[MidgetMage55]

After reading the posts here i see the potential for a problem i dont recall being mentioned.

I firmly believe many users (my self included) that initially look for an addon by simply searching will tend to compare several factors, rating being one of them. Now keeping this in mind i would hope that people taking rating in to account for initial download take the rating with a grain of salt and looking to see the number of users that rate, as well as reading commentary on the mods that have them. The two issues i see (yes i thought of another) are:

1) Removing any of the above mentioned statistics would imply that you really should remove them all. If user rating cant be considered as an accurate reflection of how good a mod potentially is (and i agree it isnt in and of itself for the reasons mentioned above), then none of statistics can truly be useful on the same basis.

To clarify this lets look at downloads in contrast to rating. Taking the above statements of other posters as accurate reflections of the issues with rating, if you look at downloads (and some things were mentioned on this as well) There are mods that in some cases havent been updated frequently enough to be all that current (some minor bugs and so on) but still have their totals go up based on the sheer volume it has done in the past. While (as mentioned) new takes on the same concept are likely to be overlooked.

2) Taking things from my personal view on initial research for a mod (im not self centered enough to think that im the ONLY person that goes about it this way) If you remove enough stastics from the listings you will have a rather hefty increase in traffic on the boards asking which mod is better. Not that im opposed to this. But you will frequently see the same batch of mods asked about over and over again by those that dont also take the time to search the forums for their answer.

In the long run i feel this may cause frustration in people having to post like a parrot the same replies over and over. This is certainly nothing new to these forums. I just see the potential for a major increase in this type of traffic.

To answer the first question you pose Cairenn, I dont think it hurts/helps the community any more then any other stastic does at this point. I agree there is a potential (and im sure execution) of gaming the stats, but in reality i would think any one of them can be manipulated.

As of the moment i havent come up with a way to resolve the issue. With most standard systems you would end up with, as Tekk put it *Suddenly the "elites" have huge ratings that noone else can compete with*.

Perhaps a rating that decays over time. Meaning people that truly enjoy a mod would have to re-rate it every month (only registered users can rate) OR possibly the stats get wiped with each new update keeping the cycle fresh. Though that could cause an issue with mods that dont need updating as often or at all. Just random ideas.

Feel free to dispute any of my ramblings. Just my take on the subject.

/ramble off