Star Ratings Are Garbage, and Hurt Uber and Lyft Drivers

Caroline O’Donovan, writing for BuzzFeed, goes deep on the problems with 5-star rating systems:

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.”

Read through to the end for an anecdote from yours truly. Thumbs-up/thumbs-down is the way to go — everyone agrees what those mean.

★ Thursday, 13 April 2017