The rating data is always going to be messy and imprecise and there is no alternative system that will turn this into a scientific result. The modified RYM seems interesting and would be a nice comparison point alongside the pure average.

I'm personally most interested in this data just to understand the human behavior behind it. And the solutions I most like are things that prevent people from gaming the system (i.e. fake/dupe accounts).

One thing that would really nicely augment the ratings system would be a curation system that lets people build and collaborate show lists based on criteria defined by phish.net members (i.e. Top 1.0/2.0/3.0, top SoaMelts, etc). Kind of like we do in the threads, but in a more permanent structure. N00b100's long posts could take on a permanent life of their own.