Put a rating in your rating...

To start off this fine post, I would like to express my happiness at seeing the Return of the Blog. It was a really great wrap-up to the trilogy and... wait, no that's Star Wars. Or Lord of the Rings. Anyways, I would like to explain what I hope to be contribution to the blog. I will rate things. You might not like my rating, but I'll make it as humorous and logical as possible. Now when I say 'things,' I mean to keep it vague. The plan is that people who read this blog will send me random things to rate. And I mean anything. Maybe a picture of a cute lizard? Maybe a mathematical theorum? I will create specific categories of things to be rated, as well, and when people send enough suggestions I will group them together in a single post. For instance, right away I would like to create the catagory: Fewd. Spelled with an 'ew' because it's funny and because the edibles that I am rating will likely not be considered edible by most. When people send suggestions, I will attempt to obtain and sample them and will then rate them as to their culinary value. As two sneak peeks: Yoo-Dew and Spicy Carameese.

Send all suggestions to x37v.tbcrh@gmail.com which doesn't exist yet so I'm going to go make it as soon as I'm done writing this.

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For this post, however, I will be rating various rating systems:

The Letter Grade:

The most classic and well known grading system in schools, and often used as a generic rating system. We've all had driven into us since childhood the idea of how great 'A' is and how bad and terrible 'F' is, so it's clear that a lot of how we view this system comes from classical conditioning. As such, it receives credit for involving psychology. However, it's so random. I mean, why leave 'E' out? And for that matter, why use letters at all if you only need 5 of them? Finally, as with all ratings, we want more detail when a grade isn't quite good enough for A, but too good for B, so we introduced +'s and -'s. Now this is just dumb. I mean, combining letters and mathematical symbols? What is this, algebra? And it gets worse when considering that we can't express higher levels than '+' without resorting to 'A++' (or for those who have slogged through eBay feedback pages, the dreaded 'A++++++++++++++++++++++++++'). In the end, though, letter grades express what they're trying to express adequately, so they receives a decent

B-

Percentage:

Amongst school systems, this is what the Letter Grade system is based off of and amongst media this is what fan level is based off of. It is clear cut and obvious what your position is if you understand the slightest thing about percentages. 100% is good; 80% is pretty good; 0% is bad; 50% is right in the middle and therefore not good. In addition, it looks professional and tidy. Best of all, if a hundredths scale isn't specific enough for you, you can just tack on some decimal points and it still looks good. (Ex.: 83.45%) While viewing percentage ratings, they are nigh on perfect. However, when assigning them, they can be hellish. I mean, you have a hundred different numbers to pick from. And if even one of your numbers ought to have a decimal point, they all need it. The worst is when you're trying to add up a bunch to equal 100% total; then you have to keep bumping one measurement up and another down and they never all look perfect. Percentages receive the adequate grade of

87.65%

Stars:

Unfortunately, the source of all knowledge and Wisdom on the internet, Wikipedia, does not seem to have a page on the Star Rating system. If it had, I would have been able to give a quick history of how this system came to be. As it stands, I will have to live with the fact that I have no idea how the idea of stars as a rating system came about, but it is used endlessly today. It is often used for rating movies and games, and of course is the primary system for rating hotels. I believe it is so popular because it is extremely quick and easy to use and because images seem to stand out better than words. Most commonly, a rating will be something 'out of 5 stars.' When more detail than fifths is required, either more base stars can be added (Ex.: 7 out of 10) or fractions of stars can be used. (Ex.: 3.5 out of 5) This makes it look like the star bar is being filled up, and is visually pleasing to most people. However, pieces of stars can be somewhat hard to decipher, and even with fractional stars, 5 is still a very limiting number. Therefore, the star system receives a better-then-average

Non-Stars:

This is a somewhat rare spin-off of the Star Rating system. It is often applied on internet forums and the like. It entails the use of various images, emoticons, animals, memes, or abstract concepts instead of stars, but is similar in every other aspect. This can lead to a much more appropriate, humorous, and/or relevant expression. (Ex.: I give this webcomic about pokemon 4 out of 5 happy Pikachus! -accompanied by 4 pictures of said happy Pikachu-) However, when taking into account the above mention of partial ratings, this can look extremely odd, such as when 3.9 Buddy's results in a missing limb:

However, this may prove to be even more humorous than the whole picture would have been. The primary issue with such a rating is when those internet folk that are lacking in brain cells attempt to use this system and completely ruin the point of it by using an entirely unrelated and possibly annoying picture/idea. (Ex.: I give this picture of a laughing camel 3 out of 5 pretty, pretty princesses) Non-Star ratings receive a better-than-better-than-average

(4 out of 5, I found this to be humorous. -gets stabbed-)

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Well, that's all for now. As everyone else is changing their name, and I'd prefer a single word name, I shall be going with my long-standing codename: X37V.

Farewell and good fortune,

~ X37V