[mst]

There is no one stop approach to judge a lens Some prefer technical analysis, some prefer field reports. The good news is that there are many review sites nowadays to give you a mostly complete picture.

Yes, ratings are a bit problematic. For another reason, though: they simplify things too much IMO. People tend to stop reading the (not that long really) review texts and look at the star ratings only. Best indicator is the often requested list of "Highly recommended" lenses.

Back in the early days of photozone, there were no ratings, but people urged us (or Klaus at that time) to add them. Now that we have them, we are criticized again

-- Markus