Changes to soliciting ratings/file of the month votes

[Dark0ne]

Basically what I said in the OP then...

 

This will be offset in the near future by a new feature that will allow users to better see what files they have and haven't rated and whether they have voted for a file of the month (with some gentle encouragement if they haven't).

 

;)

[Pushkatu]

I've only been asked once, but not by the mod author. I always forget to give that special rating to a mod I like and I was quite happy when a friend told me to give my rating to that mod and I think it deserved it.

 

I agree that when people start abusing this and try to get to many "unfair" rates they should be stopped somehow so this might be a good idea after all.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

p

[bigkid7834]

Heres my whole take on this deal. I understand where this is comming from though. I get how you would get more ratings and such if you ask for it. Considering I ask for ratings myself and will be taking that line out of all my posts after this. A couple things that I have definantly noticed as being a mod holder on this site.

 

If you ask for ratings / comments / fotm / w.e you are more likely to get it. Plain enough.

 

Plain and simply put if you don't really hear anything back about it you sort-of think you failed or didn't do a good job. Even if all the comments say your bugged as hell it still means people are taking enough interest in it to give you feedback.

 

Also before I started posting that line saying "Please rate and comment." I was lucky to get a new rating or comment in 1 or 2 weeks. After that I added that line in I got one every couple days or so.

 

Another thing I noticed is that when onij said "The most downloaded file on this entire site is FOOK. It has over 185,000 downloads but only 500 votes. So For every 350 people who download the file, only 1 votes!"

 

To put a little insight on this as I put up a mod on here I always do it right off the bat in the morning so it gets the most "show time" on the updated today list. Well whenever you first post a mod you will get anywhere between 5-15 comments right off the bat. After that, the occurance of a comment compared to the number of views goes down.

 

This is just because (whether true or not) back in there head when they see 500 comments on a mod some people may think "What more is there to say?" or feel that another comment is just kind of useless. Well even in reverse, If you see 0 comments you think, "Sweet! I can put my mark on here. 1st comment ftw!" or even "Hey he will be able to help me more considering I'm the only comment he will see."

 

It's just all perspective really.

 

 

 

My personal thoughts about the rating system is simple. Let it be. Don't change a thing. Rating is all opinion either way and you can't say ones opinion is wrong and another is right. 1-10 is simple. It's already being moderated if somebody gives you a 1 and just trashes you calling you a nub either way. Let the system stay how it is. -SP

[Callighan]

I agree with bigkid7834.

Ratings and comments is an incentive for modders. I myself like making mods and I'm quite happy with the fact that one of my mods get 40+ comments or ratings. It's the community reaction to my mod that makes me enjoy modding. So I think it's only natural to ask for ratings and votes for file of the month.

 

If there would be an overhaul, I suggest that the compulsory comment for ratings should be kept.

[caitivoltaire]

Ismelda, please do not take the changes personally. I am sure that were it the case that the site administration thought you were out of line in any way, they would have told you do.

 

Basically what they're saying is "before there wasn't any rules for this kind of thing, and now after a lot of talking about it, we've decided we want to make rules and this is what they are...".

 

At least, that's how I see it. Maybe I'm wrong.

[VerbalEarthworm]

to anyone feeling that they are to blame EVEN THOUGH

 

Dark0ne has blamed nobody whatsoever in his posts;

 

"if the cap fits, wear it"

 

 

i see no reason to mollycoddle or assuage here, please stop fishing for it.

 

it's embarrassing for all involved.

[Tigerlilly]

Vote Soliciting:

 

I personally don't see a problem with advertising one's creations, as long it's equally available to all the modders. After all, despite mods being free, it's a big competition out there and why shouldn't people be allowed to promote their works? The only problem I see with it however is that some authors are very shy and feel uncomfortable with asking others to vote for their files. I personally know someone like that.

Some see it as cheating, but frankly, that's a fallacy imo. For eg: when Sentient Weapon II was released at the end of January, no one promoted it or asked for votes for the FOM and it ended up with 16 votes for the month of February! It was a brand new mod and the few people who thought to vote did so. But really, I feel it's such a great mod; it deserved a lot more than it got. I'm sure it would have received more votes too, had it been promoted as some others were, or at least been around long enough for people to get to know about it.

Once a new mod is gone from the 'new files' list and this can happen within a couple of days, it gets buried away among 1000's of others and unless you advertise it, people don't really know it exists.

I think a 'New Mods Category' should be created, where new mods should be allowed to reside for a calendar month, so that they get a REAL opportunity of exposure. Otherwise, unless you know the exact title of the mod, the author's name and the category it's in, one can spend hours searching for that one mod you want.

 

 

The Rating system:

 

I'm sure it's not just me who feels this, but even before I got involved in modding, I've seen that there's a bunch of people going around deliberately rating good mods down, just so they can take the credit for doing so and go brag to their friends about it. I've found there are individuals who think no mod deserves to have perfect ratings and will deliberately rate it down just for that reason. I know this for certain, as I've had people state this very thing to me in PM's.

Now I’m not saying that all mods should have perfect scores that would be unrealistic, even ridiculous. However, if a mod is a good one, what’s wrong with it having perfect scores? At least until a genuine problem is found with it and not just some arbitrary reason used to bring it down for the sake of it. After all, it should be ‘let the best mod win’ right?

What I find most incredible, is that some person can come along and vote down a great mod that has say 50+ perfect scores and do so without any conscience, or consideration for the author, or really a good reason for doing so, or even without feeling the need to justify such a rating. I could never bring myself to do something like that, even if I found a problem with the mod. I would either first talk to the author and see if the problem can be fixed, or abstain from rating it all together and disable the mod, if I wasn't happy with it, rather than be the one to give it first non-perfect score. After all, no one held a gun to my head to downloaded it, right? But that is not why these people do it. They look for any petty reason to bring a good mod down, so they can derive some kind of kudos, or perverse pleasure from doing so. The thing is, I noticed most of these people who rate mods down like this, have never contributed a thing to this community. Most of them are 'Persona non Grata' and I guess being the one to bring down a perfectly rated mod, is the greatest achievement they can aspire to.

As far as the idea, there's no such thing as perfect mod, come on! This is a game and what game is perfect? I know there are some badly made mods out there, but lots of them are as perfect as the game's engine and tools of Oblivion allows them to be. I actually feel sorry for lot of modders. It's a thankless job really. When one offers a 'free gift' to the community, it saddens me that a few individuals seek pleasure by deliberately bringing their works down for some childish ulterior motive.

I would like to see a change in the rating system, perhaps something like the image share, where no one can defile other people’s work. If you don’t like it, don’t rate it and let the highest scored mod win. However, I do think it would be unfair if such a rating system was introduced and new mods were made to compete with those already in the top 100 list. They are so way ahead already, a new mod would never stand a chance of competing with them, let along passing them.

Perhaps a separate top list for those mods, which have been released up to a certain date and a new top list for mods released thereafter, would be an answer?

A top 100 list for each category would be even better, as this in my opinion, would offer more scope and variety for a lively competition, as well as go a long way in creating a much fairer rating system according to their categories.

If the existing rating system is to stay, then I would like to see a clearer set of defined rules for rating mods, with definitions of what is and what isn’t a justifiable rating.

A list of terms and conditions that an individual has to agree to (just like up-loaders do) and have them available on hand prior to rating a mod, would be a good idea. Having clearer and more defined rules available at the time of rating, would make at least some of these people think how and why they’re rating, before committing themselves to one rating or another.

Lastly, I have been a Nexus member for a while now and feel in that time, I have made, or tried to make a positive contribution to the community. My comment here is not made to criticise Nexus, or it’s staff in any way, or those decent members of this community. This is a great site and I resent having a few bad apples spoiling it for the rest of us. I only wish to point out that I have noticed there are individuals out there who do not have the best intentions and have found ways to cleverly manipulate the existing rating system within the bounds of what is acceptable. And in pointing this out, I hope I have offered some constructive ideas and solutions to these problems.

 

Tigerlilly

[SATrilobite]

I like the idea of replacing the numeric ratings with a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating. It'd be as useful as the current system, not to mention simpler.

 

Maybe to make it friendlier and more generally supportive of modders (I think that's part of the rationale for the unusually high ratings currently seen?), it could be split up into several "yes/no" sections, like "Does this mod work properly (no crashes, etc.)?", "Does this mod do what its designer intended it to?", "Is this mod lore-friendly?", "Do you like this mod?", or whatever. Then people can only pay attention to the overall ratings of whichever of those questions they actually care about, and ignore the ratings for the questions they don't care about. I suppose that all the separate yes/no responses for each mod could be averaged out into some numerical value and used to determine the top 50.

 

Something to consider, anyway. It'd certainly make it easier to weed out trolls (since I doubt any mods here would legitimately deserve a "NO" in every category from technical proficiency to aesthetic appeal), and having more detailed, specific ratings available couldn't hurt.

Edited May 26, 2009 by SATrilobite

[bigkid7834]

I also agree with alot of what tigerlilly said. I didn't really want to make another post as I don't want to fill this up with only my ideas but I got one for how the top could work to help benefit new mods as well.

 

Why not keep the rating system exactly how it is but only count its last 20 ratings or whatever. That way a mod still needs an "average" of judging but can still compete with top mods on the site. -SP

[Takun]

I thought that in a 1 through 10 rating system, that 5 was considered 'average.' You would give you most favorite, can't live without mod a rating of 10. You would give the worst mod you have ever seen a 1 (for example, one that is bugged to the point it cannot be used). Both of these occurrences would be very rare extremes with the majority of your ratings hovering around 5.

 

I think that if this was the case that this system would work, but it isn't. The system has become flawed by moving the 'average' rating too high so that even an 'average' mod gets 10's consistently. This unbalances the system, and causes any other ratings below a 10 to be considered below average and have an adverse effect. Why would you rate an average mod the same as your favorite mod? That doesn't make much sense to me. Personally I haven't rated any mods here because I would be giving 5's most of the time, and I don't want to affect anyone negatively because of a broken system.

 

I don't see a way to correct this imbalance without doing something like removing all past ratings and starting over with a more structured approach to determining what to rate a mod. I think that instead of this (which even if you tried to correct would eventually become unbalanced again) a move should be made to a more simple approach that people can't 'screw up' as easily.

 

Something like a thumbs-up system where you have the opportunity to give a mod a thumbs-up if you liked it, and can later remove your thumbs-up if necessary (example: an update bugs the mod and makes it unplayable). You should be able to change whether you give a mod a thumbs-up or not whenever (you could require a comment whenever changing though to encourage feedback as to why you gave or removed your thumbs-up). Of course there is no foolproof system and every one is subject to abuse and flaws, but I think that a system like this would have less negative side-effects.

 

 

Just my opinion.

 

 

 

EDIT:: Grammatical errors.

Edited May 27, 2009 by Takun