Every registered user of freshmeat may rate a project featured on this website. Based on these ratings, we build a top 20 list and users may sort their search results by ratings as well. Please be aware of the fact that unless a project received 20 ratings or more a project will not be considered for inclusion in the top 20.

The ratings are calculated similar to the way the IMDb calculates its Top 250 Movies. The formula gives a true Bayesian estimate:

weighted rank (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C

where:
  R = average for the project (mean) = (Rating)
  v = number of votes for the project = (votes)
  m = minimum votes required to be listed in the top 20 (currently 20)
  C = the mean vote across the whole report