Thank you, @Pauli, for this. Super interesting (even though I don't understand a significant percentage of it). The one factor that I didn't see discussed in these posts is the timing of ratings. It seems that a lot of the abuse of the system has happened all of a sudden - where a show is sitting at say 4.3, and then in the space of an hour, 50 one-star ratings come in that drop it to a 3.6. And from what I recall, they come in from 50 different accounts. Is there any way to take that into consideration as well as the general rating patterns of a user you've described in the previous posts?

On another note, I like @Lysergic's idea above - keep the current 5 point scale but add percentile. That would keep everyone happy!