I agree with you all.

Tobias: I don't know if I am one of the three. At least I have no idea or only a guess who the second could be but absolutely no idea about the third.

But I am man enough to tell you honest and straight what I experienced and what I did. This is what I am doing often. I tell about good and bad experiences of mine with this forum, with people, with politics, government or with this technology. Because of that I had a good amount of low ratings. Maybe this is the reason why politicians are not honest to you. They need good ratings

PS: I rated you 5 stars, Tobias, I am in a good mood. I hope we get rid of this soon.

I voted no, mostly because I did not realize there was a rating system. Then I noticed that I have something like 5 stars after my name which means that I must be more useful or cooler than JCL or ventilator or all those other guys who post useful information. So can I go back and change my vote?
Seriously, a voting system that gives me 5 stars when I may have posted 10 times with only marginally useful information is rather silly.

Christian, this is so true. Many users like to give newcomers full rating of 5 stars, just like a welcome gift or to change something in the forums or out of pure fun. But it is meaningless in the end.
Many users only give 1 or 5 stars and nothing in between.

This topic comes up because of a few strange controversal ratings (I even rated "TheExpert" to 5 stars. Some of you might know him as a funny and persistent guy ). And I am happy that this leads to a discussion.

So we all can make the forum better in the future.

Hm, the ratings seem to be bugged anyway. It still says I have 71 rates (I think that was the numebr I already had quite some while ago), but the number of stars does not correspond to the old number...

I rated firoball 5 stars because I noticed he had only 3 stars at his name, while in his profile he had 5, and it says, indeed, that he had 71 votes (well 70 before mine). As soon as I voted his stars turned to 5 again. My votes just count for 70 :D.

I Should have voted 1 star.
*runs away*

I just wish that clicking on a topic would take you to the first NEW message like the old version did.

I agree that the font is too small for the dark scheme

I got people who are totally jealous of my finished works and thus they rate my stars very low.

It's a totally un-fair system.

Let's get rid of it.

Get rid of user rating. People quickly learn who the helpful and/or knowledgable users are.

As noted by many others, the current use of the rating system has been totally arbitrary and useless.

I voted 'no'. For me, it would be better, if 'User rating' was replaced by 'Thanks rating', so when you're making something good, users can rate you up, and 'thanks count' will be displayed at place, where the stars are now.

Yep, scap them for good