Understand that we who have taken a position against a ratings system have done so with thought and reason, not negativity and the thrill of shutting down ideas (which is not thrilling at all).

It is my belief that the fallacies of the ratings system will become clear, and we will get a lot complaints, just like people are rallying behind it now.

eie, you confound disbelief, doubts and oppinions different from yours with beeing negative.

You want changes so much that you overlook all counter-arguments or call them negative.

You say award system has flaws but don't want to see the flaws in other systems.
You talk about all the good things in other systems that come true in a transparent and fair world, but the world isn't transparent and fair.

You want to regulate the voting system which tells just perfectly the flaws in it. And the flaws don't disappear with your regulation. They just make the voting pool tighter by cutting the edges making it harder to differ great from average tracks.

And you just ignore all the other arguments brought to you from me and other people who don't see a good change in a voting system.

btw "you suck, go and die" is something you hardly see here.
I've played thousands of tracks, been on thousands of track pages and you'll find less than a hand full of these kind of insulting behaviour.

Idiots like these will write that shit no matter if there is a voting system or not. They insult you for the sake of it.

Just to be clear. I'm not against ratings. I'm not sure I'm for them either though.

I just see a lot of potential problems with it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. But we should be fully aware of how it will be used and potentially misused before we even think of adopting it.

I think some of us are, especially those of us who have observed "friendly awarding" and the general trends of the community over the last few years.

You have to imagine every type of user using the ratings system. Some will use it properly and always vote what they think. Other people will use it to try and balance the rating on the track. It could work in both directions. If someone sees a track with a rating of 2.1 and think it deserves 4, they might rate it 5 in order to raise the average.

I know people think in this way because people have all kinds of wacky ideas about the award system itself. I've seen many users explain to me that they think a track is overrated because it has more awards than they think it deserves. They liked the track as well, but they tell me they won't award it because they think it has too many awards already.

Of course we know they're using the system incorrectly. But we have to accept there will be a certain percentage of people that see things in their own quirky little way and will use the system how they think it should be used, instead of how we intend it to be used.

Perhaps the best way to adjust for those types of ratings is to make sure that ratings are visibly tied to the person who gave the rating. Why? Well, awards have comments. It's sort of a way for the user to own up to the fact that he awarded that map. Same with comments. You're associated with the comment you've given.

I think people are less likely to be extreme with their ratings if their reputation is tied to it. Of course some people don't even care about that either, but it could be a step towards preventing some misuse.

One thing I can see with ratings not being associated with awards. We might end up with a LOT of ratings on tracks. If you compare the number of downloads a track gets to the number of awards or comments it gets. There's quite a separation in numbers there.

I compare ratings to the ++ and -- ratings you see online in aseco servers. I know it's a different system, but you get way more votes in those systems than you presently see with the award system. It gives authors a lot more statistical feedback about whether their map is fun online or not. It doesn't tell exactly why it is or not, but it gives a general idea about the map. It's primary intended for server owners to manage their tracks of course.

I think more users would take the time to click their mouse and give a quick rating. A lot of people can't be bothered to write some feedback about the track when they'd rather open the game again and do some more driving. It's probably why we see so many awards with just a few short words.

People who want to give feedback will still do that. I'm quite sure the ratings system will have zero effect on those users writing their lengthy feedbacks. What it would do is eliminate all those one word awards that it seems many people dislike getting (I know this has already been mentioned by others).

This would also probably mean that the number of awards on maps will go down, but the number of people rating maps will go way up.

Regarding the idea to eliminate top and bottom scores...
That's an interesting concept that is already used in the MTCs. But I'm not sure it would be wise to use it in track ratings. For instance, how will you know the difference between a user who is legitimately rating a track 1.0 and a user who is only doing it to lower the rating closer to what he thinks it should be? You can't know. The guy who is legitimately rating a track 1.0 should not have his vote ignored. Why is his vote any less valid than someone who voted 3.0?

In the MTC it's different because none of the judges know the votes of the other judges until all votes are tabulated. So there's no influencing other votes with your own.

There will always be some bad with a new system. You're not going to get away from that or eliminate that.

I think the question is... does the good outweigh it and make it worth having the new system?

I'm still not sure if it does.

But educating users about the system would be a major part in how successful it is.

SkunkY says:
btw "you suck, go and die" is something you hardly see here.
I've played thousands of tracks, been on thousands of track pages and you'll find less than a hand full of these kind of insulting behaviour.

Same. I've seen something similar maybe once or twice. Mind you, I was mostly active on United TMX. I think such comments were possibly a little more common on TMNF TMX. My experience so far is that MX is made up of a combination of the more mature TMNF players and the United players who tended to be a little older anyway. So I'm not too worried about people making those types of comments.

