Every few months a firestorm wages on WinCustomize.com. The site hosts thousands of pieces of artwork in the form of skins, themes, icons, wallpaper, etc.

And some people can give a star rating to a submission (1 through 5 starS)

On the one hand, often times the skinners (the ones who create the content) have a problem with the whole rating thing. Usually skinners whose works get below 3 stars. Solutions such as eliminating anonymous ratings have been proposed over the years.  Of course, what many would like to see is the elimination of ratings entirely.

And on the other hand, users very much want the ratings. And in fact plenty of users find WinCustomize to be full of "garbage" because we don't moderate very much content. People are free to upload their half-baked skin and unless it's totally broken or really horrendous it's made available. So the casual user finds themselves wading through a lot of stuff they don't like. This hurts the site and the ones who pay for the bulk of the site's costs -- Stardock.

So WinCustomize.com doesn't want to offend skinners but doesn't want to casual users to have to wade through sub-par stuff.

That's where the rating sytsem comes in.  Only users who have contributed to WinCustomize.com (by getting a subscription or having elite access through their works over time) are allowed to rate skins. So most people can't rate skins.  Moreover, the higher the access, the more the rating is weighted.  So if an admin rates a skin, it is weighed far more heavily than a level 1 user who has a subscription.  This way, those who have spent a lot of time doing this and have seen thousands of skins and themes and icons and wallpapers can make a relatively objective rating. 

The second part of the rating system is that those who are not logged on won't see skins,themes, etc. that have 2 stars or fewer ratings. If they log on, they can see it all. Eventually we hope to have per-library rating filters that users can set.

It's a tough thing. The desire to keep everyone happy is an impossible task. Many people who get 2 star ratings or 3 star ratings are simply unaware that perhaps they need to work on their skin. I regularly will go through the galleries and if I see a skin or theme with a rating that seems way too low (or way too high) I'll check the ratings to see if it's being manipulated. It happens. But the reality is, the average skin is a 2.5 star skin which means most skins hover around 2.5 to 3 stars (including my own stuff).

At the end of the day, the skinning community has to realize that it's a symbiotic relationship.  We all need each other.  We need the users AND the skinners. And we can't placate one without alienating the other. So we have to reach a compromise. The rating system is that compromise.  The alternatives -- not allow anything but the very best on would tick off skinners. Or let everything be on with no ratings would make the site unwieldly to use.