I believe the article's author is not saying that the author was in the right; quite the contrary. Rather, the point is that the author can be in the wrong, and yet one can still sympathize with her situation and difficulty in being dispassionate about having her work rated. Yet, the mechanisms of social media (ranking, instant comments, etc.) push everything in the opposite direction of reflection and sympathy.

Aggravatingly, in a lot of circumstances, 5/5 means "acceptable" and anything less is varying degrees of "unacceptable". That's not good, but it's very real. Uber drivers who fall below 4.6 can lose business, so a 4 rating can literally cost them money.

Given that they might as well just go to a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system. There are a number of situations where I'd love to give somebody 4 stars as a way of saying "You did good but I'd prefer X", but I don't want that to be a black mark.

I make the same mistake some times. If all other things are equal on a product I'll pick the 4.8 star one over the 4.6 star one, even though I know perfectly well that these are worse than useless.

That's no excuse for an author to be a dick about it, but it's a really stupid bind they're caught in.

Rating systems online are generally skewed. Look at ebay or other marketplaces. Anything less than 95.5% favorable is treated as a problem or worse[1][2]. Look at restaurant ratings - 4 stars is not good. As best I can tell, there are really only two "true" ratings: good or bad. Part of the problem is that anytime a reviewer has a bad experience and comes away unsatisfied, they tend to go give a 1-star rating to "punish" the seller. The 5-star reviews typically only come from a. someone who had a memorably good experience and is very motivated to say so or b. fake. Someone who gets an "ordinary" experience in the transaction has little or no motivation to rate, so there's nothing in the middle.

A star rating system I know of that makes sense and is relatively uncontroversial is the independent groups like AAA hotel ratings, where the number of stars is more-or-less objective based on the amenities, making them more of a classification than a rating.

1. https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/ebay/seller.htm

2. https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/ebay/seller.htm

Same for a lot of colleges! If you don’t have a straight 4.0 you’ve “failed”