I saw my girlfriend rate our driver 3/5 stars for a ride that was perfect. When I asked her what problem she had with the driver to rate him so low, she said "huh? it was just an average ride, nothing special."

I think of this whenever people suggest that a star rating system is ideal.

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the Netflix rating system which seems more accurate. Netflix scales the rating against your other ratings. If you always say 3 = OK then 5 = great. If you always say 5 = does not suck then 3 = sucks but not horrible.

I don't even rate AirBNB hosts (for instance) because I know that a good enough host will be punished. I only rate the top and the bottom because those are the only two ratings that have meaning any more.

Netflix switched to a thumbs up / thumbs down rating system in 2017:

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-netflix-replaced-its-5-s...

People got very mad at this, but it seems preferable. Movies/TV shows that you "like a lot" versus movies that you "just like" are both movies that you'd watch, and watching is what you're buying.

That would only work as long as they're not figuring null ratings into the score, which would still decrease the host's average.

I'm not sure how it works for either company - is it (transactions/rating score) or (ratings/rating score)? Downthread, we learn that Lyft gives null ratings an automatic 5.

Time to invent the bell curve..

Not getting enough ratings also causes punishment.

That's how you'd rate a film. 3 stars for something that's fine, five for something that blows you away.

Plenty of people see 3 stars = Average, 5 = Amazing, but companies have decided that 3 = Bad, 5 = Acceptable.

In my perception that wasn't the idea of any company, but companies just decided to adapt to how the majority of users use the 5-star rating system: basically like a one-star-system, where 5 means "all ok" (1 star), and 1 star means "crap" (0 stars), and in between there's a wasteland nobody uses anyway.

I think it started to go wrong on eBay back in 2000. People gave any seller overly enthusiastic comments on any sale that somehow made its way to their door, as if that was something special and totally unexpected. And the sellers gave best ratings to buyers in return. Soon, both expected the other to provide a perfect rating for any transaction.

Wonder if it started before that to be honest. It's pretty common knowledge that game reviews have ridiculously inflated scores for example, with anything lower than 70% being seen as bad and people not bothering with anything under 80-90% when choosing what to buy.

So perhaps the average for a review score/rating has just steadily crept upwards over time, til the scale collapsed into a two choice system with 'bad' and 'great' being the only options.

Coincidentally, the inflated subjective scores from game reviews tends to match the percentage of players that rate a game as "recommended" on Steam.

The median rating on Steam is about 80% positive (meaning 80% of players who rated it would recommend it). A game with a 70% Steam rating tends to be mediocre.

It's interesting that even though a rating system where you choose between "recommended" and "not recommended" is much less subjective than trying to rate a game on a scale from 0-100, in aggregate, you get similar scores.

Yes, gaming scores were inflated indeed. This gaming magazine from the 90s called Hoog Spel [1] never gave ratings to games. Instead they gave a summary of plus and minus points. Such a summary takes slightly more time to read (but not a lot) and gives the reader a good idea on the positive and negative sides of the story.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoog_Spel

It was eBay indeed which introduced me to this system. eBay is just a symptom though. The problem is fundamental, that a rating does not tell much. Because what you rate 3/5 someone else rates different. Its the same with movie reviews and game reviews. You'd need to read the review in order to understand it. I do that on e.g. Amazon (and my conclusion is often: this writer is clueless).

> companies have decided that 3 = Bad, 5 = Acceptable.

Does Uber actually give instructions on how to rate? Does it say a normal, acceptable trip should be 3 or 5? What would a really great trip be anyway, perhaps if the driver says "hey, I just won a lottery and I'm celebrating with my passengers, take $10k", or perhaps something sex related?

Once Uber kicks out all the below-average passengers / drivers, will they take into account that the average will be pushed up for those remaining, so they will need to do further rounds of kicking?

They do give pretty clear instructions, and say that a ride that didn’t have any problems should be rated 5 stars.

Yes, 3 stars is "disappointing", for example.

In that case, I'm unclear why the prior-mentioned girlfriend selected the "disappointing" option.

I can't check myself, I've never used Uber. I've been unable to sign up due to some problem where my "email address is already registered", which apparently can't be fixed. I could just use a different email, but I don't really want to deal with a company that has such issues.

