Which brings me to the point that I’m not nearly as disciplined as you. I tend to rate songs in the 1st minute because I feel like I have a sense of it. A down side to rating while working, like I do, is that its harder to pay close attention to lyrical content, meaning sometimes i’ll rate a stupid song high or pass over a gem because i wasnt paying close enough attention to the words.

My rating standard is pretty easy to adhere to:
5 stars – I absolutely adore it, musically and lyrically. Also I am proud to like the song (no guilty pleasures get 5 stars)
4 stars – I have some sort of good feeling toward the song and I would be happy to put it on a compilation for someone.
3 stars – I have no feelings about the song. Its a song that I’ll just as likely FF’d as listen to all the way through.
2 stars – I dont really like the song, but it stays in the library (sometimes because its part of a beloved artist’s catalogue, sometimes becuase I have faith that someday I will like it more)
1 star – Delete from library. Because its often a bit harder to delete songs as your listening to them (if youre in a playlist you have to switch to the library and find the song, or if you arent even using the iTunes interface and instead navigating you music with a taskbar app) I indicate a hated song with a one star. Then I can do periodic Spring cleaning on the songs I dont like.

So anyway, I dont think I’m anywhere close to being where you are. I think I have a little under 1000 songs unrated out of about 7800 (i couldnt tell you now becuase I’m on my work computer, on which i keep only about half my music).

Speaking of too much music, as of July or so, my library outgrew my iPod. The first person to get me a ≥40G iPod for Christmas wins.

5 stars – I’m pretty much always in the mood to listen to this song / I’d get really excited if it came on in a random rotation of my entire playlist / I’m very proud to like this song

4 stars – I consider this song very good, and would put it on compilations / I consider this song very good, but it’s new to my library and I don’t want to jump the gun by saying it’s a favorite

3 stars – This song is alright. I probably wouldn’t recommend it passionately, but I enjoy listening to it.

2 stars – This song is just OK. I’d just as soon FF’d as listen to it. Maybe a 60% chance of FF’d.

1 star – I don’t like this song, but I’m keeping it because I own the CD and I want my whole CD library on my iTunes / The song’s OK but I’d never want it to come up in a rotation (like Christmas songs for example) / It’s not really a song (like language learning audio files)

Also, I don’t really take lyrics into account. If I happen to know and really love a song’s lyrics (e.g. Diamond Ring, by Pedro the Lion), it could bump it up. And, as often happened with Christian rock songs, if I found the lyrics particularly saccharine or irritating, the rating would be demoted for lyrical reasons. But for the most part, I was going by how the song made me feel, and the lyrics only insofar as they played into that.