As someone who's run a site with rankings.. :-)

The biggest problem with this is that , say we set that we expect people to rate an average book at 5 on a 1 to 10 scale, I'll definitely tell you that the average review will push 8 or 9, because people will artificially inflate their ratings; so now with all these ratings high up on the scale, it's hard to distinquish between books.

My idea, which is similar to a PM Hall of Fame idea that I had, was that each person could mark a certain fraction of the books as their favorites; no ratings, just, say, 5 out of the 25 books available. The user can change their selections at any time, of course. The overall list would then be just a similar summation of the votes in order.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important