RATING SYSTEM
| Rating | Meaning |
|---|---|
 (1/5) |
Cruft; not worth your time except maybe to laugh at |
 (2/5) |
Bad, but not exceedingly so |
 (3/5) |
Okay or average, fine |
 (4/5) |
Notably good - a really entertaining piece of media |
 (5/5) |
Amazing - a masterpiece or something close to one |
I use half-star ratings in addition to the round number ones, since I feel that five stars alone is often too coarse. Many would argue that a ten-tier grading system is already too fine, especially given the wild variability of what individuals think of as consistently objective evaluations (if that makes sense to you in the slightest). And I would want to agree with people who posit this (which is why I use a five star system in the first place), but there are enough times when I feel on the fence about something that I felt I needed a little more granularity.
Now, HAVING SAID THAT, I would like to acknowledge the fact that my reviews of things are still unreliable in relation to each other. Their relative scores often won't make sense when I compare them with each other. However, I'm content with this. I've always found it difficult to grade my own enjoyment of things, since I'm prone to ex post facto modification of my experiences. This isn't metacritic, and I'm not a media journalist. I'll leave high quality evaluations to the score aggregators.