Soon to be page 27.
Oops, we're there.

just a quick note on that above.
in old tmf you could see the servers your tracks were played on so is it possible to require that servers register with TMX to download stuff?
it seems daft that no registration is required for downloads.

SkunkY says:
Soon to be page 27.
Oops, we're there.

Let's go for a few more... XD

I think downloads it's not a important data.
Maybe interesting for have an idea about the ratio awards/download to see how many players use to leave some feedback before and after ratings (i mean awards, comments, replays...)
Now is a fact that if you're on top on awards list you get more downloads... But rating could change this, and maybe people will download using ratio so downloads won't get "monopolized" just for awards.
I think betwen the tracks with low awards, but hig rating we could find something interesting... And dissmis the craps...
How many awards will you need to trust the rating? Let's say... 5? 10? 20? I think 20 people is fine to trust the rating... And about 5 is enough to expect something fun... (A track wich maybe could go up in rating with your award, or going down... Then your ratio will be important XDDD)

eie says:
1. This is one of the reasons I want to get rid of numbers, and instead just have stars as symbols, because it makes it harder for people to connect the number of stars to the actual rating. When one might see three stars, one might not automatically think 3/5. I also think that this kind of abuse is unavoidable either way, but if everyone abuses the system in one way or another, it might become integrated into each rating, so it wouldn't really matter anyway.

2. Awards isn't meant as a rating, even if some people believe that is the case. It's just means "I like this track". Nothing more, nothing less. Some people misunderstood this, and thinks this is some sort of rating.

3. With the possibility of negative rating, you'll get some "I dislike this track"-feedback, which isn't really nice if you're a newcomer. T/MX should always be a place that welcomes newer players, and make it easy for them to feel accepted.

4. While it might sound as a good idea, I don't think it is. It might have worked if more people used the awards as a *point*-system, but it's not a *point*-system, so you'll never get an accurate rating from that.

1. The whole point of my point 1 was just proof that people would abuse the system, because I would. Stars would make no difference to me, it's still a rating. I do agree with the last sentence though.

2. I know it isn't meant as a rating system but to a lot it is a rating system. I know people misunderstood this, which is why it actually is like a rating system. It's all about perception, if people believe it's a rating system then that's what it is as people use it as such. I was one of those people who didn't give an award because the track had what I believed to be too many already and I'm sure many others do the same, this turns it from a humble awards system into more of a rating system. It's all about how people do use it not how it's meant to be used.

The main point of my point 2 (which I don't think you really understood) was that If there is no rating system then people use the closest system there is to it, awards I used to believe that it meant not "I like this track" but "you deserve another/more awards" and so that's what I did. I think some of what I said will get lost in the mass of writing I have so I'll say it again. It's all about perception, as long as people treat it as a rating system (as in, award if they think it deserves more and not award if they think it deserves less) Then it IS a rating system and unless a different rating system comes into place (and not saying one should) it will stay that way, whether it was meant for it or not.

3. It doesn't matter if it's not *nice* to a newcomer. Giving them a constructive comment isn't *nice* to a newcomer either, the point is that nobody has enough time to go around giving constructing comments to all the newcomers bad tracks because there are so many of them. People fear trying random maps because more often than not they are bad, a lot of the time their quality would improve if they knew they were doing bad. Take me for example, in TMUX I made a fair few tracks, all terrible, because nobody told me I was doing bad, when they did (and told me to look at the most awarded tracks, hence me stopping because of Crusard) I stopped building tracks. Is that a good thing, YES. I was contributing to the masses of time-wasting tracks that were not worth playing and I wish that people told me that sooner. Please stop worrying about newcomers so much as if they want to contribute to the community and aren't doing it right then it's better to tell them sooner rather than later and it saves them a lot of time.

4. Some people do use it as a point system as I used to. Yet again, it's all about perception. And anyway, you said yourself the award means "I like this track" So if it has 100 (registered) downloads and assuming all who like it award it as they should, then it should work as a way of determining the % or the people that enjoyed the track. Yes I realise that only works with registered dl's though so that would make it very difficult but If it could be implemented then it would be the best thing since the install and play feature

The main reason I suggested that in the first place was because ever since I saw the highest awards list I've wondered what was the highest dl's/awards tracks list because I'm always looking for a fairer method. It might be true you'll never get an "accurate rating" from that but you don't get an "accurate rating" from most awards count either. I simply believe it is more accurate method of finding good tracks than the awards list which seems to me is "tracks that got to the list at the start and stay there because everyone has played them" Would it be possible to seperate which dl's came from people logged on and people on servers/offline people? That was you could make the dl/awards ratio list come from only the people who have the possibility of awarding it. Also, failing the dl/awards thing as I accept that it's almost definitely never going to happen, could you make the dl count visible on the track page for tracks other than yours as well as your own? I don't think that should be very hard to do and that would certainly keep me happy. that way I can do the dl/awards thing myself and I don't think anyone would bother abusing it.

Also, not all of that was directed at eie so if there's things in there that you go "I didn't say/think that" then well, that wasn't meant for you. I just don't know how to quote multiple people and I didn't want to make 2 seperate posts.

Some things that aren't for eie (and I didn't accidentally put in the bit that was meant for eie...

@Ville
It is actual feedback, it says, "you know how you made that track right there, yeah, that one, well, don't do it like that because it's bad." That sounds like feedback to me The main purpose of being able to give a "-1" is to tell them that they should look for ways to improve their tracking skills. The karma system for online does that nicely, if someone sees their track online has bad karma then the're more likely to try to make a better track next time than if it's not possible to tell them it's bad (or unpopular if you would prefer that term) Imagine the karma system if you couldn't put a --. Would it work any where near as well? NO. The awards system is basically that isn't it? Well, that with a comment attached, which half of the people who award don't use properly anyway.

