As an addition to the previous post:
http://www.litestep.net/index.php?section=4&action=view&catId=6&id=497

I agree that one of the problems of a rating system is that giving people low ratings (even though they may have deserved them) is counter-productive. However some sort of system is needed.

Devil mentioned problems with download counts. The only problem I forsee with download counts is that over time the same top 10 themes will continue their success while a new theme, that may be spectacular, wont appear to be appealing to new users because of its low download count.

I propose 2 different types of sorts. One that sorts the downloads with respect to time (ex. Most downloads today, most downloads this week, etc), and the overall lifetime download total. This provides 2 advantages. New users are able to see the old gems with their overall downloads since their "downloads today" will be relatively low, but new users will also be able to see the "quick gainers" which may indeed be the better of the themes.

Downloads of course aren't an accurate measure of theme's quality. However the best measure of a theme's quality has already been implemented in the comments/suggestions part of the theme info. The downloads just indicates that this might be an interesting theme to look at.

I'm in favour.

Unfortunatly single users will continue to download themes over and over again to push up download ratings. I have an idea of how to do it, but again...it will wait until the themes section gets re-written.

I figured that since you need a user account to download anyway you could just not re-count their download (still allow them to download, just dont count it). A person would need to make several user accounts, hundreds even, to achieve the same goal.

Well tell me now if were gonna have to make new accounts for the downloads to count so I can start making them.

Seriously, nothing is going to stop people from finding a way to make the download count go higher. It's inevitable. Why do we need a rating system anyway? One man's trashy theme is another man's treasure.

I agree with Mr. White on this one. I can create over 100 email addresses on my personal domain and I can create millions here at LSnet.

Now as for a ratings system. We may have one we may not. Discussing how things can be done is just going to give people time to work around it. Anyways...I never agreed with the arbitrary number rating system anyways. So give it some time and you may see something, you may not. If you don't like it...go to LSThemes...they seem to snag all of our unique features and have ratings and download counts.