Turning mod ratings into a joke

[voodoojedizin]

Turning mod ratings into a joke

 

My reason for posting this is that I have read through probably every mod listed, and unfortunately in the comments I have ran across a lot of people who who are into rating the mod before they've even used it.

 

Scoring people's work before you actually used the mod doesn't do them, the artist or other people any good. It gives a false rating when you do that.

 

The rating system is not there to rate ideas.

 

Please do not rate the mod's until after you've tried them!

 

Giving a mod a 10 because it sounds good when you read its description, is not good.

 

I'm not going to mention exactly which mod's but I have ran across several which people gave high scores to, only to find out after they actually tried them that the mod's had problems.

 

I have also noticed that several of the regular users names keep popping up are the biggest abusers of this, the very people that should know better.

[frankc]

People rate mods based on ideas, friendship, screenshot quality, all sorts of stuff that doesn't let me know what people really think of it - that's why I prefer systems that let me sort according to several criteria at once. If a mod has 10k downloads, 500 ratings and an average score of 8.8 I'm going to value that much higher than a mod with 30 downloads, 10 ratings and an average score of 10.

 

(The converse is true also, people rate mods a '1' because it offends them, they think the idea is stupid, or they have something against the author - the moderators seem to come down on that hard at least)

[Skree000]

Should implement a rating system that requires voters to have clicked Download first... additionally the voters must have downloaded atleast 10+ mods, and over 20 posts in the forums...

 

might prevent vote inflation and other such things, also would pretty much eliminate votes from people who arent even involved in the community, thus not really bearing any opinion that would hold water among the people who care about the top 50 ranking...

[buddah]

Should implement a rating system that requires voters to have clicked Download first... additionally the voters must have downloaded atleast 10+ mods, and over 20 posts in the forums...

 

might prevent vote inflation and other such things, also would pretty much eliminate votes from people who arent even involved in the community, thus not really bearing any opinion that would hold water among the people who care about the top 50 ranking...

That would be extremely asset intensive to implement, requiring multiple queries and responses from the forum server, and checks along the way. Yes it could be done, but it would have a high cost is assets.

 

On the bottom of the main page for the forums you will find this:

 

Our members have made a total of 750467 posts

We have 886470 registered members.

 

Do the math, that is less than one post (this count includes ratings) per member.

 

Therefore using your own logic, the 5% of the forum/site membership that actually post on the site/forums have screwed up the ratings by rating mods.

 

And you have never rated a mod before downloading it?

 

@frankc

 

After doing your search, and getting the results, you can reorder them by downloads [check under the organize tab]....then just by reading down the page you can check for the highest rated mods. Multiple search criteria, downloads, ratings etc would put a great strain on the site......but we could put a 4 or 5 minute wait between accepted requests to keep the site functional, flood control so to speak. This would stop the ips errors during peak traffic periods [weekends], that many seem to complain about.

 

Could we have a better system, probably yes. It is on Dark0nes list of things to do and in time it will happen.

 

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=78367&hl=

[Skree000]

aww but I like pipedreams *pout*

 

I cant recall ever rating a mod before downloading it no... Tempted to though..

 

 

all in all people need to take the rating system with a grain of salt and try things out, after evaluating from the download page whether or not it seems legit/helpful/good/stable etc.

 

Usually if the image window shows something awesome, chances are the mod will be awesome.

 

Ive downloaded mods before that have no rating simply because the documentation and images were impressive enough, which is something I guess everyone should do.

 

I suppose many people made the mistake of assuming ratings mean quality, which is why a 'top 50' list can in fact cause harm to the community and pit modders against eachother instead of helping out the spirit of creativity... imho the modding community for fallout3 is still too new for a top 50 list, the few mods listed in there will only get more hits meanwhile some absolutely awesome gem-in-the-rough type mods will go overlooked =/

 

=/

[Derkins]

Well I can say I agree with most of this. What annos me most is when people give it a bad rating cause it don;t work for them. And when people give it a bad ratting when its in .05 BETA release. There will obvsoully be errors here I mean come on think.

I have commented mods before playing them but that is because they either crashed my FO3 or they did not work. So I gave the mod a good comment and asked for help. I don't think its fair to give a mod a bad raiting because it did not work.

(Though I would love to help getting a huge problem to work."

[frankc]

I suppose many people made the mistake of assuming ratings mean quality

 

I've been around long enough to know that ratings are simply a single tool to winnow the chaff. If you really want to get the good stuff you also need to watch the recent updates and follow the forums.

 

I've been very happy with 80% of what I install, because I do a lot of research before I install a mod. I make backups of any data directories it changes so I can back it out easily, I read the forum threads to look for known problems, I sometimes even dig through the files to figure out how a mod did something, if there is an omod version I use that, I check out the mod lists some posters keep in their signatures, I check out other mods by authors I've liked. I invest at least a couple hours in every mod I'm interested in.

 

I'd simply like mod ratings to be more helpful to selecting good candidates to check out, there are way too many mods out there to go to that much trouble for every single one. The nexus sites are a great resource, and I don't want to seem ungrateful - but I'd also like them to be an even better resource.

 

I don't think its fair to give a mod a bad raiting because it did not work.

I think reducing the rating by a point or two is fair. To me the rating includes "does it do what it claims, how easy is it to get installed, how easy is it to configure in game, how polished is it, how clear is the documentation". If a mod needs fose or a specific patch or another mod and a specific load order and is not very clear about that in the instructions then even if it is an otherwise good mod I'd knock it down a point for that.

[Derkins]

Ok perhaps I worded that wrong thats what my fault.

I meant if it causes your game to crash or gives you some stupid error it just might be your install of FO3 that is causing the problem for the mod. I have had a few of thoes so I simply delete them and move on. Or ask for help if I like the mod and want it to work.

 

As an example thew SSC mod. It works half of the time for me I downloaded it so I could a compainon someone had made and they said "you need SSc to make this work" So I installed the SSC mod but the campionon mod does not work but the actuall SSc mod works.

[LHammonds]

...a lot of people who who are into rating the mod before they've even used it....

If you see one of these comments which claim to have not downloaded the mod yet or rated a mod before the file was uploaded, REPORT IT. We do not allow this and those votes will be removed.

 

The staff alone cannot monitor every vote for every mod on every site and rely on the community to report issues as they see them.

 

LHammonds (File Admin)

[SickleYield]

There will always be people like that. My first rating on my recent upload was a 5 based solely on a person not liking my screenshots (others brought the rating up afterwards). Those not willing to deal do have the option to disable comments when uploading the mod, if not afterwards.

 

I think most of us that are regular members of the community are aware of the system's benefits and shortcomings and the tendency of random jerkwads to yank ratings downward capriciously. I've never found the moderators lacking in hammering the real trolls once posts are reported.