Rating Scale(based on what?)

I'm pretty sure the rating you have as an author is just the arithmetic mean of all the ratings on all of your poems.

That and to tell you were you stand...the poem its and your average...against others, and well, yourself.

This has been said many, many times, but ignore the ratings- they mean nothing! They are just the average of all your ratings and votes. They do not measure how good a poet you are.

Very true.

Haha yep..

On arithmetic calculations for mean/average:

Say, you are a 4.9 with 17 votes. If you want to have an approximate idea of how people voted, consider the following mathematical operations:

4.9 (your score) x 17 (number of votes) = 83.3

But, since you cannot vote a 3.3, you may righteously assume the sum of all the 17 votes is 83. Now, 80/5=16, so if 16 people voted 5, then only one person voted a 3. Similiarly, it is possible that two people voted 4s, and the rest 5s.
Now, assume the case where you know that you had 3 5s, because you checked your poem in your last login. In your next session, you find your fantastic poem has now been rated a 3, but you find 3 more votes, so with 6 votes you were rated a 3. Pure mathematical understanding helps once more: 6x3=18, but you had 3 5s previously, so 18-(5x3)=3, and 3/3=1, so you got 3 people voting you a 1.

SORRY, I had to put this, I felt mathematical today.