It is common practice to leave a score after a review. This score comes in many different forms. The most common one is probably the 1-10 score. 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. On Goodreads (a site for rating books) you choose 1-5 stars. The Legendary Film reviewing duo Siskel and Ebert had a simple thumbs up or thumbs down system. All these systems have problems and I will go over why in just a bit, but first the overarching problems with scoring art.
In math, you do not get points for having the answer right. You get points for having the equation right. The number at the end is not as important, what is important is how you arrived at the number. The important thing is your trouble solving
The MOST important thing to keep in mind is that the score is only really relevant to the person giving the score. It has little to no value to anybody else.
Personally, I use a 1-10 score and I use it to simply categorize different books, films, anime, and so on. All the 10s I give are somewhat equal in quality. The same can be said for all the 9s and so on. But this only really has relevance for me. Everybody has a different idea of what a 6/10 means, some people might think it is an okay score, others might think a book receiving a 6/10 is totally worthless. My 6 might be your 8 or your 7 might be my 9, we simply can not say and we will never reach a consensus on this. I like using it because I like to categorize things. I have the score I give down to a science at this point. But it is still only relevant to me since you have no idea of what my 7/10 is and I can never fully understand you 7/10.
I often have discussions with my friends about what score a film or book should have, but instead of talking about the work, we end up talking about what constitutes a good work. Is it 6, 7, or 8 out of 10. Much time is wasted arguing semantics.
Also, The Idea of giving a numeric number to a piece of art is a strange thing. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and art is a very subjective thing. What I argue is that giving a piece of art a score is also a subjective exercise.
If you go on Goodreads you will find a 1-star review and a 5-star review on every single book. If there was a real mathematical way of assigning a score, then there wouldn’t be a divide. We would all simply agree.
The same goes for movies on IMDB or Letterboxd. We can average the score out and make a list like the IMDB250 movies of all time. However, no one is going to agree with the list. None is going to say that is exactly the top 250 best films, they nailed all of them.
People have what I call “look at the number effect”, where they will only focus on a number over everything else. People will see a number on a movie site like IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes and then make a judgment on whether to see it or not.
We see the same when students of all ages get their grades. They all look at the number instead of the feedback. To think, we have made a society where your knowledge and worth as a student is being compiled down to a grade. You are always told to get good grades so you can enter a good school, so you can get a nice job and so on. It is not a surprise that people have an obsession with numbers. Everyone is conditioned to value numbers more than reason. It is no wonder people have such a focus on numbers.
The Siskel and Ebert system is way too simple in my opinion. It takes all the nuances out of the scoring and simply provides a good vs bad system. The problem is that most movies are a 5/10 a down the middle generic piece of art. The thump system does not take into account the genericness of most art. Most art being produced is just okay.
To some it’s all up
Art is subjective, giving a score to art is subjective, different scores mean different things to different people. Society only values numbers and not people, thus by avoiding scores in the review you force people to consider the art itself and not the bloody number at the end.