
A movie that hasn't aired yet has 5.5 on IMDB out of 129k reviews - muse900
A movie about the Armenian Genocide, called The Promise, has received 129k reviews and the majority of them are negative.<p>With only 3 airings previously and an airing date today, this is clearly not right.<p>I hope this gets the attention of someone working on IMDB and sets this straight.<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt4776998&#x2F;
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lemonad
Wikipedia has some more information on the issue:

"By the end of October 2016, before its official release and after only three
pre-release screenings in September 2016 at the Toronto International Film
Festival to small audiences, IMDb had registered over 86,000 ratings for the
film. 55,126 of which were one-star and 30,639 of which were 10-star, with
very few ratings falling anywhere in between. The majority of these votes had
been cast by males outside of the US. By mid-November the total was over
91,000 votes, with over 57,000 one-star votes. Commentators assessed that
these were mostly votes by people who had never seen the film, and that the
one star voting was part of an orchestrated campaign by Armenian Genocide
deniers to downrate the movie, which had then initiated an Armenian response
to highly rate the movie."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Promise_(2016_film)#IMDb_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Promise_\(2016_film\)#IMDb_public_votes_controversy)

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matthewbauer
I wonder what the best solution to this is? Amazon has "Verified Purchase" on
reviews that ensure the person at least has bought the thing they are
reviewing. I could see a system that is "Verified Watching" which confirms the
person has watched the thing all the way through. This would be easier to
implement on something like Netflix where that data is already available, but
you could probably work some verification process through third parties with
IMDB. Of course, this wouldn't stop people from just sitting through a showing
and manipulating the votes but it certainly makes it harder.

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tedmiston
Personally I think Verified Purchase on Amazon does more harm than good.

Many of the spam reviewers are still a Verified Purchase through Amazon and
were just reimbursed after (it doesn't actually provide much benefit because
VP is a poor proxy for legitimate customer). I always turn it off and wish
they allowed making this the default.

There are too many products, office chairs are one example, where buying on
Amazon is more expensive than buying elsewhere. So in this case the verified
purchase reviews are not from the consumers that did the best research... not
necessarily the people you want to give credit to. Ikea products on Amazon are
another example.

Still Amazon reviews have de facto standardized as the central hub for product
reviews on the web. I might never buy orange juice from Amazon when it's much
easier and faster to grab at the grocery store, but before I plop down $8 for
a jug of organic, all natural, etc from a brand I've never heard of, it's nice
to be able to validate it a little bit.

If they expanded verified purchase to include other sources, eg uploading a
receipt to prove verification, then this would change my stance. However, does
that really align with their business?

I think verified watching is a similar circumstance.

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risyasin
This is definitely an unfortunate event for Turks (I'm one of them) There was
several facebook groups and pages distributing heavily negative opinions about
movie. Comments about movie were mess. Definitely a terrible shame for all
Turks. Even if they are right about history (that's really unlikely,
historical evidence points opposite. As a Turk I believe that was more than a
cruel war. And probably I will be down voted because of this message.)
Starting a campaign against a movie they have never seen, and putting 1 star
and asking for more people to thrash out the movie on IMDB, was another wrong.
It won't make it right. I am truly sorry for those people who gave efforts for
that movie in the name of my people. It was even 1 point last month. I tried
to put my opinion about how wrong that campaign in social media. But again I
have been blamed for ridiculous claims. It was just a mass mania. Craziness.
Can't even find a better word to describe it. So there is clearly no hope for
a Turk - Armenian peace any time soon. And I am really disappointed,
frustrated for this.

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eveningcoffee

      It was just a mass mania. Craziness. 
      Can't even find a better word to describe it. 
    

I believe that you are describing it very accurately. I hope that there is at
lease some research going on about how to solve issues like this because there
are too many conflicts based on the lack of reason caused by mass hysteria.

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water42
For those who don't understand the negative reviews, this is an attempt at
subversion by Turkish Armenian Genocide deniers to continue a campaign of
suppressing any medium that goes against their narrative.

Sadly, the campaign is working. In a time where we are as interconnected as we
are, a political film with tens of thousands of fake reviews should send out a
huge red flag: someone doesn't want this movie to be seen. However the reality
is that not many people are even aware there are so many fake reviews. The
mainstream media is not covering this issue. IMDB has not responded. I'm not
sure why this is, but can guess that it's related to the subject not being
newsworthy & risk of harm with Turkish relations (i.e. why the U.S. refuses to
officially acknowledge the genocide).

Many people are going to visit the ratings page before deciding to watch the
film, and of those some will decide it's not worth their time because of the
overwhelmingly negative score.

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imartin2k
Hadn't heard about the movie but now I for sure look forward to watch it.

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ulucs
Considering the high frequency of Turkish films on the bottom list[1], it
might be the case of a number of people with too much time on their hands
rather than something more serious

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/chart/bottom](http://www.imdb.com/chart/bottom)

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Fannon
It would be so much easier to spot fake comments or highly controversial
subjects if rating systems would also show how the rating is distributed. This
shouldn't be very hard to implement, too.

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Markoff
why would i use imdb without discussion boards? pretty much everything I need
to know about movie i can find on TMDb.org plus discussions for each movie on
top of it and if it's empty there I can just check imdb archive at hashed.io
for specific movie, people should really stop using imdb after what they did
in February

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soared
What did they do in February?

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mtmail
Amazon/IMDb closed the discussion boards.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13571893)

