Sounds like a good improvement to me. /signed.
I'm not sure I'd bother rating anything if I had multiple categories. It's not a bad suggestion in and of itself, but do you think people would use it?
I agree the current system isn't hacking it, but I'd rather have a "Recommended" option in tangent with the stars. For example, I play the Super Amazing Task Force and think it's peachy keen, I can then click on the creator's name and see not only what else the player has created, but what the player recommends himself.
I've seen the suggestion for comments, not here but in other 'fix the rating system' threads, but I know I wouldn't bother wading through reviews.
I also think badges for ratings needs to be removed.
It's impossible to create an abuse-free system. You'll still have groups of people that can rally behind a single person telling them all to rate an arc up or down.
Still, the arc's rating system DOES warrant a major change in design, and aesthetics. I'd like to think of this entire Star system as something of a 'Live Beta'. They're still seeing what's working, and what isn't.
This isn't about intentional abuse, although I don't really see many people having enough personal clout to rally others to rate an arc on demand - supergroups might be exceptions to that rule, but there are already alert flags for so-called "One star bandits". It might be relatively easy to set up a flag that lights if lots of members of a single supergroup have voted identically and very differently than non-members of that same supergroup on any given arc.
[Prelude:Ranty]
As far as I can tell, and from what I gather from other players mentioning the topic, the current rating system for Mission Architect arcs is inherently flawed - not only is there no open comment space, but an anonymous rough star-based rating system is the only means of suggesting said arc to others.
[/Prelude]
The inherent problem with a unified rating system is that different players place varying degrees of importance to different aspects of an arc - some look for difficulty, others for creative enemies, others yet for story and characterization, and unless the degree of quality on each aspect of an arc is equal, each player who rates an arc will do so on the basis of their most important aspect.
Thus, what I propose is keeping the star system, but splitting it into parts - story, creativity, compatibility with canon, characters, humor and so forth each get rated separately, thus creating a much more detailed recommendation system than the current one. A player looking for an arc with a good story can search for arcs rated highly for that aspect, while a player looking for a challenge can search for arcs rated high for difficulty.
Any opinions?