[Fyron]

Most "professionals" just include the feature because other forum packages include it and they need to remain competitive... Also, just because a "professional" does something does not mean it is a good idea.

Ratings as they commonly are give a very poor first impression. There are a lot of people that deserve to have 80 five star Ratings, but instead have only 1 or 2, or even none. Additionally, many times people rate others based on disagreements with their point of view... You post something they don't agree with, they give you a 1. Doesn't matter how nice or helpful they are. How does this help?

What if someone starts off rude and annoying, so you give them a 1, but later they amend their ways and become a major contributer? What if someone has a bunch of 5 star Ratings, but then they become an elitist jerk? Either way, you can't change your rating of them, because it is permanent.

Further, the 5 star rating system is trivial. How do you determine the difference between a 4 and 5? A 3 and 4? Who really goes and gives out Ratings other than a 1 or a 5? Not many... What exactly does a 4 mean? Or a 5? Or a 3? If there was a mandatory comment for every rating, the values might actually have some weight... as it is, it might as well just be "good" or "bad", and not have 5 different meaningless possibilities...

Certainly, there are a few useful features of the rating system, hence the 0.1% usefulness I attributed to it... There are just too many negatives of the Ratings system. You can say thanks to someone by sending them a private message or making a forum post. Ratings are not necessary, for anything. The only purpose they serve is to bias the impressions of new forum members, for good or ill.