Clay, the community talked about the whole ratings thing (and
how it relates to categories) at least once before, on this thread:
https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0002Gl&topic_id=11&topic=OpenACS
At the time we talked about a "general ratings module," although
a service contract is probably a better way of thinking about it.
BTW, the offer I made on that thread to help work out functional
specs still stands, if we can come to some informal consensus
online first regarding what we would like the damned thing to
look like.