JB;
Ratings are a tool for site members to rate which comments they find useful / interesting / etc. Story voting can be enabled also and works the same, basically.
Currently I do not think they actually are turned on even tho they are there.
0 is lowest 5 is highest. Higher ratings are better.
When it is actually enabled if enough users rate a post "0" it would eventually simply not display depending on the users comment display settings.
We have not implemented it yet because it seems better to just let folks get used to the site awhile before we complexicate it more.
Users can choose what threshold to use for not displaying posts like all posts above a rating of "3", etc.
There are tons of features we do not use in Scoop so as to keep it simple for the users initially. I think we will slip these other features in a bit at a time over the next few months. Again, its not my actual area of responsibility so I'm just passing on what I know about Scoop in general.
Hope that helps.
Cheers.
TomW