There seems to be a lot of opinions on this subject so I thought I would join in and give you an insight into my reasoning.
The majority of the reviews I read are movie review because they are the ones that I find the most interesting, although I do venture into other topics.
As some of the other opinions on this subject have stated I rate them on the content and not at all on whether or not I agree with them, if I disagree I would let the writer know by leaving a comment after I rate it, and same goes for if I really agree.
To get highly recommend from me, the author of the review has to have put effort into their writing, originality and good use of bold and italics are also nice. Repeating other reviews(which I am doing partly now) is just useless so not bothering would be helpful.
I think it looks very unsightly when people abbreviate words like’Ur’ or’gr8’ etc. So unless it’s a contender for review of the year the lazy people usually get a low ratings from me, so take your time when writing and you will notice the ratings get higher and the number of people in your circle of trust increase.
Although I find it funny when people having English as a second language can sometimes spell and write a lot better quality than some English writers, I don’t take errors into consideration when rating the reviews.
One aspect I like about good reviews is detail, in-depth reviews keep me interested, so I rate them higher, if the writer brings up a point and doesn’t explain further, I tend to lose interest, so when rating I go for the lower ratings.
To get a Recommended from me you have to explain about the subject you have chosen but it doesn’t get highly recommended because it is a one-sided argument saying that you either like it or you don’t, so balancing arguments is a nice thing.
The only reasons I give Somewhat Recommend and Not recommended are if the writer is just far too lazy and only going for more points, babbling(which I am also doing in part now) is also a bad feature of opinions, getting to the point is good.
Quality not quantity is what writers should be aiming for. Leading onto my last point, I don’t really take the length of the opinion into consideration because like the one I am writing now, It could be a lot shorter and keep people interested throughout, apart from when people write opinions about seven lines long and none of the information is useful to the reader.
So that about concludes my opinion on rating reviews, thank you for your time and I hope it was of some use to you.