Yes, online recipe ratings are broken, which is why I don't pay attention to them. Of course, I'm a fairly good cook, so I know how to look at a recipe and tell

Yes, online recipe ratings are broken, which is why I don't pay attention to them. Of course, I'm a fairly good cook, so I know how to look at a recipe and tell whether it makes sense or not. Often, I'll end up with 60% of one recipe, 15% of another, 10% of a third, and 15% my own experience to pull together a recipe for a dish I want to try to make. If you're looking for something on how to make a dish (like I did recently for baguettes) and find several recipes to choose from, I find a few things make it easy to choose from: 1. Real, individual ingredients are better than composite ingredients (that is, flour, baking soda, oil, etc. rather than Bisquick™). 2. Simpler recipes are usually better than complex recipes, especially if you've never made the dish before. There are exceptions, of course. (I'm certain that the King Arthur baguette recipe that I found would be better than the one that I tried, but it requires making a sourdough starter some fourteen hours in advance. I will try it some day.) 3. Well-written descriptions suggest better recipes. This is a bit like code comments, though—there is such a thing as too much description. 4. Recipes that depend on exact timing of multiple pots and pans are probably not a good idea to experiment with if you're not already good at making similar dishes. That said, I'd pay attention to recipe ratings if there were only two yes/no questions: I made this; I'd make it again. Report the resulting value as a simple ratio of (repeat)/(made once). Seriously, I don't make recipes more than once if I wasn't enthusiastic about the results or weren't convinced that I could make it better by changing the ingredients or cooking instructions better. I don't know anyone who does. Star ratings are a waste of time.