Micon is entitled to express his opinion and I'll answer his question fairly.  This repeats a lot of material that has gone before.

The thread describes how the ratings are assigned, and the metrics used.  Information is provided by different people and I collate the information.  It is also very clear that people are expected to do their own due diligence on investments.  The ratings are not a personal endorsement of different schemes, and there are some listed that I personally would not invest in.

Further, the ratings are linked to the issuer rather than the issue.  Some of the Projects provided by Ziggy and Smart are extremely high risk, and it pays to read their guarantees and rates carefully.  The objective is to determine if the issuer has a track-record and ability to repay on the obligations they incur.  This is measured by some simple ratios and some other metrics.

1: Commencement - normally you don't get to stay in business a long time if you're stealing people's money.  Currently the longest established scheme is from Ziggy and Smart.  Pirate actually started sometime in 2011 as well, but he's not rated.  Personally, I kicked of lending and deposits back in January.

2: Liabilities divided by monthly income - Having income in bitcoinland is necessary to meet all of those interest payments.  This might be from mining (like EIEIO and Imsaguy), or something less obvious.  Some times it's diversified investments, loans, trading.  Despite what some people claim, arbitrage opportunities are still around for manual traders if they know how (the one I would do currently is about 10%).

3: Business transparency - not just what they're doing with your coins, but how open are they.  For example, the Moveto.Fund is pretty transparent, but others are not.  Some deposit takers are not prepared to even disclose their financial metrics (and so they don't get on the list).  Doesn't mean they are a poor risk, just a different level of risk.  As an example, I have 1000 coins with HashKing that I don't worry about, even though he's not in the OP.

4: Liabilities divided by assets - simple metric for indebtedness overall.

5: Current liabilities divided by current assets - an important liquidity measure.  Some deposits are on call, others are fixed term.  If you request a withdrawal, this helps indicate how likely you are to get your funds back quickly or not.  This is also linked to size (value/numbers) that follow.

6: Size of business - funds under management.  Some people will successfully accumulate large balance sheets but sustaining them given payouts helps weed out the more risky ones.  Also, managing a large number of coins takes a level of skill.  For smaller/start-ups, it simply highlights that they don't have the same level of exposure or depth.  There is a reason why some chose a big bank over a small one.

7: Size of business - number of customers.  Similar to #6, managing 10 customers versus 100 is quite different.  Indications are payb.tc had four or five hundred and he had a nice web site.  I do mine manually for about 200-ish accounts.  The numbers reflect the confidence and service levels.  Newer operators need to build that confidence and service, such as RustyRyan or ciuciu.  As they establish their track-record, people will be able to look at and ask about the service.

8: Time in business - This is actually quite an aggressive metric because being new means you're going to score badly.  Without the track record, you're a higher risk.  If you've been around for a year, not so much.

9: Disaster recovery/deadman switch - An adjustment to recognise that many deposit takers are individuals.  Provides an indication that if they die, someone can unwind the business.

10: ID - do you know who you are dealing with?  Doesn't stop anyone asking for that information directly, and if they are investing a decent amount of coin, they should.

11: Account Limits - Having an open ended appetite for deposits should be a concern.  Deposit takers need to be aware of their ability to provide returns and manage their position.  A relatively simple thing to do, but not everyone does.

Does all of the above provide certainty?  No, of course it doesn't.
Is the casual 10BTC depositor going to request and assess financial information from a dozen different sources and actually receive it?  Not likely.
Is having a starting point useful to the community when the alternative is to have nothing?  In my opinion, yes.

So, Micon can choose to ignore the collection of data listed in the OP and decide separately if and who the scams are, and who is on the more genuine end of the scale.  I will not be judging who is and isn't a scam in this thread because that would be unhelpful to those that wish to use it as a starting point for their own research.