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Tell your girlfriend that Uber drivers might lose their job if they drop to a 4.6 star average. 3 seems savage for a good ride. "If your rating over the most r

Tell your girlfriend that Uber drivers might lose their job if they drop to a 4.6 star average. 3 seems savage for a good ride. "If your rating over the most recent 100 trips is below a 4.6, your profile may be at risk of deactivation."

cowwithbeef 7y ago
His girlfriend is trying to make the system useful for communicating both great and terrible service while everyone else has gamed it down to a reporting mechanism. His girlfriend is right and everyone else is wrong.
- p1necone 7y ago
  The drivers income depends on their star rating remaining high. I don't see how it's "right" to jeopardize this.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    It is "right" to provide an honest rating. What you seem to be saying is that it is the rider's duty to provide dishonest ratings.
    - EpicEng 7y ago
      Well I hope giving that 3 makes you feel really good about yourself when the guy did his job and you're just hurting him for it. You know how they are judged and you do it anyway out of some misguided notion of what the rating system _should_ be and an insatiable urge to always be "right". It makes you a jerk, nothing more really.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        > Well I hope giving that 3 makes you feel really good about yourself when the guy did his job and you're just hurting him for it. Since I had no idea that 3 stars was a bad rating that hurt drivers until I read the comments here, I think that your condescension is very misplaced.
        EpicEng 7y ago
        Well yeah, that completely changes things. The comment I responded doesn't exactly make that clear though does it? >It is "right" to provide an honest rating. What you seem to be saying is that it is the rider's duty to provide dishonest ratings. That seems to me a staunch defense of doing what you want to do regardless of how it affects the driver.
        JohnFen 7y ago
        My comment was intended to point out that the rating system is inherently dishonest. It was not intended to indicate what I would or wouldn't do when rating. From reading the comments here, though, I think I know what I'll do: opt out of the whole thing and avoid ride-sharing services in the future.
        p1necone 7y ago
        Come on, you have to be pretty fucking naive to assume any large publicly traded corporation is going to to be honest with users or employees.
        JohnFen 7y ago
        I wasn't assuming that. I was assuming that the riders and the drivers would generally be honest, though.
    - Rapzid 7y ago
      It's a dishonest rating when you know that a 5 means normal experience. Then you are just making a point. There is a time and a place to make a point, but for stuff like tipping and star ratings policy changes are the best course of action; not hanging individuals out to dry. If your the only person not leaving somebody tips(and I hate tipping) or giving them 3 stars you're not changing the system, you are just being an asshole. EDIT: I mean the royal "you", not you specifically. Also, I have been the a'hole before :|
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        > It's a dishonest rating when you know that a 5 means normal experience. I agree, in a sense. If you're working with a rating system that is inherently dishonest (as I just learned this one is) by redefining what ratings mean, then it's dishonest to supply a rating that you know means something other than what it should. I was not advocating doing that.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Unless the company is using the restroom dishonestly, the company is doing it because they want good customer experience from excellent honest ratings; inflated ratings are thus sabotaging everyone else's experience. If the company is using them dishonestly then inflated ratings are just serving the dishonest purpose. Moreover, in the honest case (which I do not think applies) if the company is trying to use (known to be highly culturally variable) star ratings as a substitute for a simple binary “you would want to ride again with this driver” flag, they are idiots and overcomplicating what should be simple.
