Get rid of negative endorsements

[Arthmoor]

if I think a mod is crap I say so and leave it as that. No point going into detail writing a 100 word essay on why it's crap.

 

Well to be blunt, most of us don't want to hear from you then. If you think it's crap, then just move on. There's no reason to be insulting to people.

[buddah]

That putz is just a troll and is not worth your time or effort my old friend. Your pity and disgust are all he is worth.

[Immortality]

I agree that this system can be abused for trolling.

 

Reminds me once when I told somebody to "please read all the documentation". That was followed up by a thumbs down, because the user got offended that I pointed him to the readme.

 

Having said this, I'm excited to see what comes up in Nexus 3.0. :-)

[bben46]

@immortality

Yup, there exists a certain class of people that think they are somehow different. And therefore should be exempt from reading things in general. Then demand personal attention and hand holding because they are 'too busy', or 'don't have the time' to read a carefully crafted read me that explains everything they are asking in detail. :rolleyes:

 

And when you refuse to give them the personalized help that they so obviously deserve, blame you for their shortcomings.

 

If they 'don't have the time' to read the documentation, then I don't have the time to explain, in words of less than 2 syllables, what the read me says.

 

Unfortunately, we haven't found a really effective way to filter out fools yet. However, it is my personal observation that the fools usually manage to filter themselves eventually. My guess is this particular fool was never able to get your mod to work because they refused to read, and have since left the community because we are just too unfriendly and not helpful. :whistling:

 

I have long lost count of those I have told to RTFM over the years.

 

We do not remove or change ratings because of the problems that caused with the old 1 - 10 (one OR 10) system where some modders insisted we remove any rating that was not a 10 because obviously their mod was perfect and there was no possible way that anyone could seriously rate it less than 10. Plus the gaming of the ratings in various ways. Negative ratings DO NOT count toward anything - they are not taken into account for any top 100 lists or for anything else. And anyone who looks at one or two negatives and decides they are not going to download because of that - when there are 50 or so thumbs up - are missing out on some of the best mods. :tongue:

[Deleted1848331User]

I think the negative endorsements should be like the positive ones, where you type why you are not endorsing the file.

 

I have not given my endorsement to this file.

 

The mod has too many bugs in it.

 

Something similar, probably more in depth so they know what the problem is.

[LadyMilla]

This is my personal endorsement policy and an explanation as to why I don’t use negative endorsements:

 

I couldn't get the file to work

- Have you tried talking to the author and work with him/her to resolve the issue? Could it be that the problem is on your side?

 

The file didn't do what the description implied

- Again, this is something that should be discussed with the author. They may not speak English very well, they may have mistakenly uploaded the wrong version or maybe it is you who misunderstood the description. If and only if they stubbornly refuse to address your concerns is a negative endorsment warranted.

 

There were important files missing (animations, textures, etc.) that meant the file didn't work properly

- Almost every mod is a work in progress, something that is never really finalized. Without trying to contact the author and getting the problem fixed it is arrogant, to say the least, to give it the thumbs-down.

 

The file caused conflicts with the game or other popular files

- The first part may be grounds for giving negative endorsement, but only if the author does not correct the issue after it is confirmed by several players. I consider the second part ('or other popular files") a bit unrealistic. Some conflicts are unavoidable and impossible to remedy. It's up to you to make a choice which of the two conflicting mods you want to keep. The mod may have been designed in such a way that in order to achieve its goal it HAS to conflict with some popular mods.

 

The file did not meet my high quality standards

After playing the file it doesn't fit in to my personal tastes or beliefs.

- If I’m not mistaken these two options - especially the second one - were added as an anti-troll lighting rod. Quality when it relates to non-measurable properties is a subjective thing. I may like Beluga caviar, you may hate it and regard BigMac as the pinnacle of culinary evolution. You may have a thing against manga and furry things, and you're quite entitled to your opinion but before selecting the 'thumbs-down', you should stop and say 'this mod was not meant for me, I am not the targeted user' (even if you think such a mod is a disgrace to the Elder Scrolls/Dragon Age/Fallout universe, it cannot ruin your game if you don't download it, and also it will not cause global warming, recession, worldwide poverty.) If you think it is a low quality mod (it claims to be a dog but it looks more like a stool with two ears on it), explain it to the author and be polite. Not counting a few hardcore arrogant jerks and ‘holier-than-thou’/‘you’re so wrong and I’m sooo right’ prophets, politeness works like charm on most of the people.

 

Sorry for the wall of text.

 

Final words: I believe negative endorsements are not necessary. Not giving your endorsement is sufficient in my opinion, considering that in the current system negative endorsements do not affect file rankings.

 

[Thandal]

@LadyMilla;

 

While I pretty much agree with your final comment (that "negative endorsements are not necessary") I disagree with you about the first four "Negative Endorsement Reasons" not being valid. And I also disagree that just "not giving an endorsement" is the same thing. That "lack of a positive endorsement" statistic would only useful if it were presented relative to the number of downloads, for all mods, which would then negatively impact any mod that was downloaded but never played (I have several like that on my machine at the moment. Just haven't gotten around to them yet...)

