Anyway, I found a really interesting effect from the “sort game by coolness/default” options — On the first days of my rating sprees, I used to do 5 games from the default list, 5 games from the “least rated” list, and a sprinkle of hand-picked ones. The 5 games from the least rated list were often those with show-stopping bugs/just tech demos, etc. It came to a point where I just gave up reaching for the “least rated” list and just did 10 from the default list.

It seemed to me that the quality of “sort by least rated” is much lower in LD23 than it was in LD22. I wonder if this is just because the 60% increase in entries from last time, or if it is some sort of effect that people who don’t put effort in rating, and end up in the bottom of the coolness barrel, are also the same people who don’t put much effort in their games either.

I think your yellow line is the average value of the blue curve, which is not the same as the average number of votes received.