- darpa_escapee 7y ago
  > His girlfriend is trying to make the system useful for communicating both great and terrible service while everyone else has gamed it down to a reporting mechanism. His girlfriend is right and everyone else is wrong. However, Uber doesn't value star-ratings the way she does, so she is wrong.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  I don't disagree with the stupidity around the rating system, but honestly... what would a driver have to do in that world to get a five star rating? Serve you drinks and rub your feet? It's a car ride, not a movie. A perfect ride... is still just a ride in a car. If they get you there without incident and don't annoy you too much that seems like a 5/5.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > If they get you there without incident and don't annoy you too much that seems like a 5/5. Here's how the scale I instinctively would use would work: Getting me there without incident and without being too annoying would be a 3. If they don't annoy me at all, that would be a 4. If they do anything that makes my trip better (a better route, a good, relevant suggestion for where to go for something of interest to me, or just making my day a bit brighter), that would be a 5.
    - EpicEng 7y ago
      Problem of definitions. Personally I don't want any chit chat, so what makes a ride a five for you lowers it for me. At the end of the day I just give service people top marks unless they did something terribly wrong.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        Yes, that's the underlying issue with simplistic rating systems like 5-stars -- different people value different things. Even if we all agreed on some standard like "average == 3 stars", everybody has different desires, so my 5-star ride may only be a 3-star for you, and vice-versa.
  - JCharante 7y ago
    My favorite Uber ride was in a party van. Great way to get home after long trip at night. In an ideal system I think they'd be a 5/5 while most of my other rides would be 4/5.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
- amputect 7y ago
  Unless she's in the process of joining Uber and working on the feedback component, she's not "trying to make the system useful", she's just refusing to engage with material reality. Direct action needs to actually affect the people who have the power to make changes. Stubbornly rating drivers 3/5 for a good ride just makes their lives harder, and let's be clear, nobody who is working at Uber gives a shit about that.
- aggie 7y ago
  Couldn't Uber look at rider rating tendencies and normalize the scores?
  - unreal37 7y ago
    This is smart and I wonder if Uber does that, behind the scenes.
JohnFen 7y ago
Damn, that really does make the rating system almost totally useless.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Uber's only able to set that cutoff because everyone rates 5 no matter what. If people provided informative ratings, the cutoff would be adjusted. Uber's policies can't make the rating system worthless; the raters are doing it.
  - fphhotchips 7y ago
    This isn't true. Uber has always had a minimum cut-off for driver ratings, and it has always been around 4.6-4.7. Uber set that expectation, not the riders.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      So, according to you, if riders started rating drivers on a 2-centered scale, Uber would fire every driver before noticing the shift? I stand by exactly what I said before: Uber is only able to set the cutoff it does because of rider behavior, and if the rider behavior were different, Uber would adjust to it, not the other way around. The riders have all of the power to determine what ratings mean, and Uber has none of that power, because the riders are the ones who set the ratings. No one at Uber is enough of an idiot to deactivate every driver on the platform because none of them reached a number that Uber made up. Or even to deactivate 70% of drivers because only 30% got perfect ratings.
    - Slartie 7y ago
      That's because the riders have always dumbed down the 5-star system into a binary "one-star-or-no-star" system since the inception of Uber. Uber thus had no choice than to set the cutoff at this number.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago

