[sterex]

Actually, Netflix is poised in a better position to filter between people who just rated the item vs people rating it AFTER viewing it (for a minimum duration). The latter class of people will have have more weight attached to their voting.

[philh]

That's true, but it doesn't sound as fun to poke around in.

(Obviously, "collect a dataset that philh finds interesting" should not be a business goal of Netflix. I'm not suggesting this is a reason to keep the star ratings. It's just a thing that I like about having ratings more detailed than yes-no.)