Arbitrary ratings

Moderators are not able to track who rates, nor can admins within the system. I do, however, believe that the information may be tracked within the database.

If everyone used the ratings, then in general they would normalize to an overall score and one or two bogus ratings wouldn't matter. What we need to do is get everyone rating threads!

Brad!

Well it used to be the advice people gave was to rate a thread to show that the original question had been answered (to show two things: first, that the user no longer needed help, and second, that if it was a good rating it might be a good resource for another user with a similar problem). Of course this was a very loose suggestion.

I have seen very little effective use of thread rating in the forums.

I've just sorted the last two days by rating. There are
not many rated threads, and many of those that are have
no obvious reason behind the rating, as mentioned already.

I don't pay attention to the ratings because they are
anonymous and are un-commented. I don't see any meaning
for a rating if the people that are rating aren't known and
they can't explain why they're applying a particular rating.

There does seem to be quite a few threads left dangling by
the OP, no response about wether or not a solution was good.
Perhaps, in some future version of the SW, a response will be
required from OP. The quality of the threads will be higher, the
forums will be less polluted, and people who don't respond to
their own threads can be banned, and later killed, or someting.