Rating Standards

This page sets out the standards behind the star rating and the five scores shown on every Vowars review, along with the arithmetic used to produce them. If you want to know how a particular number was arrived at, the answer is here.

What the star rating represents

The rating is not a verdict on the skill of the author. It exists to help you decide one thing: whether this indicator belongs on your charts.

Every score answers two questions.

It follows that we never mark an indicator down for failing to do something its author never intended it to do. Nor do we score against whichever design philosophy the reviewer happens to prefer.

Vowars also applies its own criteria before an indicator becomes an article at all. Appearing here means it already cleared that bar. A modest star count does not mean the indicator is poor.

How scoring works

Scoring runs in four stages. The order is fixed and does not change from one review to the next.

1. Establish what the author built the indicator to do
2. Score five criteria, each from 1.0 to 5.0
3. Apply deductions, where any apply
4. Calculate the overall score

1. Establishing the author’s intent

Before any scoring happens, we work out what the indicator was built for. Skip this and the rest of the assessment has nothing to measure against, so it always comes first.

The judgement draws on the following.

• The author’s own description on TradingView
• The names given to the indicator, its plots and its parameters
• Whether it produces trade signals, in the form of markers, labels or alert conditions
• Whether what appears on screen is a decision, or material for one
• Whether the design assumes you are running it alongside other indicators

That places the indicator in one of three categories.

Category	Purpose	Typical traits
A Decision tools	To produce entry and exit decisions	Signals, alerts, an explicit long or short direction
B Analytical tools	To present material for reading the state of the market	Direction and timing are left to the user
C Utility tools	To support other analysis, speed up drawing, or gather information	Dashboards, automatic lines, session displays

Where an indicator has traits of more than one category, we place it by where its centre of gravity sits, and treat secondary features more lightly than the main purpose. A visualization tool with signals attached is scored as category B, and weak signals are not held heavily against it.

The category we settled on is reflected in the written reasoning beside the rating. We never publish a number without saying what kind of tool it applies to.

2. Scoring the five criteria

Effectiveness, originality, clarity, flexibility and reliability are each scored from 1.0 to 5.0 in steps of 0.1. Scores are absolute, measured against the bands set out below, rather than relative to other indicators we have covered.

Three rules govern the scoring.

• Each criterion is judged on its own, without being pulled toward the scores given elsewhere
• A middling score is never a way of avoiding a decision. Where the call is close, we picture a situation in which a reader would struggle, and move the score down if that situation is real and up if it is not
• The five carry equal weight. None of them is weighted above another

Effectiveness

How fully the indicator delivers what its author set out to do. What we ask depends on the category.

Category	What we ask
A Decision tools	Are the signals enough to act on? Are direction, timing and rationale all present? Does it stand alone, and if it is built for pairing, is that design made clear?
B Analytical tools	Does it give you what you came to read, no more and no less? Is it faster or more accurate than reaching the same conclusion by ordinary means?
C Utility tools	Does it genuinely cut manual work? Does it make that work more precise?

Score	Band
4.5–5.0	Delivers on its stated purpose almost completely, and suffices on its own
3.8–4.4	Delivers on its purpose. Where something is missing, how to cover the gap is obvious
3.0–3.7	Meets the main purpose, but falls short somewhere within the scope it claims
2.0–2.9	The main purpose holds, but the feature set is clearly thin against the billing
1.0–1.9	Does not function against the purpose it sets out

None of the following counts against effectiveness: a category B tool having no trade signals, a category C tool offering no read on the market, or a design that assumes you are pairing it with something else.

Originality

Whether it brings a perspective, a structure or a presentation that existing indicators lack.

Score	Band
4.5–5.0	An idea with no precedent among comparable tools. A view you cannot get elsewhere
3.8–4.4	A clear piece of thinking, either in what it looks at or in how it shows it
3.0–3.7	A combination of established methods, but assembled to a purpose
2.0–2.9	A restyling of an existing indicator that adds no information
1.0–1.9	Effectively the same as tools already in wide circulation

Using a well-worn method is not in itself a mark against an indicator. A familiar calculation still scores well when the framing or the presentation is new.

Clarity

Whether, once it is on the chart, you can read what it is telling you without misreading it.