May harken back to the adoption of net promoter scores. Back then so many companies were giving such terrible service that "average" was bad. So then every interaction needed a 10 out of 10 so you could secure those promoters. So many people came up working at companies where anything below a 9 or 10 reflected bad on their work it doesn't surprise me that max scores became the new norm. You don't want to get any fired, do you?

NPS is so horrid. I get ticket responses sometimes with sig lines explaining that anything not a 9/10 in the survey counts as bad for them, and it's so embarassing for the organisation that they have to do this.

Ugh, I’d hate to have this kind of system when providing internal support. I like saying things like “The reason why your account isn’t letting you do anything is because you haven’t completed your mandatory training”, without having to spend too much time sugar coating it.

Plenty of people see 1 star = not free, 5 = free

This is slightly detrimental to the driver. Anything less than 5-stars is basically negative.

I’ve had a perfect 5.0 rating over 500 rides but would occasionally get lower ratings or 1-star for reasons I didn’t know. Bad smell outside comes through the vent? May a strong short stop in ridiculous traffic?

The ratings were meaningless to me, there’s no actionable result you can make. It just tormented me with some anonymous, ambiguous criticism of a already super stressful job that paid $20/hour.

I've never taken an Uber, but that's probably how I also would rate a good, but not exceptional, ride. Just like how I rate movies. So yeah, a star rating for this seems like a bad idea.

I'm more in line with your girlfriend -- if the majority of ratings I'm giving out aren't 3 stars (on a 5 star system), then I'm doing it wrong. 3 means average, after all.

And I agree with you -- this sort of disparity is why ranking systems like that aren't terribly useful. Take Amazon, for instance. People there seem to weight their ratings according to price, so something that is cheap and mediocre can get 4 or 5 stars.

All of this sort of nonsense taught me to ignore ratings.

This seems like a generational thing but I have never met someone my age or younger that thinks that 3/5 or a 'C' is average.

How people like me give ratings.

5/5 - No problems 4/5 - Minor problems 3/5 - Major problems satisfied 2/5 - Major problems unsatisfied 1/5 - Horrible

How average ratings are interpreted:

4-5: Excellent 3.5-4: Okay <3.5:Terrible

This pretty much mirrors how my grades were given in school.

But how I actually give ratings is 5/5 regardless of problems as long as the service was delivered and 4/5 if not because I have anxiety. I couldn't bare to get a bad rating at my job after a mistake so I don't do it to others.

I must be like you too for 5-point ratings. However on Uber I changed my system to:

"A ride happened." -- 5 stars

"I don't think this driver should be driving anyone anymore." -- 1 star.

I've also reluctantly started giving minor tips in the app depending on whether my own rating is trending down or not, since drivers can and do rate riders lower for not tipping. (They have to rate before they take another ride, but they can retroactively rerate.)

UX pattern-driven tipping pressure is gradually normalizing a "voluntary" (but not really since you are extorted via ratings) layer of non-progressive consumption taxes.

There are now apps and other point-of-sale interfaces which default to 20% for "tips". Nice way to lower labor costs by outsourcing a voluntary fee to your customers, but this mostly destroys the signal/feedback value of the tip and rating.

Do the nudge crowd know they are engaging in semantic pollution, e.g. diluting the value of the data they are spending millions to collect, process and analyze.

> Do the nudge crowd know they are engaging in semantic pollution

Perhaps more importantly, do they care?

> This seems like a generational thing but I have never met someone my age or younger that thinks that 3/5 or a 'C' is average.

I think it's related to school grading systems. anything less than an 'A' means you did something wrong.

I remember when I had my first professional performance review, my manager asked us all to fill out the form ourselves and then discuss the difference between our ratings and his rating of us during the review itself. fresh out of undergrad, I gave myself mostly 5/5s and a couple 4/5s where I thought I needed improvement. I was momentarily shocked when I saw he had given me mostly 3s and a few 4s. he chuckled and explained that the company had very high expectations for software devs and that I wouldn't be getting any 5/5s in my first six months on the job unless I happened to be steve wozniak in the body of a 22 year old.

But isn't school grading the exact opposite? Of course anything less than A means you did something wrong. But the test expects you to do something wrong! Failing to complete some of the tasks correctly is normal, expected and exactly what almost all students end up doing, at least semi-regularly. We are imperfect humans after all, not robots.

It's the same with services like Uber driving. There's always room for improvement, I expect the driver to make some "mistakes". Not the kind of life-threatening mistakes, of course, but more like "he could have been 30 seconds faster if he hadn't driven so sluggish" or "she may have treated my luggage with a little more care". And stuff like that is perfectly acceptable, at least as long as it doesn't all happen in the same ride. But a perfect, 5/5 ride must not contain any aspect at all that could have been improved by the driver in order to justify it's rating, and I haven't seen many of those.

Right, which is why 93%+ is typically considered an 'A' but if you get less than an 'A' it means you failed to meet expectations.

I feel like this standard is very different from my experience with professors that actually expected you to get things wrong and compensated by making tests where there were, say, 130 marks available and you needed to take 93 for an A.

It feels weird to me that a 5/5 is for you means "couldn't be improved" because for me it just means "I got from point A to point B with my body and possessions undamaged."

> Right, which is why 93%+ is typically considered an 'A' but if you get less than an 'A' it means you failed to meet expectations.

This is a really strange concept to me. So wherever you went to school, most students were always able to get 93% or more points in tests, so they "met expectations"? And there was almost nobody who managed to exceed expectations, so it wasn't necessary to keep some of the grades reserved for these people?

I can give some insight in the situation in Germany, where I live. We don't have grades A-F, but 1-6, with A=1, B=2 and so on. So it's basically the same system, just with numbers. But: there are textual expressions as well for each of the numbers. The one for the grade 4, or 'D', is "ausreichend", which means "sufficient" in German, and in the long explanation it is described as being the grade someone gets if he just managed to meet the expectations. So if you got anything above that grade, it means you were above the expectations, and if you were below, you failed to meet expectations. Typically, tests were designed such that 50% correct answers give the grade 4 and are thus expected from each student. The other 50% should be hard enough to get right so that getting a significant share of them right proves that you managed to exceed the expectations.

I guess this design should encourage students to improve themselves and to push themselves beyond the minimum expectations of teachers. By setting aside the largest part of the rating scale (1-4) to honor greatness and using just the smaller part (4-6) to punish laziness, people should rather be motivated by positive feedback instead of by punishment, which is clearly negative feedback.

> Right, which is why 93%+ is typically considered an 'A' but if you get less than an 'A' it means you failed to meet expectations.

Of all of the very surprising things I've learned in this thread, this is perhaps the most surprising to me.

In my view, getting less than an "A" doesn't mean you failed to meet expectations. Getting less than a "C" means that. Getting an "A" means that you performed at an exceptional level.

But there's clearly a generational shift involved in this that I hadn't noticed before now, and I think it's clearly for the worse. If "A" means "Pass" and everything else means "Fail", then there's no reason to have grades at all. Everything should just be pass/fail.

everyone has different experiences in school of course, but at the two undergrad institutions I attended it was pretty much always the case that aptitude for the subject combined with a reasonable effort (ie, turning in completed homework and some studying for exams) would result in an A for the class. only the kids who totally slacked off or were in the wrong major would get Cs or worse.

I always give myself perfect scores on any self-review.

If my manager wants to give me a lower score, that's not something I'm offended by; though I fully expect them to explain - in detail - all my shortcomings that resulted in their determination. I'll push back on just about all of their examples, even if I actually agree with their assessment.

I want my performance reviews to be as objective as possible. In my opinion, others should feel as though they have to convince me that I'm an imperfect employee, because they do.

Realistically, what does one have to gain by not defending themselves?

> I always give myself perfect scores on any self-review.

If I were the one performing employee evaluations, this would be a big red flag to me (unless you really were exceptional in all areas). It would indicate to me that you lack an awareness of your actual performance, and lacking that is significant. If someone can't reasonably evaluate how they're doing, then they can't reasonably be expected to be able to improve themselves in the areas where improvement is desired.

> fresh out of undergrad, I gave myself mostly 5/5s and a couple 4/5s where I thought I needed improvement.

Wow, I never would have expected that. I would only give myself (or expect) a 5/5 if I was really awesome in that category. On a 1-5 scale, the majority of my self-ratings would probably be 3s, with 2s for areas where I know I'm weak, and 4s for areas where I know I'm strong.

