Basically, they use the entire dynamic range. 3 stars for "as expected" is eminently sensible, but the west and especially the US suffers so much from review inflation that you could really remove 2 if not 3 stars of a 5-star scale: either a reddit/hn-style up/down, or possibly have a middle-ground "at expectations".

Yeah, a lot of review inflation in the US. I see loads of 4-star reviews on Goodreads as well as the restaurant review apps. I wish people would use the entire range as it makes the review more valuable.

But even if you encourage that it's still pointless, because you don't know how people have used it, or with what distribution.

This annoys me with ratings used to train recommendations too, e.g. Netflix, where I don't know how they want me to use it. What if I know it is something I would absolutely not even try watching, should I rate it? Or am I telling it I tried it, and that's a higher rating (because I might give something similar a go too) than none at all? Not to mention the old stars not being mapped into thumbs, or the later addition of double thumbs up meaning only more recently encountered favourites get that accolade.

Yes this is practical in theory, but it's bad if their rating is mixed to rest of the world. Worldwide products like games review gets fewer stars by Japanese compared to others, some people think it's a problem.

I remember when I first started using rideshare, the drivers instructed people to leave 4 star ratings if bad, 5 star if good. That’s why everyone has a 4+ star ratingz

If someone tells me how to give feedback on them (the nature of it), they're getting the worst possible.

I mean, how else would you distinguish that restaurant from "Food was sublime, service ranged from movie-star charm to invisibly dealing with my every need, payment was waived in favour of a small donation to my favourite cat charity. 5 stars"

In my view scores are relative to expectations, usually tied to price. A restaurant with a $50 meal and a 3 star score will likely have better food than one with a $5 meal and 5 stars on an absolute scale, but the people who got their $5 meal were happy with it and the ones with the $50 meal were disappointed.

Mine too! I was drawing the comparison between the two schools of thought using an example. I imagine, but don’t have any evidence, that the absolute scale dominates culturally in Japan, and the relative scale in the west.

And American reviewers are pretty much the most generous out there. My rule of thumb is that a 3.5 rating by Japanese equates to a 4.5 rating by Americans. Seriously.

I recently started tracking the books I read on GoodReads and their rating system struck me as the most American one yet:

5 stars: "it was amazing"

4 stars: "really liked it"

3 stars: "liked it"

2 stars: "it was OK"

1 star: "did not like it"

I wonder how many people, without any other context, would interpret "I'd rate this book 2 out of 5 stars" as "yeah, it was OK".

Anecdotally it seems that American reviewers tend to give mostly either 1 or 5 stars.

It depends. I've seen reviews like "Excellent food, loved the atmosphere, some of the best <local food> I've had. However, when I asked for the check, waiter came directly with the POS and told me explicitly that tip was not included in the check. 1/5".

When I think about it. I would expect the food I buy to be 1. tasty, 2. reasonably priced, and 3. service should not be rude.

Now up these in anyway and star rating should go to 4 or 5.