Metanet Forums

We (myself and a few other guys) have been talking about the possibility of Featured Maps and Bitesized co-existing side-by-side, becoming integrated or only having one or the other.

To define the poll options a bit more...

"Featured Maps ONLY" obviously means that you like having Featured Maps and prefer it to Bitesized.
"Side-by-side" suggests that you have thought about and would like to see both systems together on NUMA.
"Integrated" means that the importance of Featured Maps would be lowered (ie taken off the front page) but Bitesized maps would now come with a short review of sorts, something that bitesized maps didn't have originally.
"bitesized ONLY" obviously means you liked Bitesized and prefer it to Featured Maps.

We'd like to hear your opinions on the pros and cons of each. If we come to some sort of conclusion or agreement there's a possibility that we may get Bitesized back in some form or another.

There should be a few Bitesized maps a day, and one Featured map a day.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I find bitesize to be entirely pointless. It amounts to little more than a public favourites listing and feels bloated to me.

If you like to find good maps, then use what we have already:

Ratings.
Featured list.
Other Author's favourites.

Bsize always felt a little too easy, just click a link and add a map. Much in the same way friends up each others with candy votes, they did the same with Bsize. The thing became flooded, it really wasn't a list of the best of the best or anything, more a New Maps list without all the obvious chaff.

a happy song wrote:This might be an unpopular opinion, but I find bitesize to be entirely pointless. It amounts to little more than a public favourites listing and feels bloated to me.

If you like to find good maps, then use what we have already:

Ratings.
Featured list.
Other Author's favourites.

Bsize always felt a little too easy, just click a link and add a map. Much in the same way friends up each others with candy votes, they did the same with Bsize. The thing became flooded, it really wasn't a list of the best of the best or anything, more a New Maps list without all the obvious chaff.

I agree, that and the number of quality reviewers will probably drop if both are in place.

a happy song wrote:Bsize always felt a little too easy, just click a link and add a map. Much in the same way friends up each others with candy votes, they did the same with Bsize. The thing became flooded, it really wasn't a list of the best of the best or anything, more a New Maps list without all the obvious chaff.

What about if the map requires 3-5 bitesizes to actually be bitesized?

I like bitesize. :X

Techno wrote:I like bitesize. :X

So do I, but atob and r_t make great points.

I was not around for the bitesize system - at least, I don't think I was. It sounded cool, and upon my search for maps to feature I discovered that bitesizes often have more ratings and comments than featured maps today get. I understand that friends would nominate each other's maps, but what if incluye's idea was brought in? Say, 3 noms for a bitesize, and that way you get maps that at least 3 people like bitesized.

Today's features are usually dependant on the choice of one person - and even greats can make mistakes. If each "nommer" wrote a line or two as to why they liked this map, like a public book review, then you will have three reasons as to why you should play this map.

This would make the featured system less important, and only for digging maps up out of the archives - or ones that a reviewer believes we have missed during our bitesizing. On the other hand, I quite like seeing a map on the home page of NUMA, not just a list of news that is usually nonsense. (No offence to those who put it there.)

In summary, as much as I like my reviewer status, why not give 20 or so people the power to bitesize 3 maps a day? If a map gets 3 nominations, it is added to the bitesize search. Each bitesizer writes a line or two about why they liked the map, which would replace the review box, and give a reason to the community to play the map. That way we could have a maximum 20 maps bitesized a day, but I think we'd get about 10 a day.

I like this idea.

@atob/r_t:
This is the possibility with every system. There have been a few times in which I featured a map by another author mostly because of being friends. I think it happens less with Featured Maps because there is a spoken standard for what you should and should not feature. Part of the problem with bitesize is that it was anonymous. This would be corrected if it were to be brought back. Thus there would be some responsibility for the map that was bitesized and I think that would up the quality of maps.

Bsize just seems like a watered down featured maps system.

You're remembering it through rose-tinted specs, toward the end of its life Bsize was flooded every few minutes with average map upon average map. There's next to no quality control for it.

Even if you said x players must bsize this, it would just be announced on the page by someone that it needs x more and candy sizes would roll in.

Honestly, this is just a bad idea.

a happy song wrote:Even if you said x players must bsize this, it would just be announced on the page by someone that it needs x more and candy sizes would roll in.

I'm not sure about this. Not everyone was a bitesizer, and I'm sure at least some people can be treated as responsible (although pretty much none of the review writers anymore, I have to admit.)

a happy song wrote:Bsize just seems like a watered down featured maps system.

You're remembering it through rose-tinted specs, toward the end of its life Bsize was flooded every few minutes with average map upon average map. There's next to no quality control for it.

Even if you said x players must bsize this, it would just be announced on the page by someone that it needs x more and candy sizes would roll in.

Honestly, this is just a bad idea.

Well, I think everyone agrees that if we had bitesizing again that bitesizing rights should be handed out much more prudently.

incluye wrote:

a happy song wrote:Bsize always felt a little too easy, just click a link and add a map. Much in the same way friends up each others with candy votes, they did the same with Bsize. The thing became flooded, it really wasn't a list of the best of the best or anything, more a New Maps list without all the obvious chaff.

What about if the map requires 3-5 bitesizes to actually be bitesized?

Agreeing with this will be my one and only contribution to the thread.

SBD wrote:

incluye wrote:What about if the map requires 3-5 bitesizes to actually be bitesized?

Agreeing with this will be my one and only contribution to the thread.

I will agree too. If it takes two or three people to bitesize a map, then that will act as a decent enough quality control.

a happy song wrote:Bsize just seems like a watered down featured maps system.

