Document Quality Explanation
History
When I was developing my document database, I wanted some way to indicate my estimation of the
approximate overall quality of each paper. Thus the idea of a "quality" quantifier was born.
What makes a paper "good"?
The general rule I use is that good content + good writing = higher quality. As a consequence,
many very old papers from middle or high-school ('88-'94) have a lower quality than those written in
college ('94-'98). Papers with good insight or technical content have a higher quality than
papers with nothing new and interesting.
Values
The lowest quality is 0 (zero), and there is no upper bound on the quality number. Here is a rough breakdown:
- Quality 0-1
- generally very old papers, unpolished papers, or those are generally not terribly interesting
- Quality 2-3
- includes "good" papers from a long time ago, and "poor" papers from recently (my writing has matured)
- Quality 4
- these are generally either very well written, or have good technical content, but not both
- Quality 5
- the standard for polished college-era papers which have both good writing and good technical content
- Quality 9-10
- reserved for well-written technical papers that have been published
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