There is a story in the Wall Street Journal about user ratings on web sites such as Amazon or eBay. It seems that raters are unduly generous with their stars.
One of the Web’s little secrets is that when consumers write online reviews, they tend to leave positive ratings: The average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five.
And some users are fighting back:
That’s why Amazon reviewer Marc Schenker in Vancouver has become a Web-ratings vigilante. For the past several years, he has left nothing but one-star reviews for products. He has called men’s magazine Maxim a “bacchanalia of hedonism,” and described “The Diary of Anne Frank” as “very, very, very disappointing.”
I have noticed that Amazon reviewers are highly polarized with 5 stars being the most common with 1 star reiews coming in second. And in fact it makes a lot of sense. Say you think that a product is over-rated at 4.3 stars and you think that 4 stars is more appropriate. If there are more than just a few ratings, then to bring the average down to 4 you would have to give the lowest possible rating.
Once enough ratings have already been counted, subsequent raters will be effectively engaging in a tug of war. Those that want to raise the average will give 5 stars and those that want to reduce it will give 1.
Cheap Talk 
5 comments
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October 6, 2009 at 6:55 am
hbi
Well, I guess I’ll push to have my teaching evaluations on the web then and I I know what I’m going to tell my chair when I get a bunch of 1 ratings …
October 6, 2009 at 10:55 am
Noah Yetter
It doesn’t have anything to do with pushing around the average, it’s pure selection bias. That is, I’m not terribly motivated to go online and review a 3-star product, slightly moreso a 2- or 4-star product, and very motivated to review a 1- or 5-star product. This behavior produces the observed bi-modal distribution.
October 6, 2009 at 12:30 pm
donna
Just like you would only complain about spectacularly bad or very very good customer service…
October 6, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Vinnie
The problem with seller feedback is that Amazon and Ebay give no guidelines on what the ratings should convey. If, say, 3 stars were assigned the description, “Item arrived as expected within expected shipping time,” and 5 were something like, “Item arrived ahead of schedule and/or included bonus features,” I think we’d see a lot more 3-star ratings. Unfortunately, nice guys like me default to giving 5s when the seller simply fulfilled basic expectations.
October 7, 2009 at 5:09 am
Manuel
Maybe that’s why many sites are starting to offer a simple like it/don’t like option for rating. It gives the same information with much less fuss.