Because it is our experience that, while reviewers may have a consensus on the value or excellence of a particular product's feature, that consensus us rarely represented consistently by numerical or star ratings.
Everyone is familiar with the traffic light code of green-for-go, amber/yellow-for-caution, and red-for-stop. For April 2007, onwards, we've taken this excellent system and added intermediate colours between yellow-red and yellow-green, to represent five rating states:
EXCELLENT
'Excellent' is the top rating and only applied when the product has been demonstrated to be among the best in its category for the property being evaluated.
GOOD
Being 'Good' is positive and represents an above average rating, but falling short of true excellence.
ADEQUATE
• By being 'Adequate' we mean 'average'; or not unacceptable but should really be better.
POOR
The 'Poor' rating indicates being below average and in urgent need of improvement.
UNACCEPTABLE
When you get to the rock bottom red rating of 'Unacceptable' it means that the property being evaluated has not met minimum standards of acceptability - we're talking: failure.
