Always more downvotes than upvotes

I've noticed something rather curious; namely I always appear to get more downvotes than upvotes.  This is the case whether we're talking about my comments in the mail newspaper, my Amazon reviews (although we're unable to downvote now on Amazon), and I've just discovered today even on my youtube videos of me playing space invaders and Far Cry 3!

OK, with the mail, with my controversial views, I might expect more downvotes than upvotes as a total across all my comments, although I was unable to find anyone else where their downvotes exceed their upvotes. 

Amazon reviews are more puzzling.  But, I think on average, people tend to be more gushing in their reviews than I am, and they write shorter ones on average too.  People might tend to prefer positive reviews of products if they are looking to purchase something.

But computer games??  Here's me playing the original space invaders, and space invaders pt 2.  A total of 2 upvotes and 4 downvotes for both videos.  I had a look at a few other space invader videos played by other people, perhaps 15 or so.  There were a couple that attracted 0 votes, but none where the total of downvotes exceeded that of the upvotes.

Quite curious at this point I looked at one other video I've uploaded, a short video of me playing Farcry 3.  0 upvotes and 2 downvotes . .er . .  colour me baffled.  Why would someone click on a video of me playing space invaders or Far Cry 3 and downvote it?   

I feel this kinship with Novak Djokovic​. Neither of us are destined to be popular with the masses!

How much I like novels compared to other people.

Ever since the beginning of 2011 I've been giving a rating out of 100 for each novel I've read. I also thought it would be interesting to take the average Goodreads rating out of 5, convert it to a score out of 100 and compare this Goodreads rating to my own ratings. Here is the chart:

The blue dots represent each novel, a total of 323 novels. The x axis is my rating, the y axis is the average Goodreads rating. Hence, on the far left, my lowest rated novel I gave 6 out of 100, and if you read off the Goodreads value, it is 67 out of 100. Note also that the y axis starts at 50. That's because no Goodread average rating was less than 50.

The red dotted line is a trend line. It slightly slopes upward from left to right. This means that there is a positive correlation between how much I enjoy a novel on average, and how much the average person enjoys it. However, it appears to be a weak correlation. Indeed, the worst novel that I rated at 6, and my best novel rated at 89, have the very same Goodreads rating of 67! This suggests I really shouldn't take much notice of average customer readings at all.

My average rating is 57, but the average Goodreads rating is 80 (4 stars)! This means that Goodreads (and indeed Amazon) ratings are grossly inflated and therefore unreliable. I mean naively one might suppose that score of 80 or 4 stars means a novel is pretty good. But that is merely an average rating. To be in the top quarter of all novels a Goodreads rating needs to be 84/100 or 4.2 stars. So a big difference from 80 or 4 stars (better than half of all books), to 84 or 4.2 stars (better than three-quarters of all books).  This from the xkcd webcomic is appropriate.

As a matter of further interest, my average rating for male novelists is 58 and for females it is 55.  For the average Goodreads reader the figures are identical at 80.

Deciding on a novel to read

I've decided to avoid reading all 5 star customer reviews on amazon -- they can't be trusted since 66% of all reviews on Amazon are 5 star. OK, looking for a novel to read. I read the blurb, sounds great, but then read the customer reviews and keep getting put off!