Here's a chart of entries and statistics for Ludum Dare 42, taken from the stats page:

Lots of Entries

First of all, that's a lot of games for a weekend! My last time participating in the Compo was LD39 last summer. This has 30% more entries than LD39, and in the Jam category, there was a 48% increase in entries. At this rate, we'll have the entire population of the US participating in the Ludum Dare Jam by 2048 (hey, I can dream, right?).

More Unpublished than Published

Another thing I noticed was that there were actually more unpublished games than published ones by a couple hundred. This makes sense, because Ludum Dare is a pretty daunting task, and people's obligation/motivation/schedules are likely to change over the course of a weekend. I would imagine that first-time participants would be more likely to drop before the end of the event, but this is obviously just speculation (it would be cool to see more detailed stats on this, @pov).

This suggests to me that there is room for us, as a community, to lower the skill and commitment barrier to start participating in Ludum Dare. Successfully participating in one event, even if your entry is a glitchy mess, would probably give people the skills and confidence to participate again.

Your Lack of Ratings

At this point, nine days before rankings become finalized, only about half of games have received 20 ratings. Furthermore, these "unrated" games are highly weighted toward the low end, within this range (this likely has to do with the "danger" search option).

As most previous Ludum Dare participants know, this isn't because the games or bad, or overlooked, or don't have an enticing enough splash image or description --- it's because their creators haven't rated any games. This website is really good at making sure that, if you have rated other games, your game appears at the top of search results. Most of the games in the "Zero" search category that have received 0-2 ratings have not rated a single other game themselves. This probably has a few factors.

• Not understanding the system - It's feasible that some entrants don't understand that you have to rate games to be seen. I think that is probably less likely at this event in particular, since the boxes you check upon submission make the expectations and requirements very clear for both events, but it's probably a factor.

• Lack of motivation - We've all seen blog posts with screenshots and animations, saying "Help, my game is at 10 ratings, play it here!" It, unfortunately, takes a couple hours to rate 20 games and only a couple minutes to write a blog post.

• Different priorities - Presumably, some people participate exclusively for the satisfaction of making a game in a weekend. Personally, I've always liked being rated, because I can use my scores as a metric for self-improvement, but other people may be more intrinsically motivated. In a sense, it's these people who align more closely to the spirit of Ludum Dare than any of us --- it is called "Give a Game," not "Earn a Score."

You can check the stats page for yourself.