LLM-as-judge stuck on one confidence value? Switch to labels.

pedrinho_k2 · reddit · 2026-08-28

A developer found that LLM-as-judge evaluations were getting stuck on a single confidence score (0.72), rendering it meaningless. Anchoring scores in the prompt failed. The fix was counterintuitive: asking for categorical labels (coinflip/slight/clear/decisive) instead of numbers and mapping them in code. The same logic applied to checking if answers converged: ask for a boolean in code, not a comparison in text. Anecdotal data suggests the judge is most decisive on creative tasks, preferring precise, quantified language over evocative prose.

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