Star Ratings
Star Ratings
Understanding online star ratings:
5 stars: [Has only one review] 4.5 stars: Excellent 4 stars: OK 3.5-1 star: Crap.

This comic deals with the idea that users when viewing online star ratings are usually heavily biased towards the best possible rating (five stars). As there are nine possible scores in the rating system in the comic (1 star, 1.5 stars, 2 stars...4.5 stars, and finally 5 stars), a rating of 3 out of 5 stars is supposed to represent "average" or "mediocre". Thus, anything above 3 stars is supposed to be "good" and anything below 3 stars is "bad". However, most people consider a four star rating to be "OK", and everything below as "crap".
On one hand there is some justification for this, as ratings are more likely to be given by people who fall onto one of the extremes (either loved or hated the product) and thus there is a tendency for ratings to be skewed either high or low. Fake reviews are also a factor that often push an aggregate score higher, although this is not addressed in the comic. For this reason, no product is so perfect that every user will give it five stars - as soon as one person gives it less than five, the overall review score would drop. So the only explanation for a five star rating is that only a few users have voted, maybe only one.
The title text may refer to the folkloric practice of attributing a feeling of a chill to someone walking on your future grave. When Randall is back home he would like to give a bad rating on Yelp — a corporation that operates an "online urban guide" — and hovering his hand over the 'one star' button, he was just 'walking' over the rating on his own future grave.
Another possible explanation for the title text is that the headstones are from people that gave the cemetery star ratings and were then murdered, having their given ratings displayed in the headstones. This in turn would explain the chill Randall feels before clicking the one-star button.
See also: 937: TornadoGuard , another comic about star ratings.
Understanding online star ratings:
5 stars: [Has only one review] 4.5 stars: Excellent 4 stars: OK 3.5-1 star: Crap.
