Why is zero stars not considered a "rating" when making a smart playlist?

[relink]

I am trying to make a smart playlist that has all songs of a particular genre that are either NOT rated, OR rated 4-5stars.

So I created a filter like below;
Track Rating is not 1
Track Rating is not 2
Track Rating is not 3

This should show me all tracks that are not rated, rated 4 stars, or rated 5 stars…but it doesn’t, it only shows 4 and 5 star ratings.

This has to be a bug, I cant believe that this is supposed to work this way. If I wanted this result I could just add another filter myself that says “Track Rating is not EMPTY”

I hope im just missing something here.

[beckfield]

Yeah, it’s been around for a while now. Here’s an earlier report:

Bug: Custom filters do not properly handle "Track Rating" with tracks that have an empty rating

I just tried to make a custom filter that contains music by a particular artist that is not rated 1 star. So naturally I added two search criteria to the filter: “Artist Title is XYZ” and “Track Rating is not 1 Star”. However, it excluded all music that had an empty rating. Furthermore, if I set the filter to include “Track Rating is not Empty” is still includes all music that has an empty rating.

And here:

[Bug]: Custom Filter: "Artist Rating" "is not" "Empty" finds nothing

My entire music collection has no ratings. I’ve never rated any artists, tracks, or albums. When I tried a custom filter with the settings “Artist Rating” “is not” “Empty,” I expected to get no results. But it appears that the filter doesn’t even get applied. Not sure if this is the same bug or a separate one, but I also tried “Artist Rating” “is not” “3stars.” Again, with no ratings on any Artist in my library, I expected the result to be every artist in the library. Instead, the result w…

[anon18523487]

There is not rating of 0, so not having a rating means having no value “null” for that field. A null is not equal to a 0 so your criteria above won’t find it.

You need to use “Track Rating is empty” to include these in the result.

[beckfield]

But “null” still matches “not 1 and not 2 and not 3.” You’re right, adding the “is not empty” filter fixes the problem, but, logically, you shouldn’t have to.

[anon18523487]

No. “not” needs to compare to something. You can’t compare a null to anything except a null.

[GuyGizmo]

@anon18523487 I understand what you’re saying, but I think you’re letting the implementation details of Plex’s database leak into the user experience, which is a bad idea. The user should not ever have to think about what data type comparisons make sense inside of a database query. That’s an absurd thing to expect them to do!

So instead the features should work as is intuitive and makes sense from a user’s perspective. And in that sense, a track with no rating counts as “not 1”, “not 2”, “not 3”, “not 4”, and “not 5”, because it intuitively obvious and apparent that it is not any of those. Consequently I’d consider this a bug and would still like to encourage you to think of it as such and work on a fix.

[anon18523487]

@GuyGizmo

The user should not ever have to think about what data type comparisons make sense inside of a database query. That’s an absurd thing to expect them to do!

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think including unknowns is correct, not just in terms of a database query, but even just IRL.

For example, “list all the foods you don’t like”. Would you include foods you’ve never tried?

@GuyGizmo

Consequently I’d consider this a bug and would still like to encourage you to think of it as such and work on a fix.

Well, the feature is working the way it’s designed, so it’s not technically a bug. But feel free to file a feature request to include nulls in search results for “not”. If there is enough interest, it might get the devs to change.

[beckfield]

If an intended design is logically invalid, it’s still a bug. By any logical assessment, the OP’s filters (“not 1 and not 2 and not 3”) should have found tracks with no rating, as well as tracks with ratings of 4 or 5.

[relink]

I’ll post this over in feature requests, because not only does this make no sense (from a user perspective), but it also severely limits the usefulness of smart playlists.

As was said earlier, “null” within the rating field is in fact not 1, 2, or 3 so it should have returned results. The filter doesn’t say “not 1 Except…”, it’s says “not 1”, and the available options are;

• Null
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

If I did not want to return unrated tracks I can easily do that now by simply adding another filter for “not empty”. So regardless of the technical reasoning behind this - which may be valid, from a users point of view this is a bug.

[Thilas]

I have the exact same issue and it prevents me from excluding low rated tracks when most of my tracks are not rated. This problem is known for years and has an easy fix I mentioned above in the thread so please do something about it. Thanks.

[PhilthyJeep]

Did you make a feature request? I would like to vote that up. I also have the same problem. I would like to make a playlist with all the music I haven’t heard and the ones I like, excluding the music I have rated low.