I let a family stay at my home for a month, and forgot my Xbox 360 was on Netflix. Came back from a trip and the recommendations we're all kids all the time. Cancelled the Xbox account. Three months later, still all kids, all the time. Went to website and negatively rated all kids shows (though I like some things like British lit movies for kids) it suggested, mercilessly. Kept at that for two weeks. Didn't help. It kept cycling around the dregs of kids shows, surfacing Pokeman, or old Nik reruns. Found an obscure "don't consider this" button, cycled through everything again. Five months after that, our top 10 "for you" don't list kids shows any more. But, one of those precious custom genres is still always kids and family related, no matter what we try. So, we're giving up on fixing it, and just going to have a kid instead.
I almost spit out my coffee, very well done. I have the same issue in that I set up my preferences, and told my wife (who uses it alot more but doesn't look at the recommendations much, she generally already knows what she wants to watch) to just not rate anything, so that it wouldn't be confused by my ratings. All it took was one accidental 5* on Desperate Housewives and my recommendations were shot.
It seems to me that the rating algorithm is a bit sensitive. Also, I wonder if Netflix has considered giving people they option of multiple "personalities" for the purpose of suggestions, queues, etc. I bet if they offered this for something like $3/mo more, people would pay for it.
