Jim Nugent:
Brad cam correct or confirm my explanation, but I am going to take a stab are responding to your last post regarding the guidelines in the GW rater handbook.
All raters necessarily evaluate courses against some standard. Also, since raters are human, some are naturally inclined to assign liberal ratings while others are more conservative. The guidelines were developed in order to allow raters to have a common standard. All raters are well traveled and have played many of the great courses. A very few have played a high percentage of the great courses. The presumption is that in order to rate a top 100 course, the rater should have played several. Otherwise, a novice might overrate a course simply because it is the best he has ever played.
The guideline is just an aid to help raters have a similar, if not common, standard. A 10 should be assigned to a course only if you think it is deserves to be among the 5 best courses in the category. Naturally, that means that you should not give that rating to more than 5 courses. You are not necessarily comparing it to the other 4 best courses. In fact, it may be the only top 5 course you have ever played. The guidelines are just that, guidelines. They are not hard and fast. It just means that you should be very careful about assigning 8's, 9's, and 10's, because there are not many courses that deserve them. The rater is not being asked to RANK courses. Personally, I resist the temptation to even try to rank courses. I know that I consider my 9's to be better than my 8's, etc., but that is as far as I go.