Ratings of 1 and 5 are, to me, reserved for the very end of each extreme. 1 means "nothing could be worse", and 5 means "nothing could be better".

it was certainly an embarrassing moment at the time, but I had gotten perfect scores on all my coding assignments in school, so I expected similar on my first performance review. also, when we did evaluations of our professors at the end of each semester, they would always explain that anything less than a 5/5 was basically fucking them over and we better have a good reason for the rating.

it's hard to understand what a rating out of five actually means unless someone takes the time to explain it in plain english.

> they would always explain that anything less than a 5/5 was basically fucking them over and we better have a good reason for the rating.

In my view, that is an unconscionable level of unprofessionalism. I'd rate any professor who told me that lower just because they told me that -- and say why.

definitely unprofessional, but every last one of them explained it that way. made me think that they were just victims of an unreasonable system. maybe I was naive.

Also _regional_. Mirroring how my grades were given as school would be >40% - pass, > 80% - exceptional. Example grade boundaries[1]: 71/180, or 39.4% - pass; 88/180, or 48.9% - a strong pass[2]. Top grade is 147/180, or 81.7%.

[1] https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/G...

[2] https://www.aqa.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/policy/gcse-and-a...

> 5/5 - No problems 4/5 - Minor problems 3/5 - Major problems satisfied 2/5 - Major problems unsatisfied 1/5 - Horrible

But that makes it impossible to indicate when something is great.

The problem when it comes to uber/lyft in particular is that as the customer you're never really comparison shopping scores the way you can on amazon, yelp, etc. The audience for the scores is Uber itself, not other customers. So the real question isn't "how was the ride", it's "do I want to fuck with this person's livelihood." If the answer is no, there's no reason not to give 5 stars.

> So the real question isn't "how was the ride", it's "do I want to fuck with this person's livelihood." If the answer is no, there's no reason not to give 5 stars.

If that's the actual game that Uber & Lyft expect people to be playing (as it appears that it is), then screw that. I'm not going to be using the services at all.

I imagine this is fairly common actually.

If it is, it's not difficult to introduce a system to deal with it (and they may already have such a system). All it'd need to do is normalize ratings or at least reduce the weight of negative ratings if the rater always gives negative ratings.

I think they have. For anything that wasn't 5* , you're asked to pick an aspect that sucked to justify it. I think that helps avoid 3* / 4* is "normal" problem. At least for me it did.

Having 3 or 4 stars be normal isn't a problem though. The expectation that 4.6 is normal is a problem that AirBnb, Uber, and more and more companies now are creating. They show 5* ratings on the app to people who just signed up for apps. The average rating should be much lower than 5* in order to not mislead unsuspecting users. I don't expect it to be 3, but a 4 should be considered a good rating, and if it isn't, the app is engaging in false advertising. (Yes, I recognize that my cutoff is arbitrary, but 5 stars is supposed to mean excellent, and it has for time immemorial.)

I wouldn't be surprised if a desired outcome of ubers rating system is to manipulate people into thinking of the rides as excellent by forcing 5's.

They should ask people for justification on 5 star ratings as well, like "What was the absolutely exceptional, one-of-a-kind aspect in this ride?". Because if 5 stars means "everything's normal" and it is the maximum, what do you do to express the deviation from normal into the positive direction?

To me and seemily people my age getting an 'A' or 5/5 means "no problems" not "exceptional".

You don't express derivation in the positive direction because delivering a product or service as described without issue is the highest aspiration. It feels wrong to make anyone dance for their supper.

It's not about making anyone dance - it's about rewarding people for exceptional service. Sometimes, when I pay someone to do some kind of service for me, they go out of their way to be better than average. That is just what happens in human-to-human interactions, and I want to honor that. It's the reason to give a bigger tip than normal (now don't tell me you never did that and always tip whatever is your absolute maximum), and it should also be the reason to give more than the average amount of stars.

Oh, and btw: it's the same the other way round. I also sometimes put much more effort than strictly required into my job for a particular client, and I love it when that is recognized and honored. If it is, I am more inclined to do it again later. If not...well, not so much, then it's probably back to "standard service, just enough to fulfill the contract".

