Criticker alternatives

[Moribunny]

TLDR; is it too much to wish for a really good Criticker alternative that I can migrate my ratings and reviews to in at least a somewhat streamlined fashion? (automatically would be a dream)

Long version:
I've been using Criticker intensively, daily, for 18 years and it has been an integral part of my journey as a viewer. As of this hour I've rated 5546 titles (and 207 games) and reviewed almost each and every one of them (must have missed 3 or 4) and am in the top ten reviewers of the site by stars. I have submitted 487 titles and hundreds of crew pictures and info updates, and started dozens of collections. As a movie freak this site has been my second home.

And I'm starting to think it's time to move away, given the ongoing destruction of the site's UI. I did interact some with Mike on the support forums, and I think he's a devoted and attentive webmaster. Some of the destruction was undone or mitigated, but essential features just keep getting wrecked, with promises on the update forum of more destruction to come.

I do have accounts on Letterboxd (which is superior for list-making) and Movielens (which has a really nice page with stats about my own ratings), and if Criticker keeps having its most appealing features stripped away (most crucially the amount of info it used to display - e.g: own review still gone from title page, recent ratings page now missing dates) they may become the better choices for me.

The trouble is, migrating thousands of ratings and reviews is just so daunting a task, I just wish there was some A.I. algorithm that could do it for me; or at least that I could trust the target site to still be there for me down the line.

I'm mainly venting and don't honestly expect help with this, and maybe this will piss some of you off but hopefully some others maybe share my plight and feel my pain.

[BadCosmonaut]

Are you trying to import to IMDB, or to another site that would be new to you? If it's IMDB, then have you tried these types of things:

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/463836-imdb-ratings-importer

https://github.com/TobiasPankner/Letterboxd-to-IMDb

I found those with a quick google search. I'd imagine there are a few more options too. It may be possible to get one of them to work with some tinkering to however the list is exported from Criticker.

Once the UI overhaul dust settles down on this site, I wonder if someone with the knowledge and experience to create browser addons could create an addon to modify the layout to address some of the concerns unhappy users still have. I thought about doing it myself last year or so after the previous big UI overhaul, but now I'm okay enough with the UI to not want to bother. At least, not just yet. And I've never made an addon before.

[geohawk]

It really depends on what you like and dislike about this site. RateYourMusic/Movies certainly has a painfully old user interface and a community, of sorts. Film Affinity lacks discussion and would largely provide what MovieLens does, but with a more European user base. Almost everything else I've run into (or is still operating) is even simpler or is hung up on rating multiple aspects of a movie and hasn't built up a very impressive user base.

[brrrp]

You can import ratings only thru CSV file that you can generate (you probably know how) to Letterboxd. There is a thing here that I couldn't figure out how to use that grabs review + logs date watched:

https://github.com/mnzeric/criticker-to-letterboxd

[schnofel]

Having a similar history to yours here on Criticker, I share your frustrations. Since letterboxd seems to be the market leader, and people mostly reference it when discussing fan reviews, I might check it out someday. Right now, I'm not watching many films as it is, so this ghostly, re-animated site will do.

[td888]

Having a similar history to yours here on Criticker, I share your frustrations. Since letterboxd seems to be the market leader, and people mostly reference it when discussing fan reviews, I might check it out someday. Right now, I'm not watching many films as it is, so this ghostly, re-animated site will do.

You're hitting the nail on the head for me. I'm a long time user as well and all these layout changes are just not working for me. But I'm watching less and less movies lately, just series.

I do appreciate the site owners effort to keep the site updated, although I feel it's in the wrong direction.

[Scholar69420]

I chose Criticker over Letterboxd just a few years ago because the latter was too mainstream. I loved the old UI for its retro-aesthetics, which tickled my hipster sensibilities. And best of all, it was so functional. Everything was there on one page, a beautiful information dense layout. Perfect for condescending over my sell-out film-buff friends with the vintage, niche vibes at this site.

Now Criticker has the look of your typical dead internet news aggregator, and any kind of USP to draw in new users is gone. There is no reason to use this over the alternatives. It's extremely frustrating that this new "wide-layout", supposedly introduced to make better use of available screen space, has only increased the amount of white space on the screen. They made the site less information dense. That's almost unforgivable. I just don't get it, Criticker isn't big enough to engage in enshittification?

I say almost unforgivable because I do intend to stick with Criticker, even though I fully expect it will be years before the UI improves to the point that it's not a worse UX than what we had previously.

[movieboy]

I have been here for 15 years.

I have only small complaints about the new UI

- Blanks in the middle - viewtopic.php?p=78046#p78046
- More steps to rate a movie - viewtopic.php?p=78382#p78382

I still find the site convenient to use.

However, I don't see the point of the UI change - what has it achieved? It has achieved very little for me at least. I can't think of a single thing I will miss if we roll back all the changes.

[td888]

Sunk cost fallacy.

[AFlickering]

a whole thread of people acting like the main draw of criticker used to be the layout? i'm not a fan of some of the changes either but c'mon now, the draw is the ability to rate using whatever scale you like, the relative lack of obnoxious mainstream qualities and younger userbases that plague sites like letterboxd, the character limit (i understand this is polarising; i like it), the collections, and most of all the algorithm which facilitates the best recommendation engine on the internet. until another site has those things, i can easily put up with some interface problems personally. and i do trust mike to keep listening to complaints and try to improve stuff, he's already made plenty of improvements since the launch and repeatedly explained why leaving it the way it was unfortunately wasn't a viable option. i'm willing to sacrifice some of the old stuff if the alternative is the site dying because traffic's too low.