Changes to soliciting ratings/file of the month votes

[Lehanna]

If your mod is worthy of a Top 50 spot, it will be there. Engineering schemes to get it there is a little pathetic.

 

As for the changes to FoTM? I say good riddance to mod prostitution.

 

 

... *sniff* Poor martyred WarThug

[HadToRegister]

I'm all for an easy to understand "Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down" system and here's why.

 

It's like Digital vs Analog

 

With Digital, it's like a Light Switch, there's only two states "ON or OFF" "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down"

 

No confusion there, you either like the mod or you don't

 

With Analog, it's like using a Dimmer Switch, there's

still an ON and OFF state, but then there's all the GRAY Areas in between the On and Off states. IE voting 1-10

 

So I'm all for going Digital with the voting.

 

You either like the mod or you don't THumbs Up or THumbs Down.

 

It's time to remove all they gray areas in between

[ANG3Looo]

As some people have already stated the rating system has got some what silly where as anything lower than 10 risk's being ridiculed.

 

Simplest solution get rid of it replace it with a simple star system either 1-3 or 1-5 then the stars can be tallied up at the end of the week/month and the awards are handed out to which ever ones have scored the most for that time.

 

Once a mod has being awarded something then it shouldn't be entered into the follow weeks/months entry's or rather you could have something that the Aurthur's can activate at there end, where they are asked if they want there mods to be entered into the mod of the week/month system, the reason why i say that is because the mod might be in its infancy so there's no point entering it into say mod of the week/month or what not if its not finished.

 

The comments section should really be renamed feedback where as its there for people to give the Aurthur's the feedback they need to improve the mod.

 

 

The other side of the site id like to see improved is the both the search function and the mod tracking pages.

 

By this I mean when I go into the mod tracking section of the site I'm greeted with thumbnails that take up to much screen real estate, when really the core information that I need to know about is last update time and preferably weather the update was an actual file change and not a an description or image update.

 

As for the search function of the site the search feature works nicely but again my only gripe with it is the way that it relays the information back to me, they is to much emphasis on thumbnails in big boxes that take up a lot of screen real estate when a lot of that space could be grabbed back to list even more relative information to me.

 

 

As some one previous before my post has already stated that they are some key mods/tools that have being developed for the f3 that are absolute godsends and must haves and make our life a lot easier, I think them tools could be better presented to newcomers of the site rather than them finding out they actually exist long after they signed up.

 

 

The last thing id like to see improved is the descriptions & downloads sections on the mods pages they are a great many out there that are so untidy that it becomes impossible to determine what exactly I need to download and how to go about setting it up.

 

This is further confounded by the fact that some modders upload to many variations of the same mod under different place holder's this then leads to greater confusion, and to top it of the same modder can then open another subsection to different class of mod and thus repeat the same again. :s

 

The best way to tackle this would be to confine a modder's to one account/placeholder so upon entering their download page we are presented with a list pertaining to all their mods, the descriptions page can easily divulge all the information to all their mods, after all that is why read me files should be written for each and every mod and included in the archive download file.

 

One last thing the user log on information should be moved to the top of the page rather than the bottom right where it resides atm.

 

 

Over all the sight is very good but as it has grown it has become very untidy and thats understandable after all hindsight easier said than done.

 

Anyways best of luck with ya final year and thanks to all staff for keeping things rolling.

Edited May 24, 2009 by ANG3Looo

[caitivoltaire]

Hi there, I've been lurking around TESNexus for a while now, only recently signed up though, since that was required to download the HGEC bodies. I felt compelled to throw in my couple of cents...

 

Any comment or rating system that the authors of a mod do not have direct control over is going to be contentious - both to the authors, and to people that are dedicated to a mod. And I've seen some poor mods out there that even have a following.

 

There is no real way to solve the "popularity contest" phenomenon in ratings systems online. A mod that gets more exposure is going to get more votes, and TESNexus has always seemed to lend itself to a "vote high or don't vote" mentality.

 

People take pride in their work, regardless of its merits. Someone who took 100 hours to make a steaming pile of something unmentionable is going to much more see "I took so much time making this" than "This isn't any good."

 

I think the onus is on the rating system to be more than an on off switch. Would you recommend something to a friend? Would you use it yourself, because you're aware of how to workaround the bugs? Perhaps it has some feature that you don't like, but you have enough knowhow to disable it? Well, good for you, but it's still not going to be something everyone else can do.

 

I think "reviews" in favour of "ratings" would show much more helpful information - and also show where these ratings are just farming. If you truly enjoy something, it should be pretty easy to say how you enjoyed it.

 

For example, I have the vampirism/embrace mod thingy for Morrowind (someone will have to remind me it's name o-o) and I love the added possibilities for vampires, because it makes the game seem much more expansive, and mitigates the fact I can only play 90% of the normal game during half of the game "day".

 

By the by, I have always been under the impression that it isn't a good rating you're giving someone if you're giving them a high rating because they asked for it, you're coddling their ego, and while telling a friend they're doing well is helpful for the friend, it's unhelpful to the community at large when they're looking to evaluate a mod.

 

Let us not forget - that is the point of a ratings system - not to game ratings or let someone get some high status in a list or some social merit - it is to let people know whether the mod is something of good quality that they may enjoy.

Edited May 24, 2009 by caitivoltaire

[Astorius]

This is a good change.

[lordbelfast]

I think the rating system is fine. The 1-10 scale give a good idea of the quality, despite the fact that an "ok" mod usually receive a 10. But it's like those who give a 1 because it's not lore friendly... No matter which rating system they'll find, retards will destroy/abuse it. People need to be more critic and use their brain before rating. If you give a 10 say why, if you give a 1 say why. But in the end, I guess it's a matter of common sense.

[dezdimona]

If you give a 10 say why, if you give a 1 say why. But in the end, I guess it's a matter of common sense.

An excellent answer, some are just lacking in that area unfortuneately

 

 

 

this system works fine. I've talked to others who have said they can find no rules or regulations on how the system is suppossed to work. Perhaps making the rules easier to find would help. Also from experience many give a mod less than a good rateing because " it didn't have this or that, you should have done this or that" , instead of rateing the mod on the rule of "did it accomplish what the author(s) intended it to.

 

Any type of system will get some abuse because of people that a just babaes or jerks,those that have an axe to grind etc.

The current system is more than fair and I think changieing it to a thumbs up or down won't make a real difference in people abuseing the rateing system

[caitivoltaire]

Something that's been touched on a couple of times is "abusing" the system, that is, gaming the system to get like into the high mods and whatnot.

 

Asking for votes to get to the high end - or worse - saying "vote 10 or don't vote" - is gaming the system. That's not to say it isn't done with the best of intentions sometimes - I'd even venture to say most of the time - someone who has a great mod they want to get more exposure.

 

What it comes down to though, is the ends don't justify the means, at least they don't for me. The way I look at it, if it is a good mod, you will attract people to it so long as you have it on a site where the majority of people will see it, and TES Nexus is one of the best if not the best sites to do so. Yet some people aren't just happy with that kind of exposure, they want more. They get greedy, and it's rephrehensible to me.

 

I'm glad that some steps are being taken to balance the need to curtail that kind of thinking, with the privelage of the community to vote how they wish on a mod - and I emphasize that. I'm _not_ going to get shouted down because I gave an honest 7 or 8 rating because it is "not good enough". If I'm going to vote for something, I'm going to vote precisely how well it functions and how much I personally like it. Yes, it's personal opinion. Every vote or review, by nature, is. The more responsible reviewers or raters will just try to be as objective as possible despite personal biases.

 

I have to reiterate again that I think a more review-based system - or at least a system whereby people are more encouraged to leave comments on why they voted as they did - would be healthy for the community. It both gives the mod author hopefully constructive critcism along with telling them where they went right, and it also gives a better idea to someone looking at a mod what the strengths and weaknesses of the mod are.

 

To address another concern:

 

Also from experience many give a mod less than a good rateing because " it didn't have this or that, you should have done this or that" , instead of rateing the mod on the rule of "did it accomplish what the author(s) intended it to.

