[eru]

Yes, that's why I linked to the list https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame?sort=rank directly.

Though honestly, as a newbie, you should probably look through one of the curated game lists: the bare rating that a game has seldom lines up with what a beginner might be looking for. For a start, it's mostly heavier games that have very high ratings.

[tialaramex]

And like many ratings sites BGG ends up weighted to novelty. Is this really the best movie / novel / video game / comic book / burger ? No, probably not, but it's the popular new one right now among people who watched a lot of movies, read a lot of novels, played a lot of video games, read a lot of comic books or ate a lot of burgers as appropriate.

Unlike built-in ratings (e.g. Uber, eBay) these ratings do at least provide some value at the low end. There are a fair few games on BGG with 5.0 or lower ratings and you probably just don't want those games, sight unseen.

[eru]

BGG makes an attempt to correct for novelty: for their ranking their add a few hundred synthetic votes that give your game an average score.