Organization How can we save the rating system?

I agree with you about the 3 to 5 stars. I don't remember giving 1 or 2. If someone wants to give a smart advice about something bad he can do it throught comments, not rating. Giving 1 or 2 sounds to me just like "you did bad and here is your punishment for that". If I don't like a level I just ignore or leave a comment if I feel something interesting wanted to be done but failed.

As I already said I use much more the stars as like/love/adore (so to express my feelings) than to "evaluate" a level, despite it stills an evaluation. Comments can give more nuances and details on what's wrong or great and are much more important to communicate in a good way.

Everybody learn from errors and mistakes so that's important to have positives and negatives feedbacks as far as they are for the better and as we stay opened to constructive criticism.

 

@nGord have an access to the admin panel of the forum but this is not covering low level works. It is much more about some priviledge permissions (giving someone moderator right, as an example), managing warning, bans and forum messages, nodes, logs, users among other stuff. To change or add a plugins someone needs to be super-admin (currently only NeoCHI), which requires to have an access to the filesystem of the server and modify some files.

If possible, I'm not even sure we can change the rating system without loosing the previous one . That really seems dangerous anyway. But talking on a more efficient rating system still interesting... despite probably not applicable.

 

I like it too.

Maybe someyhing is missing: zero star.
Despite that doesn't express something specific but avoid to be too much critical. Then, we could have next to @QuantumForce suggestions :

1. Valid level, but poorly designed and not fun
   
2. Acceptable level, but some problems or unenjoyable elements
   
3. Good level (but can be improved?)
4. Great level, excellent gameplay and interesting mechanics
   
5. Outstanding level. Exemplary gameplay, aesthetics, mechanisms, etc. Should be featured on facebook

I really like the outstanding point of view for #5 and the idea that it should be featured on facebook!

 

I've talked many times about this subject and failed to comment here before because I had already repeated myself so many times elsewhere (profile posts, Discord, level comments). That being said, I thought it time to bump this conversation to the top again. So here are some of my thoughts (again):

Although I agree with @vince about there being too few ratings to really do justice to evaluating a level, I disagree with his approach of 5-stars or nothing. I say just leave a like if you don't want to use the rating system. You either "like" the level or you don't.

Unlike @Gepeto, I don't think 1 or 2 stars are a punishment. I believe that their use are an honest evaluation and proper use of the rating system. Again, if the position is to not use all of the ratings available, why use them at all?

Regarding the expansion of the ratings to 10 stars, this is a moot point because there is no way to change it even if we wanted to.

So that leaves me in complete agreement with @Chuckthulhu on pretty much everything, particularly his opening remarks and especially about this comment:

So this brings us back again to what should each of the ratings represent and can we all agree to use such a rating? As much as I also like @QuantumForce's summary, it may be hard to encourage new users of the forum to use anything too different from the base words associated with each of the star levels already in the software (i.e. the words that pop up for each of the stars). These are: 1-star: terrible, 2-star: poor, 3-star: average, 4-star: good, 5-star: excellent.

Since most of the membership is the remaining absolutely devoted fans of the game, I would argue that the average level uploaded is a good level. This brings me to my biggest point: 3-stars is a truly acceptable rating that signifies that the level is a proper and enjoyable level, a good level that's also the average of what a player is accustomed to and tends to rate. This further means that 4-stars is above average and 5-stars is truly exceptional (far from the average).

TL;DR - My position is that if one does not want to use the rating system ethically, consistently, and fully, then they should avoid it altogether. Either way, the best thing is to leave a detailed, constructive, and thoughtful comment. Simply leaving a smiley, writing something short like "nice level," or using only terms like "interesting" don't add any value except serving the ego of the commenter. Clicking "like" for such comments promotes poor behaviour and standards.

//end rant (sorry )

 

Unfortunately, I see three problems with the site message route:

1. It will most undoubtedly lead to arguments,

2. It will remove the freedom of making a more subjective assessment and thus many will feel boxed in and in turn will spend less effort on the comments to go along with their ratings, and

3. Setting a system now will confuse people looking at the ratings from before as they will all be skewed in comparison.

 

Those are not to be shared in the Levels section. Instead they should be shared in this thread: Sharing new (and old) mechanisms or (depending on the mechanic) in other threads within either the Game Behaviours or Level Creation Help sub-forums.

I think this would solve a problem that we don't have. The majority of levels uploaded are legit. It is also easier to crowdsource the opinions of the players to determine such a seal of approval. That is one way in how @richardfu_ narrows down which levels he should consider to feature on Facebook.

Furthermore, the aim of this thread is to find a way to encourage all those who rate a level, to rate it fairly and equally across a spectrum of stars. Having one Moderator to cast an opinion of what it should be rated would be an impossibly large task and would end up inevitably leading to disagreements due to personal biases.

My two cents. Thanks for the input though!

 

Yes, this forum does have a rating system. It only becomes a problem when members rate only with one number - that's not a rating. A single number is akin to a "like" i.e. it is more of an acknowledgement of having played the level. It's worse behaviour than not rating at all.

As long as members make at least some effort to differentiate what a 5-star level is compared to a 3-star level for example, then it will have some value. Remember that 3-stars is average and most levels are average by definition so that should be an easy baseline.

One place that it makes a big difference is in @Gepeto's monthly statistics compilation. If all ratings are always 5-stars, then levels are not ranked by anything more than popularity of the creator. If only one person rates with something other than 5-stars, then it suddenly has a significant value. Thus the use of other than 5-stars must be encouraged by everyone in the community and especially noted to the noobs in level comments.