cowwithbeef 7y ago

His girlfriend is trying to make the system useful for communicating both great and terrible service while everyone else has gamed it down to a reporting mechanism. His girlfriend is right and everyone else is wrong.

p1necone 7y ago
The drivers income depends on their star rating remaining high. I don't see how it's "right" to jeopardize this.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  It is "right" to provide an honest rating. What you seem to be saying is that it is the rider's duty to provide dishonest ratings.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    Well I hope giving that 3 makes you feel really good about yourself when the guy did his job and you're just hurting him for it. You know how they are judged and you do it anyway out of some misguided notion of what the rating system _should_ be and an insatiable urge to always be "right". It makes you a jerk, nothing more really.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > Well I hope giving that 3 makes you feel really good about yourself when the guy did his job and you're just hurting him for it. Since I had no idea that 3 stars was a bad rating that hurt drivers until I read the comments here, I think that your condescension is very misplaced.
      - EpicEng 7y ago
        Well yeah, that completely changes things. The comment I responded doesn't exactly make that clear though does it? >It is "right" to provide an honest rating. What you seem to be saying is that it is the rider's duty to provide dishonest ratings. That seems to me a staunch defense of doing what you want to do regardless of how it affects the driver.
        JohnFen 7y ago
        My comment was intended to point out that the rating system is inherently dishonest. It was not intended to indicate what I would or wouldn't do when rating. From reading the comments here, though, I think I know what I'll do: opt out of the whole thing and avoid ride-sharing services in the future.
        p1necone 7y ago
        Come on, you have to be pretty fucking naive to assume any large publicly traded corporation is going to to be honest with users or employees.
        JohnFen 7y ago
        I wasn't assuming that. I was assuming that the riders and the drivers would generally be honest, though.
  - Rapzid 7y ago
    It's a dishonest rating when you know that a 5 means normal experience. Then you are just making a point. There is a time and a place to make a point, but for stuff like tipping and star ratings policy changes are the best course of action; not hanging individuals out to dry. If your the only person not leaving somebody tips(and I hate tipping) or giving them 3 stars you're not changing the system, you are just being an asshole. EDIT: I mean the royal "you", not you specifically. Also, I have been the a'hole before :|
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > It's a dishonest rating when you know that a 5 means normal experience. I agree, in a sense. If you're working with a rating system that is inherently dishonest (as I just learned this one is) by redefining what ratings mean, then it's dishonest to supply a rating that you know means something other than what it should. I was not advocating doing that.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Unless the company is using the restroom dishonestly, the company is doing it because they want good customer experience from excellent honest ratings; inflated ratings are thus sabotaging everyone else's experience. If the company is using them dishonestly then inflated ratings are just serving the dishonest purpose. Moreover, in the honest case (which I do not think applies) if the company is trying to use (known to be highly culturally variable) star ratings as a substitute for a simple binary “you would want to ride again with this driver” flag, they are idiots and overcomplicating what should be simple.
darpa_escapee 7y ago
> His girlfriend is trying to make the system useful for communicating both great and terrible service while everyone else has gamed it down to a reporting mechanism. His girlfriend is right and everyone else is wrong. However, Uber doesn't value star-ratings the way she does, so she is wrong.
EpicEng 7y ago
I don't disagree with the stupidity around the rating system, but honestly... what would a driver have to do in that world to get a five star rating? Serve you drinks and rub your feet? It's a car ride, not a movie. A perfect ride... is still just a ride in a car. If they get you there without incident and don't annoy you too much that seems like a 5/5.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > If they get you there without incident and don't annoy you too much that seems like a 5/5. Here's how the scale I instinctively would use would work: Getting me there without incident and without being too annoying would be a 3. If they don't annoy me at all, that would be a 4. If they do anything that makes my trip better (a better route, a good, relevant suggestion for where to go for something of interest to me, or just making my day a bit brighter), that would be a 5.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    Problem of definitions. Personally I don't want any chit chat, so what makes a ride a five for you lowers it for me. At the end of the day I just give service people top marks unless they did something terribly wrong.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      Yes, that's the underlying issue with simplistic rating systems like 5-stars -- different people value different things. Even if we all agreed on some standard like "average == 3 stars", everybody has different desires, so my 5-star ride may only be a 3-star for you, and vice-versa.
- JCharante 7y ago
  My favorite Uber ride was in a party van. Great way to get home after long trip at night. In an ideal system I think they'd be a 5/5 while most of my other rides would be 4/5.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
amputect 7y ago
Unless she's in the process of joining Uber and working on the feedback component, she's not "trying to make the system useful", she's just refusing to engage with material reality. Direct action needs to actually affect the people who have the power to make changes. Stubbornly rating drivers 3/5 for a good ride just makes their lives harder, and let's be clear, nobody who is working at Uber gives a shit about that.
aggie 7y ago
Couldn't Uber look at rider rating tendencies and normalize the scores?
- unreal37 7y ago
  This is smart and I wonder if Uber does that, behind the scenes.

JohnFen 7y ago

Damn, that really does make the rating system almost totally useless.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
Uber's only able to set that cutoff because everyone rates 5 no matter what. If people provided informative ratings, the cutoff would be adjusted. Uber's policies can't make the rating system worthless; the raters are doing it.
- fphhotchips 7y ago
  This isn't true. Uber has always had a minimum cut-off for driver ratings, and it has always been around 4.6-4.7. Uber set that expectation, not the riders.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    So, according to you, if riders started rating drivers on a 2-centered scale, Uber would fire every driver before noticing the shift? I stand by exactly what I said before: Uber is only able to set the cutoff it does because of rider behavior, and if the rider behavior were different, Uber would adjust to it, not the other way around. The riders have all of the power to determine what ratings mean, and Uber has none of that power, because the riders are the ones who set the ratings. No one at Uber is enough of an idiot to deactivate every driver on the platform because none of them reached a number that Uber made up. Or even to deactivate 70% of drivers because only 30% got perfect ratings.
  - Slartie 7y ago
    That's because the riders have always dumbed down the 5-star system into a binary "one-star-or-no-star" system since the inception of Uber. Uber thus had no choice than to set the cutoff at this number.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago