The state of repository reviews.

My experience is that people are too embarrassed or something to point out obvious issues, most of the time when you get some feedback that is not along lines of cool it is just saying something like crap, hardly ever there is something between and quite rarely even that.

But then I can be quite a lot to handle if something pokes me wrong ways (dragon blood tends to run hot even when cold), which might explain some.
Who is perfect throw the first stone and all that, we all fail, we fail miserably, but maybe at least we can try to be better at times

What I would be interested would be constructive criticism, pointing out obvious flaws I miss and such things. While 5 starts and cool is nice, I would have that rather only when deserved so I can get better. For some of us it is bit harder to see other's perspective or experience, so sharing that is helpful.

So pointing out negative points of things I have crafted while backing up with some proof / facts is appreciated, I won't bite then, very hard

Claim something is done in 5 minutes without pointing any flaws etc. oh there will be flames, can count on that, but it is just because I'm bit ... more

 

Yeah I agree with you but for all 4 of my cars I did take upto an hour building each one giving it a 'rough tune' and then handing it off to another member on the Automation Discord (Moderators I am not advertising anything here I am just saying where I found my tuner from nothing more okay) to get it finely tuned so it works, I cant do the tuning correctly so I need help there, it just helps me out because I am still learning Automation myself its been some years since I played it and that was on the old Kee engine not the new UE4 engine that it is now...

 

Ayye that's me in the pic
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But in serious words, it depends, really. I don't think the author will ever improve, most of his stuff are just randomly-generated heightmaps, which deserves the ratings it deserves.

 

Its amusing to me that you don't seem to understand this isn't about the mod, it isn't about the 1/5 star ratings, what it is about though is the people who leave reviews that just say "Crap!".

 

You should review the work in question, not the author, otherwise reviews don't work.

If you think author will not improve, then what is point of reviewing?

It really is not your position to try to make author to get the point etc. All you can do really is review or not to, in review tell there is not much added to base map and be done with it. Crap does not really describe anything useful to other users or the mod author.

I'm not sure if you see how you are part of the problem in this, but think it this way, you don't have any power over any user, only moderators have. I think somewhere there is basic fault in concept.
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I'm just wanting to point out that it is not as easy or simple to all persons, for some it is much more difficult than others to get certain aspect of interaction. While I can't say anything concrete it being case here, there are always possibility that it might be more difficult for him to see than for someone else.

 

Again, I think there needs to be a more higher text minimum so these kind of reviews can be reduced (and it would likely get the reviewer to do some explaining for that rating). It also can make these reviews more in depth and constructive.

Just a suggestion I think would do some improvement to the review system.

 

don't be proud you got mentioned

 

Believe you me I understand, I have a form of autism which makes some social interactions very difficult but the concept of what he or others were doing wrong was made abundantly clear in this thread but he hasn't read through to learn what he did wrong just like I imagine he hasn't read the rules.

Some things in life are tricky but there is ways to handle and learn and quite frankly when people ignore those learning opportunities and continue their poor behavior it frustrates me and many others.

 

Aye, very big percentage of us have, because modding in general involves procedures that such feature sets works well.

Also I agree fully how frustrating it sometimes is when seeing something that appears as "not even trying" while holding your own volcano under control and within rules that don't follow logic, all of which takes more mental effort than average person will extort ever in life time. However if I fail in maintaining that, I consider myself as failed, only thing that can be done is serve information, if that is not taken, there is not much to do, well, other than In Good Name OR Everything of course

 

To be honest. The current rating system is fine. The only thing that can make it better is what steam does for its reviews. You can upvote, downvote, or funny (mostly for joke reviews) and that would solve most of your problems. If reviews were removed then why have the repo? If the repo was removed we could go the old school way of installing mods by dropbox or the greatest Russian site of them all world of mods?

The repo to me is a place to download the mods in a very simple easy way through a secure site, see how good the mod is and in a quick glance the state of the mod. The way most of you are talking you want me to read possibly 300+pages of text just to get to read 2 lines to see where the mod is currently is and then read what people are saying from over the possible past 3 years.

 

Indeed. The problem is actually people abusing it.

Now, which is easier to change, users' attitude or the abusable system?

 

Just gonna leave this here.
For reviews and also a bit about the forums in general:

• Don't make it personal, you give feedback on the mod, not on the author. It shouldn't matter if he or she is red, blue, purple or glow in the dark, only rate the mod.
• Point out the good and bad things. Here at my university we call the Tips and Tops, try to mention at least one Top for every few tips.
• Elaborate. Tell the author what is good or bad and why, if someone says it's bad, tell me what's bad? The Jbeam? The textures? Both?
• Use (proper) punctuation: It is easier to read a text with too many commas and points than a text with only one line and no commas that goes on and on and on so you don't even know where it started with.
• Have some sort of ettiquette: follow the forum rules and be as nice to others as you want them to be to you. I helped people and some said to me that I was the first person that was actually nice to them. This saddens me, are you guys so rude to others? I'm not always the nicest guy but if I am the first one that is actually somewhat nice to others, you guys should be ashamed of yourselves.
• Use the stars wisely, see it as this: 5 stars: Everyone should have it, it doesn't have many flaws and is a good addition to the game. 4 stars: It's good, not great and some people won't like it that much because of some shortcomings. 3 stars: Mediocre, it is quite easy to improve some obvious things but it is kinda fun nevertheless. 2 stars: The mod has flaws that are not easy to fix because of bad choices due to a lack of knowledge or ingnorance and this really kills the fun. 1 star: It's so bad that making it better includes almost starting over.
• Have some respect. If you would come to me and tell me to kill myself in my face, I bet you would at least get a few questions from me(not gonna promote violence here ). Don't do that on the internet, if you want to insult people, go outside and face the concequences instead of doing it from your safespace. Also, most authors spend a lot of their free time on working on mods, be a bit appreciative and nice to them. I sometimes think about not releasing stuff because people are so annoying. Most authors mod for themselves and are just nice enough to share it with you. For free.

Please try to improve the forums

 

Couldn't of said it better. Usually when I do reviews I'll give suggestions for more parts and stuff like that, and I'm sure most other people do the same (well I hope they do, or we got a serious problem). Although I do agree that there needs to be some sort of system in place, maybe not a huge one, but one where if a mod is really really bad and is just a simple gridmap with some hills, that it should be removed, but only after it gains "heavy constructive criticism" and if it isn't updated by the author to a satisfactory level.

 

to be fair, when you're hunting for decent quality content, and my standards are quite high, users like ngm and platinum_kaboom uploading bare untextured heightmapes in perpetuity tends to get tilting.

There's no excuse for explosive abuse, but one star ratings have their use here. I had to make a thread recently because I couldn't find the Tail of the Dragon map. The reason I couldn't find it was a high volume of poorly made content was diluting the desireable maps. I would like to be able to favourite mods at the very least.

and christ knows how many actually good mods I'm missing out on because it's burried in absolute shite.

 

I feel that if we want to avoid reviews like this, the moderators’ quality standards for what can go on the repository should be heightened, i.e. not approving a bare heightmap uploaded just because the creator could. Having a standard of quality on the behalf of approvals would massively reduce the number of 1 star ratings.

I do think constructive negative reviews are an excellent thing for modders, but not approving really bad mods removes the temptation to leave ones that really aren’t.

 

I really don't think restricting mods based on quality is a good idea, feedback is a great way for people to improve, taking that away from them will just kill modding in the long term.

 

But they should also try first sharing it on the forums first before releasing it on the repo.

 

What if you have a character amount so that you have to have say, (50?) characters typed for it to be called a review before it is allowed to be posted?

 

I'd say that's a good minimum. Looks like I'm not the only one that likes the idea of a increased minimum length for reviews.

 

I think the moderators should, as @Fenneko has said, encourage people to first test release their mods on the forum, and then when they do decide to post on the repository, enact a minimum character limit on reviews.

And I do stand by the fact that the moderators should do at least SOME quality control with mods. Mods that need severe improvement should stay on the forums until the mod is improved enough by the author and the community to get onto the repository.