Rating System: Topic vs Message ratings

I believe that the message ratings should influence the topic ratings that a thread gets...

For instance, if there are 5 posts in a thread and 3 posts have +3, perhaps the topic should be rated to a +2 because of that...

Or, a topic has 70 posts and there are 4 posts that have more than +8, perhaps another point?

At what point does the amount of messages actually play into a topic rating and when does it stop? I don't think topics with less than 4 posts should be able to be rated by the messages alone. I also think that if a really good thread has good information and the posts are getting rated well, the topic should show that.

I'm very open to how the system should work. Any ideas?

I think any rating system that is made will need to be constantly updated and tweaked. I say go for it and we can see how it works out.

Here is the formula I'm currently using to add to the topic voted count for the messages...

sumrating is the sum of all ratings in a thread.
totalvotedcount is the count of messages that got rated
totalcount is the number of posts in a thread.

rating=(10*(sumrating+(floor(totalvotedcount/25))))/(totalcount*totalvotedcount)

The rating cannot be higher than sumrating/totalvotedcount either and this addition only adds when there are at least 15 posts.

I completely understand that equation...

Thanks.

At least I can figure out that rating messages will increase the topic rating.