How not to sort by average rating (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29200103 - Nov 2021 (82 comments)
How Not to Sort by Average Rating (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15131611 - Aug 2017 (156 comments)
How Not to Sort by Average Rating (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9855784 - July 2015 (59 comments)
How Not To Sort By Average Rating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3792627 - April 2012 (153 comments)
How Not To Sort By Average Rating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1218951 - March 2010 (31 comments)
How Not To Sort By Average Rating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=478632 - Feb 2009 (56 comments)
If anything, it seems like the likes of Amazon are making it harder to sort and filter, using dark patterns to direct you to their preferred products.
1. Reddit's default sorting algorithm was (and perhaps still is) based on this
2. Google's internal Q&A tool, Dory[1], used it to rank questions to ask to the leadership during the "open" mic sessions.
NOTE: please don't do the same mistake.
The math of the algorithm ensures that controversial questions never get asked, since the algorithm approximated the upvotes/downvotes ratio, not votes/views ratio.
The latter was not used because, IIRC, counting impressions on an internal site was too "technically challenging".
This, in my opinion, defies the entire point of an internal Q&A, which is to address hot topics before they spill out and become an issue.
(I don't think I'm spilling any tea talking about how Q&A in Google was run five years ago; there's no secret sauce there. It was natural to ask "which questions make it to the top", and the answer was the link to the article we're discussing. Google considered it to be fair).
The reason for posting lists of previous discussions is not to boo reposts—I hope that's clear! It's to point curious readers in the direction of additional interesting comments.
Not really sure, some people have different base likelihoods of rating something. I will rate apps when I see the app rating popup because it's simple and I know how important that app rating is. But the majority of people will just instinctively close it.
If I see an app rating popup, I will rate the app 1 stars for annoying me with popups.
I'm sick of rating things. I can't write an email to a company, without getting a follow-up email to rate my interaction with them. Same for telephone calls. Every time I charge my car on a public charger, the app will ask me to rate my charging experience. If I order a pizza, I get asked to rate it. Just... fuck off. I'll rate/review things if I feel strongly enough either way about it, but just stop pestering me about it.
Remember to please rate this comment!
I've tried to do this on Amazon for companies that attempted to bribe me for a positive review, but sadly Amazon doesn't allow you to mention review bribes in reviews, and they don't get posted.
> declining to rate it contains useful information about that item’s quality.
In situations where you’re estimating probabilities (like the average rating of an item based on user reviews), there is a Bayesian interpretation of this adjustment.
Beta distribution is a conjugate prior to the binomial distribution, meaning the update process has a posterior distribution is also a Beta distribution.
By adding one to the numerator (the number of positive reviews) and one to the denominator (the total number of reviews plus one), you’re effectively using a Beta(1,1) prior (uniform distribution).
This approach smooths the estimated average, especially for items with a small number of reviews. This is a useful regularisation, pulling extreme values towards the mean and reflecting the uncertainty inherent in limited data.
Maybe even start including an incentive to re-review items several months on?
