Mary...

Personally, I do not believe that any type of user-generated system, where the "usefullness" or "quality" of a user's posts (or users themselves) are peer-rated, is a good idea. The number of times a post is viewed and responded to is, and has been, quite sufficient.

This could easily become an unofficial "popularity contest", that might cause users who do not get rated well by their peers, or users whose posts get poor ratings, to be discouraged from future posting or even visiting this site.

I have seen that most users are quite capable of arguing their points within posts, for the most part as equals. But to introduce a new system where a "5 star" user might take a questionable position, would you be sure that every "1 star" or "no star" user that had another point of view would feel comfortable posting it?

(Of course, these comments could be considered just the lowly opinion of a "no star" user who has not even broken out of the "novice poster" catagory yet.)

Mark Owens
H16 1976 sail # 19857