What is the purpose of rating?

Rating serves multiple purposes in the Honswer environment:

1. It is the first retribution of an honswerer's effort;
2. It lets honswerers know that their honswer has been viewed by the requestor;
3. It lets honswerers know how their honswer was received and perceived as well as what it generated for the requestor;
4. It is used, in prized requests, to automatically distribute the awards when the requestor hasn't done so manually by the final distribution date;
5. A user's overall rating may be used as a criterion to be allowed to compete for awards in other requests.