What Is Rubric Scoring and Why Use It?

Rubric scoring lets you break a review down into named criteria — each with its own scoring range and its own weight — instead of asking reviewers for a single overall number. Set it up from a project’s Review Panels tab: add a criterion, give it a Max score and a Weight, and repeat for each thing you want scored. Dapple normalises every score to a 0–100 scale and combines them into one weighted average automatically. Use rubric scoring when different aspects of a submission matter by different amounts and you need reviewers to score consistently.

Rubric scoring replaces a single “give it a score out of 10” question with a set of named criteria, each configured separately on the Review Panel. A typical rubric might use three or four criteria such as "originality", "technical ability" or "audience fit" — each scored on its own star rating. Every criterion has its own description, so reviewers know what a 3 looks like versus a 9, and its own Max score, so you can give one criterion a wider range (Technical Ability out of 10) and another a narrower one (Presentation out of 5).

Reviewers score each criterion on its own rather than holding every factor in their head at once, and Dapple does the math to turn those individual scores into one final number out of 100. This keeps reviewers focused on the specific thing they’re being asked to judge, and keeps their raw scores comparable to each other.

Each criterion’s score is normalised to a 0–100 scale using score ÷ max score × 100, then multiplied by its weight. Dapple sums those weighted results across all criteria and divides by the total weight to produce the weighted average shown on the submission.

For example:

Normalised: Originality = 60, Technical Ability = 80, Audience Fit = 90. Weighted sum = (60×1) + (80×2) + (90×3) = 490. Total weight = 6. Weighted average = 490 ÷ 6 = 81.7 out of 100. Because weights are ratios rather than absolute values, 1/2/3 produces exactly the same result as 10/20/30.

How do I set up a rubric on a Review Panel?

Set criteria up once on the Review Panel and every reviewer scores against the same rubric.

Once the Review Panel is live, reviewers see each criterion as a star rating on their review form, and the weighted average out of 100 appears automatically once every criterion has been scored.

Weight controls how much a criterion influences the overall weighted average — it doesn’t change the scoring range reviewers see, only how much that criterion counts once every score is combined. A criterion with weight 2 counts twice as much as one with weight 1; a criterion with weight 3 counts three times as much. All weights are relative, so 1/2/3 works the same as 10/20/30.

Use unequal weights when one part of a submission matters more to your decision than another. If publishability matters far more than flair, giving Publishability a weight of 3 against Flair’s weight of 1 means a reviewer can’t let a flashy but unpublishable entry accidentally outscore a solid one — the maths won’t let it.

Rubric scoring works best anywhere a single overall score would flatten out real differences between submissions.