We may have another thing coming when there's an influx of new players with ShootMania. But only time will tell on that.

Educating the users ... we could have used that for the current system. What I'm saying is don't count on education to make the system work. Count on users being uneducated as far as using the system goes. this means that a user's first impression of the system has to be the right one. I'm not sure the ratings system (or the awards system for that matter) fulfill that criterion. I predict a lot of people will associate 1 star as negative because it's the minimum, just a lot of new users now might associate awards with quality instead of popularity.

if everyone accepted the "it works so let it be" idea then we would still be in the stone age.
the idea should be not to keep things the same but to improve them a little in every generation.
yes it isnt easy and not without risk but the benefits could be great. (for one this thread could stop )

tbh im wondering why this is all still going. MrA has stated that hes working on it and im sure whatever system he comes up with will be a good compliment to the current one.

since i have the anwser to the reason i opened this thread you have my blessing to close it.

Got a really nice idea, later when im on a computer I will try to explain it.
It should be' hard to implement, but really nice for avoiding lazy, friendly awards, and increase feedbacks.

...

Can't we just agree that awards with rating is a good idea. (I know it might not be, but we should still be trying other things once in a while =))

But we could still have some tweaking with the system. We want people to give feedback, but some people just don't care about that. Let them be able to give an award without text. Nobody is going to be hurt.

If all users actively uses the rating system, in the end we will get a somewhat fair rating, because there will always be some people rating 1 on ALL tracks. If ALL tracks get a rating of 1, it would just make all ratings lower, but we would still have tracks with a higher rating than 1, just because a single rating doesn't make a very big difference.

We have to understand that a rating system is different than awards. That is important because with different systems we will get different results. Both positive and negative, but we can choose if we want to look at the positive opportunities if we want to be optimistic, and vice versa.

eie says:
Can't we just agree that awards with rating is a good idea.

No, we can't, which is the very reason this discussion is happening. You can't just expect me (and others who are opposed) to say, "I don't think it should be implemented, but it's a good idea." That's not going to happen without a sufficient argument (which there has not been at this point).

eie says:
We have to understand that a rating system is different than awards. That is important because with different systems we will get different results. Both positive and negative, but we can choose if we want to look at the positive opportunities if we want to be optimistic, and vice versa.

It is important to weigh out both positive and negative repercussions of one's choices before they are made. This is true even outside of this discussion. Those opposed believe that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, which logically means that it's not a good idea. We're not dismissing the positive arguments.

MrA mentioned the idea in the thread, but it doesn't mean us discussing it is pointless.


To reply to Bucky's earlier post...

I agree that users will see 1.0 as a negative vote.

What if it was shown on the voting page like this:

Good * * * * * Awesome

With those words on either side of the scale.

Would they still vote on the furthest left star and think it's for a negative vote?

But it's kind of beside the point.

I still think there should be negative ratings. I know SkunkY's point on the last page about not hurting user's feelings. And I don't wish to do that either. But even critiques and feedback could have that effect now. Is it really our job to shield the userbase from the truth about their tracks?

The ratings should either represent the full scale of people's opinions or else they shouldn't exist at all.

But there is also the possibility that the entire community could improve if people got better feedback about their tracks. Consider this scenario:

A user who never gets any awards or comments but has uploaded about 30 maps here on MX suddenly begins to get ratings on his tracks. The ratings are quite low, between 1.0 and 3.0. This causes him to question why they're so low. So instead of being inactive in the forums and only posting his tracks with no screenshots and no author comments... he gets curious as to why these ratings are appearing and so he finds the forum and asks... why are my tracks getting low ratings? This causes some other users to check his maps and give him feedback about why they think his tracks received low ratings. The user is grateful and seeks to improve his maps. And he's suddenly a little more active and participatory within the community. It's a good thing and it all turned out well. He can still delete his maps with low rankings if he wants to update them or perhaps just start over from scratch.

That's just one scenario. It could of course go totally south and the user could get frustrated and simply quit TM. But really, that's up to each user on how he will react to a low rating.

--

I will fully support ratings if they're added and hope the best for the system. I'll also do whatever is required of me as a moderator to ensure integrity of the system. But just because I work here (as a volunteer) doesn't mean I don't have my concerns, and I'm surely within my right to voice them.

I DO want the site to move forward. I DO want the database of tracks to have rich metadata to be able to find diamonds in the rough even when the track has been posted months or years ago. I've played 10s of thousands of tracks in the past with every intention to find unknown authors both for the frontpage showcase and also to have some different and unique maps for my online server.

I also think users deserve to get some feedback about their tracks, whether they spent 20mins making it or 2 weeks.