 

If a mod doesn't do what I want it to, and it's lead me to believe it does, yes I would vote it down. Perhaps I think they did something in a way they shouldn't have, perhaps they did something entirely out of left field and it impressed me - either way - I as someone rating the mod and as someone who is by their vote effectively endorsing it if I give it a good rating - have the privelage of making that rating based upon whatsoever I choose to base it upon.

 

One particularly contentious issue with that is the "lore unfriendly" mods - which I always meet with a sort of eagerness and dread in equal measure, to be honest. There are some mods that implement some things not quite "lore" that do so quite well. The demon race mod for Oblivion does that quite well, in my opinion - and since they changed/updated it, it even flirts with lore in an interesting way. But a mod that is entirely out of left field is going to _feel_ that way in the game. It is going to feel that the things in it don't belong, and this will break immersion for a lot of people, particularly those who enjoy roleplaying in Morrowind or Oblivion (or even Daggerfall if that's your cup of tea). As such, I couldn't feel justified giving it the top rating, because even if I enjoyed it, I know that many people out there would not.

 

Again, just my two cents though - though I did try to explain why I feel like I did, instead of just saying "this is great" or "omglolol!!10121 this suxxors!1elventyone"

[GodOfAtheism]

I think the rating system is fine. The 1-10 scale give a good idea of the quality, despite the fact that an "ok" mod usually receive a 10.

If a "ok" mod receives a 10, then it's not a good system. Imagine if nearly every movie you heard about got 5 stars from pretty much every critic, and 4 stars from the rest. Would you be able to trust critics at all? Heck, lets put that analogy into a comparison.

 

On FO3Nexus, almost 3000 mods (out of roughly 5300) have ranks from 9 to 10. On IMDB, the Top 250 (I'm not sure how many movies are listed on IMDB, but it's a safe bet that there's probably more than 5000) go from 8 to 9.1.

 

Now, I'll admit, the listing I was using for the Nexus isn't necessarily the best comparison, considering it's listing mods with a single 10 vote in sorting by rating, so lets up the ante a bit. The Top 50 mods on this site have ratings from 9.92 to 9.81. 1/10th of a point difference. Again, the top 250 movies on IMDB go from 9.1 to 8.0. A difference of a full point more.

Edited May 25, 2009 by GodOfAtheism

[kalia]

First off: I've been a critic of the moderation here in the past. I won't respond to the now-banned WarThug 'cause, clearly, just bait, but I'll say this: I don't have a problem with it now. Maybe it was my mood prior or maybe there were kinks in the stricter system to work out, but it seems to be running pretty smoothly to me now and I quite frankly scratched my head when I started reading that first post (before I figured out it was just bait). And more & more mod authors are using mirrors when they upload as well (multiple good reasons for that, including site down time & all sorts of really bad possibilities we don't want to think about, like for instance aliens stealing the servers with some secret mod-sensing beaming technology). I've *no* problem with how Nexus is being run.

 

However: I will always have a problem with a numerical rating system on a large site like this. For an individual reviewer, it's fine. I can go back thru that reviewer's history, see how she's rated different things, find how the tastes mesh. And, like caitivoltaire speaks of doing, there's usually an in-depth statement of *why*. But you reasonable mod-raters who like a clear explanation & are willing to put in the time & energy to do so are unfortunately the minority. There's been calls for nice explanations of *why* the mod's so good as to get a 10 for years now, and it still isn't happening. And it seems a lot of the low ratings *are* because the mod does exactly what it says it will do, and the rater simply doesn't want that type of mod to exist. (And I've seen someone state flat out at another site that he would see [rateable item] that he thought should be an 8, see that its average rating was 10, and so rate it a 3. He apparently didn't understand what the 'average' was supposed to mean, and that regardless of what he thought the reasoning behind the 10s was he didn't get to just arbitrarily rule them out & drag the rating down to *his* ideal.)

 

So hurrah for *whatever* changes Dark0ne's making - he certainly cleaned up the ImageShare section nicely, so I'm sure the FileShare's gonna do just fine as well.