In playing off the 90/10 rule where 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute and10% are contributors of various levels. It would be a good idea to break out the voting from these groups of people. One average is determined by contributors with a voting potency above a certain level (say 20%), - but then there is a lesser 'ghost vote' tally that anyone can cast into. (i.e. below, say 20%) These anonymous votes don't count for or against it in terms of leaf color, but are there only as an extra bit of data that people can choose whether they want to take it seriously or not. There is always an outside chance that someone is using the feature to unfairly cast disproportionate votes - but for the most part, these anonymous non-registered votes would still be there as an additional feedback mechanism.
A third level of voting:
Obviously the owner's decisions are tantamount over the communities, however, there should be safeguards that guard against an unreasonable owner that is demanding too much from the community. To safeguard this from happening, perhaps the owner has a voting potency as well, that is quite high in relation to the individuals in the community, but is not so high that their decisions could not be appealed by the community if they are totally unreasonable. Perhaps the owner's potency is composed of half of the communities voting potency points. So in this sense, the owner himself could be overrulled if half of the community got behind it. This would be very rear occurance, i'm sure, but it gives the community some assurance that they won't be working their tails off for some insatiable owner. In this sense, this could be the third level of voting... one for sideline, noncontributing voters, 2. for contributing voters with potency, and 3. owner's vote.
Would be nice if this feature was variable too and could be tailored to what categories certain groups and/or what percentage cut offs would like to add as they would like to (20%... 30% etc.), between the groups, etc.
