How does the thread rating system work?

[Participant]

How many votes before a rating is registered in the rating column? Does it take account of people voting everything one star or five stars? Does it take more votes to reach five stars than it does to reach four? Once enough votes are registered, is it just an average of all the votes?

I was wondering this because we have a hell of a lot of highly rates threads:

IMO a four / five start thread should be harder to attain. But the main purpose of the thread isn't to bitch about five star threads but to understand how the thread ratings work on this forum.

And yes I know this thread will probably achieve one star faster than you can say Jack Robinson, such is the price of knowledge.

 

[Participant]

Two stars! Everything went better than expected.

 

[Participant]

If you hover over the stars it gives you a score average.

Well I didn't know that!!

Upvote if you think this thread is awesome guyz

 

[Participant]

This thread already has more votes than the awesome GIFs thread, which is tens of pages long! I think we've discovered the cure to voter apathy!