Score	Band
4.5–5.0	Readable at a glance. Can stay on the chart without getting in the way
3.8–4.4	No confusion once you are used to it. Detail and screen space are in balance
3.0–3.7	Readable, but parts of it have to be memorised
2.0–2.9	Elements overlap, or colours run counter to intuition, making misreads likely
1.0–1.9	The display collapses, or there is too much on screen to follow

Taking up a pane below the chart is not counted against clarity. For oscillators that is simply how they work.

Flexibility

Whether it can be fitted to your instrument, your timeframe and your style of trading.

Score	Band
4.5–5.0	Works broadly at its defaults, and tunes down to fine detail when you want it to
3.8–4.4	The parameters mean something legible, and where to adjust is apparent
3.0–3.7	Workable at its defaults, but fitting it to your setup takes trial and error
2.0–2.9	Parameter names give no sense of their role, or changing values produces no readable difference
1.0–1.9	Only holds up on one instrument or timeframe, or the defaults are unusable

A long parameter list and a short one are treated the same way: neither earns nor loses points on its own. More settings mean freedom, fewer mean simplicity, and both are legitimate design decisions.

Reliability

Whether you can take what is on screen at face value and act on it.

Score	Band
4.5–5.0	Fully reproducible, and the description matches what appears
3.8–4.4	Stable behaviour. Where it does something unusual, the author says so
3.0–3.7	Stable, but some of its behaviour goes undisclosed
2.0–2.9	Description and behaviour diverge, or results shift with conditions
1.0–1.9	The same conditions produce different results. What it shows cannot be trusted

Redrawing or late confirmation that has been disclosed as intended behaviour costs nothing. The same goes for values that hold steady on closed bars while moving on the live one, which is standard Pine behaviour and is explained in the article itself.

3. Applying deductions

Points come off the total only in the cases below. Where more than one applies, they are added together. Nothing is ever added back.

Case	Deduction
The author’s description and the actual behaviour diverge (weighted by how directly it affects a trading decision)	−0.1 to −0.5
The indicator repaints while the author states that it does not	−0.3 to −0.5
Certain settings break the display or throw errors	−0.2 to −0.5
The author makes unsupported claims, such as guaranteed wins or high win rates	−0.2 to −0.5

Whenever points are deducted, the grounds appear in the body of the article. Nothing that goes unwritten is used as a reason to deduct. Deductions affect the overall score only, and never move the five values plotted on the radar chart.

4. Calculating the overall score

The overall score is the average of the five criteria, plus any deductions.

Overall = (Effectiveness + Originality + Clarity + Flexibility + Reliability) ÷ 5 + deductions

Because the five criteria carry equal weight, a cap applies when effectiveness is low. Without it, an indicator that fails at its own purpose could ride the other four scores to a respectable total.

Effectiveness	Cap on the overall score
Below 2.5	3.0
2.5 to 2.9	3.4
3.0 and above	No cap

The result is rounded to one decimal place, with a ceiling of 5.0 and a floor of 1.0. Where the cap has been applied, the reasoning beside the rating says so.

Reading the radar chart and the bars

Each review plots the five scores as a radar chart with a matching set of bars. A few things are worth knowing when you read them.

• The axes run clockwise in a fixed order: effectiveness, originality, clarity, flexibility, reliability. They are never rearranged from one review to another
• The scale is fixed at 0 to 5. It is never rescaled to flatter a particular indicator
• Each value is shown to one decimal place, exactly as scored
• The overall score sits outside the chart. Since it includes deductions, it will not always match the visual centre of gravity

The shape tells you about character rather than quality. A spiked shape means the indicator is strong at something specific; an even one means nothing about it breaks down. Neither shape is better than the other.

What the scores leave out

None of the following ever costs an indicator points. It is worth knowing which factors are outside the scoring before you read a number.

• Lacking a feature the author never set out to include
• Being designed to run alongside other indicators, where the author intended that
• Having many parameters, or having few
• Being built on a widely used calculation
• Occupying a pane below the chart
• Disclosed repainting, and values moving on the live bar
• The author’s background, reputation or number of published scripts
• Whether the script is free or paid, and how popular it is on TradingView

Where the ratings stop

Even with every step followed, a rating still depends on how you trade. An indicator built for a narrow purpose will score lower for that reason, and that is a characteristic rather than a weakness. In the situations it was designed for, it will outperform the general-purpose alternatives.

Ratings also reflect the conditions Vowars tested under. Change the instrument, the timeframe or the phase of the market, and the same indicator can feel like a different tool.