Garland,
Sorry, sure not trying to piss you off. You've mentioned my post twice now!
But, isn't it already clear that whatever criteria agreed upon by the merry band here (used or not) would have its own bias? If you are focusing on, say a Redan or a driveable par 4 as adding points, is that not skewing the results? Everyone has their bias, no matter how you set the criteria.
I know GD has tried to get ever more mathmatical and using more categories, precisely on the belief that if someone is asked to judge, say "resistance to scoring" they won't let the ambiance of a famous course get in the way on such a focused effort. And yet......
I have done that kind of criteria ranking for my own designs. Whenever I have mentioned that, its "formula" but when Ran or someone does it, its a "better attempt at ranking." But, besides that, its just a never ending battle. You keep breaking it down further and further, and just like discussions here, its hard not to keep from thinking of he exceptions that prove the rule.
I think its an interesting excersise though. My own personal rating take would be to start with a system like you propose, but do the final rating on gut after some number crunching narrows it down.
BTW, I think you have sort of crossed from galaxys to planets when you mention "Variety" as a criteria vs "Redan". Variety is a big picture issue we could all agree with, I think. A redan is a type of hole. If you include a certain type of hole as a "must have" then it really does become a Seth Raynor formula, no?
I would put variety at the top of my list, too, and ask myself if the course had play variety, difficulty variety, and aesthetic variety.
For aesthetic variety, a course like CP would rank higher than Spyglass because the hole backdrop/settings revolve around rather than being 5 beach, 13 woods.
Difficulty variety would mean a variation in how hard holes are. Length could be a start, but hazards would have to go in there, too.
Play variety, or design interest would have to be subdivided, too, into "shot concepts" and "feature concepts." I prefer courses that suggest a lot of different shots. But, I also prefer courses that have a lot of different features. When designing, if I have ten holes with fw bunkers, I take a look at making each of those different in a lot of ways. For play it might be carry, flank, pinch etc. For looks, I would vary small and big, clusters and singles, etc. It would be hard to rate courses on as little as a 100 point system! 1000 points (50 for each hole and then 100 intangible points?) might be better.
Probably every gca has tried to do the similar deal, as evidenced by TD and his attempt, even after (I think) running the Golf Magazine on a formula free basis and trusting the "gut reaction" of knowledgeable raters. If I misconstrue that, I am sure Tom will gently correct me!