Editorial Scoring as Code is the practice of encoding subjective judgment as an explicit, repeatable scoring rubric. Instead of relying on vague intuition, you define criteria, assign weights, and compute a composite score that ranks items according to your priorities.

This turns “taste” into a small, inspectable system you can tune over time.

Why it matters

  • Consistency: every item is judged against the same criteria.
  • Debuggability: you can see why something ranked higher or lower.
  • Tuning: weights can be adjusted as goals change (e.g., more novelty, less hype).
  • Personalization: two people can share the same rubric but set different weights.

Typical structure

  1. Define criteria Examples: novelty, impact, technical depth, relevance, PR-fluff risk.
  2. Score each criterion Manual, heuristic, or model-assisted (0–5, 0–10).
  3. Weight criteria Example: score = 0.35*novelty + 0.30*impact + 0.20*relevance + 0.10*depth - 0.15*pr_fluff.
  4. Rank by total score Items float to the top according to your rubric.

Where it applies

  • News/idea feeds: prioritize what’s worth attention.
  • Backlog triage: rank features by impact and leverage.
  • Bug queues: combine severity, frequency, and customer impact.
  • PR review: rank change risk vs. value.

Pitfalls

  • Overfitting: too many criteria makes it opaque and fragile.
  • False precision: treat scores as relative signals, not exact truths.
  • Stale rubrics: weights should evolve with your goals.

References