I think while the ratings system is a dumpster fire, it does a huge service for readers still. You can easily track your reading list, books you're read (and sharing it with friends), and their app's scan feature is lovely for me personally when in bookstores to quickly add a book to my list. And they could improve a lot on this areas for sure.
In terms of reading tracking I think it's quite an interesting source and while the outcomes are not surprising, I think with just some better analysis this could be a very interesting piece. Props to the author for the idea alone.
Yep. I don't pay any attention to ratings, though I do go through and read reviews. Mostly the middle range ones (2-4 stars), because they're usually the people who can see some good and bad and comment on it more fairly than just those who leave 5 star or 1 star reviews. It's also nice to read reviews of people I follow and to see what they think of it.
Otherwise, I use it mainly to track what I've read and what I think of it. I wrote reviews for a while, and might start getting back to that this year, but it's really good for tracking my personal star rating of a book and to see what I think of stuff. It can also be useful for getting recommendations as well, based on their recommendation algorithms as well as similar books and ones people mention in reviews.
In terms of reading tracking I think it's quite an interesting source and while the outcomes are not surprising, I think with just some better analysis this could be a very interesting piece. Props to the author for the idea alone.