Netflix is doing some very interesting things lately. They are totally expanding their community (formerly “friends”) features, and the writing at their new community blog makes them sound more like a 1-year-old startup rather than the relatively mature company that they are.

I often look to Netflix as an example, since they are pioneers in this online review space. So I really found a recent blog post about why they don’t have 1/2 stars very interesting.

Lots of users ask us to implement half stars, and I’ve been puttin it off for months. Mostly because I see it as an incrimental change, while there are tons of big changes to be done here development-wise. Partially I put it off because I like just five stars… having to choose between 3 and 4 (rather than settling on 3.5) forces you to really make up your mind about a wine.

I’ll now add Todd from Netflix’s explaination as another reason 1/2 stars a way off yet. From the post:

…here’s what I learned from months of testing this across the country: when we make the ½ star options possible, we get fewer ratings. Significantly fewer ratings. We have argued these results internally for some time, and our best guess is that the complexity of doubling the number of choices from 5 to 10 deters many people from rating, so they just give up.

…I like the improved accuracy, but I’d rather have more people rate than fewer.

It’s worth reading the whole post. So here is the link again: Todd Speaks: 1/2 Stars