Or a multiple post window.
A basic window for general text and if you choose to give a rate you active a doble window with "What's right" and "What's wrong" section (so this can be more schematic and usefull).

Thats a very good idea.
In our german Forum, you can only see the votes if you have voted before.
Compared with the rule that it is necessery to have written something before, like 20 words, would be the best choise I think.

great question

Yes, it is necessary to solve this problem as quickly as possible in my opinion

I would not want it to turn into an essay writing test everytime you rate a chop so a word count should be out of question.

I'd recommed is to "unlock" the star votes for the user after a comment has been posted. Simple as that.

...And re-scale it to 1-5.

I definately think you should not be allowed to vote without commenting. The voting shouldn't even come up before you decide to post a comment. I really have a hard time accepting 'anonymous' and 'random', I prefer to know exactly what I did wrong.
What he said, only I would prefer 1-6

Completely agree.

As Olli said, you should unlock the ability to vote by commenting.

The stars should probably be located in the post quick reply box. Also I believe a five star system would be the best.

Perhaps above each comment it should show how many stars the person voted.
Something like this:

Nice idea, perhaps people can only vote after leaving a comment, and the comment cannot be something short like just "good" "bad" "nice" etc. should be something rather helpful like "you should make the car lower so that it looks better" etc.

Thanks for the positive reply guys!

hmm... tough decision...

if its a really good chop... then why does there need to be a comment to help you improve? Yeh.. sometimes its kinda unfair, but if the chop's so good, then its clearly down to personal styling taste... is there a point to the voting system if you have to comment first? Surely its a quick way of saying 'its good' or 'it needs more work'. typically a chop will get far more votes than it will comments.... naturally some people may abuse this, but that'll happen regardless of the chopper...

but.. that brings us onto another question - is the rating option even needed at all? How are we supposed to rate it? Comparing novice chops against those in HOF should surely mean that 1 star is given all the time... but i've never seen this... some people vote comparing it to the other chops in the division.. others vote as a universal system... which may explain the low votes...

gahh.... its all a mess... i say just leave it. So what if you get a low vote? Forcing people to comment isn't going to improve the c+c, more likely just make people even more lazy. So leave things... low votes? meh.. it makes no difference.

I can see what you mean there Andy, but getting rid of the rating system isn't really an option due to 2 things; 1: how much sheer work Mark put into making it work properly, and 2: it contributes heavily to the global ranking system

I THINK but i'm not sure that the rating system does have something in place whereby a 10 given in new choppers is worth less than a 10 given in elite for example... of course you have on top of that that more people tend to rate chops in elite than in NCA.

It's something that could be worked on, but it's still more or less in the testing stages at the mo meaning it's still being worked on and fine tuned. We'll get it working properly