Suggestion about ratings and rate-sorting

[Nexx]

IMO, two big issues need to be addressed on NUMA:
(1) listing manipulation
(2) ability to find good maps easily

I have a suggestion that address both issues at once (though not fully), and it's almost the same as what mintnut suggested in notsteve's thread: what if every rated map also had a tag that indicated its rating?

Why?
This would probably be on the easy side to implement, and it would let you find good maps quickly, which was the point of top-rated for me. This would allow people to find pages and pages of very well-received maps without giving the wrong impression of overall rank. And new maps wouldn't suffer as much rate polarization as some maps did in the old top-rated. Also, it would give you more general flexibility in looking for maps.

Logistics:
Yeah, it wouldn't just be a number. This is open for discussion, but in the current system, I'd propose a "rated" and a "rated:x" tag, where x is the rating, though if Arachnid ever got his fancy flexible search up, it could just be a "rated:x" tag, and that way you could still just search "rated" and get back all rated maps.

Potential problems:
Let me be blunt. This is going to put more emphasis on ratings. It's still going to put maps in a ranking, though just in the way that the rating system naturally does. People with the power to snipe will be able to find all those 5-rated maps now. These are all true. And if you find yourself thinking they would cause all hell to break loose if such a system were implemented, then I think it's time you put your money where your mouth is.

NUMA has a rating system. This sort of thing is exactly what that rating system is designed for. Also, certain things like featured maps and the float/sink system already put "more emphasis" on map ratings and they work pretty well, no? If placing "more emphasis" on ratings somehow ruins the rating system, then what good is it? Get a better system. One that can do what it's set up to do. My point is that if you have a problem with my above suggestion, then I think you really you have a problem with the ratings system. So if you're going to complain strongly against this, either suggest something to replace the ratings system (or explain why the ratings system should be removed without replacement) or explain why you think that there can and/or should be ratings without the ability to use that rating data in searches.

[mintnut]

Just to say, my suggestion was that there would be a page which would give you 10 random maps with a 5 rating...

[origami_alligator]

NUMA has a rating system. This sort of thing is exactly what that rating system is designed for. Also, certain things like featured maps and the float/sink system already put "more emphasis" on map ratings and they work pretty well, no? If placing "more emphasis" on ratings somehow ruins the rating system, then what good is it? Get a better system. One that can do what it's set up to do. My point is that if you have a problem with my above suggestion, then I think you really you have a problem with the ratings system. So if you're going to complain strongly against this, either suggest something to replace the ratings system (or explain why the ratings system should be removed without replacement) or explain why you think that there can and/or should be ratings without the ability to use that rating data in searches.

I'm not against the rating system, but I would like to point something out to you.

When Arachnid and I were discussing the new features for NUMA during the redesign he mentioned many times that he wanted to take the emphasis off of ratings and give people a system that would allow them to continue to rate but to give the feeling that ratings were not the deciding factor of a good or bad map. I think he achieved this with the following two changes:
1. Removal of half-ratings. Everyone that complains about the loss of half-ratings doesn't realize how much of a nuisance they were. Maps that are now rated 4 can probably be expected to be rated 4.5. If we had 1/4 ratings (1.5, 1.75, 2, 2.25, etc.) I would imagine that a lot of maps would be rated 4.75, just because it is the next best thing to rating a 5. Why I say that the removal of half-ratings was a good thing was that it took the emphasis off of what you rated a map. Now you can rate something a 4 and leave a comment saying what you really thought it deserved, thus making the comment mean more than the rate, which is a great system I think. Any system that emphasizes comments over rates is a bonus in my book.

2. Removal of Top-Rated and Bitesized maps. What's the best way for snipers to find maps that are good that are worthy of sniping? Go to the place where other people believe the map deserves an extremely high rating. Sniping has cut down immensely since the redesign. For the first month or two of NUMA there were absolutely no reports of sniping that I had heard of. Now we get a report of sniping every couple weeks. Compare that to sniping every day. Old NUMA was full of sniping, flaming and trolling on an almost daily basis, from what I understand. NUMA today is less so. We have less flaming. Less spam. Less sniping. Less is more, IMO.

To me it looks like a lot of things that we hated about old NUMA have all but disappeared, thanks to reducing the emphasis on ratings and bringing in a moderator system that works very well, if you ask me.

It's a nice suggestion but I don't find it appealing really. You can feel free to tell me if I may have made any points that you don't think are true.

[Superpok]

thanks, i'd never heard it explained that way, that clears a lot of things up for me

[Nexx]

2. Removal of Top-Rated and Bitesized maps. What's the best way for snipers to find maps that are good that are worthy of sniping? Go to the place where other people believe the map deserves an extremely high rating. Sniping has cut down immensely since the redesign. For the first month or two of NUMA there were absolutely no reports of sniping that I had heard of. Now we get a report of sniping every couple weeks. Compare that to sniping every day. Old NUMA was full of sniping, flaming and trolling on an almost daily basis, from what I understand. NUMA today is less so. We have less flaming. Less spam. Less sniping. Less is more, IMO.

Sorry, this is a late-ass response.

Anyway, you're seriously using snipers as a reason not to implement a feature? Because that's... I mean... that's just wrong. From my discussion with b_t in that other top-rated thread, he made it sound like NUMA has a purposeful laissez-faire policy towards snipers. Basically something to the effect of "there's no way to track it, and even if there was, it wouldn't be a good use of the mods' time." Fine. I can understand that. But you can't then go and use snipers as a reason to not implement something. That's not a laissez-faire policy.

