hello lists,
this is a proposal to include an option of local rating into GeoNetwork.
The rating system in GeoNetwork is non-local : users' rating of metadata is
stored in the GeoNetwork installation where the metadata was harvested from
(if harvested) or in the installation the user is visiting when rating (if
the metadata was entered into that installation). The idea is to show a
metadata's rating as an average over all users' rating for that metadata, no
matter which particular GeoNetwork installation they're visiting when they
rate that metadata -- a "global" reflection of users' opinion.
It is however also possible that an organisation employing GeoNetwork is
more concerned with the ratings that their own visitors provide, rather than
the distributed average that GeoNetwork now offers.
A Dutch project I'm working on wants to do it like that; not least because
the bulk of their metadata comes from CSW harvesting, which doesn't support
any rating (only GeoNetwork harvesting protocol does) -- they feel it would
be wasteful not to offer such a nice, interactive feature for most of their
metadata. The local rating system allows them to offer rating for all of
their metadata.
As I'm implementing this anyway, I'd like to ask if anyone would be
interested to add it to standard GeoNetwork. I would make it an option that
"admin" can set for the system, the default remaining the non-local rating
we have now.
For one, it would prevent forking code which would ease future maintenance
and upgrades for the Dutch project implementing it 
Thanks in advance for your opinions,
Heikki Doeleman