Specifics:
give the number of times a person has given a bad rating (probably 1 or 2) to other people
OR just bring back the old negatives.
This will improve the following aspects of the site:
I am frankly often more concerned about the number of times someone LEAVES bad comments than receives them. Someone can get a lot of bad negs/ratings because their computer went out, etc. Someone who constantly leaves bad ratings is probably blaming others for his/her poor sportsmanship.
The one thing that was GOOD about the old system was the ability to look through negs and tell who really was the jerk (sometimes "all of the above"). Now that whole aspect is lost.
Now, you cannot even challange a rating. That means, in practicality, that those folks who thought it was "funny" to leave bad comments or who set up their own pesonal criteria (like "you must take a turn in no more than 20 minutes ..." ) will now be jsut that much more eager to do so. Now, not only be able to ruin the reputations of good players, but it will much more difficult to even see who the jerks really are.
I know a lot of people referred to ebay when talking about a rating system. BUT, they missed one critical component. In ebay, folks have a real incentive to be honest .. its called money. Here, you have a completely mixed community of people who think "talking sh*t" and giving people negs (now they'd be poor ratings, I suppose) is "fun" ... some who just want those ranks ... and a good many who just want to play. Before, you could pretty well figure out which category a player fit into. Now, there is no clue ... until you play.
It will also be much, much harder to track multis. Again, often the way to spot them was through the negative comments