Since the launch of GOO Reviews Phase III, we’ve used a five-star grading system where fewer stars (i.e., 1 star) is bad and more stars (i.e., 5 star) is good. Partial points (i.e., 1/2 star) are also possible. Generally if something receives 2 1/2 stars or better, we liked it at least a little bit.

It goes like this:

is Near Perfect

 

is Amazing

 

is Great

 

is Good

 

is Decent

 

is Passable

 

is Flawed

 

is Bad

 

is Horrible

 

is Nearly Worthless

 

However, that’s not the whole story.

Sometimes you might see something that is technically brilliant or really well done but you didn’t love it and sometimes you see something utterly awful but you still kind of liked it. That’s where the heart comes in. Taking a cue from Apple Music, we also use a heart system.

When something receives a heart, regardless of the quality of the piece or the score we give it , know that, for whatever reason, it’s something we still loved, possibly beyond reason.

In Phases I and II, Grace judged pieces on a letter-grading scale (‘A’ to ‘F’ = bad to good) and Thom judged pieces on a numerical scale (one to ten = bad to good). Even back then we couldn’t agree on things.