By contrast, the current ranking system leads to the popular becoming more popular — once you’re on the top charts, you have increased visibility, which leads to more reviews, which further cements your chart position (as long as you stay inside your semantic rating bucket).

Those of us who want to discover hidden gems really need the search functionality to work with us, not against us. We want a system where the top charts are self-correcting, rather than self-reinforcing. Otherwise we get a situation like Apple’s with frozen charts, shady tactics, and skyrocketing user acquisition costs.

via Fixing Steam’s User Rating Charts.