Agreed. And because ratings are so broken, there are multiple ways to game them. In addition to rarely leaving ratings, I rarely trust the damn things either.
In my opinion, ratings need to decay over time. For service workers like Uber drivers any rating >1 year old (or maybe less) should decay to 0 significance. For online retail like Amazon, maybe 2 years but not much longer than that. This not only allows people to "clean up their act" after bad ratings, but makes botting a recurring cost instead of a one-time investment.
App store ratings are gamed through bugging users to rate the app, cozying up to the app store maintainer who can delete reviews, or even Sybil attacks on competing apps.
In my opinion, ratings need to decay over time. For service workers like Uber drivers any rating >1 year old (or maybe less) should decay to 0 significance. For online retail like Amazon, maybe 2 years but not much longer than that. This not only allows people to "clean up their act" after bad ratings, but makes botting a recurring cost instead of a one-time investment.