The Rio scale first introduced in 2010 by Almár & Tarter to quantify the significance of a potential ET detection. It was named so (Rio) since it was first presented at a conference in Rio de Janeiro. The scale “…was designed for communicating with the public as to ‘how excited’ they should be regarding a signal.” With the initial version (v1.0) of the scale being bound between 0 and 15, v1.1 and the version proposed by Duncan Forgan v2.0 scale between 0 and 10.
With Rio v2.0, the authors of this article seek to provide a quick and objective way to quantify a potential ‘detection’. This calculation examines the ET significance of the signal and if there is a possibility to establish 2 – way communication. Further, this value is convolved with the authenticity of the signal – basically whether the signal can have a potential anthropocentric or instrumental source, if it can be studied / observed again, and potential sources of bias in the detection.
They also provide a web based interface to calculate the score for a discovery by answering a handful of questions (here). I believe such a framework is useful to weed out news of detections which are better to not be proclaimed (example: the Face on Mars). This also helps since any news regarding this field can get sensationalized really easily and hence needs to be ‘curated’ better.