How can I calculate "most popular" more accurately?

Question

I'm developing a website at the moment. The website allows users to "rate" a post from 0 to 5. Posts can then be displayed in order of popularity. At the moment, my method of calculation is pretty primitive: average_rating = total_rating/ratings the problem is that a story with 1 rating of 5 is more popular than a story with 99 ratings of 5 and 1 of 4. (5/1) > (499/100) Could someone suggest a more accurate way to calculate popularity both on the number of votes and the quality of each vote?

Answer 1

This gets complicated and muddy very quickly. Would you rate someone with a 4.99 rating and 100 ratings higher or lower than someone with a 4.98 rating and 200 ratings?

You could change your rating system from 1 to 5 to instead -10 to +10, and simply add ratings together. Someone with 99 +10's and 1 +9 would then rate higher than someone with 50 +10's.

Or you could make the ratings simply +1, 0 or -1, and add them up.

The math can't tell you what you value more.