I also rather trust the algorithm to see what is a good movie and what is not.
In my case the collected ratings of the experts, not the users.
Current example: http://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/Sundance2015
There are some outliers, typical "festival hits", which only relate to festival specialists, but they are easily detectable, with a "10%" human bullshit detector. Like last years Godard at Cannes, 2012 Leos Carax, 2011 the Kaurismaki and 2010 both the Godard and the Jury winner Weerasethakul. Those outliers are even statistically detectable.
One thing is clear, you can trust the collected experts more than the juries. So I can fully confirm the story.
The problem I've found is the algorithms for detecting taste seem to struggle greatly the further ones taste deviates from the norm. I find Netflix's recommendations to be fundamentally useless and is always reccomending things in which I have zero interest. But I've also found Rotten Tomatoes to be borderline useless as well (the second worst film I've seen in the last decade--Snowpiercer--has a very high RT score...go figure.)
Do you actually rate the things you watch on Netflix? Or go back and rate a bunch of popular movies you loved and hated? Because if you don't, you will just keep getting the same mainstream recommendations.
Rotten Tomatoes' rating, mentioned in the article as scoring THE BRONZE as 10% (though the RT now says 18%), is also a collection of professional reviewers' ratings.
There are some outliers, typical "festival hits", which only relate to festival specialists, but they are easily detectable, with a "10%" human bullshit detector. Like last years Godard at Cannes, 2012 Leos Carax, 2011 the Kaurismaki and 2010 both the Godard and the Jury winner Weerasethakul. Those outliers are even statistically detectable.
One thing is clear, you can trust the collected experts more than the juries. So I can fully confirm the story.