As a HOST: Every time I sign onto my dashboard I'm greeted with the warning that "You’re at risk - Your account could be suspended if you don’t focus on improving to meet Airbnb hosting standards."
I know of no other realWorld system in which a score of 4.5-out-of-5.0 (i.e. "90% positive") is the cutoff point for threatening someone with suspension. Do you?
Clearly:
* airbnb's rating system is a mystery to all of us
* airbnb claims that they have "hosting standards", but nowhere are they defined in terms of the rating system on which they're supposedly based, so ...
* those who do the rating don't know to determine the value or implications of airbnb's 1-2-3-4-5 rating
Most of us in the realWorld reasonably assume that a 4-star rating is 'pretty darned good'. Only in airbnb's fantasyWorld is a 4-star rating the basis for suspension.
Okey dokey. Let's make the rating system simple:
- Unacceptible
- Needs improvement
- What I expected
- Nice
- Excellent
The baseline (3) is "What I expected"
Below that (1, 2) is the basis for finger-wagging
Above that (4, 5) is the basis for reward
Transparency : Label-the-Table
The ratings have meaning
and implications
and they're unambiguous
to everyone
Now you've actually crowdsourced some Wisdom
rather than just collecting numbers
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