From Rubrics to Reliable Scores: Evidence-Grounded Text Evaluation with LLM Judges
Updated 4 h ago · first seen 11 Sept 2026
paper_01M294GPQAAW9RKSZ8X9P74ZTV
- Published
- 11 Sept 2026
- T1 · 4 h ago
- arXiv
- 2601.08654
- T1 · 4 h ago
- Category
- cs.CL
- T1 · 4 h ago
Abstract
-cross Abstract: Rubric-based text evaluation increasingly relies on large language models (LLMs) as scalable judges, yet frozen black-box models can interpret the same criteria inconsistently, produce score attributions that are difficult to audit, and map judgments poorly onto human scoring scales. We define this challenge as criteria transfer: translating human rubric intent into a stable, auditable inference-time scoring protocol. We introduce Rulers, which locks a task-level rubric specification, executes it through structured, evidence-grounded judgments, and calibrates the resulting signals to human score boundaries. Across four rubric-governed benchmarks and multiple frozen backbone models, Rulers achieves stronger agreement with human scores in most evaluated settings, while better matching empirical score distributions and remaining more stable under semantically equivalent rubric perturbations. Calibration controls and component ablations show that these gains cannot be attributed to post-hoc alignment alone, but depend on the combination of fixed criteria, traceable evidence, and calibrated score interpretation. These findings suggest that reliable LLM judging requires faithfully operationalizing human evaluation standards rather than relying on prompt-level scoring alone. Our code is available at https://github.com/LabRAI/Rulers.git.
Authors 6
Yihan Hong, Huaiyuan Yao, Bolin Shen, Wanpeng Xu, Hua Wei, Yushun Dong
Specification
- Official page
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
- Arxiv announce type
- replace
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
- arXiv id
- 2601.08654
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
- Categories
- cs.CL, cs.AI, cs.LG
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
- Primary category
- cs.CL
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
- Published
- 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 4 h agohigh
Each value shows its source, tier and observation time. Conflicting claims are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. How AI Atlas records facts →
Provenance
Attributed facts
9
Source tiers
T19
Freshest observation
4 h ago
Conflicts
None
No models linked to this paper yet.
- Authors
- Yihan Hong, Huaiyuan Yao, Bolin Shen
As of
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Claim history · Abstract
Abstractabstract1
| Value | Valid from → to | Status | Source | Confidence | Extractor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -cross Abstract: Rubric-based text evaluation increasingly relies on large language models (LLMs) as scalable judges, yet frozen black-box models can interpret the same criteria inconsistently, produce score attributions that are difficult to audit, and map judgments poorly onto human scoring scales. We define this challenge as criteria transfer: translating human rubric intent into a stable, auditable inference-time scoring protocol. We introduce Rulers, which locks a task-level rubric specification, executes it through structured, evidence-grounded judgments, and calibrates the resulting signals to human score boundaries. Across four rubric-governed benchmarks and multiple frozen backbone models, Rulers achieves stronger agreement with human scores in most evaluated settings, while better matching empirical score distributions and remaining more stable under semantically equivalent rubric perturbations. Calibration controls and component ablations show that these gains cannot be attributed to post-hoc alignment alone, but depend on the combination of fixed criteria, traceable evidence, and calibrated score interpretation. These findings suggest that reliable LLM judging requires faithfully operationalizing human evaluation standards rather than relying on prompt-level scoring alone. Our code is available at https://github.com/LabRAI/Rulers.git. | → current | current | arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1 | high | deterministic |
Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →
New paper: From Rubrics to Reliable Scores: Evidence-Grounded Text Evaluation with LLM Judges
arxiv
| Source | Document | Type | Tier | Last observed | Snapshots |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| arXiv (Atom API + RSS) | rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.AI | feed | T1· Official | 2 h ago | 1 |
Tier 1 = official/primary, 2 = quality secondary, 3 = community, 4 = unverified. Every snapshot is archived; see all sources and the methodology.