I don't especially care (as I haven't posted for ratings since the ancient days of a WWIV message board where you got points and ranking for posts and forums wars :) but I am curious what drives the rating changes here? I've watched mine go up and down for apparently no reason at all and just recently apparently drop an entire star because I was on vacation for a week?

You gain stars by posting consistently a lot.

You lose stars by not posting or by having posts deleted or moderated.

Bottom line, don't pay too much attention to the star system beyond the understanding on how active a certain poster is at any given time.

I believe it is based on how active of a poster you are.  I sometimes go a week or two without posting and my rating will drop, but when I start posting more often within a short period of time my rating goes back up.

 It's affected by how much you visit, how much you post and the quality of your posts.

They really do not mean anything other than saying whether you are a frequent poster and visitor to this website.

 Theres a secret item shop.  A star = 15 $. 

My theory. 

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Originally posted by Xasapis
You gain stars by posting consistently a lot.
You lose stars by not posting or by having posts deleted or moderated.
Bottom line, don't pay too much attention to the star system beyond the understanding on how active a certain poster is at any given time.

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* How many days you visited the site (and logged in). This is also counted when you use our "autologin" feature.
* How much information you have posted in our forums (not the amount of posts)
* The quality of your posts. If you post lot of "filler" posts that only consist of a few words this will cost you rank points.
* Any posts of yours that had to be deleted will cost you 5 rank points (there are only 100 total). To prevent your posts from being deleted, please obey our Rules of Conduct.

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