Really, it seems more like you're just interested in doing whatever minimizes sniping while permitting normal users to have as much functionality as possible. And that's not a bad thing to shoot for. But there just needs to be a way to find highly-rated maps (including those that aren't recent). Yes, that let's the snipers find those good maps, too. Oh well. There's no way around it. If you can find a way around it, please let me know. Otherwise, maybe you can do something other than have a laissez-faire policy. :\

[wolfgang]

I like your idea, it shouldn't be hard to implement and it adds another layer functionality to the site.

I just want to bring back bitesizing, it does exactly what b_t wants Hot Maps to do now, highlighting the best recent maps. Hot Maps completely fails at this, but does work well as a new maps page which rewards good contributions, although is perhaps unfair to the newer users.

[origami_alligator]

Sorry, this is a late-ass response.

Anyway, you're seriously using snipers as a reason not to implement a feature? Because that's... I mean... that's just wrong. From my discussion with b_t in that other top-rated thread, he made it sound like NUMA has a purposeful laissez-faire policy towards snipers. Basically something to the effect of "there's no way to track it, and even if there was, it wouldn't be a good use of the mods' time." Fine. I can understand that. But you can't then go and use snipers as a reason to not implement something. That's not a laissez-faire policy.

Really, it seems more like you're just interested in doing whatever minimizes sniping while permitting normal users to have as much functionality as possible. And that's not a bad thing to shoot for. But there just needs to be a way to find highly-rated maps (including those that aren't recent). Yes, that let's the snipers find those good maps, too. Oh well. There's no way around it. If you can find a way around it, please let me know. Otherwise, maybe you can do something other than have a laissez-faire policy. :\

I want NUMA to implement a deviantART-styled function, because they have some of the best ideas for websites that involve archiving things that I'm surprised nobody really ever seems to listen to people when they suggest things from deviantART that would work wonders for NUMA.

Here's what I would propose for Hot Maps, which seems to be the "top rated of the moment" page (not the New Maps page, that's Active Authors).
Implementing both user-functionality and a great way to find top rated maps, I propose that Hot Maps have a 6-part system, as follows:
1. 8 hours
2. 24 hours
3. 7 days
4. 1 month
5. 1 year
6. All Time

Under each would be the top-rated maps for each category. A map that received an amazing rating within 20 minutes would sure be at the top of all of the lists, but as they were rated up or down they'd move up or down the lists according to what people rated. I think that this would allow people to continue to see the top-rated maps of all time while allowing them to see what has been recently top-rated so that they can play good maps.
The only issue is that Hot Maps shouldn't be the main map page if this were the case. I've been working a little bit here and there with ideas for a redesigned Active Authors page that has an author's latest submitted map as well as their most recent unrated map (or random if that's easier for Arachnid to code). I would propose this be the first page you see when you click on the Maps tab so that you can see newest maps first and then top-rated maps second.

I want to be diplomatic as it seems you are right, sniping isn't a good reason to not have a Top-Rated system. If you see anything you disagree with please point it out and I'll be sure to either explain my point on it further or come to an agreement with you.

[Nexx]

I want NUMA to implement a deviantART-styled function, because they have some of the best ideas for websites that involve archiving things that I'm surprised nobody really ever seems to listen to people when they suggest things from deviantART that would work wonders for NUMA.

Here's what I would propose for Hot Maps, which seems to be the "top rated of the moment" page (not the New Maps page, that's Active Authors).
Implementing both user-functionality and a great way to find top rated maps, I propose that Hot Maps have a 6-part system, as follows:
1. 8 hours
2. 24 hours
3. 7 days
4. 1 month
5. 1 year
6. All Time

Under each would be the top-rated maps for each category. A map that received an amazing rating within 20 minutes would sure be at the top of all of the lists, but as they were rated up or down they'd move up or down the lists according to what people rated. I think that this would allow people to continue to see the top-rated maps of all time while allowing them to see what has been recently top-rated so that they can play good maps.
The only issue is that Hot Maps shouldn't be the main map page if this were the case. I've been working a little bit here and there with ideas for a redesigned Active Authors page that has an author's latest submitted map as well as their most recent unrated map (or random if that's easier for Arachnid to code). I would propose this be the first page you see when you click on the Maps tab so that you can see newest maps first and then top-rated maps second.

I want to be diplomatic as it seems you are right, sniping isn't a good reason to not have a Top-Rated system. If you see anything you disagree with please point it out and I'll be sure to either explain my point on it further or come to an agreement with you.

Wow, that post was awesome, Manus! Thank you for being diplomatic. :) :)

Anyway, I absolutely agree with that suggestion. But since it's not really related to my initial suggestion, and I've been thinking about other issues with top-rated recently, I think I'm going to make another thread.

[im_bad_at_n]

maybe we can change it so people know each persons individual ratings

Benefits:
we know who's sniping
we know what people like Meta_ing and Turtles think versus other new people
we can understand who likes our maps more versus other people, for example, i noticed myself and Technochocolate rating each others maps a lot recently
we can know who rates ANYTHING without putting a comment: i ALWAYS comment before i rate, especially old maps so the authors know that their old maps get attention.

[mintnut]

This has been discussed before, and it won't be implemented. It 's all to likely to cause sniping wars, with little real benefit.

[blackson]

I like this idea. Supports.