Rating a Blog

So I'm trolling my usual troll when I see a new kidlit blog spring up somewhere in the general vicinity of Australia. It's just getting started so there's not much there to report on, but then I notice a Rate This Blog posting at the top. Rate this blog? This appears to be an option put out by BigBlog (as opposed to Blogger or Wordpress) and it scares the bejeezus out of me. Rating blogs? Would that help or hurt the blogger? If I saw that I was averaging one and a half out of five, would that discourage me or encourage me? I'm sure that it's a way for BigBlog to locate their biggest draws, but it seems like a questionable idea to me.