Giving Star Ratings the Thumbs Down

This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

Caroline O’Donovan, writing for BuzzFeed, on why star ratings are awful:

The other problem is that not everyone can agree on what the star ratings mean — not even the companies themselves. Lyft says that five stars means “awesome,” four means “OK, could be better,” and three means “below average.” But for Uber, five stars is “excellent,” four is “good,” and three is “OK.”

Individuals have different interpretations, too. “For some people, three could mean this is good, while four is great and five is perfect. Some people might say, nowhere is going to be perfect, so I’m going to say five stars is really good, and four is good,” Celis said. “The way you can interpret those stars is infinite, and most people don’t have the exact same system.”
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Agreed completely. Moving to a more descriptive system was one of the first things I did when redesigning this website.

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