Understanding quality using the Fudge scale
In the flood of information around us, one of the most efficient ways to sort out "good" from "bad" is to use a quality scale. For example, IMDB rates movies from 1 to 10, and Metacritic uses a scale of 0 to 100. Many critics also use a star system that starts at 0 or 1 and peaks at 4 or 5, depending on the version.
Although numbers like these are great for computing averages and trends, they are harder to interpret for humans, and this can cause a lot of inconsistency and inaccuracy in your data. What exactly does a 3 mean? Does my feeling of "threeness" really correspond to yours?
The same issue comes up a lot in role-playing game systems, where character traits and skills are ranked at various levels. Your druid might have a 17 in Wisdom, or a +4 in Wilderness Lore. I love reading RPG books, but not always to play the game. I find that a cleverly designed game model often works as a microcosm of reality and how we relate to it. For example, the lawful-chaotic axis of alignment in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons correlates nicely to the judging vs. perceiving aspect of the MBTI personality test.
The most user-friendly rating scale I’ve ever found is from Steffan O’Sullivan’s ingenious Fudge system, which maps English words to various degrees of quality. Instead of having Strength 7, you might have "poor Strength". Instead of Fishing +9, you might be "superb" at fishing. And this is the scale I use when I review products.
Fudge scale
| +3 | Awesome | |
| +2 | Great | |
| +1 | Good | |
| 0 | Okay | |
| -1 | So-So | |
| -2 | Bad | |
| -3 | Terrible |
Note: The original Fudge scale actually uses the terms superb, great, good, fair, mediocre, poor and terrible, but I prefer to use more colloquial translations you see above.
ooh i like your terms better than the original fudge terms
as noted by many others, numeric review scores in videogame publications are often highly skewed toward the upper end. a publication might nominally use a 1-10 scale, but in practice they tend to actually score almost everything in the 7-10 range, where 7 means “so so” and 10 means excellent. this is a totally different feeling for “seveness” than what one might find in other contexts.
Words are much better for describing quality than numbers alone, I agree. The Fudge System reminds me of gun condition in System Shock 2 (SS2) where guns in poor condition might break, requiring repair before they could be fired again. SS2 had a 1-10 numbering system for that:
0 – Broken.
1 – Terrible.
2 – Poor.
3 – Shoddy.
4 – Fair.
5 – Okay.
6 – Good.
7 – Very good.
8 – Excellent.
9 – Superb.
10 – Perfect.
I think I prefer yours though. Often, however, I think it’s better to measure quality with qualitative terms. If wanted to rate the quality of comments on a blog, for instance, you could use words like, insightful, wise, interesting, funny, true, false, subjective, short-sighted, rude etc. You could assign numeric values to these, later, depending on what you are looking for.
In some cases the top value is the usual one to give – for example for a simple transaction such as delivering a parcel. If it was delivered on time, to the right address and undamaged, then that is 10/10. Yes, that’s what should happen, but you can’t actually have better (unless of course the deliverer went out of their way to ensure it was delivered correctly such as trudging through deep snow / tracking down an incomplete address etc).
For subjective things such as the quality of a restaurant then it’s another matter. Back when I used to go to pubs I only once gave 10/10 – and wouldn’t give more than 6/10 if the pub didn’t have the kind of beer I liked to drink.