Hello everyone.
As has become a custom after every major event by WWE/NXT, NJPW, AEW or even Impact Wrestling, a number of warnings and even bans were handed out today for misuse of the CAGEMATCH ratings system. Since a number of those warned have complained, I wanted to make a public statement regarding CAGEMATCH's stance on downrating popular events/matches/wrestlers/etc. -- or as those warned would say: "censoring minority opinions".
First of all, as has been discussed many times before, the ratings system has a full spectrum of 0-10 points, which we expect you to use sensibly. The rules are very clearly accessible and everyone taking part in the ratings system is expected to have read and understood them. If you have any questions about the rules, do not hesitate to send us an email, we will answer you quickly and add the missing information to the rules to prevent any misinterpretation in the future.
Now, the big question: Do we censor minority opinions? No, we do not. But we will look at them and analyze the ratings pattern of the user that voiced it. And more often than not, the ratings pattern shows one of the following issues:
(1) Extreme ratings: At least half of the people that get a warning have a ratings pattern that looks like an inverted Gaussian distribution. All 10s and 0s, nothing (or much less) in between. This type of black-and-white rating behaviour has always been against the rules of the ratings system and almost always leads to a warning.
(2) One-sided favouritism: Some of the people that get a warning are devoted fans of WWE/NXT, AEW, New Japan or any other promotion, to the extreme point that they cannot conceive, understand or tolerate the notion that another promotion may get better overall ratings than their favourites do. The same applies to fans of specific workers as well, sometimes, where everything that worker does is a 10 and any other match that is close in the top listings but does not involve that worker must be worse. This type of trolling has been monitored more rigorously since last September,
when I put out an article as a warning for trolls.
(3) Second-hand hate: Some of the people that get a warning are fans of highly opinionated, but prominent figures in the wrestling business. Whether it is Dave Meltzer's newsletter, Jim Cornette's podcast, a wrestler's Twitter account or your personal best friend in the business, these people are taking the opinion of someone else as gospel and call to action, especially in those cases where the opinion is focussed on hating something: a certain match, a certain wrestler, a certain promotion, whatever. In the aftermath of these outbursts some fans seem to be unable to form their own opinion and try to use the ratings system to promote the opinion that have just heard or read, either because they think it's "the right thing to do" or just to spite whomever it affects. Needless to say, we do not want this kind of rating behavior in our system.
(4) Overbearing love/hate: Some people just want to see the world burn. They create multiple accounts and downrate or uprate a small number of specific entries to affect their position in the top listings. I cannot attempt to understand the mindset of those people, but I can assure them, they have wasted far more minutes trying to "game the system" than it took me clicks to ban their accounts and remove their ratings.
(5) Pick-and-choose: This is the last and most controversial, hardest to judge category: people whose rating pattern "feels" off, but individually most ratings may actually seem to have a valid reason, even those giving 0s to otherwise highly popular matches/promotions/wrestlers. I spend quite a lot of my free time looking at these accounts and trying to understand the context and ratings behavior, in order to justify the low rating that originally prompted me to take a look at the account. Sometimes I cannot and then I need to give out a warning and in the case of the last two days, a number of people were warned for downrating the AEW Tag Team title match between Omega/Page and the Young Bucks; a similar number of people were warned for downrating NXT TakeOver: Portland matches and/or the Wrestle Kingdom headline matches back in January. These are usually the people who complain about being censored or treated unfairly, so I think it is important to public state the criteria as to when we give a warning in these cases:
context and trust.
Trust is important. A user that has been active for months or years, has proven to use the full spectrum of ratings in a sensible manner and has shown to be internally consistent in his rating behavior is the ideal. Almost none of us are matching the ideal, including myself. But it is somewhat easy to spot those of us that can be trusted to not misuse the ratings system, based on their previous behaviour, so a trusted user that suddenly gives a 0 to a match/wrestler/promotion that is otherwise raking in high numbers will not have any problems, especially as trusted users usually give reasonable comments that help understand why they are rating so much against the grain. In rare cases we will contact the user to get additional feedback.
On the other hand, obviously, a user who just registered and is throwing around 0s for popular things, is much more suspicious.
But, trust alone is not everything and often simply is not available due to the short amount of time a user has been part of the ratings system. Therefore the more important, second criteria is
context. How does a low (or high) rating that is a "minority rating" compare against the other ratings a user has given? What is the context? For example, if a user has rated all matches of a promotion for consecutive weeks or big events, a clear context is available. If some of those people giving the AEW match a 0 or 1 would have rated the other matches on the card, they might have gotten away with it. Even better, if they had rated AEW matches before, and shown that they are using the full spectrum of the ratings system to differentiate and provide context, they would have been fine. But most of them did not. And the same is true for the recent WWE/NXT, NJPW or Impact events, many of the "minority opinions" are voiced on an island, in some cases it was the first or only rating for that promotion.
No context given, no trust earned.
I do even admit that some of those opinions might even be legit, but given the criteria we have built the ratings system on and are monitoring its use, there is just not enough evidence to support its supposed legitimacy. And that's why these "minority opinions" were removed, plain and simple.
If there is enough context for allowing trust in the user's legitimacy and understanding of the ratings system rules, we do not censor any rating, even if it's a 0 for a match that otherwise only got 10s.
But if there is not, based on our renewed stance against trolling and the fragile state of internet discussion etiquette, we do give out warnings earlier than in the past. I would call it curating instead of censoring.
If you have read this far, thank you. I do not expect all of you to agree (this never happens for anything anywhere), but I hope that the majority of you have gained some insight and understanding and maybe some
context and trust.
