L/A/S Ratings

Pretty much every guy rates a woman. A common way on the Internet boards is L/A/S. I don't agree with it, but without diving into the whys, this post outlines how I use it.

LOOKS

Last year I had dinner with the two youngsters who founded HotorNot, which is a site where people rate other peoples' photos. I asked them for the statistical distribution of variance in peoples' rankings. They said there were some people who had amazingly uniform rankings (within the error limits of false/joke ratings), and many people who did not. The former were biased toward the high and low ends of rankings, in other words, they vary the MOST in the middle ratings (e.g. 4 vs. 6). The statistics are computed over several tens of million ratings, although the site attracts a biased sample.

This implies that looks may not be as subjective as you think, at least for the best and worst looking.

This probably would change if we ranked individual body parts.

More commonly hobbyists do not rank on a bell curve. And I suspect that a truly private board would rank differently than a public board, for reasons of politeness. For example, a looks of 7 really means "average", partly because in a public board the provider will see how she is rated and doesn't like to see a 5, and partly because many hobbyists weigh their rankings bimodally (or fail to post ratings for average experiences). Obviously the better you know the hobbyist, the more you can normalize their rating.

When I rate, I rate based on what I've seen among providers, reserving some buffer for the future. So I've never given a 10, but I'll give a 9 to a gal who might be only a 8 among swimsuit models.

ATTITUDE

Agreed this varies. To me this is a combination of professionalism and goals. A professional can maintain an appropriate attitude under extreme circumstances. The question is, what attitude does she attempt to maintain?

SERVICE

I have a different rating for service. I'll grant a 10 when they are perfect TO ME. I'm not into water sports or crocophilia, so they don't increase the service. In fact, they decrease the rating. Yep, I'd drop a gal to at least a 5 if she peed on me!

To me, service is a skill rating.

For myself, I also like to ask about presentability as a 4th criteria. This has to do with public face, e.g. if you took your date to the opera or fine dining, how presentable is she? Would she impress your boss or business associate? Or would she come across like Anna Nicole Smith?