Why is zero stars not considered a "rating" when making a smart playlist?

[beckfield]

Yeah, it’s been around for a while now. Here’s an earlier report:

Bug: Custom filters do not properly handle "Track Rating" with tracks that have an empty rating

I just tried to make a custom filter that contains music by a particular artist that is not rated 1 star. So naturally I added two search criteria to the filter: “Artist Title is XYZ” and “Track Rating is not 1 Star”. However, it excluded all music that had an empty rating. Furthermore, if I set the filter to include “Track Rating is not Empty” is still includes all music that has an empty rating.

And here:

[Bug]: Custom Filter: "Artist Rating" "is not" "Empty" finds nothing

My entire music collection has no ratings. I’ve never rated any artists, tracks, or albums. When I tried a custom filter with the settings “Artist Rating” “is not” “Empty,” I expected to get no results. But it appears that the filter doesn’t even get applied. Not sure if this is the same bug or a separate one, but I also tried “Artist Rating” “is not” “3stars.” Again, with no ratings on any Artist in my library, I expected the result to be every artist in the library. Instead, the result w…