Imagine you are making barely above minimum wage and your entire income depends on your ability to constantly make customers feel like they were serviced "better than average". Sounds incredibly exhausting.

> You don't express derivation in the positive direction because delivering a product or service as described without issue is the highest aspiration.

It's very disturbing to me that the highest aspiration is to just "meet expectations". That seems like motivating everything toward mediocrity.

My highest aspiration is to exceed expectations.

I mean in a general life sense I completely agree but not when were talking about grading others. Setting the bar for perfection at "exceeds my personal ever-changing expectations by an arbitrary unspecified degree" would actually cause me distress to have to carry out. I could never judge another human being in such a way and I would feel, and have felt, degraded being judged that way.

Like why even set expectations in the first place if your bar for perfect is "impress me"? Why is "I did everything you asked" less than perfect?

Who's talking about perfection? Perfection is like zen -- it's a goal that can never actually be achieved, so there's no problem in not achieving it. Striving for it nonetheless is a good thing.

exactly. When you're being driven somewhere, "no problems" is 5/5.

Tips. Or Lyft has some badges you can award people for stuff like good conversation, safe driving, and the like.

Pretty simply, the answer is to tip them more. While that might not be a publicly visible gesture, the driver will certainly appreciate it.

Many apps, including Uber, now also give the option to commend the driver for things they did well (e.g. cool vehicle, smooth driving, great conversation), which is also an option to express specific positive feedback.

But then what happens if someone give a 4 when they always give 5? If your normal is the maximum, it screw quite a bit with the reality.

On the other hand I rate every single driver 5/5 almost without fail, even if they were rude. I figure if their livelihood relies on it then I'd be an asshole if I didn't metagame the system.

You aren't metagaming the system, you are being gamed by the system. Uber isn't as concerned that all the drivers are polite, but they do want them all to have near 5-star ratings, so if anything goes badly they can say “Hey, he had great reviews from riders up to that point”. If they guilt you into rating 5-stars for rude service, mission accomplished.

I do the same, unless I feel my life is in danger (reckless driving). Why punish someone who might be working for less than minimum wage?

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."

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

A while ago the story went around of an Uber driver who hooked up a Nintendo Switch with Mario Kart in the back seat.

That guy probably deserved a "true" 5-star rating.

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.

Couldn't Uber look at rider rating tendencies and normalize the scores?

This is smart and I wonder if Uber does that, behind the scenes.

The drivers income depends on their star rating remaining high. I don't see how it's "right" to jeopardize this.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

I wasn't assuming that. I was assuming that the riders and the drivers would generally be honest, though.

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 :|

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Uber had the choice to drop the 5-star system and replace it with a thumbs up/thumbs-down system, or a minus/check/plus system, or a “click this if your ride sucked” system.

Uber had lots of other choices, too.

True, and I would like any of those better than the idiocy that is the 5-star system. But the "no choice" statement was directed at where they set the cutoff in their existing system. With their lie of a rating system, they have to set the cutoff at that point, or they would either not even ban the worst offenders or end up with no drivers at all.

They don't have to use a simple average.

That would be much better. At least it would be obvious to everyone what the rating means.

I never thought of it that way. I always think of it like the A thru F grading scale back in high school. But from your girlfriends perspective, nobody gets a 5 unless they went out of their way to make the ride special. I actually like that much better.

1. The grading system in school is supposed to / used to be very similar, in that a C was actually average and very few people got As.

2. I don't want the driver to do anything "special", and I can't even imagine what that would be. Balloons? Played my favorite song on the radio? Just get me from here to there, I'm looking for transportation not an "experience".

The thought of only special, out of the ordinary rides getting a 5/5 is amusing to me. That's absolutely not the culture I want to experience as a rider. Even above-average levels of conversation can be distracting when I just want to quietly think about what I'll be doing at my destination. My ratings are basically either 5/5 or 1/5.

regarding 2), it's certainly fine if all you want is a ride from A to B, but there are plenty of other things that meaningfully improve the ride for me. maybe the driver is actually familiar with the area and knows a faster or more pleasant route than the one google maps picks. maybe it's a long ride and you have a genuinely interesting conversation that helps pass the time. maybe it's a hot day and they have bottled water in a cooler. maybe they have a much more comfortable car than you expected.

there should be room to acknowledge people that go above and beyond the requirements of their job without being punitive towards the people who do a fine but unremarkable job. I tip most drivers who don't completely fuck up the transportation part of the job, and I tip extra for really good rides, but I wish there were a way to recognize this in the ratings too.

