One of the nice things about our lower numbers these days is that we can more easily do qualitative analysis in addition to quantitative, and that's in addition to the knowledge we get from snooping, immteraction, and anecdotally from other immortals. In this case, I'm able to combine information about how many edge points every character on the MUD is earning in each category with their character histories, imm comments, and other things to get a pretty good picture of how things play out in practice, how characters who rely on PK for EPs compare to characters on rely on RP or cabal wars or exploration or all of the above, etc.

While you might say Bob is an excellently RP'd character who is deserving of accolades, I can see that when he died last week he spammed his killer with OOC taunts and abusive language, or that while he tunes up the RP when someone is watching, he regularly makes horrible RP choices in private for the sake of gold or equipment.

At the end of the day, all that combined with the player feedback that I do obviously read (though I'm seriously questioning why I bother) leaves me feeling pretty confident that I'm making sufficiently well-informed decisions.