Why even have a rating system at all though? If your post makes an impact on someone, let them praise it in the P.O.T.M. I don't see a way it could be objective.
I used to belong to
debate.org before coming here. Essentialy someone posted a debate topic and another person could engage in the debate. You had 3 rounds to debate your side, and then it was voted on by all the members asking who won the debate.
The problem was that people were voting on subjective ideological premises, and not who was the better debator. Indeed, it is quesitonable whether half the time the debates were even read.
If the debate was about how abortion is bad, if most people were for the pro-choice movement, it didn't matter if a 3rd grader looked like they were debating versus a PhD laurette. The other person would lose simply on the grounds that they liked abortion or hated abortion. It was ridiculous. It pissed me off so much that I ended up leaving and coming here.
Before my exodus I brought this up to the creators and they actually took it to heart and have completely revamped their entire forum. It now is a forum similar to this one.
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams
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