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Comment by beauzero | Hacker News Reader

As someone who worked for a third party used bookseller, this was 8 months ago, we would always and I mean always dispute anything below a 3 star review. Many get thrown out. It was generally in the 40-50% range that we could get removed. Not much rhyme or reason...just dispute all of them.

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Why? Isn't that a little dishonest?

More than a little, but I think the "why" is obvious.

Cause people have to sell to eat in our culture of step on the next guy to have a life.

And it encourages and even facilitates shady shit.

>Cause people have to sell to eat in our culture of step on the next guy to have a life.

A bit hyperbolic, but also applies to pretty much every culture which has ever existed.

Wait... living organisms have to get food in order to eat? Next you are going to tell me that they are in competition for finite resources.

Not only that, but if they don't eat, they starve.

Because people write crappy reviews. I remember seeing a 1 start review for a video card that was basically "I ordered the wrong one and it didnt fit my system" reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.

Sometimes the reviews also don't match the rating. I see this happen all the time, not only on Amazon: "Great service, great product. No complaints." 1 star

I confronted someone who left this sort of my review on my mobile app to ask why they gave me one star if they were so pleased. It was the only review under five stars.

They said that they wanted their review to appear in the "top negative review" column since it didn't have a shot at the "top positive review" column.

I was dumbfounded.

I had a similar story - user said that even though their review is wrong, "I'll let it stay because I don't feel like changing it".

Really makes you question what is going on in the heads of people around you.

I noticed my ex-girlfriend rating our Uber driver 3/5 stars once we arrived at the airport. I asked her what was wrong with him. She said he was fine but it was just an average ride, nothing exceptional. And that she's only given out one 4/5 and zero 5/5's.

Not her fault. What choice do you have but to assign your own arbitrary meanings to each star, and how aren't those going to vary from person to person?

I never looked at 5-star rating systems the same.

I agree it's frustrating that most sites leave it up to each individual user to decide what each star rating means.

On the other hand, I don't think it's really a problem as long as users are consistent. It doesn't matter how "harsh" they are as long as everyone has similar odds of getting a harsh reviewer.

I do tend to leave slightly below-average ratings because I like leaving room for truly exceptional products/experiences to get a higher rating.

I used to see this very commonly on a site with a dropdown rating system. I believe people were selecting 5 stars and then trying to scroll down the page. Since they'd be focused on the dropdown it'd change their rating to 1 star. That was my hypothesis anyway.

Just because some people write crappy reviews is not an excuse for challenging all of the bad reviews.

Race to the bottom. Who will win?

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