Although "grade inflation" distorts this, the way it's supposed to be is that only a small percentage of students get "A"s. A means "exceptional", after all, and by definition most people aren't "exceptional".

They might be by yesterday’s standards (Flynn effect and all).

Flynn effect or not (and the evidence supporting the Flynn effect is weak at best), most people are not exceptional.

Even if the average is rising, the average is still the average. Only people far above average are "exceptional", even if the average person of today would be considered "exceptional" 100 years ago.

The normal distribution curve may (or may not) be sliding along the scale, but its shape doesn't change.

I don't drive Uber, but on Lyft if a driver or passenger gives a 3-star or below rating it's considered such a poor ride that they won't be matched up again. Far from "average."

That genuinely surprises me. I really would have thought 3 stars means "it was fine". This issue would actually make me think twice about using Uber or Lyft. Is it OK not to rate a driver at all?

As of late 2018, if you don't rate your Lyft driver we automatically get a 5-star rating for that ride. That further emphasizes how crucial keeping a high rating to Lyft for the driver.

It genuinely surprises me that you expect more from a ride than getting there.

What makes you think that I expect more than that?

The typical Uber driver will serve thousands of passengers. People like your girlfriend drag down every driver's average, but they don't explain why one driver has a 4.8 and another has a 3.5.

Uber could certainly be doing more to give an operational definition of what the stars mean.

It's a difficult UX and communication problem, I'll grant. But I saw several unforced errors on their part, like (from memory) marketing copy about "Uber only allows exceptional drivers on our platform". Um, no dude. That sounds nice, but it doesn't lead to usable ratings.

> It's a difficult UX and communication problem, I'll grant

Is it?

It seems to me that they could just use imoji-like images instead of stars, ranging from Angry for the lowest rating to Ecstatic for the highest. The 3 star position would be neutral.

Yes, it is, because of wide variation in what experience someone will associate with and expect for a given face.

I really like grab for this reason. I have a friend who will think an Uber driver should get a 3/5 stars for a ride that was perfect fine. If you give a non-perfect rating in grab, it asks for a specific reason why, giving you a dialog with common reasons why. If you give a low enough rating, grab will reach out to you to understand what happened during the ride and to try to make things right.

Ideally it looks at the delta from the average scores that you awarded when determining de-activations.

I feel like that's giving Uber far too much credit.

> Uber should not be making the choice based on some arbitrarily chosen numerical value

It’s tough to judge the measure without understanding the distribution. Uber has to compete for drivers. They aren’t incentivised to throw them away without good reason.

Most people I know default to 5 stars. Anything below means something went wrong.

(I do 4 for nuisances, like odour; 3 for discomfort, like jerky driving; 2 for minor safety issues, like being on the phone; and 1 for major safety issues, like threatening my fellow Pool passenger or nearly hitting a pedestrian lawfully using the crosswalk. Maybe once every few weeks I’ll rate a ride less than 5.)

FWIW I’ve heard that a rating of 3 or less for the driver ensures that you are never matched with them ever again.

this is already happening. the driver does see the rating and does decide if they want to pick you up or not. effectively, if you have a low rating you will have troubles getting a ride today without uber banning you.

I heard from a Uber driver that she was told to avoid passengers that are below 4.7.

Only time she didn't follow the rule, the passenger changed a lot of details during the trip (I don't have money, can we stop a while at some bank while you wait in the car?, Could you take me some blocks ahead?, and some other weird things). And even with she complying with those requests, she got one star in the end.

So, yes, passengers are also rated and some drivers take actions based on that.

It's interesting that there is a cut-off around 4.70 for some drivers, it seems bizarre then that I have a 4.69 rating. I considered myself the ideal passenger. I'm talkative or quiet to match the driver's personality, always polite, shower before the ride, well dressed, never complained to or made any kind of request from the driver, nearly always rate the driver 5/5. Maybe it's because I don't tip? It's very strange to imagine that I'd be getting automatically declined based on my rating.

