Ben Borgers

Bronze, Silver, Gold

June 24, 2022

I was talking with Trisha about a new project. We were thinking of making the ratings for this project on a five-star scale. But I just didn’t love the idea of a five-star scale.

But then Trisha had a fantastic idea (I can’t take any credit for it, but it was good): rate things on a scale of bronze, silver, or gold.

The problem with the five-star scale is that it skews upwards. 5 stars is really good, 4 is pretty good, and 3 is already pretty bad. Then 2 and 1 are abysmal. You don’t have much range.

But instead, when using metals, everyone’s won already. Bronze is still pretty good!

So you have the range of being able to give the worst rating while not having it sound terrible. You can use the entire breadth of the scale.

Plus, if you come across something that’s so bad that it doesn’t even deserve to win, you can make up a coal tier or something.

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