Something I’d like to see on sites with random folks writing reviews: cumulative frequency statistics.
What I mean by that: a problem I have with amazon, IMDB and the like is that comments and ratings tend toward the extremes (and thus away from the middle). This is, one should note, to be expected: it’s people with strong opinions — in one direction or the other — who tend to go through the bother of commenting on these sites, one imagines. But really, not every book or movie or whatever is the best or the worst ever; most of them are just, y’know, there. (The extreme numerical reviews are ameliorated somewhat when people actually go and write cogent comments regarding what they liked or disliked, but as often as not the comments amount to THIS BOOK IS TEH SUCK which isn’t all that helpful.)
And so: for each reviewer, I’d like to see a little histogram, outlining how often they give a given number of stars. Or at the very least, a little note to the effect of: 58% of books received this ranking or higher. Computationally it’s a little profligate, perhaps, but in a world of targetted banner ads, it doesn’t seem infeasible.