Many people, including this writer, use Booking.com to book hotel accommodation when traveling. The website uses its own system to rate different places to stay, including hotels and hostels, and allows users to leave detailed reviews on what a given space is doing right and wrong.

But a Reddit user noted one particular quirk in Booking.com’s rating system – one that can prevent users from highlighting a particularly horrible place to stay. User JfnS posted a screenshot of the “Rate this property” menu. For each, the lowest possible score, represented by an icon of a frowning face, was selected.

The average grade assigned, with everything totaled? A rather generous 2.5.

Granted, a 2.5 is far from a glowing review, but it’s also not a 1 or zero. The following thread features other travelers who have had similar experiences and debates about how the system was designed and to what end.

Because this is an internet discussion thread, it starts to get lost quite quickly, giving way to anecdotes about bad hotel experiences and unpleasant cases of online hotel reservations. Still, the initial screenshot allows for a fascinating exploration of how the online reviews we can trust have become – and what data is and is not being factored into them.

It’s important to remember that Booking, like most sites of this genre, is ultimately a revenue partner for all the hotel it hosts, and not an impartial third-party reviewer. If this is critical integrity that you are looking for when comparing hotels, it would behoove you to look for the ratings of someone with no skin in the game.

Editor’s Note: RealClearLife, a news and lifestyle editor, is now part of InsideHook. Together we will cover news, pop culture, sports, travel, health and the world. Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.