play a new game every once in a while
The problem with recommender services is that while initially they really introduce you to the new and wonderful movies, after some time, you exhaust the movies you really want to see on the first several screens of suggestion list. At that stage the suggestions become widely inadequate.
Reshuffling the suggestions list, bringing something that used to be hidden in the ocean of three star movies to the top can make suggestions interesting agsain.
Movielens has switched to the new interface and gave us four algorithms to choose from. So for some time I was busy using all four of them.
Now that I am past the 1000 ratings, those dont' provide anything useful anymore.
I was very excited about Spirit algorithm, expecting it to find some hidden gems for me. The suggestion list was all new, full of movies I've never seen the titles of. Except that the majority of suggestions it provided to me was a total garbage.
I've tried to come up with a couple of hypothesis. Such as "I should make a little more suggestions", "It needs some time to tune itself up", "may be if I use tags more extensively it will be more adequate". Nope, didn't help. So I switched back from Spirit and met all the well known suggestions I still don't want to watch.
Bottom line: a new game to play every once in a while makes me very happy. But other than just being a new game, it better bring new interesting movies.