Abstract: A method for determining a reliable rating for an entity includes steps or acts of: receiving a bounded rating of the entity to be rated from a rater, wherein the bounded rating is a first number selected from a bounded interval of integers; retrieving a bounded current rating for the entity, wherein the bounded current rating is selected from the bounded interval of integers; transforming the bounded rating into an unbounded rating by applying a functional transformation; transforming the bounded current rating into an unbounded current rating by applying the same functional transformation; retrieving a reliability score for the rater; retrieving a reliability score for the current rating of the entity; computing a new unbounded rating as a weighted average of the entity's unbounded current rating and unbounded rating; computing a reliability score for the new unbounded rating by adding the rater's reliability score to the current rating's reliability score; and converting the new unbounded rating into a new