I've enjoyed poring over these message boards recently, discovering how others approach the matter of rating sites. Which leads me to wonder, what are the specific "outliers" of other members of this forum? What comes out on top when you sort your personal stats according to deviation above the standard? And why do you think that is?

Personally, my greatest outlier is the Canal du Midi, which I rated as a 4. My rating is .38 above the standard -- the site has a 2.6 average rating, which feels sadly low to me. I'm sure it has everything to do with the experience of having spent five beautiful summer days lazing on a houseboat, as it made its way through villages, locks, and plane trees, and my rating would have been much lower if I'd seen the canal only from its banks.

Granted, my count is pretty low -- I'm new to this -- but I wonder what this statistic says about others? What WHS did you seem to enjoy more than the rest? (I also tend to overrate, I think; I can't bring myself to rate any WHS under 3.0. I think my criteria may have less to do with Outstanding Universal Value and more to do with Immediate Personal Vibe, so apologies if I'm wrecking the curve a bit. But I guess that's for a different post.)

These are always great fun. I have 2 sites that are 1.0+ over standard deviation, both in Germany as well.

Wadden Sea (me 1.0 average 3.01, dev above std 1.14) this just isn't a site that appeals to me, and I visited a full unrepresentative part, but I stand by my score)

Bauhaus (me 5.0 average 2.94, dev above std 1.09) the opposite of above this very much appeals to me. Also everyone else is wrong ;)

Hm, I also think that I am in average more generous with ratings than other WHSers, probably since once I get to know the story of a place and the motivation for its OUV I find it difficult not to appreciate it (we had some discussion about ratings in general, I think. Maybe not on the forum). But I try to consider both the background and the "layman's experience".

So, if I look at my deviations from standard... I think maybe I should review sme of my ratings! :-D

The largest deviation is 1,57 for Dubrovnik, which I rated with a 2, while the average is a 4.25. Why so strict? Sincerely I am not sure. Probably because though I recognise it is very beautiful, I felt it is "yet another Medieval city centre". I treat a 2 as a "nice, but not something I am too moved by, maybe a little trivial". Then Westminster (2,5/0,97), Seville (2,5/0,87), Český Krumlov (2,5/0,79), probably for the same reason. Drottningholm 1,5/0,53!

On the other side, a convinced 5, deviation 0,89, to Quseir Amra: this small "desert castle" with one of the most remarkable representations of the Zodiac and the constellations is a true gem to my eyes, but I understand it can appear rather unassuming. For natural sites, I gave 4 to the newly inscribed Evaporitic karsts of Emilia (deviation 0,7), a site of which I know some components very well, and which I think might not be completely understood by everybody for a variety of reason, recognising that its OUV is rather of a technical kind.

So I could assume that I tend to focus on details, and if some of those details are of value (to me or in general), I give high ratings, while a generally beautiful, though not focused site won't excite me too much.

Interesting question. My biggest deviation is rather close geographically to Astraftis. I give a 2.5 to Kotor, which is a deviation of .74 from the average of 3.92. For me, if I believe a site is worthy of being recognized as World Heritage, but the site means nothing more to me, I rate it as 2.5. I can see why Kotor is a World Heritage Site for its extensive walls, but it didn't stand out to me compared to other coastal sites I'd seen in Croatia. This was one of the earliest sites inscribed on the list (1979), but I think Dubrovnik and Split were the better sites in the region inscribed that year.

Well, I'm clearly a stingy rater as all my deviations are where I have under marked compared to average. And my two biggest discrepancies are Kilimanjaro (Ave 4.25, Me 2.5) and Saloum Delta (Ave 3.13, Me 1). And on reflection those are the result of the visits I made. Had I summitted Kili (rather than just having a day hike on the Shira Plateau I would almost definitely have given it a higher score. And while I was well within the inscribed area of Saloum I saw nothing that related to its Cultural OUV (as I discussed in my review, I was in an area that wholly related to the Natural criteria of what was proposed to be a Mixed site; while inscription was eventually just on Cultural grounds the boundaries not amended to reflect this).

But I do believe the ratings do accurately reflect the experiences I had - and which other people would have if they replicated my visits.

Not as "stingy" as I am Liam!! Of my 842 ratings 734 are below the Community "average" and 110 of these have a deviation of .5 or greater.

I try very hard to rate the "site" rather than the "experience" unless I think the experience is typically poor because of the way the site is "shown". I note Daniel RF's 4.0 for the Canal du Midi (v my 2.0). If his boat had broken down, there had been terrible thunderstorms and he and his wife had split up during the "voyage" then, presumably, he would have marked the Canal rather lower???

As I said many years ago - we are rating these sites at a PhD level. they are supposed to be the "best of the best" in terms of their "Value"/"significance" etc. That calls into question both their rating within their "type" cohort and the rating of their "type" within all the types of heritage which are represented. (I.e how good a "mine" is it .... and how "good" a WHS can any mine be - even the "best"?) The WHC trend for granting inscription for "worse than average" sites isn't new and many such sites have found their way onto the list right from the start - e.g Madara Rider 1979 - one of 12 ratings of 0.5 I have given (though that was more likely due to lack of established standards and competition than political shenanighans)).

There is also the issue of "Granularity" - if everything is rated too highly there is no room left to differentiate (I think of "grade inflation" in the UK education system, and maybe elsewhere?) . I make 2.5 my "average" to give room for 5 "differentiations" above it and try to use ALL of the avaiable rating levels in a positively skewed normal curve.

Of course all such assessments are "personal". And we just have to look at the number of WHS which have been rated at both 5.0 AND 0.5 by different visitors here to demonstrate that. All any of us can try to do is to be
a. "Internally consistent" within our own values - difficult the more sites being rated and the look I have just given my current ratings shows me that a few are "out of internal line"!
b. Reasonably aware of the standards being applied elsewhere so that one can take stock and at least consider "re-calibrating" in some cases. Of course, like Meltwaterfalls, one might still conclude that the Bauhaus is at the pinnacle of WHS sites (I gave it 3.0!). I suspect that, like reading theatre. movie or opera reviews, we know by experience whose ratings we regard as the most "believable" in our "World view" and whose we just roll our eyes at and move on from!!
c. Open to re-evaluation if and when one learns more about a site even long after a visit. I perhaps haven't done that enough!!

My biggest outlier is Neolithic Orkney. I ended up missing Skara Brae and Maes Howe. The rest is just standing stones!
The other 4 most extreme ones I do not regret, maybe only Cuzco warrants a second opinion.


I know many (or even most) take the 2.5 as the average, but I use 3 as 'average' (in the middle of a 1-5 star system) and don't use 0.5. At least I do it consistently! This means that I should generally rate higher than the average, but it seems that I am a bit scared to hand out the 4.5 and 5 stars. There is something like "keep some space at the top end because there may be better sites to come". But after now having seen 72% of all WHS, these "better" ones probably aren't going to turn up anymore.
(it's also a side effect of the 1-10 rating I use privately -> I've never handed out a 9.5 or 10)


I do so as well, but this becomes a problem when you have only seen a small part of the WHS (and probably not the best of it, like Neolithic Orkney). These sites should be put on the revisit list then (note to self!). I think low ratings by others can also be attributed to poor visits: not always the fault of the site and its visitor experience, but also not putting enough effort (time/money/preparation) into it by the visitor.

Ah well - you have reason to be up that way again sometime. For St Kilda - definitely, and for the Flow Country - possibly ... and an Orkney revisit...

I'm afraid to say, the answer is almost surely yes! Though it still would received at least a 3.0. I acknowledge that mood can only have so much to do with it; but the rest is given freely. I'm sure as I continue to visit more sites, and as my understanding of the universal criteria increases, my rating strategies will adapt.

I'm edified by these responses, thank you. Because of my chronic tendency to overate, it didn't even occur when I posed the question that the deviation stat also applies to underrating!

Daniel RF
I'm totally on your side Daniel... ;-)

I also tend to rate over the community and my top outlier is... Canal du Midi! I even gave a 5 to Canal du Midi, which is 1.38 over the average! And I really like all the technical aspects of Canal du Midi, but for sure an important part of my 5 is that I spent a whole week on a boat enjoying all the slow driving, the locks, the nice weather and the fine food of southern France.

Btw.: my next outliers are:
- Mathildenhöhe (me 4.5 / average 2.59 / dev above 0.94): I had no expectations on this and liked it really much, the style, the flair, the art...
- Rhaetian Railway (me 5 / average 3.16 / dev above 0.83): That's where I used to work - I really know every tunnel and every bridge of this whs.
- Prague (me 3 / average 4.34 / dev above 0.79): There were so much (drunken) people, I couldn't enjoy my visit as much as I wanted to.

So I have to agree: You can try to rate the site and not the experience but I can't and won't reach this goal all the time.

Interesting -- I think we've identified a theme here! (A few of the earlier, more positive reviews of the Canal also discuss the advantages of seeing it by boat -- and seem to have been written before the starring system came into place.)