Sort By Rating

[Glue]

Just a thought that has been rattling around my head for a while. If its been discussed before, apologies but..

Something which i would find a very useful addition to TESS would be a 'sort by rating' option when viewing files. If i want to look for the perceived best mod in a genre at the moment i kind of rely on the downloads option and view them from most to least. However, this obviously is only a partial help because a file uploaded in March 06 will have potentially been downloaded thousands of times and yet only gain a rating of 4 or 5, compared to a recent mod which is consistently getting 10s but only a few weeks old so very many fewer downloads. I would want the latter mod but its at the bottom of the list.

Agreed some of the old ones are always going to be among the best but as time has gone by oblivion modding has evolved rapidly and with OBSE possibilities now and modders working with and off one another the bar keeps being raised. These mods have no podium to stand on right now if they don't make the top 150 list and that doesn't really help me anyway if i just want to quickly compare the top LOD mods for instance.

I'm not sure if TESS used to offer a sort by rating ability in the past,(the memory plays tricks), but it would certainly be a boon if it was possible to find a balanced way of working it.

I realize that the numbers of people applying those ratings would be a factor but as i say, even a rough idea of the community's favourites would be invaluable to someone looking for the mods that stand out.

Anyway, i thought i'd throw this out there. maybe something to consider.

[DarkAnsem]

right you are. I wanted to post the exact same thiing. To list file by rating, not by downloads, and possibly longer lists, not with tons of descriptions.

[LHammonds]

If you're looking for most current AND popular, you really need to look at the date when it was uploaded and the amount of downloads. If a mod was uploaded one month ago and has 15,000 downloads as compared to one that was uploaded a year ago with 15,000 downloads and they have the exact same "user rating", you can rest assured that the newer file is far more "popular" regardless of how many 10/10 votes or 1/10 votes there are.

 

I've seen too many abuses of the voting system already for it to be a consistent "teller" of quality such as somebody creating bogus accounts just to vote down top mods and vote up their own or a friends. I posted a feedback for this very reason since the voting system is still needs some fine-tuning.

 

"If" you are only looking at user-rating, wouldn't you value the rating of a long-standing member or a member with modding experience over someone whose account was created yesterday, posted nothing and handed out a bunch of votes?

 

EDIT: As a work-around solution, you could go to the Advanced Search feature and pick the category, leave everything else blank, hit search, then sort by downloads. This will just show items in that category.

 

Thanks,

LHammonds

[Glue]

yeah, i understand where you're coming from on the abuse issue and that i think will unfortunately be inevitable whichever system you choose. (something odd on the kudos list anyone?EDIT: kudos thief caught and removed). You could i'm guessing as easily hype your downloads simply by you and your friends(not you personally of course) just repeatedly DLing.

You're right again in saying that checking downloads against upload dates is a good idea and to be honest i do every time, I just think that there is room for a user rating option as well.

I think my original post may have sounded a little like, 'new mods are getting lost amongst all the old timers', but be certain that is not what i meant. i trust the experienced heads around here and even though its open to abuse like everything else i have to trust the user ratings or else i'd just have to download everything to test.

 

The big advantage i see in the user ratings if i can assume most people who use Tess are honest gamers who care about this site,(and i do) is that whereas a lot of us will DL to simply check something out or test it, or even because it sounds like it will be cool, i think most actually only vote after this, when they've made a valid judgment. Quality, i hope, over popularity. Ratings seem to work so far. The real deal mods all have the highest scores.

As i said though, its about balance. The more facts and the easier they are to use, the better. I just want the search engine to to get the eye-strain, not me.

 

Thanks for your views.