The state of repository reviews.

I can see where this person was coming from. In his newest one he mentions that he uses a map generator. He is probably learning his way around it seeing what different outcomes he/she gets from different inputs. He/she doesn't want to watch a 45 minute tutorial on how to do one small thing. He/she wants to learn the program by experimenting. I did the same with paint.net. I learned the basics and started teaching myself by experimenting with different tools in paint.net. I originally wanted to keep my first skin I made private but ended up putting to the respiratory. And I'm pretty sure he/she wanted to do the same. That's just my $0.02

 

I just feel that something will happen because of this because this is getting into a state where the Moderators and Admins will take note and do somethings about it....

 

Instead of us having to report reviews when it's too late, reviews could require approval from the staff before being published.

Maybe then people would think twice and put some effort in their comments, or refrain from commenting at all.

 

I really like that idea, but the issue is the time it would take to read trough and approve the reviews.

 

You do make a good point there it would be good for the reviews to have review time on them so that if any get like 1 star reviews they are flagged and not shown until the mod creator allows them to be shown or not

 

It would have to be visible to admin staff of course.

They probably have better things to do. Considering how long it takes to get a mod approved I'd hate to see how long it would take with that work load added on too....

 

The problem with that is that there are more reviews than there are mods. Having to review mods and reviews would kind of be to much for the moderators

 

I actually really agree with MrAngry .. A anonymous review system would improve it.. Or will it ? I mean, atm, people are abusing this form of communication to call out people.

If there was no way to tell them that their mod is low quality etc. then a rating system wouldn´t really matter and would just get lost.

edit: And reviewing each and every single review isn´t an option. it would just make Moderators life so much worse and slow down the process of making a mod even more

 

Indeed.

Which points to my previous comment: review system as it is is easily exploitable and misusable, generates countless of reports they have to process anyway, and literally serves no purpose as it rarely produces a credible evaluation of the resource in object.

 

Okay can I ask everyone who is in this thread currently to think up ways of making it less consuming task to deal with reviews and mods that are posted here, at most it needs to be at least 5 minutes of work nothing more than that to sort the mess out, it needs to be quick and efficient nothing too laborious

 

Assuming the review system is from Xenforo and not custom, i'm not sure they could even change it that much.

 

This is a Xenforo forum so really I am not sure what can be done...

 

If you made your first mod and it's bad, you should keep it private until you find a way to improve it. Or if you decide to share it on the repository, don't upload 10 more. Nobody's keeping you from experimenting - just not every result is worthy of the repo.

 

I write quite low amount of reviews, I would like to make more, but when I download and test a mod, writing review I find bit tedious, so kinda I then often forget the task. I do have few A letters with also HD of course, which makes certain things more difficult to do, some which most see as simple task can be lot of work for me.

So I would make more ratings if it would be just simple click of stars, but I'm still bit cautious of supporting that idea, because would that hundred 2 star rating serve modder better than 1x 2-star rating with some points to it?

I have always at least attempted to give some pointers if I have rater mod less than 5 stars, so that modder could have at least some information how to improve.

Also some reviews has brought up discussions that has resulted modder to be able to create better version of the mod, I think that is where everyone wins.

Really lot of this repo stuff that devs have made also attempts to be useful for modders to grow, what tdev has written about these subjects tells me that they are putting lot of effor (probably also money) for modders to be able to become better little easier than how they had to grow many many years ago.
Also one thing I have read is that they don't really want to have system that would discourage beginner modders.

Devs have been doing this much longer than they have been doing BeamNG, so I would trust them to have better idea than what I can come up with.

 

If I may make a suggestion for reviews. You could do something like Steam and have curators

 

Synsol rates mods sometimes, so all that would need is to have way to see all his reviews, or maybe there already is a way?

Earlier there was also something mentioned about featured mods in relation to this, but can't remember if there really was even a connection. I think it was discussions around 2016 Christmas or so?

 

At this point, I think the whole system should be replaced with a basic upvote/downvote system. Many reviews end up being suggestions or bug reports, which go in the feedback thread. The old system was great while it lasted, but now the system is in dire need of an overhaul.

 

I've said it before, but the review system really needs a way for users to rate reviews helpful or not, especially if the reviews are going to be anonymous. There are a few users here who know far more than the rest and are willing to give accurate reviews on mods and not being able to tell the difference between their review and one of the countless 5-star rating spammers would make it far more difficult (for me at least) to see how good the review is. Anybody abusing the ratings system by retaliating for a low rating should be given a warning and if they do it again should be banned from reviewing mods. I'm not sure if the forums have an option to do that, but I think that would be a good way to do it.

 

Holy shit! what the hell is going on in here!?

 

Constructive discussion.