It's true that moderators are the safest way to have your work rated. User ratings often are nothing more than a friend trying to make you feel good or an enemy trying to make you feel bad. If someone gets mad at you they'll give you a 1 to drag down your score, likewise, your buddy will give you a 10 to show he's your buddy. Moderators don't do these things, they rate your work in a consistent manner using criteria that makes the consistency of the ratings more meaningful.

It seems like whenever there's ratings discussion it comes from one of two places. One is someone gets rated low after their piece has been up for awhile and they're angry because someone sabotaged their rating so they want ratings abolished (or they just want to talk about it hoping that will make people less likely to do it to others). The best way to deal with this is to contact an admin, not post a message board thread because of the unfortunate tendency for so many members to jump in with their own motives either to slam the poor poster or start their own tirade against the site. 

Which brings us to the other reason, ego. The other most common thread on ratings is anger because someone got a low rating and they want a higher one. If you look at their work and compare with other pieces you'll almost always see their rating was fair, consistent with other pieces that are of similar quality. But these people will start an argument that ratings are political, moderators are in a conspiracy, or various other ridiculous claims because they want a high rating to boast about to their friends even though their work doesn't deserve it. These people try to gather anyone who has a complaint about the site to join them in their cause. These arguments are the worst as they degenerate into insults and foolish demands that when not met are 'proof' that the site is unresponsive to users or 'elitist'. 

With all the tempers and emotions flying around here on a daily basis, I don't see any alternative to having moderators making the ratings. Users often have their own agenda, moderators rate the same way for everyone. You can make an argument that moderators are just users that have been given a title but speaking for the group, we take the title seriously. The crew of moderators here were hand picked over the years because of their art backgrounds and experience in skinning or the community and for their maturity and even-temperedness. We're far from perfect but it could be a lot worse.  

What I would like to see change is the immediate preconceptions that surface every time someone starts a conversation about ratings or any other once-controversial subject. I think it's true that people trying to bring up a subject get attacked or ridiculed on the message board and it seems like there's no open debate possible on a few subjects. That bothers me. Often I'll see a comment start with what I think are good intentions and the next ten responses are just insults or flames because it was assumed the commenter had some previously identified agenda. Let people speak their mind without jumping to conclusions.