 

And for those first four reasons that you say the player having the issue should contact the author to discuss their problem individually; while that may be the appropriate step in some small number of cases, that doesn't mean that:

I couldn't get the file to work, or;

The file didn't do what the description implied, or;

There were important files missing (animations, textures, etc.) that meant the file didn't work properly, or;

The file caused conflicts with the game or other popular files,

aren't valid observations. Nor that, just as with a positive endoresement, any of they should require a conversation before sharing the observation with others. If the author doesn't describe the mod well, or provide straight forward installation instructions, or include all required files/links to required files AND clearly label them as such, then that's the author's mistake and they should be called on it.

 

I just found a mod yesterday where the "Installation" section of the Description was:

If you don't know how to extract and use these by now, that's your problem. I'm tired of repeating myself.

 

So, yes, there are bonehead (or just n00b) players who give a mod a negative endorsement ("doesn't work") because it's a .7z file, and they can't figure out what to do with it. But there are also bonehead authors who forget that they should have deleted the other 1000+ lines that their mod didn't change before uploading their tweaked .gda file and messing up other mods for the same game. :laugh:

 

A quick look at the (mostly unhelpful) negative comments quickly shows which ones were probably player-error, and which ones were actual shortcomings. If a mod has 50+, and 2- endorsements, and the negative ones don't say anything beyond the default text, then anyone using that as a yardstick knows what's going on. But if there are real problems, that's where you can find them without having to read through all the other comments associated with a mod.

 

So I agree that negative endorsements are of only limited value, they do have some. And they do so at almost zero-cost in terms of time or effort on the part of the site Staff, authors, or other players. (And they provide a way for those who just have to say something negative about a mod they don't like to do so without cluttering the mod's comment pages. :thumbsup: )

[LadyMilla]

And for those first four reasons that you say the player having the issue should contact the author to discuss their problem individually; while that may be the appropriate step in some small number of cases, that doesn't mean that:

I couldn't get the file to work, or;

The file didn't do what the description implied, or;

There were important files missing (animations, textures, etc.) that meant the file didn't work properly, or;

The file caused conflicts with the game or other popular files,

aren't valid observations.

 

I see your point but even though they may be valid observations from a personal point of view, this does not mean, IMO, that the best course of action is to give the mod a negative endorsement even if these observations are valid.

 

Let me give you an example. I wanted to try EVE badly (Energy Visuals Enhanced), and no matter what I did (I read back several pages, used search to find similar issues, used recommended load order, merged patch, disabled certain mods, updated video driver, I even reinstalled FO3 from scratch to remove any leftover files from uinstalled mods, etc.) Fallout 3 kept crashing. When EVE was removed, the crashes stopped. Now, from my point of view, this mod is badly incompatible. I did the necessary troubleshooting steps and still the problem persisted. So theoretically I could thumb down EVE for the first and fourth reasons (couldn't get it work, caused conflicts with the game). Still I did not do that because from other posts it was clear to me that my case must be a freak occurrence. So I simply left it alone without giving it a thumb-up or thumb-down.

 

I do believe, and at least my personal practice is that both the user and the mod author should do his or her homework. For me, the New Vegas Version of Underground Hideout is an excellent example: if you read back you will see that people report things that do not work or broken, and the author responds to them and releases fixes and minor versions with improvements (as a result: the mod has 1140 endorsement, and only 2 thumbs-down). Beyond a certain complexity it is impossible to release a mod that is free of bugs/conflicts/missing items, so even if your observation that e.g. it caused conflicts with other popular files is correct and according to the "letter of the law" you are entitled to thumb it down, in this case I think doing so would be hardly justifiable.

[Thandal]

See, and I would take your experience and say you would have been totally justified in giving EVE a thumbs-down.

 

And if any others that had the same result after trying it did as well, and the problem were wide-spread, then the number of negative endorsements would indicate that the mod had serious problems. That's useful information. But if yours was an isolated case, then that would also be reflected in the numbers, and the person deciding whether or not to try it could reasonably say, "Seems very few people had an issue."

 

"1140+/2-" doesn't mean that the two negatives were wrong, (although they might have been.) Simply that the mod was overwhelmingly endorsed. The best one can expect from such a highly subjective evaluation system, (which anything that deals so intimately with matters of personal preference must be) is that one can get a general idea as to whether something is, or is not, likely to be worth one's time. Almost 600:1 in favour is a fairly wide margin! :laugh:

[greywaste]

Imo any quick endorse system should be scrapped, it's not quite as revolting as post reps *spits* but it's still lazy and ultimately meaningless.

 

Praise and heaps of praise/statements of undying love should be directed to comments and bugs/problems should be addressed with a 'submit' feature - Though I realise this probably wouldn't play nice with the forum link as is.