Rotten Tomatoes has decided to remove the option for fans to comment and "rate" films via the site's "Want to See" feature before their release in an effort to stop users trashing films they haven't seen yet.

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The change is part of a site overhaul that's intended to "more accurately and authentically represent the voice of fans, while protecting [Rotten Tomatoes'] data and public forums from bad actors," explained a recent blog update . The update reads: "As of February 25, we will no longer show the 'Want to See' percentage score for a movie during its pre-release period. Why you might ask? We’ve found that the 'Want to See' percentage score is often times confused with the 'Audience Score' percentage number."The blog also issues the reminder that the "Audience Score" percentage is the percentage of all users who have rated the movie show positively with a rating of 3.5 stars higher and is only shown once the film or TV show is released. It's the user version of the Tomatometer or critics' rating, which displays the percentage of positive reviews but is often misinterpreted as an average score.It's likely that the changes were ushered in following a prolonged negative response to Captain Marvel on social media platforms from users who have yet to see the movie."Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership," the blog post continues."We have decided that turning off [the pre-release comment function] for now is the best course of action. Don’t worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences can leave a user rating and comments as they always have."The ‘Want to See’ percentage score will be removed for the duration of a movie's pre-release period. Instead, Rotten Tomatoes shows the total number of users who voted that they'd see the movie. For Captain Marvel, that number is currently around 17k, compared to 4.6k for Shazam! or 10k for the more distant Avengers: Endgame, which may be why Rotten Tomatoes found its percentage displays to be misleading.This is just the "first of several phases of updates that will refresh and modernize [the] Audience Rating System."As for Captain Marvel, the newest MCU film will be released in theaters on March 8, 2019, and initial reactions from Twitter are positive. Editor's Note: The article headline originally described the ratings feature as "user reviews". We changed it to RT's official term to avoid confusion with the site's audience score rating.

Shabana is a freelance writer who enjoys JRPGs, wine, and not finishing games. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram