The number in the circle on a project page is the average of every criterion score that project has been given, on a scale of 1 to 10. It is not a percentage, it is not calculated from your views or likes, and nothing you add to the project moves it. Only ratings move it.
The card appears only once a project has at least one rating. A project nobody has rated shows no score card at all, which is why new work carries no number rather than a zero.
Ratings are given per criterion, not per person
A member who rates your project does not leave one mark. They pick criteria from a fixed list uni maintains, with names like Design Quality or Innovation and Creativity, and score them one at a time. Every criterion runs from 1 to 10. One member might score a single criterion, or every one of them.
That is what the line under the circle is counting. "Based on 12 ratings across 4 categories" means twelve individual criterion scores have been given, not that twelve people have rated the project. Three members scoring four criteria each also reads as twelve.
The small circles are your best four criteria, not all of them
Below the main number sit up to four smaller circles carrying criterion names. Those are the four criteria with your highest averages, strongest first. If your project has been scored on more than four, the weaker ones appear nowhere on the page.
So read them as a highlight, not as a breakdown. The main number will often sit below all four, because it averages everything, including the criteria that are not on display.
Raising it means being rated, not being edited
Three things follow from it being a plain average:
- Only new ratings change it. Adding sheets, tags, disciplines or a location feeds a separate internal score that helps order projects around uni, and that score is never shown on the project page.
- Early scores weigh the same as late ones. There is no decay, so one low score on a lightly rated project holds the number down until enough others arrive to outweigh it.
- It can move with nothing new happening. A rater can change or withdraw a score at any time while the project is up.
You cannot rate your own project, and neither can anyone credited on the team, so the number is never something you can push directly. Which plans open the rating panel is covered in Who can rate projects.
This is not your jury score
Ratings are open scoring by members. If your project was entered into a competition, the jury scores it in a separate system and those scores never appear here. See Seeing your jury scores.