To me, a five star review means that a product went above and beyond my expectations in some extraordinary way. I have bought products that fit that description, but not many.
Everything else, I'd give either 4 stars or a still-very-satisfactory 3 stars.
The problem is, I know these 4-and-3 star reviews actually hurt sellers, which isn't my intention at all. So I just don't leave feedback.
It was here on HN a number of months ago that I learned that in the Uber world, 3 stars does not, in fact, mean "acceptable". That knowledge altered my view of all reviews, including Amazon's, in two ways:
1) Like you, it means that I'm no longer willing to give reviews/ratings. If there is no consensus on what the different numbers of stars mean, then I can't be at all comfortable that my rating will indicate to others what I intended to indicate.
2) It means that I no longer put any weight whatsoever on ratings I see from others, for the exact same reason: I can't know that what I think the rating means is at all what the rater intended it to mean.
That 3 and 4 star ratings hurt Amazon sellers underlines this problem.
Knowing how the system works and how 5 stars are expected, the way I look at Uber rating is all drivers start with 5 stars. A good enough journey gets that. But stars will be taken off if things like the car is dirty or they drive dangerously etc. It starts at 5 starts, not has to earn them.
I get why this is, but’s it’s really never been this way. Even on early eBay, if a transaction simply occurred without errors it was pure etiquette to rate them a full 5 with a comment along the lines of “A++++ SELLER! SHIPPED ON TIME, GOT EXACTLY WHAT WAS LISTED!”
Really, same thing goes for Amazon and Uber, etc. the etiquette is to start at a full rating by default and deduct based on what goes wrong. You can’t “earn” extra stars... if I order a box of batteries, and they arrive on time and the box is full, that’s a perfect transaction. 5/5, no problem. You can’t realistically expect extra batteries, or for the batteries to perfect above their rating. They’re batteries.
This reminds me that Youtube used to have a star rating system, but as you say, it was effectively treated as thumbs up/thumbs down, so they eventually made that official.
Interestingly though it wasn't quite a simple five stars/one star dichotomy: the original blog post[0] has a dead image, but this one[1] shows that while five stars was overwhelmingly the most common rating, one star and four stars were about equal in second place.
Not sure I understand your problem. What prevents you from simply changing your interpretation of review scores so that it will better fit the expectations of others, instead of avoiding leaving helpful reviews altogether?
I totally agree. For five stars it would have to be exceptionally good. Something I'm very satisfied I might give four stars, which ironically drags the score down.
I recently purchased an alarm clock. When I put the clock in my bedroom, the light from the display was so bright it kept me awake. I went back to the item on Amazon and read all the reviews. One person mentioned the same issue yet still gave it four stars!
i believe that's the reasoning for why many systems have devolved to boolean choices rather than multi-tier (distortions in voting cause mispresentations of the customer population's sentiments).
but boolean choices are really 3-tier systems where it's assumed that only the extremely statisfied or dissatisfied customer will vote (up or down), and the lukewarm/indifferent customer is assumed not to vote. however, that assumption very likely misrepresents the sentiments of the (majority) non-voters and thus the population as a whole.
you might address this by moving to a 3-tier system: (1) unsatisfied/bad, (2) acceptable/fine, (3) exceeded expectations/great to more accurately differentiate the non-voting/indifferent customers, but non-voters would have no incentive to suddenly voice their opinions and make the system more accurate.
you might be able to counteract that impulse by incentivizing customers to vote on every product/service delivery event (like earning points for future discounts) to lower response bias. you could also do a separate study to see how the voter/non-voter population differ, and adjust the boolean ratings accordingly.
I usually ignore the star ratings completely and read the text of a few reviews. This isn't a personal policy, just something I've done unconsciously. The stars don't tell me anything useful.
(Reading the reviews is by no means a good system—it's time consuming, the reviews are poorly written, and I never know what to believe. But if I ignored everything I'd feel blind.)
Before I started ignoring the ratings, I absolutely bought products with 3 star reviews, since my view was that "3 stars" means "it's fine".
And you know what? They were. I never really noticed a huge quality difference between things rated 3 stars and things rated 5. And, since I started ignoring the ratings, I've purchased things with 1 and 2 star ratings on Amazon (that were well-reviewed in other places). Those have generally been as good as the 4 and 5 star things as well -- and a couple of them were actually excellent, deserving of 5 stars rather than 2.
To me, a five star review means that a product went above and beyond my expectations in some extraordinary way. I have bought products that fit that description, but not many.
Everything else, I'd give either 4 stars or a still-very-satisfactory 3 stars.
The problem is, I know these 4-and-3 star reviews actually hurt sellers, which isn't my intention at all. So I just don't leave feedback.
This is also why I don't rate Uber drivers.