Alright now half the threads on the first page are 3 stars.
The feature as it is absolutely useless.
Here's my theory.
The one-star bandit seems to strike first with one-star on a thread as soon as it appears. It happens quickly enough that it make me wonder if he's running a macro to give new threads one star once they appear. If that's not the case, then he is really somebody in serious need of finding a life.
Then the original 'chronic star rating critic' or the masked avenger or PatJew or somebody else apparently responds with a five-star rating to balance it out - resulting in three stars for the thread.
The funny thing is that a lot of threads are now getting seven, ten, twenty or more ratings, so the one-star bandit's efforts are all for naught. That one-star rating goes away pretty quickly. Yet the game continues.
The result of more people rating threads is that the average is going to come closer to the middle - and three stars. If 100 people rate a thread, what are the chances of all 100 agreeing? Very slim. Even slimmer for 100 people to give a thread an average of a five or a one. But when only one person was rating most threads, then we saw them all over the place; that's because the sample size was so small. That ended when another person rated every thread, regardless of content, the same.
I think the reason why we see so many three-stars may be due as much, if not more, to more people rating threads now.