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I give Uber drivers 5 stars unless they did something egregiously horrible, because I know that if I give 4 stars, and enough people do the same, that driver wi

I give Uber drivers 5 stars unless they did something egregiously horrible, because I know that if I give 4 stars, and enough people do the same, that driver will be banned from the platform, even though most people would say that 4 out of 5 ain't bad. Similarly, if I ever actually take the time to fill out a receipt survey from a retail store, I just give full marks across the board, because I know that otherwise some poor underpaid single mom is gonna have to "be accountable" for my responses to an uncaring corporate drone. On the other hand, a person giving a 1 to an Uber driver or bad marks across the board on a retail survey is probably unduly pissed off, and upon further reflection (or exposure to the consequences of their score) even they might not agree they suffered a truly 1-worthy experience. So my question to you is, how do you distinguish signal from noise?

jetrink 8y ago
It's as if these companies were an extraterrestrial intelligence and mathematics our only common language. What does a 4 express? The other absurdity is that the only context for these rating is the value that appears under a driver's portrait. One person is 4.67 driver, while another is a 4.89. Now rate your driver using the numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.
hugh-avherald 8y ago
I'm surprised Uber doesn't add a remark like "Your rating for <Driver> will be compared to your ratings of other drivers." beneath the rating. This could (a) encourage people to give 1-5 star ratings more uniformly and (b) discourage constantly giving 5-star ratings. Depending on how much they wanted to get more uniformly distributed ratings, they could (a) make the rider rating depend on the uniformity of the ratings given or (b) just use a comparison rating ("Was this better or worse than your previous trip?").
- lozenge 8y ago
  They don't want uniform ratings. They can either show "average rating 4.7" for a driver (assuming everybody is rating 4 or 5 because they don't want the driver to be fired), or "approval rating 70%". 4.7 of course sounds better.

jetrink 8y ago

It's as if these companies were an extraterrestrial intelligence and mathematics our only common language. What does a 4 express? The other absurdity is that the only context for these rating is the value that appears under a driver's portrait. One person is 4.67 driver, while another is a 4.89. Now rate your driver using the numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.

hugh-avherald 8y ago

I'm surprised Uber doesn't add a remark like "Your rating for <Driver> will be compared to your ratings of other drivers." beneath the rating. This could (a) encourage people to give 1-5 star ratings more uniformly and (b) discourage constantly giving 5-star ratings. Depending on how much they wanted to get more uniformly distributed ratings, they could (a) make the rider rating depend on the uniformity of the ratings given or (b) just use a comparison rating ("Was this better or worse than your previous trip?").

lozenge 8y ago
They don't want uniform ratings. They can either show "average rating 4.7" for a driver (assuming everybody is rating 4 or 5 because they don't want the driver to be fired), or "approval rating 70%". 4.7 of course sounds better.