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Everyone's a Critic (EaC) was a film community website. It began as an experiment using a
collaborative filtering Collaborative filtering (CF) is, besides content-based filtering, one of two major techniques used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook, Recommender Systems Handbo ...
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...
to obtain film recommendations from people who share similar tastes in film. Over time, this
recommendation system Recommendation may refer to: * European Union recommendation, in international law * Letter of recommendation, in employment or academia * W3C recommendation, in Internet contexts * A computer-generated recommendation created by a recommender ...
website grew into an internet community of cinephiles, critics and reviewers.


History

In 2002 Dan Seidner, a
software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...
from suburban
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
, created a website where people could get film recommendations from other people who share their tastes in movies. Site members (henceforth referred to as critics) grade movies and get a list of all other critics from the site, in order of how close individual ratings are to theirs. From there, a critic can look through their closest critic's ratings to get film recommendations. By clicking on the name of critics closest to your film tastes, you get a list of the movies they've seen that you haven't; in order from their highest rated films, down to the lowest rated. This method allows critics to not only use recommendations for what movies to go see, also what movies to avoid seeing. EaC has evolved from a place to get film recommendations, to a community of film critics and cinephiles who write in-depth reviews, participate in film discussion, polls, contests and games. EaC has grown to over 2,900 critics, over 900,000 film ratings, over 19,000 film reviews, and over 170,000 films in the
database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...
.


Grading films

EaC critics grade films using a scale similar to
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
School Systems. A+ at the top of the scale and F at the bottom. The average ratings of the community generally fall between C+ and B−. Critics can also give films ''Anticipation Ratings'' before the films are released. These grades are on a scale of 1 to 5. Rating an upcoming film a 5 represents a high expectation and excitement level, while a rating of 1 represents the opposite. Critics can view a list of upcoming films in order of the community's anticipation for the release of those films.


Lists

EaC allows critics to create and maintain various lists.


My Critics

EaC critics can flag other critics for various reasons such as critics who share similar tastes, critics who write exceptional reviews, critics who are also friends, etc. EaC allows critics to filter some of the lists (described below) to show results based only on site members who have been flagged as My Critics.


Active Critics

EaC automatically flags critics that log into the site on a regular basis as Active Critics. Active Critics filters can be applied to some of the EaC lists (described below).


Comprehensive Film List

Critics can keep a list of every film they've ever seen. If there are films critics have seen that are not currently in the EaC database, critics can instantly add those films to the EaC database. This list can be ordered by the grade the critic assigned the films, alphabetically by title, and by the year released. This list can also be filtered by genre.


Top/Bottom 100 Lists

Critics can create hierarchies of their top and bottom films of all time. These lists are referred to as Top 100 and Bottom 100, but these lists aren't limited to 100 films, nor are 100 films required to create these lists. EaC automatically creates other lists based on the Top and Bottom 100 Lists. EaC will show the critic hierarchies of the actors, directors and writers that appear/work in the films that are listed in their Top and Bottom 100, along with the number of films each actor, director and writer appears in within the lists.


Top Actors, Directors and Writers

Critics can keep lists of people involved in filmmaking. There is a separate list for Actors, Directors and Writers. Critics can create and maintain these lists in a hierarchy according to the critic's favorites.


Wish List

EaC critics can create and update a Wish List of films they’ve yet to see, but would like to.


Custom Lists

EaC critics can create and maintain custom lists such as ''Favorite Concert Films'' or ''Documentaries I saw last year''. Anything film related the critic can think of can be put into a list.


Movie Rankings

There are several lists on EaC that reflect the overall community rankings. There is The Top 200 Movies and The Bottom 200 Movies that show these hierarchies based on the community average. These lists are referenced in the following Wikipedia articles: Films that have been considered the greatest ever and
List of films considered the worst The films listed below have been cited by a variety of notable critics in varying media sources as being among the worst films ever made. Examples of such sources include Metacritic, Roger Ebert's list of most-hated films, '' The Golden Turk ...
EaC critics can also see The Top 100 Somewhat Obscure Movies which is a list of the highest rated movies that have been rated by no less than 3 and no more than 12 critics total. EaC critics can also see Adjustable Movie Rankings by applying filters to the lists. Critics can filter by year, genre, ''My Critics'', movies the critic has rated and movies the critic has not rated.


Critic List

EaC critics can view a list of all other EaC critics with links to each critic's personal lists. This list can be ordered by name, join date, number of ratings, age and sex. This list can be filtered by ''Active Critics'', date range, age, sex and name.


Community

In addition to a recommendation system website and a place to keep various film related lists, EaC is also a community-oriented website. Discussion is a major part of the website and many friendships and partnerships have spawned from the EaC community. One example is the partnership of TC Candler, Richard Propes and Jacob Hall; EaC critics who've collaborated on their own film review website: independentcritics.com. EaC critics can add films, actors, writers and directors to the EaC database causing the growth of the site data to be an interactive and community-oriented project. EaC critics voluntarily host community contests, polls and games.


Community outreach

Critics on EaC sponsored a year-long
charity Charity may refer to: Common meanings * Charitable organization or charity, a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being of persons * Charity (practice), the practice of being benevolent, giving and sha ...
event called Words of Hope, raising money for
child abuse Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical abuse, physical, child sexual abuse, sexual, emotional and/or psychological abuse, psychological maltreatment or Child neglect, neglect of a child, especially by a p ...
charities: Prevent Child Abuse America and National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Several EaC critics sponsored the event by donating money for every review written (within certain
guideline A guideline is a statement by which to determine a course of action. It aims to streamline particular processes according to a set routine or sound practice. They may be issued by and used by any organization (governmental or private) to make ...
s) on EaC for the year of 2005. Several critics made additional cash donations at the end of 2005. The event was run by Richard Propes, an EaC member who is the executive director of a
non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
out of
Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
called Tenderness Tour.


See also

*
List of films considered the worst The films listed below have been cited by a variety of notable critics in varying media sources as being among the worst films ever made. Examples of such sources include Metacritic, Roger Ebert's list of most-hated films, '' The Golden Turk ...
* Films considered the greatest ever


References


Everyone's a Critic cited in Stanford University Information Retrieval and Text Mining Course (PDF file)






(Link dead as of 05:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC))


External links


Everyone's A Critic

Independent Critics

Which Critic
{{DEFAULTSORT:Everyone's A Critic American film review websites Online film databases