I tend to think that it is more the result of a bit of cognitive dissonance, particularly with respect to what the points values mean. They can be viewed eithe

I tend to think that it is more the result of a bit of cognitive dissonance, particularly with respect to what the points values mean. They can be viewed either as a metric of popularity, or a metric of quality. Most people { {handwaving}} conceive of points as some mixture of the two, hence there is a reluctance to give a point to a story with, say, 20 points, even if you liked it, because you don't think it is a "21-point quality" story.