I thought this is a rant thread? If you want to discuss the rating system, we have half a dozen threads about that already and the conclusion is pretty much the same in all of them: The rating system is fine as it is.
You think forcing a review is the correct choice? Then nobody is going to give you a rating anymore.
Only reviews for 1*? Why? Why not for 5* as well? There are way more 5*s that are probably just thoughtlessly thrown at a story. Why are they okay but 1* are not?
You guys are putting yourself in public by publishing here. Not everyone is going to like whatever you do and there are plenty douchebags that just throw a 1* at a story out of spite, for trolling or some other inane reason. Ranting is completely fine, I rant as well when it happens. But the rating system is not at fault for that, people are. No matter what you do, people will find a way to abuse it. And that doesn't mean only the readers do so. There are plenty authors who would as well.
Forcing reviews and the like are horrible suggestions, simply because they either create a huge bias if you only enforce them for particular ratings or you simply kill off the majority of ratings. SH is not a place where many people are writing reviews in the first place, but if you want even the most popular stories to have less than twenty ratings, then, go ahead and continue suggesting it.
Oh, or you have tons of reviews that are literally just a "hurrdurr, good story" or "hurrdurr, such trash"
That's just going to cause unnecessary work for Tony who, afaik, checks every single review.
And accountability? Seeing who is rating? Please, dear god, no. That's a huge rabbit hole you don't wanna go into. It's just going to cause a lot of abuse and hounding the raters. Just because you wouldn't do it, doesn't mean others won't. I've already heard quite often how unfriendly some authors are in the comments and how many readers don't even want to comment anymore since they just get a hateful reply from them. You want to get the same shit with ratings? No, please, no.
Just use the search function and read up all those threads where the rating system has already be discussed in detail, since all of that is discussed in those threads already as well. You can't make everyone happy. That's how the world works.
Still waiting for someone to suggest to implement the Bayesian average alongside the regular average in these discussions since it's one of the few things that would be a good suggestion, imo.
Now, for ranting, yeah, it sucks. They're horrible. Go take a break and do something you have fun doing or take some friends and rant an hour or two to them. Helps a lot.
Just do some fun things and try to forget about them.
