What is the best voting system

I'm wondering what is the best voting system for site that have ranking like top 10 / top 100.

Like/dislike

stars rating (from 1 to 5)

single thumb up

thumb up/thumb down

What you think?

Answer

Last year YouTube abandoned its 5 star rating system after research showed that nearly all users only use 1 or 5 stars. See http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html

Now YouTube uses a thumbs up or down system.

So the conclusion is:

1. 
   

   Use thumbs up or down if your users either love or hate the thing that is rated

   
   
   


2. 
   

   Use 5 stars if users have more nuanced opinions (Amazon books, for example)

   
   

Since you asked about ranking the items after they have been rated, remember that you normally don't want items that have a single 5 star rating or one thumb up to outrank items that have 100 ratings and 4.5 stars or 95 out of 100 thumbs up because that gives undue weight to the lone ranker and will mean that unpopular items will always outweigh popular items.

Here's the link that explains how to solve the rating popularity problem: www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html