I am Marcell Mrsan, the owner, and what is more important: the maker of Koronya. I have mixed feelings about this shoe-pyramid. Isn't this pyramid thing just about reputation?

I am not sure of the value of a pyramid.

It is subjective. It depends on your foot and brands you have tried.

I am happy to read about brands, but see little value in fretting over what rank they are in. I would rather read, say, Leather Man on Churchs and Edward Green. He has large numbers of them. He will tell you what he thinks. He will not BS or posture.

Edward Green seem to be getting their marketing right. They can jack up prices and list individual sale shoes by price and colour. They still end up beating off customers with a stick.

Gentlemen,

I am going to wade in, and hopefully you will not feel as if I have crashed in, to your party.  I love the idea of devising a system of informing purchasers of the merits of certain shoes, if not ranking them.  I think it would be a good idea to separate them into categories: bespoke / MTO / full benchmade / machine made.  Then I believe you could get to an apples to apples discusion (as the Shooman suggested in his early post) of materials and construction.   

I understand this still leaves a great degree of subjectivetivity. However, if the goal is to enlighten the reader, a discussion on materials would focus first on the genus of the material, i.e. region of the world and, if known, tannery.  Region is probably the single most important charateristic for understanding how supple the material will be as it will likely inform you as to the animals diet, amount of sunshine and treatment. Then one could truly focus on the other aspects of material, such as a discussion of PVC welting vs. leather or steel shanks fiberglass, people can make up their own minds as to whether these things truly affect quality.   I think it is more useful to identify differences in shoe construction rather than attempting to rank them.  If this thread were created 30 or 40 years ago, I am sure someone would have argued that combination lifts (much less complete rubber lifts) were an abomination, full leather lifts being the only way to go--elbow and coxis be damned.  The final aspect would be to identify different methods of construction which fall into the typical categories: welted, blake stiched, 360 or 270, etc.  These would also include subtle differences such as stiches per inch.   Perhaps a template for identifying these things would be useful.

Brand:
Style:
Last # or Name:
Upper Material: Full Grain, Shell Cordovan, Rare Skin:
Genus of Material:
Tannery:
Welt:
Sole material and maker:
Channeling/ Exposed?
Filler material
Heel (lift) stacked or not
Heel materials
Footbed
Lining (Y/N)

I am sure I am leaving out a tremendous number of things one might want in a template.  That said, I do believe it is the only way to objectively judge those apects of shoemaking which are not personal preference. I think if you could get to an objective understanding of each of the components, one might eventually derive a ranking system of, maybe, 1 -5 for each.  This might not be perfect, but it would allow a rational discussion of shoe qualilty and would certainly be more objective than the traditional shouting matches which generally occur.