The cutoff probably varies per city, but I imagine they're only trying to get rid of the lowest percentiles of the distribution.

Honestly though, a 4.7/5 generally sounds good. If a 4.7/5 is near the (very) bottom of the distribution then it sounds like the rating system is quite flawed and should suggest to Uber that they need to replace it (perhaps with just a "would you use this driver again" question, and if no, then whether the cause was behavioural (e.g. odour or some form of rudeness) or dangerous driving), then rank drivers using this. Vice versa for riders.

If the /5 rating system was accurate, then 'good' drivers/riders should be ~3.5-4, excellent drivers 4.2+, and poor drivers 1-2. But since some people have different definitions of 5/5 compared to others the rating system ends up generally turning into a 5/5 for above satisfactory with no real issues, and random usage of the rest of the scale.

Well, this is in my city, I don't know if drivers elsewhere have this kind of informal rule too. This means, more or less, that for 1 ride with 4 stars you need 3 rides with 5 stars.

Or, even worst, that you'll need 13 5-stars to compensate for 1 ride with 1 star...

It’s because you don’t tip. Why don’t you tip anyway?

That happens because of rating inflation. If everyone just used the system where 3 was the average rating instead of 5, then he'd be in a much lower range.

But since everyone got in their heads that anything lower than a 5 is somehow an assault on the other party, 5s are the "average" rating and there is no way to distinguish between average and good. You only know that he was bad enough to get dinged .3 stars over the course of his history with the app.

The issue with this rating inflation is that it's a recursive effect.

If the majority end up treating 5 as average, then you also have to do the same and go with how the majority ends up using the rating system, which in turn forces even more people to use that definition of ratings, and so the cycle continues.

If you hold 3/5 as your average when 5/5 is held as the average for most people, you're just hitting the driver with a "this was awful" effectively.

This rating scale allows for some form of categorisation of the levels of 'badness' of the drive (e.g. differentiating between dangerous driving and jerky driving, between rudeness and general discomfort), but doesn't allow 'above satisfactory' to be separated from good or excellent.

But perhaps that's what Uber is going for with the rating system; maybe their intent is that 5 is meant to be 'above satisfactory' and anything better than that should be a 5 + a tip? If that's not their intent then I have no clue why they haven't redone the rating system already.

Who tells everyone to use that scale though? You're presented with a row of stars. Expecting people to read winds up being a big ask.

Also, those categories are subjective as well. What's the difference between "bad" and "really bad"?

Mutual graded rating systems suck. That's all there is to it. Because no matter what, it turns into currency. "Yes/No" and then base a rating on that. Rotten Tomatoes had it right from the start.

I'd probably flat out rate these annoying passengers with one star or maybe even tell them to get a hike.

I think in Uber Pool, the driver is automatically assigned the rides with no confirmation step?

Not always true. Not picking up is highly disincentivized.

I think I like the binary choice.

I also think it'd be better to flip it around. These services could ask if anything went wrong, e.g., "Did the driver do anything dangerous?" or "Was the driver discourteous?" Likewise for the rider.

Since we're saying anything less than 5 stars is a problem, might as well ask explicitly problems, and if it's not big enough to be worth reporting, we just assume it was good enough.

I agree, there are cultural and market issues at play. It should as simple as would you drive this person y/n, or anything less arbitrary than the current. I spent some time in foreign markets where Uber no longer exists and my rating took a hit for not knowing the language or being a foreigner, or something. There should be a way to at least correct that.

Add to that, in the states now some drivers will rate lower if you don’t tip. I mostly tip and the one and only time I’ve rated a driver low was when he was blasting music, twitching and doing some disco move right turns that were frightening to everyone in the car.

> Just make the question "would you do business with this driver/rider again?"

FWIW I’ve heard that a rating of 3 or less for the driver ensures that you are never matched with them ever again.

100% agree. Uber drivers should be able to tag a passenger as "do not accept requests from". Maybe they can; I'm not sure if the driver app has that functionality. But if they truly are contractors, they should be able to pick & choose their clients, so to speak.

For a good while, and possibly still, Domino's Pizza stores were graded on a yes/no "would recommend" (iirc).