We are a ratings-obsessed culture. Critics award stars and points for films, books, restaurants, hotels, gadgets and a vast number of other products and services. Sometimes, a professional critic does the scoring, but increasingly, the public collectively creates averaged scores. Some ratings gathered with great detail, such as wine critics' commonly used 100pt scales. Others are as simple as Facebook's "like" button, purely a measure of marketing prowess. Some of the most useful ratings combine verifiable metrics. Consumer Reports, which has been an essential part of my reading for many years, comes up with what I consider highly trustworthy scores for automobiles and other products. A car goes through a variety of tests; the magazine then weights them according to its longstanding practices and comes up with a total score on a 100pt scale.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/27/point-scoring-web-freedom
