"Bad" or "Poor" is more severe?

Solution 1:

I think that the list clearly is meant to be in order of quality, and that one is meant to infer that poor is worse than bad. Given the common usage for these two words, I don't see that they have any clear ordering between them, so the inclusion of both of them in an ordered list of this type seems a bad (or poor) choice as it can lead to ambiguous interpretation.

If anything, one might think that poor was less severe. Poor, in addition to being used to describe quality, also describes persons who are in a state of poverty. Poor people can also be good and worthy of praise and sympathy, whereas bad people are always just bad.