@all the people (maybe only 1 idk) who say the new rating system for awards will fix the problem of highest awarded tracks always being the most popular.
Mr. A has said that you might not even be able to search by ratings. If you cannot then it doesn't really change a thing. And if you can only search for ratings in a secondary search then the awards count is still what matters and the top tracks aren't very close in awards count for rating to matter.

@ the people who said "well very good and all but I don't agree with a lot of it."
If you have the time (I know it will probably take a while) could you please tell me what and why?

@ the new ratings system, do you really think anyone will award it and then give it a 1 in rating, people will think of them seperately and as the people who award it obviously like it then I think the ratings will only range from 3-5. As I have read a fair bit about it I understand it and I will try to rate accurately but if I hadn't then I know that would apply to me. Wrong though it is.

Yet again that was too long to preview and so I don't know how right I got everything. Thankyou all for feedback btw, much appreciated and I hope for more after this.
Thanks in advance guys.

The system will be a compliment to the award system, not a replacement for it.

For instance, you will not be able to rate a track without awarding it. So the act of awarding it will show "I liked this track". Whatever you rate it will be based on that. You liked the track. Now, how much did you like it? Or, just how good was it?

This is nothing new. People have been rating tracks for years. They do it within their award. The rating system will just take that, and make it easier to see across all tracks, and will make it easier for all users to do it.

I have faith that the majority of people will use it responsibly and correctly. We know some people will misuse it, just as some misuse the award system. But you'll never get around that. In fact, I wouldn't want to. It's the human factor which keeps the system alive, interesting, and surprising.

How gives and award and give a negative rating - 1 ? (why award a track if you don´t like it, is it to say you opinion, hehe, thats not going to happen. lol, "I hope"

If you donate to mx, you get a dl counter and see what player that downloaded your track for x days, if its the same as tmx ofc....

= good track
-1 = "doesn't exist" so you cant give an award just to vote - negative that is redicolus...
you can only rate if you award, but hey there is beta area for all that want feedback,
but that is a award harbor, people say what to do on your track and whola you got x award
"i put my track on the frontpage of a news paper if i can" ithink i got
download = you can manipulate it easy, so nothing with that (10 click = 10 download)
is it possible to fix that. ("i know its possible but can you the mx team")? one click per IP or something ?

"I put my track on the frontpage of a news paper or in the television if i can"

edit: 30.000 character is to little for Themaniac2. Change it to 100.000 please, just in case ^^

I think downloads should be ignored in terms of rating. If a server runs into problems, for examples and needs to download its tracks again, it will run into problems. Trying to incorporate downloads is more trouble than it's worth.

Themaniac2 says:
3. It doesn't matter if it's not *nice* to a newcomer. Giving them a constructive comment isn't *nice* to a newcomer either, the point is that nobody has enough time to go around giving constructing comments to all the newcomers bad tracks because there are so many of them. People fear trying random maps because more often than not they are bad, a lot of the time their quality would improve if they knew they were doing bad. Take me for example, in TMUX I made a fair few tracks, all terrible, because nobody told me I was doing bad, when they did (and told me to look at the most awarded tracks, hence me stopping because of Crusard) I stopped building tracks. Is that a good thing, YES. I was contributing to the masses of time-wasting tracks that were not worth playing and I wish that people told me that sooner. Please stop worrying about newcomers so much as if they want to contribute to the community and aren't doing it right then it's better to tell them sooner rather than later and it saves them a lot of time.

T/MX is supposed to be nice to newcomers. I remember that as a newcomer it was important to me to get feedback, and if I had gotten too much negative feedback at that point, I'd given up. I know that I might've been a terrible builder as a newcomer, because nobody can make The Trump Card at their first try, because we improve all the time. If we all gave up because of too much negativity as a newcomer, we wouldn't have nearly as many great builders as we do. What we want is for newcomers to understand this, but with time, everybody can become pretty good.

tl;dr - Constructive feedback + Positive feedback is important, but never negative feedback.

I think there could be some confusion among the terms we use here. Or perhaps not. But to me, they mean this...

Positive feedback = Any information given to the builder to show what he did right. If it was the entire track, then "nice track" is still positive feedback. --- The majority of people welcome this type of feedback (although I've actually known one person who didn't).

Constructive feedback = Some feedback that the builder can actually learn from. It could be explaining exactly what part of the build could have been improved, and more importantly, in what way. It could be saying what turns or parts needed more signage, etc. It's probably best to be given in small doses. If a map has many bad parts, perhaps it's best to point out only the worst ones, and leave the other flaws for some other occasion. --- Most probably appreciate this kind of feedback.

Negative feedback = Any feedback which only serves to hurt the feeling of the builder without offering any helpful advice. "You suck", "this map is pure crap", etc. To be honest, I've only seen that 2 or 3 times on TMX. --- We're not amused. These types of comments are not helpful. If the comment is vulgar, it may even be removed by a moderator.

Again, negative feedback is rare on TMX/MX. I see it a lot on other parts of the interwebs though.

I guess ratings will fall into the positive feedback category, just as awards themselves do. They don't tell anything specific about the track, so they're not "constructive". But they're still a form of positive feedback.

eie says:
tl;dr - Constructive feedback + Positive feedback is important, but never negative feedback.

Exactly!

Something else to consider:

Constructive feedback is the most valuable to the author. It's also a lot less common than it should be. I still believe that whatever new system is set in place should encourage this type of feedback.

A ratings system succeeds (or at least that is the goal) in telling users just how 'well-liked' a track is by those who awarded it. This does NOT help an author improve. If anything, it improves the efficiency of which users choose the tracks they downloading.

A successful rating system is useful to both the author and those viewing the track page. Such a system has not yet been suggested ...