Me: I’ll have a good meal tonight.

Eva: Wait for me to see which rating is good.

This is one of my daily conversations with my friend Eva, who is the KOL of a review website. She Love to write food reviews, even a cup of tea can write a 300-word review.

I often say to her, “It’s a pity you don’t write reviews.”

▲ Picture from: Curiosity Institute

But over time, Eva also became very dependent on review sites, watching ratings before eating, watching movies and watching ratings Talk about the game without leaving IGN … I often endure hunger for ten minutes because I have to wait for Eva to choose the right restaurant.

In fact, people like Eva who use ratings to judge products are not by my side. Friends A recently called DxOMark’s new iPhone photos too low, and called them unfair.

In the era of Internet consumption, the score is decided. h3>

Scoring always digs out new things, provides suggestions when we have no idea, reviews with meals, The movie has Douban, the mobile phone performance is safe, the camera has DxOMark … But the unexpected results always make these platforms controversial.

After all, a thousand readers have a thousand Hamlet. You say that this mobile phone takes great pictures, you can follow The standards of others may not be the same thing.

▲ I ordered this cup of “Fengjiao Coffee” at a coffee shop. I don’t know many people, so I have almost no ratings, but I think it is very interesting in terms of appearance and taste.

Speaking of “looking at ratings to judge good and bad”, in fact, I have also experienced this before, only However, at that time I was mainly watching movie ratings, and those who got a lot of praise went to the cinema, and those who did not have a good one saved a movie ticket. Maybe because there were not so many review platforms today, I was not as particular as Eva.

The rise of the scoring platform is actually something that only appeared in the past three or four years, here In addition to the gradual development of mobile networks, there are also factors such as rich life content and increasingly advanced hardware.

As an “Aboriginal” who is paying close attention to the Internet almost every moment, I find that once Implicit netizens have become more and more sharing spirit, eating, watching movies, traveling can all score points.

If you put it in the past 2G and 3G era, it would be unimaginable.

However, with more and more online reviews, we have gradually come to make consumption decisions. The habit of looking at scoring: High scores are naturally preferred, and low scores are never considered. This also invisibly promotes a new consumption habit and the birth of an industry chain-using ratings to determine the quality of products, the water army To control scoring and evaluation.

Controversial “standard” and “non-standard” scores

How did these scores come about?

From my personal summary,There are two main scoring methods for current online platforms: one is to test the product according to the established test standards, and the other is to combine the official own standards and the public evaluation to obtain the results.

Take my most familiar smartphone as an example. The Antutu and DxOMark that we are familiar with are based on A platform for a given standard to obtain test scores, these platforms usually have the following characteristics:

  • There is a mature test project
  • is widely used
  • has some authority
  • Subjectiveness of the platform

    The four characteristics can be said to be closely related to each other. For example, some time ago, the iPhone 11 Pro Max test was pushed to the hot search DxOMark, which is one of the representatives of the standardized test.

    This agency has a set of Our own testing project , which includes the process and scene testing of the function and imaging quality of mobile phone cameras.

    ▲ 2017 DxOMark camera test project. Picture from: DxOMark

    In more detail, a single” imaging quality “item contains more than ten camera exposure, color, zoom, noise reduction, photo quality, and video quality Link. After performing a set of tests, DxOMark will score a comprehensive score based on the performance of the product. The higher the score, the stronger the strength of the mobile phone camera.

    With a large number of rigorous tests, DxOMark has naturally become a “benchmark guide” for mobile phone photography. Vendors that have been at the top of the ranking for a long time often endorse DxOMark’s scores for product endorsements, and use the scores as proof of camera strength.

    But whether it is DxOMark or other scoring platforms, testing the product through a fixed process will also measure unexpected The results and controversy.

    For example, Xiaomi CC9 Pro and Huawei Mate 30 Pro who have recently won the DxOMark head ranking, although both phones It’s a comprehensive score of 121 (2 points for Huawei’s single photo and 2 points for Xiaomi’s video), but Xiaomi only ranks below Huawei in the list.

    What makes the public question the fairness and objectivity of DxOMark is the performance of iPhone 11 Pro Max. This also allows iMore , Androidauthority and other technology media Submit Questioning and dissatisfaction-they look similar, and even perform better in certain links, how can the score be so bad?

    Many people may think subconsciously that DxOMark should be an absolute authority, fair and objective test Organization, but DxOMark Image Labs, which runs DxOMark, is actually a company that focuses on solution sales and consulting.

    Testing the camera and scoring it is actually one of their jobs to make DxOMark Image Labs profitable It is this set of test standards and solutions.

    ▲ Image analyzer sold by DxOMark

    In other words, the manufacturer can adjust the camera by purchasing DxO equipment according to the standard and paying for the camera, so that the camera can take better pictures, or directly send the test to the PK strength of other products. In other words, the test of DxOMark is For one exam, you can pay for the sprint class before the exam, and other manufacturers can go directly to the exam venue.

    So, in the final analysis, DxOMark’s controversy lies in the fact that they have adjusted the grades that may have been adjusted and those that have not been adjusted. The results of the school are put together for comparison, and no special notes are made; the second is that this list is just the focus of the DxOMark homepage.

    Of course, it is not impossible to pass a standardized process test or make a profit, after all, the manpower, time, and equipment testing of the test Costs are equal to money.

    There is a scoring and marketing, but the rarely disputed example is iFixit, although they are selling Disassembling accessories and tools to make a profit, but they are not selling some test standards and rankings to manufacturers like DxOMark, so there is almost no controversy.

    ▲ Picture from: iFixit

    The definition of “non-standard” scoring does not mean that the scoring is not credible, but rather compared to the previous Standard mode, the “non-standard” scoring rules will be based on the platform ’s own standards, and will also incorporate user participation data, which is more objective: