Proper Rating Etiquette

Most ratings are currently too high for a plethora of irrelevant reasons (just watch anything JDM get swamped with 5 star reviews by NFS kids, regardless of the actual quality of the mod...).

Most reviews only offer a superficial evaluation of the mod (more often than not, not even that, as they are just a sweetener for the modder).

In this sense, reviews serve absolutely no purpose, and since the current star rating is too easily influenced by said irrelevant reasons, it's pretty much impossible to compare mods with the current system as well.

 

*insert parables and stories and proverbs and witticisms here*

The review system certainly isn't very helpful right now. At all really. That doesn't mean we should just accept what's wrong though. A better way to calculate the overall score would help a lot.

Part of the issue is that everyone has different standards. There's people who are genuinely happy with meshslaps, some who have lower standards than others but still have standards, and some who only use the few dev quality mods around. Add to that the fact that an outlier review is weighted so heavily...

Somewhat on topic, I really wish there were more community contributors around... You can get so much more out of a quality video of a mod than you can from the current review system or the cursory look'n'crash that most of the CC's give. I wish I was actually qualified to be a CC...

 

Pretty sure there's a function somewhere that will automatically force the uploader to make a discussion thread (Saw it on the Pixel Car Racer forum, they use the same software.)
EDIT
@RobertGracie Agree.

 

What a shame, although I must agree with others. A simple thread about not wrecking a mod's average rating is turned into a grade school food fight, and should probably be locked before it gets worse.

Also, there's about a million ways to fix a chair that wobbles. One could make a 3 legged design, which physically can't wobble because 3 points defines a plane (and any more are redundant, hence the 4 legged wobble), or you could adjust the leg lengths individually. That being said, I'm not sure how high school bullying relates to mods for a game??

 

I honestly think that the staff members should give people on here a chance to improve before they resort to locking this thread, but that's my opinion though.

On topic: I think people should make reviews (whether they are negative or positive) that are constructive, go into details about the mod, help the author to improve on their mods in the future, and aren't rude or nasty. I also think people on here should be allowed to rate a mod however they want. Sorry if I sound like a crazy hippie.

 

Before this thread gets locked, some more talk from my previous comment train:

There's a few key things that can help in conjunction or otherwise(with the ratings issue):

• Use the ability to redesign your site. Make it harder for people to give bad ratings somehow, that way people are more likely to give positive reviews or get fed up, and give up trying, which results in nothing at all.
  • Keep in mind, The general trend of people, is when there is an opportunity to get away with something, they may take it, if there is high risk they likely will not

This can be a bad thing because more people are likely to be a little dishonest inadvertedly, by showering with praise where a little criticism could be but that's irrelevant to most purposes here I'm going to guess.

• Users who give bad ratings usually do so on impulse. Anger is impulsive. THe moment you try to rationalise your anger, the harder it becomes to stay angry.

Expanding hypothetical: Make it more than a few clicks to give a bad rating and you might cultivate a different negative culture set of people, these types:

1. People simply don't post quick insult-cynical negative reviews anymore,
2. people that cant be bothered to post,
3. and people that do post negative reviews, but often they state exactly what it is thats bad, with less fluff and they put more effort into their comment, giving their review more surface credibility.

Don't quote me on this bs unless it's constructive, lol.


Now for hopefully my final suggestion/scenario to the impossible problem:
Only allow 3-5 star ratings. No more 1 or 2 stars. Anyone who wants to make a one/two star rating, simply cannot, but they can comment real quick!
I mean...hows that for a change? Certainly doesn't sting as bad if you're never getting a 1 star rating, if properly implemented I can see it working, but I wonder if anyone caught onto this idea yet and if it would help "modder's pain", shall we call it? in the long run.
Only time tells the tales!

 

That's not how it works. If they did that, then a three-star rating would just become the new one-star rating. It'd have the same meaning.

 

Your argument is more in semantics, so that's Debateable. I tend to think getting a three star rating is still ever so slightly better than a one star rating. Quote me on that.
And anyone who leaves a comment instead of a rating, it is assumed it is a one or two star. The way everything is laid out currently, the modder suffers from the ratings system. So anything that can potentially change it for the better is welcome, even the slightest of changes gives modders the idea there is hope for change in the ratings system. Are you a modder? Do you agree?

 

Disagree.

I've definitely seen mods uploaded that I would rate 1-2 stars.

Plus, as stated, that makes 3 stars the new 1 star. It also completely defeats the purpose of ratings

 

You don't seem to understand.

Say you have a mod, an unsatisfied reviewer, and a five-star rating system. The lowest you can vote is one star. Since this unsatisfied reviewer really, really hates this mod, he writes a one-star review.

Now imagine that the ability to vote one or two stars is taken away. Now, the lowest you can vote is three stars. The unsatisfied reviewer leaves a three-star review, because that's the lowest he can vote.

You seem to think that by making three stars the lowest possible rating in a five-star system, you're preventing people from leaving negative reviews. What you're actually doing is converting a five-star system into a three-star system with two star emojis to the left of it. If two stars get added to your vote no matter which of the three buttons you click, then those two stars are meaningless and a three-star rating just becomes a one-star rating.

I agree that one-star reviews that basically boil down to the reviewer not clearing his cache are bad, but your suggestions' prime directive seem to be artificially inflating the ratings of mods to make their creators feel better about themselves. It won't change anything for the better, and the rating system will become meaningless.

 

As it is, here we are trying to minimise modder pain. The modder uploads their mod, and they see a one star rating, in their eyes it should be at least 3 stars. Obviously I didn't get my message or ideology across either because you don't care to hear it or because you're not open to hearing it, but I will not elaborate further in that case.

What I will elaborate on, however is this. Any positive (even meaningless change to the vast majority of people) change to the ratings system is better than no change. The ratings system needs a change, the sooner, the better.

 

But forcing people to rate at least three stars means that rating three stars isn't a good thing anymore. It's the worst possible rating you can get. If the American education system decided to drop D's and F's in their letter grading system, getting a C- would now be considered a failing grade since by default it's the lowest grade you can recieve. It's not going to "minimize modder pain" since the mod creator will know that three stars is the worst rating. This would only work if you were somehow able to keep mod creators in the dark about this change, and even then it still wouldn't mean anything because the reviewer is going to say the same negative things they would have said had they been able to rate one star.

And even if a mod creator thinks they deserve three stars, it's entirely up to the consumers to decide how good it is. Forcing high ratings is fraudulent. Amazon can't restrict their rating system to three stars because that would be considered false advertising at the very least.

So, in essence, censorship. Only positive feedback allowed.
Negative feedback can be helpful for mod creators; they can identify and prioritize what needs work. If people are only allowed to post positive reviews, then the functionality of the ratings system goes away entirely and it basically becomes a mod creator's ego booster. Unless they're too young to be on this forum anyway, getting negative reviews on their mod isn't going to hurt their feelings. In fact, it may even push them to work harder to get their mod up to a higher standard.

And I don't see why you're complaining about this anyway, since all of your Automation mods (that have reviews) have five-star ratings across the board.

 

This a pointless analogy. The American Education System literally changes lives and is too complex and specialized to deserve such a quick fix system I'm talking. It deserves the very best it can get. What I'm on about is never intended for any other application other than what I've stated. If you're going to compare apples to baskets, I'll let you know, every case is individual. You can't use high school teachings for rocket science at NASA can you? Pointless argument this one.

 

The American Education System may not be the best analogy, but don't use that as an excuse to dismiss my entire argument. The fact remains, restricting and/or censoring the rating system is pointless and will change nothing.

 

I am dismissing your entire argument based on false analogy. It was argued poorly.

You don't know what hasn't been done. Nobody knows everything. Claiming something as pointless is killing it before it even has a chance to succeed. That is not a good mindset to have, at least from my limited experience.
--- Post updated ---

Of course there are mods that deserve the one star rating, no doubt but would it hurt to instead of leaving a star, leave a comment? The star system is flawed. This is an attempt at a workaround.
A lot of time has been put into the mod, even bad ones. Hard to explain.
It's a small change. I've tried to explain it earlier up in my post if anyone wants to read it.

 

If this system was implemented and your mods started getting three-star reviews without any negative statements whatsoever, would you be able to live with yourself knowing they were all built on lies?

It doesn't have a chance to succeed, because it's an inherently flawed strategy that solves a problem that doesn't exist. That's like saying you shouldn't dismiss the idea of using an industrial strength magnet to secure your hard drive inside your PC before giving it the chance to succeed. It doesn't take a genius to see why that won't work.

I guarantee you if you ask mod creators what their biggest complains with the ratings system are, none of them will say "someone rated my mod two stars and it hurt my feelings. ):" They may have something to say about negative reviews that don't provide any constructive criticism, but your solution is like addressing a few rotten apples by chopping down the apple tree and replacing it with an artificial one. It doesn't actually solve the problem at hand and replaces a flawed yet functional system with one that isn't functional at all (but nice to look at).

That analogy good enough for you?

 

Are you a Genius, or do you claim to be a Genius? It's not a complete solution, a temporary fix rather for a few things that I didn't explain because they were off topic and would have made my posts too long in the first place. Rather not have them longer than I want them to be. No, I never claimed it to fix all problems forever, just that it could be tried out and worked on from there. Aren't you claiming that it is supposed to? Nevertheless, no point arguing with you.

Unfortunately, no not good enough, but that's ok. I stopped arguing my position in the last comment.

 

So basically its a rating system for snowflakes that can't handle getting less than 3 stars?

That's all I got from it...

 

But it doesn't fix anything. I cannot make this more clear. Falsifying ratings in an ineffective attempt to make mod creators feel better about themselves solves nothing.

You've said something along the lines of "I'm going to stop arguing with you because your opinion sucks" about seven times now.

You're trying to look like you're taking the high road, when what you're actually doing is dismissing all criticisms of your proposed strategy (which ironically is exactly what your strategy outlines) as "pointless" in an attempt to hide the fact that is inherently flawed. You're even claiming that the most minute and insignificant details—such as a subpar analogy that only served to illustrate the point I had already laid out—are sufficient enough to dismiss everything I say as a "poor argument." You haven't actually defended or even attempted to improve your strategy at all. All you've done is call my criticism pointless and claim you're done arguing numerous times.

 

Dabate Review:

@SuperAusten64 5 Stars
It was coherent and well structured. I also found your analogy to be very relevant.

@G-Farce 3 Stars
3 stars simply because I can't go lower, but hey, at least your feelings didn't get hurt by getting 1 or 2 stars...

See the flaw?