Talk:1098: Star Ratings

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 19:24, 23 August 2012 by Shalom S. (talk | contribs)
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  • An alternate explanation is that internet users only vote in 1s and 5s, and that the cutoff represents the point where there are too many 1s.
  • The people most likely to vote are those with strong opinions, which would often be polerized to one or five stars. These people would be the most likely to vote because their connection to the product would make them more willing to spend the time to share their experiance.
  • In my opinion, this comic is about overrating. The comic says anything between full fout stars is crap. One possible explanation could be that people dislike to admit that their decision for a particular product was a bad one, so they grant three stars. Or look at certain brands, where every defect is by definition unimportant so they do not impact the review too harshly. 46.142.51.138 15:05, 22 August 2012 (UTC)madd
    • It was pointed out to me (by a district manager in the organization concerned) that on those surveys you are asked to take by retail outlets, anything less than a 5 is considered a zero by Corporate. They're apparently not interested in honest evaluations; either it was SUPEREXCELLENTGREAT!! or it's worthless. Shalom S. (talk) 19:24, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
  • It seems likely that any product with a 1-start rating only has one (or a small number of) reviews as well. Usually a product has some redeeming value that someone will find useful.
    • Usually the developer or at least a friend will provide a positive rating and review, though the issue of self rating isn't specifically addressed by this comic. Still, if 3 users give it a 1-star review, but the developer has access to at least 2 accounts that can give a 5-star rating, you still result in 13/25 rating, or two-and-a-half stars, which is why that star rating would be "crap".--DanB (talk) 16:31, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
      • Agreed. If there's only one review, it most likely comes from the supplier / author / producer, and in that case it's going to be a five star rating. From that perspective, the only way to get a bad _average_ review is if there are many bad reviews. As an example, consider a product with five reviews: 5, 2, 2, 1, 3. The average is 2.6, and depending on the implementation this might be shown as "two and half stars" or "three stars". If you take out the 5, you get an average of 2. Consider the case of two reviews, 5 and 1. The 5 is from the author and the 1 is from a real user. Average is 3. Considering the other cases (5 and 2, 5 and 3, 5 and 4) the averges are 3.5, 4, 4.5. As you can see, anything below 3.5 is crap (the 1 and 2 from real users) and 4 and 4.5 are indeed ok (3 and 4 from the real user). As the number of "real" reviews increases, the average will tend towards the actual average perception from users (law of large numbers), and there is no way to get a 5 on average because of the fact that when dealing with subjective evaluation, someone is going to think the product is crap, therefore a five star rating is the product of a single review from the author. mem (talk) 20:56, 22 August 2012 (UTC)