Internal Consistency of Judgment
Whether the critic's judgments hold together across the text, rather than contradicting themself evaluating the same element or equivalent elements
The five levels
Each anchor describes what separates one level from the next — not a general description of quality. This is the text the evaluator itself reads.
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Level 1 Below Standard
Outright contradiction: the same element is praised in one paragraph and criticized in another with no explanation for the shift
Example "The simplicity here is a strength" then later "the work suffers from a poverty of detail" about the same element
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Level 2 Approaching
No outright contradiction, but the implicit standard of judgment shifts between equivalent elements without justification
Example Praises a color repetition in one element and calls it a flaw in a functionally similar one
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Level 3 At Standard
Judgments are mutually consistent; no noticeable contradiction across the text
Example The standard for judging conciseness stays constant everywhere it appears in the text
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Level 4 Above Standard
Judgments are consistent, and the critic explicitly flags when their standard shifts for a contextually different element
Example "Unlike the ambiguity in the first passage, here the ambiguity serves no clear purpose"
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Level 5 Exemplary
A perfectly coherent evaluative structure from the text's first line to its last, one declared standard applied disciplined to every comparable element
Example States their standard explicitly in the opening then applies it literally to every element discussed afterward
Where does your own work sit on these levels?
Submit one work to be read against this criterion alone: your position across the five levels, why you are not higher and why not lower, three literal quotes from your own work, and one exercise with its success check. Your first card is free.
Price: 7 SAR · Included in Pro & Artist Plus · First one free — Pricing details
Read my work by this criterionOther criteria in the same art
Whether every evaluative judgment is paired with a specific pointer to an actual location or detail in the work that grounds it
The five levels →How clearly the critique distinguishes "what is in the work" (description) from "my opinion of it" (judgment), rather than blurring them in one undifferentiated sentence
The five levels →How closely the work's details the critic describes (color, shape, composition, word, rhythm) match what is actually present in the work
The five levels →Whether the critique goes past the first impression to uncover relationships or causes not obvious on the surface, rather than stopping at surface-level description
The five levels →The critic's distinction between "what is seen in the work" and "what it is presumed to mean or symbolize", and whether the move from the first to the second is signalled
The five levels →Whether evidentiary grounding is sustained throughout the text, rather than concentrated in one paragraph while the rest of the critique is unmoored judgment
The five levels →The critic's use of the discipline's own terms (composition, rhythm, contrast, plot, maqam...) with their precise conventional meaning in that art, rather than as loose metaphor
The five levels →Whether the critic explicitly distinguishes between what is personal taste preference and what is judgment grounded in a general, defensible artistic standard
The five levels →