Scoring policy

The 5 dimensions

Critics rate every pitch on 5 DRP-anchored dimensions on a 1–5 face-emoji scale (😡 Terrible / 😕 Meh / 😐 Okay / 🙂 Good / 😃 Excellent). The set is anchored to the Direct-Response-Pitch craft: problem → proof → offer → close → recommend.

1. Problem Solved?

   How well did it address a real pain I have?

   problemSolved

2. Proof / Believable?

   Demos, evidence, testimonials — did it feel real and trustworthy?

   proofBelievable

3. Offer Clear & Worth It?

   Value, pricing, bonuses, guarantee — would I bite?

   offerClear

4. Convincing / Want to Buy?

   Persuasiveness and call-to-action strength.

   convincingBuy

5. Overall Recommendation

   Would you recommend or watch again / buy from this pitcher?

   overall

The v1.0.0 equation

For each rating, take the mean of the 5 dim scores. For a pitch with N valid ratings, take the mean of the per-rating means. Round to 1 decimal place.

honestScore(rating) = mean(
  rating.problemSolved,
  rating.proofBelievable,
  rating.offerClear,
  rating.convincingBuy,
  rating.overall,
)
honestScore(pitch) = mean(honestScore(r) for r in ratings)

Per-rating mean, not weighted. The breakdown (per-dim means) is weight-agnostic — a future v2.0.0 can swap the rollup without changing what the widget collects. The current implementation lives in the open-source @honest-pitches/honestscore-core package.

Below-threshold copy

The headline HonestScore only appears on a pitch card once enough critics have rated it. The current threshold is 3 critics.

• 0 critics: "No ratings yet. Be the first to rate after watching."
• 1 to 2 critics: "2 of 3 ratings so far. Headline HonestScore appears at 3."
• 3+ critics: "" (the page is past the threshold; the headline score surfaces)

The same string is surfaced on the activity-feed cards (the home page / /pitches/) so the page and the feed show consistent progress copy.

History of the rebuild

The HonestScore prototype shipped a 6-dim 1–10 scale (Hype, Execution, Honesty, Helpfulness, Production, Quality). On 2026-06-12, the system was rebuilt around the 5 DRP-anchored dims above on a 1–5 face-emoji scale. This was a clean break:

• The legacy 2-dim hype/reality collection and the 6-dim shape are both gone from the data schema.
• The 5-dim ratings_honestscore collection is the single storage backend.
• The package export RATING_DIMENSIONS is the source of truth; the per-package lock-step test in www/pitch-honestscore.contract.test.ts pins the labels.
• The "Computed with scoring v1.0.0" version stamp on the hero card and this policy page is the versioned label — a future equation change is a major-version bump.

License

The scoring equation and the dimension definitions are open-sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. See the scoring repo (the Q7 repo-extraction follow-up; the @honest-pitches/honestscore-core workspace alias is the pre-extraction home).