Votes

One of the best features of AniDB is the voting system. It allows you to vote for almost any aspect of the DataBase, including anime (both finished and unfinished), episodes, reviews, groups and groups-per-anime.

You should read up on the specifics of each one before voting for them; for example, review-votes should always be accompanied by a comment, and when it comes to the groups-per-anime vote you can also leave a comment if you feel like it.

Earlier, all the votes used to be simply averaged out to get the actual rating for each of the things you can vote for. This is no longer the case - now there is applied a weighted heuristic to each of the votes, determining the actual rating based on an improved method for handling vote stuffing. This heuristic is kept secret in order to have a little security in obscurity as well as the actual method making the vote stuffing virtually impossible.

Voting levels

6 levels

For reviews you only get 6 total levels of grading. This is mostly because you should use the comments to express your exact feelings. It is graded from 1-10 though, you only get fewer levels to choose from.

6 levels - only for reviews - 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10.

10 levels

For most things you have 10 levels to choose from when you vote, from 1 to 10. This includes anime (see below as well), episodes, groups and groups-per-anime.

10 levels - default - 1, 2, 3, ... 10.

19 levels

When it comes to anime votes however, you have three different grading scales to choose from. Ordinarily it is the same 10 level scale you have with the other votes as well, but you can set an option in your profile which will allow you to see 19 levels of voting.

19 levels - profile setting (only for anime) - 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, ... 9.5, 10.

901 levels

If you're really crafty you can also vote with 901 levels! This stretches from 1.00 to 10.00 and involves manipulation of the URL in order to cast a vote like this.

901 levels - URL hack (only for anime) - 1.00, 1.01, 1.02, ... 9.99, 10.00.

This is a bit tricky as there aren't buttons for this and most likely never will be. Exp never wanted to increase the voting levels to 901 levels in the first place. Though the db software doesn't care and accepts the votes anyway so you may use it, if you want to. (Alert readers may spot what would seem to be a contradiction here, the database being Exp's as much as the front end. Appearances can sometimes be deceiving, but not in this case.)

Copy the following link to the url field of your browser:

http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=357&votea.rate=100&votea.ratenow=vote

You have to adjust the aid for the anime you want to vote on and the vote (the number behind votea.rate). It can be any integral number between 100 and 1000.

Alternatively, there is a Firefox Script that removes the current vote dropdown menu from the anime pages and replaces it with a text field in which you can write any 901 level value and then press vote.
Another way is to use Tessa[AR]

Usage:

!votex <aid> <vote>

Note:

ONLY works with aid
The vote HAS to be input as a number between 100 and 1000. 100 equaling 1.00 and 1000 10.00

Grading

There are only two voting guidelines that you should need:

Give better anime higher votes
Leave some space at the top and bottom for still better (or worse) anime