Persona quality scale
Here's a new personas blog by Angela Quail with an excellent idea: When we deliver personas, we should label them with just how much research rigor went into their creation. Many people realize that personas are at least partially "made up." The question that often arises is this: How much of the persona is invented vs. grounded in research? What parts of the persona can I trust for decision making, and what parts are just for flavor?
I like the idea of a scale or some kind of label to let people know what level of research went into each persona. Of course, I see a core distinction between qualitative personas and quantitative personas. Perhaps one metric behind any persona should be the number of actual users that shaped this persona (in interviews, field studies, surveys, etc.).