submit a brand new movie with your rating just to correct the typo. Doing so will produce two separate entries in the database. Instead, rate the entry with an error in the title and the administrator will correct the error as soon as possible (feel free to leave a public or private comment about the error). In addition, if you see two entries which are obviously the same movie with slight differences in the spelling of the title, please rate just one of the movies titles, not both. That way, when the administrator merges the two entries, your rating won't be duplicated (this is only a potential problem with generic ratings since the merging process will detect an eliminate duplicate personal ratings).

Thank you.

Cheers!