Agree most people are clueless about what they should or should not be skiing. I don't know how much the lack of uniformity to trail ratings can be used as an excuse though. Anytime you are at a new resort that you're not familiar with you should try to feel out the terrain a bit and work yourself up.
Of course even within a single resort I think there's a lot of variability. The diamonds on Gate House seem to be rated relative to that pod and not the resort as a whole for example. Someone new to the resort that doesn't know better could easily think "well I did Sleeper Chutes and Waterfall no problem so let me go tackle The Mall or Middle Earth since they're all rated the same" when in reality that isn't even close to accurate.
Another thing with people being clueless is that I think a lot of people don't even bother to look at trail reports at all to see what was groomed. If you want to avoid bumps or surprises, that's kind of important if you're not familiar with an area. Back in December at one point North Lynx was open on all natural snow and ungroomed. I had just come down Birch and a father with his young son getting off Gate House stopped me to ask how the trails were. When I mentioned there was no groomed option from the top of North Lynx and everything was bumped up he was a bit surprised and questioned me a bit saying "You mean there's moguls? But I thought there were blue options up there". "Yes, but they haven't made any snow yet up there and at the moment nothing is groomed. They're skiing well as long as you realize you'll be skiing bumps." I think at that point the only groomed option on Gatehouse was the Pushover route so I directed him to trails like Lower Jester off Bravo instead to get some other groomed options.
