[nkurz]

As for my "idea" of allow a 0 on a 5 point system; it makes it a 6 point system while retaining a 5 point UI that everyone is accustom to. What is wrong with that?

Nothing is wrong with it necessarily --- it's all a matter of implementation and audience. I think the first thing you are going to run into is a need to visually differentiate a non-vote from a zero. I'm also not sure what problem it's trying to solve.

What I would find more useful (from a 'build a better recommendations engine' perspective) is a 5+: a short list of favorites that can stand in for someone's favorites. Personally, I'd also like a better way to better differentiate the gradations between standard, good, and great. Whether I hate something or 'hate-hate' it isn't going to make much of a difference. Do you think your audience is going to be persuaded to reduce their average rating by a point, or are you still going to find the oft-quoted 4.3 average? I'm doubtful, but this doesn't make it a a bad idea to try.

As to the downvote, I stand by it. My goal is to rearrange the page so that the comments that are most useful to me are at the top. If others find your comment useful, they will see the injustice and bring it back up to the top.

As to the need for 'strong backing', I think we just have different worldviews. With due respect to my friends who are psychology professors, "a [nameless] psychology professor told me" is barely a step up from "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV". We obviously respect different authorities in our lives.

[fuzzythinker]

Re: "Need for 'strong backing'": I think this goes back to the seriousness of how you take the discussions here. For me, forum/msg threads are just causal discussions (one level lower than blog posts), it would be nice if the person stated where they get their backing for the idea or assertion, but it's neither "necessary" nor "too helpful". If every idea/assertions needs backing, there would be almost no discussions at all. Innovation often comes from idea/assertions that have no backings.

It is not "necessary" because to me, if I believe in it and it's important to me, I will test it out. It doesn't matter if the idea came from Steve Jobs or Joe Doe. It's not "too helpful" because often the research being done on it is flawed, outdated, or just really not too trust-able. An example for example I remember reading some group has done research on max width of cell phones people like before feeling discomfort. The Motorola design team was the first to ignore that when they designed RAZR.