Question: is there any point to being able to rate programs/files in the downloads section?  The files already go through a vetting project, and they're all pretty high quality anyways.  Also, nearly all of the files there are either 5 or 4 stars, or just have no rating -- they don't really tell me much about the program.

I didn't know we had a download section rating system at all, actually.  I guess it doesn't really matter.  *shrugs*

They can be disabled, but there still remains the fact that while there is a quality control, it is just to filter extremly crappy text-only games or redundant guessing games. Also crappy games of a serie of complex games are sometimes exempt, otherwise Illusiat 1, 2 and 5 would never have been included in our archives.

Also some people might not find a game as fun as some others. For example, Omnipack got rated 1 star. It's just a matter of opinion really.

I thought about disabling ratings at one point anyway, however, because barely anyone even used it.

Did you know we used to be able to comment on files too by the way? Unfortunately nobody ever used this so I disabled it, not to mention the comments didn't count in the New posts section. We even had a mod to comment on users profiles before. I think the comments are still in the db, except it was removed since it wasn't used.

They can be disabled, but there still remains the fact that while there is a quality control, it is just to filter extremly crappy text-only games or redundant guessing games. Also crappy games of a serie of complex games are sometimes exempt, otherwise Illusiat 1, 2 and 5 would never have been included in our archives.

I think people are unwilling to give out one-star and two-star ratings, though. Most of the downloads are either 4 stars, 5 stars, or zero, which doesn't help quality control

Now that you mention it, I noticed someone rated Grayscale Number Guessing Game 5 stars.

I guess maybe it might be best to just disable ratings altogether there. After all, it creates a topic automatically when someone uploads a file so people can simply post their opinion on the forums.

That said, the 1 star ratings on Omnipack and Omnipack SE were not by a troll (I can see who rated files). The user most likely felt the programs quality were too low. I even think myself it's pretty low, considering it's a pack of games I made between 2001 and 2002, most of which were unoptimized BASIC clones of ASM games. Homescreen Game Pack outmatches Omnipack by far.