what's with the "rating" column

who and why are "stars" placed in the rating column beside a posting?

 

Currently at the very bottom of a thread there is a dropdown for "Rate This Thread" - the initial thought was that useful how-to's and other really good threads would be given a rating and then visitors could sort by rating which would put the most interesting threads at the top (you can sort by any of the columns on the forumdisplay thread list page - thread (alphabetical), thread starter, replies, views, rating, last post.)

 

On the other hand, I admit the rating column might be a waste of space on the thread list page, especially for those viewing the forums on smaller monitors. It's not widely used and I'm not sure if it really serves a purpose or if it would be better to drop it and make the thread list cleaner.