The Kashmir Files: IMDb Changes Rating Method Upon Noticing 'Unusual Voting Activity'; Vivek Agnihotri Reacts

IMDb, the popular website who hosts movie and television audience reviews, recently changed its system of calculating the rating for Vivek Agnihotri's latest release The Kashmir Files. The film's rating page mentioned that their rating mechanism had detected unusual voting activity for the Anupam Kher-starrer. As a result of this, they applied an alternate weighting calculation to preserve the reliability of their rating sytem.

The website declared on its user rating page, "Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied."

The film currently has a weighted average rating of 8.3/10 based on 249,893 IMDb users. Explaining details about weighted average rating, the page mentioned, "IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. The simplest way to explain it is that although we accept and consider all votes received by users, not all votes have the same impact (or 'weight') on the final rating. When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system. To ensure that our rating mechanism remains effective, we do not disclose the exact method used to generate the rating."

Meanwhile, a Twitter user accused IMDb of dropping the ratings for The Kashmir Files and tagged director Vivek Agnihotri in his post. The filmmaker retweeted the post and wrote, "THIS IS UNUSUAL AND UNETHICAL."

The Kashmir Files is currently having a successful run at the box office and has collected Rs 42.20 crore in four days. Starring Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumaar, Pallavi Joshi and Chinmay Mandlekar in key roles, the film is based on the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits during the Kashmir insurgency in 1990.