How I wish I rated things:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This thing is superb, no notes, I would bear its children if I could.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ This thing was amazing, minor notes, mostly differences of opinion.
⭐⭐⭐ This thing tried its little heart out, bless it, notes but not nasty notes.
⭐⭐ This wasn't my thing. No offense intended, maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind at the time.
⭐ This thing wasn't my thing because it was bad. It wasn't so bad as to make me hate it, but it sure wasn't good. Major notes. Massive notes.
⭕ This was an insult. I take it as a personal slight that you made this thing, and I'm inclined to demand satisfaction. No notes because to give you notes would imply that I thought you could improve.

How I actually rate things:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This thing was fine, and I feel bad for criticizing it because so many things these days just get torn down by people, plus sometimes people's livelihoods are on the line, so here you go, it was good.
⭕ I hate this, you, the world, life itself, myself, gah, sweet fuck set it all on fire!

@intransitivelie I’m finding that’s how I rate things in private versus the reviews I leave on platforms. Because if managers are going to treat a rating system like a binary, then so am I.
@Hareguizer
Yeah, at this point giving anything less than five stars for a lot of ratings systems is tantamount to giving no stars at all.