well, of course it always depends on how you ask for feedback if it's regarded as spam.

Not necessarily. Even with polite and honest wording, you still don't want to approach strangers asking them to try it. The accepted policy is to only send messages to folks involved with the track already (i.e. betatesters). Of course, if they ask you to stop, then you really should.

What bothers me is that we don't have a rating system. And we do have a rating system. And it's called awards.

We use it as a measurement for the best tracks(of the week, month, year, all time). And yet we claim it's not a rating system, but rather a system to give authors some feedback and recognition. Can we come to a conclusion on this problem, because to me it is fairly hypocritical thinking.

There are some solutions to this problem, but I'm not going to elaborate on that right now, but it's clear that it might be time to see other opportunities. The previous thread about rating-systems on TMU-X did not end very well, and I'm not sure what the best solution would be. Awards seem to work very well, but the fact is that we don't seem to agree upon their function. I think that is the first step towards a solution here.

About advertising people to award/comment on their track: It is mostly fairly annoying, most people don't like to be told what to do. ^_^ Again, there isn't any agreed definition of what an award is, so even if people advertise and tell people to award a track, that might not be enough to make people understand that they want feedback. So remember to be clear on that if that's what you want.

Awards themselves are more of a popularity system. The text that goes with the award (a boost in popularity) is for criticisms and complements.

If the system was used like this, there wouldn't be as many complaints about it. I do think that it's time to at least move away from using the word 'best' with tracks that have a high award count.

@ Bucky:
You're right... But I've seen quite a lot of user profiles with sentences like 'Will be happy to try out your tracks' on them. Mainly on Sunrise Exchange though.
On United Exchange, I sometimes got PMs from unknown authors asking me for feedback, even though I didn't say anything about that on my profile page. But I usually tested their tracks - and I never regretted doing that.
Well, maybe there were also some 'track spammers' and I'm just lucky I was never dealing with them.

@ eie:
First, I think it would help a lot if on MX, terms like 'best of the week / month' wouldn't be used. It has already been suggested several times, and I don't understand why it hasn't changed yet.
About asking for feedback: I've seen that a lot on Sunrise Exchange, too, while nobody complained about that there. Though, I agree saying sthg. like 'please award this track!!!' is not ok of course.

It would be nice if people stopped abusing the awards, and use them as *points*, because a lot of them are currently used as that. How can we change people's attitude?

Maybe we should make a separate rating system to keep those people happy, or make it clear that rating system will never exist on T/MX? Either way, I think something has to change.

Maybe make a character mininum on awards, forcing people to write longer, (and hopefully) more constructive feedback on them? That could still be abused, but it would certainly be more difficult.

Just some thoughts, because I think we could need more ideas =)

eie says:
W
Again, there isn't any agreed definition of what an award is, so even if people advertise and tell people to award a track, that might not be enough to make people understand that they want feedback. So remember to be clear on that if that's what you want.

From my experience, most people asking for awards want exactly this = awards. They don't care a whole lot about feedback, they want awards. Because it makes them feel like they are climbing up an importance-ladder or something..
So yes, most people look at the award system as an indicater for quality and/or acceptance.

But what I see from the past 6 years of award discussions is that there is not much we can change about it. And neither would any rating system change or stop the endless complaints.

There will always be people feeling discriminated by the system as soon as they don't appear in the top lists.
The fault is always in the system. And there will always be people trying to trick the system.

So I think it is naive to think any other system than the award system would be better. In fact I believe that any other system would be even more prone to cheating and regulated by one's popularity.

While someone with lots of friends will get more awards than a lonesome author it would be even worse within a rating system. The same guy would get lots of fishy top ratings while the lonely one gets no ratings at all, just because he's unknown.

So once again, no system is perfect. It will always be corrupted by the players. That in mind the simplest system is doing the job just fine - thus keep the award system. TMX has grown popular with it, it has become what it is - the most popular track swapping site for TM.

ok lets break down these points shall we.

1. you say the award system isnt working as designed.
2. 6 years of discussions and TMX havent tried anything else?
3. you say the system isnt working as designed then blame people for feeling discriminated and flaming the system.
4. your advice is live with the broken system because we cant be arsed to work on anything better.
5. you fear cheating and abuse of a new system but condone the way it is currently abused.
6. the simplest system isnt doing the job fine otherwise these threads wouldnt keep appearing.
7. just because TMX has become popular doesnt mean you should sit back on your laurels and watch the world go by.

observations:
if individuals can abuse the system we need to minimise their impact with more people.
if we attach the track page to the like/dislike option on aseco (or other program) suddenly you get masses of data which you can turn into a percentage.
the data you put on the page would be something like: servers contributing to the score, percentage like/dislike out of total players poled. eg. (10 servers, 58% like, 643 players)
this type of thing would really show up inconsistencies in the awards because you could get loads of awards but a large dislike.
a way to encourage servers to use the system would be to have a server of the week board.

now this bit above is called an idea and its there for everyone to poke holes in. but importantly if enough people start working on it eventually we might come up with a decent system.

so come on TMX stop been so negative and engage the community in figuring out a solution so we can all stop flogging this dead horse of a topic.

the above post about feedback got me thinking (up near bucky).
i have created this thread in an effort to get some.
experiment in track building feedback
a bit off topic but all for the lolz.

scala says:
ok lets break down these points shall we.

1. you say the award system isnt working as designed. Where?
2. 6 years of discussions and TMX havent tried anything else? Tried what? All 101 systems suggested? Maybe 1 per day? Or wait a few days to collect more complaints before moving on to the next one?
3. you say the system isnt working as designed then blame people for feeling discriminated and flaming the system. I don't blame anybody, I sight. And again, I don't say the system isn't working. It works, for more than 6 years until now.
4. your advice is live with the broken system because each and every other system has it's flaws as well.
5. you fear cheating and abuse of a new system but condone the way it is currently abused. See point 4.
6. the simplest system isnt doing the job fine otherwise these threads wouldnt keep appearing. Do you earnestly believe in any other systems these threads would not appear? You must be a dreamer.
7. just because TMX has become popular doesnt mean you should sit back on your laurels and watch the world go by.

When do you start realizing tmx is no server and adapting a server voting system is nonsense.

Further more there are plenty of players liking the current system. They just don't bother (or don't bother anymore) debatting about it.

Anything becomes popular for a reason, most likely because it's good and people appreciate it.

Go and ask Facebook to remove their 'like' button. It's not gonna happen.
There's lots of people flaming on it but even more who use and enjoy it, you just won't see them debatting about it.
I'm not comparing mx with facebook.. just so nobody picks up on this now.. ah they will anyway. lol