Annoyance wrote, "There's no point to the rating system if we don't exercise our evaluations independently. Taking other people's opinions into consideration may be a good way to reach a final conclusion, but it's a terrible way to form your own opinion."

It's also a terrible way to contribute to a good group evaluation. One of the points Surowiecki wrote about in "The Wisdom of Crowds" is the necessity of aggregating independent judgements. If the judgements to be aggregated are not independent you get bubbles and runs.