Let’s reform bad rating systems, starting with Uber. Gut check, please?

From my understanding, Uber ratings currently work like this for drivers:
- 5 star average: Fine
- 4, 3, or 2 star average: You’ll be fired soon.
- 1 star average: You’re toast

Given this situation (which seems similar across other services with a 1–5 star rating system as well), riders seem to rate like this:
- 5 stars: Fine. Or amazing! Or kinda-poor-but-I-don’t-want-the-driver-to-be-fired!
- 4 stars: Pretty awful!
- 3 or 2 stars: (Mostly unused?)
- 1 star: OMG! BARELY ESCAPED ALIVE!!!

Who knows which screwy situation begat the other one, but here we are, eh?

My hope is that we, collectively, can come up with a rating system that:
- Provides useful info to the service provider and to the company hiring that service provider (e.g., Uber driver and Uber itself)
- And doesn’t require one to fill out a 10 page survey.

So here’s a first draft of a new rating system (“o” = radio button)

—
o AMAZING! Top 10% of drivers
o Better than average
o Worse than average
o TERRIBLE! Bottom 10% of drivers
____________________ Optional comment

Share this comment* with:
o Only the driver
o Only Uber
o Both the driver and Uber
*Individual ratings are never shared with drivers.
—

Three prompts, and — just like today — only a single rating is required by default. Though maybe a comment should be required if the user rates the driver as “TERRIBLE!”?

And yes, I intentionally omitted an “average” option, since I think pretty much every experience is at least slightly better or slightly worse than average, even if just a tad.

I’d also hope that a user would be prompted with a “Seriously?!” (okay, something a bit kinder) if they just reflexively rate every driver as “AMAZING!”

With this revised scale, Uber would better be able to…
- Use the ratings to throttle or suspend truly below average drivers
- Use the written feedback in the context of appeals

And drivers would be more apt to get actionable, honest, unfiltered feedback.

Yes, it’d take maybe 20 seconds longer for users to write feedback, but I believe passengers, drivers, and Uber (or Lyft, if they chose to implement this) would end up in a much better place.

And yes, Uber and Lyft both have plenty of other challenges they need to address, but those have already been written about extensively :).

Lastly, I wonder if moving to a rating system like I’ve outlined above would also prove useful to companies like Amazon and Yelp.

Thoughts?

Would you like using this sort of revised rating system?
Any suggested changes?
And do you agree that it would benefit customers, drivers, and companies alike?