Like many others who I've read comments from on this topic, I am not a fan of the star-based rating system for various reasons - too vague, can't tell if someone doesn't like something because its not a good amp for their style, or maybe not a great amp for their type of guitar, or if they play at low volumes at home or on a stage, what they use to play through, etc. You also can't tell if they gave it 5 stars because they modified it or if they gave it 1 star because they didn't like it although they use it all of the time after they modified it.
For me the ideal situation would be:
- For every rig uploaded to the exchange an immediate thread would automatically be created in the Rig Exchange part of this Forum with the title of the rig used as the title of the thread and all tag information listed in the text field of that initial post.
- In the Rig Exchange you can click a "Reviews and Discussion" link directly to that thread in the forum.
- Do not allow for manually creating of new threads in this area or else do something to differentiate the auto-created ones - maybe right vs left justified thread titles, thus making it easy to spot something being discussed that is not in the exchange.
Hopefully authors who wish to comment/provide info as they do now can simply upload their rig, click the link to the new thread over on the forum and post their own info on the second post to the thread. I think reading someone's remarks on how they tried the rig and then used a different cabinet, increased the presence, decreased the drive playing through their Les Paul sounded great, however just using the stock settings and just changing the cab made their strat sing with a great edgy lead tone is far more telling than slapping a rig with 2 stars on it only to then make their tweaks, re-save it on the KPA and jam away to it regularly. Meanwhile the person who created the profile with a P-90 Gretch slung around them can't understand why his favorite rig has 1 review for 2 stars.
I just think the community would benefit more from having the exchange and forum linked together this way and we would all probably learn more from each other on how to make rigs work better for us after downloading them.