In another article, the author (Evan Miller) recommends not showing the average unless there are enough ratings. You would say "2 ratings" but not show the average, and just sort it wherever it falls algorithmically.
In that article, he even includes a formula for how many ratings you'd need:
> If you display average ratings to the nearest half-star, you probably don’t want to display an average rating unless the credible interval is a half-star wide or less
In my experience, the second article is more generally useful, because it's more common to sort by star rating than by thumb-up/thumb-down ranking, which is what the currently linked article is about.
And the philosophical "weight on the scale" problem isn't as bad as you'd think when using these approaches. If you see an item with a perfect 5-star average and 10 reviews ranked below an item with a 4.8-star average and 1,000 reviews, and you call the sort ranking "sort by popularity," it's pretty clear that the item with 1,000 reviews is "more popular."
https://www.evanmiller.org/ranking-items-with-star-ratings.h...
In that article, he even includes a formula for how many ratings you'd need:
> If you display average ratings to the nearest half-star, you probably don’t want to display an average rating unless the credible interval is a half-star wide or less
In my experience, the second article is more generally useful, because it's more common to sort by star rating than by thumb-up/thumb-down ranking, which is what the currently linked article is about.
And the philosophical "weight on the scale" problem isn't as bad as you'd think when using these approaches. If you see an item with a perfect 5-star average and 10 reviews ranked below an item with a 4.8-star average and 1,000 reviews, and you call the sort ranking "sort by popularity," it's pretty clear that the item with 1,000 reviews is "more popular."