I'm with John on this. I normally don't get involved in these types of discussions, but I'd love to opt out of this insanity. I said this ratings system that didn't focus on solutions/fixes was silly here and I stand by my original comments. Interestingly, I just noticed when I was getting the link it had received positive ratings so my only ratings that I know of on Moodle are on a post about the ridiculous nature of the way the ratings were set up! (Ironic)
I believe that was the point of Steve's ratings that started this latest round of unfortunate events. I want to make it clear, I do not have (nor have I had a problem) with any of the people involved (Steve, Martin, Helen, etc.) so I don't have an ax to grind. They have all been helpful to me in the past in some way.
To point out the insanity of this system though, I would like to point out that I believe you have an employee of Moodle (Helen) (At least I believe I read that she was officially hired by Moodle headquarters a couple of months ago) who has given Martin D (essentially her boss if I'm correct) very high ratings on some of his posts. I have no doubt many of these ratings are well deserved, but has she ever given him a low rating? I doubt it although there's no way to search by ratings so I don't know for sure which is another reason I think this entire "ratings" exercise is pointless even if they were accurate which we all know they are not. Don't get me wrong. I'm not badmouthing Helen or Martin, I'm just pointing out the utter uselessness of an employee publicly rating her boss or people rating someone on whether they agree with their opinions or not. What would you say if you had to rate your boss on a forum? The same goes for Moodle Partners. I doubt Martin has given any of the partners poor ratings and I wouldn't expect him to because of their business relationship, but it doesn't mean their posts are any more or less useful than any other post that he does rate.
Ratings are one person's opinion that may be based on fact or fiction. They most likely (intentionally or unintentional) contain biases or in rare instances they may be completely objective, but ratings as they exist on Moodle are not helpful, they do not provide any useful information to anyone trying to figure out something on the forums, and as John says, they do more harm than good. Those are all very good reasons to admit they haven't worked as anticipated and get rid of them for good.
Todd