I also agree with this, but that is exactly the point of bitesizing. It is a lower quality filter that will allow for more than one map per day.
For the players it will allow a daily selection of good maps to play, without having to search for them. The quality would generally be higher than sorting by rated maps.
For the authors, it allows more maps to be in the spotlight that may have otherwise been missed by the masses.

As an aside, what if maps could be tagged by the number of bitesizes that the map currently has? So you could sort by the maps that have one bitesize, or two, three or four bitesizes.

a happy song wrote:Bsize just seems like a watered down featured maps system.

You're remembering it through rose-tinted specs, toward the end of its life Bsize was flooded every few minutes with average map upon average map. There's next to no quality control for it.

Even if you said x players must bsize this, it would just be announced on the page by someone that it needs x more and candy sizes would roll in.

Honestly, this is just a bad idea.

Yes yes, I know, my only two maps that were ever bitesized were because I asked Condog.

If you're worried about "candy votes" and "candy rates" then you must surely be aware that "candy features" exist too. Blackson featured a map of mine because I asked him to. Maybe "candy features" don't happen as often but that is probably because of the frequency of the system. Ratings can happen 1000+ times per day and Bitesizing could churn out 30 maps in a day (of both new and old stuff). Featured Maps happens once a day.

I'm firmly behind featured maps only. Bitesizing with multiple votes required is effectively adding a whole extra system of voting, one where participation is limited to the arbitrary elite. At least with the reviews, there's a standard—if you can write good reviews, you should be able share them with the community. What's the standard for bitesizing—that you can select good maps? According to who? Whoever controls admissions. The result is a narrow system that would reflect their own biases and tastes. You could try to counteract this by allowing more people to participate, so Bitesize reflects a broader selection of views, but even in this best-case scenario, Bitesize is redundant. Fairly reflecting the public's views is what the normal voting system is supposed to do. Bitesizing has to be about exclusivity, and ultimately, it's always going to be subjective.

The featured maps aren't immune from subjectivity, of course. Someone still has accept reject applicants. But, firstly, they have more to go on: the reviews. You could have Bitesize applicants write reviews of their own, but if you're doing that you might as well publish (feature) them. Secondly, featured throws up one map per day. It's obviously just one person's opinion—and that person's name appears at the end of the review. Bitesizing is on a significantly greater scale. It's still exclusive, but not as exclusive as featuring. While features are clearly just one person's opinion, there's an element of 'publicness' (for want of a better word) and seeming objectivity to Bitesizing, because of the numbers involved and also because of the anonymity. You can remove the anonymity, but however you implement it, Bitesize will always end up suggesting that this is what people who matter think, and if you're not one of these people, you don't matter. More to the point, it suggests that bitesizing matters and ratings don't.

Bringing back Bitesize would indicate an acceptance of a couple of things. First, that some people's opinions are more important than others. I know this is true, but I also know this is a subjective judgement, and I don't feel it's appropriate to be making such a subjective—and yet, as I mentioned above, outwardly objective—system a part of NUMA proper. When Bitesize NUMA was a separate site, this was not an issue. The other thing that bringing back Bitesize would be demonstrating an acceptance of is that the current voting system isn't an accurate reflection of which maps are best. This may well be true, but the solution is to fix the existing system, not to tack another still-flawled system on top of it.

Edit: expanded on my views.

Manus Australis wrote:

a happy song wrote:Bsize just seems like a watered down featured maps system.

You're remembering it through rose-tinted specs, toward the end of its life Bsize was flooded every few minutes with average map upon average map. There's next to no quality control for it.

Even if you said x players must bsize this, it would just be announced on the page by someone that it needs x more and candy sizes would roll in.

Honestly, this is just a bad idea.

Yes yes, I know, my only two maps that were ever bitesized were because I asked Condog.

If you're worried about "candy votes" and "candy rates" then you must surely be aware that "candy features" exist too. Blackson featured a map of mine because I asked him to. Maybe "candy features" don't happen as often but that is probably because of the frequency of the system. Ratings can happen 1000+ times per day and Bitesizing could churn out 30 maps in a day (of both new and old stuff). Featured Maps happens once a day.

Featured maps (1 per day) and bitesize (no limit) are nowhere near the same in this regard. And as you go on to reason, you show us clearly how the difference is weighed. I'm not quite sure what that post was in aid of.

Clearly there is a lot more potential for the Bsize system to be "abused".

My main problem is that Bsize is just not needed. At all.

We have Featured Maps which have decent quality control.
We have favourite lists.
We have Sidke's plug in.
We have the Hot maps floating the best (most rated) maps.

Do we really /need/ another system in place? Especially one that really doesn't show off the quality it's supposed to and is literally a public favourites list.

It just seems rather bloated to me.

-

PS - Ninja'd by Maestro. And he' perfectly on the ball with this one, imo.

Why not give the reviewers the ability to do it? Go with the 3 votes system and have it essentially be a more regular but less prominant review, where all three reviews are shown together with the map. This would eliminate the concern of who is doing it, at least, as much so as we have with the featured maps system, and would provide the userbase with quality maps more regularly.

Everyone wins! :D

I will fight tooth-and-nail against the "3 votes" system. It is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard seriously considered for NUMA.

romaniac wrote:For the players it will allow a daily selection of good maps to play, without having to search for them.

Search for them? Is pressing "Next 10" really that hard for some people to do. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to use thumbnails to filter out the rubbish if you've got even a semi-decent knowledge of mapping and mapmakers.

*Sigh*

We've been here before many times.

Me, over a year ago wrote: They have a choice of a near guaranteed selection of all the good maps, or those same good maps, but with the poor-average maps mixed in. I know which I would choose. Giving this kind of choice is bad for the development of new authors.

Yet again mintnut brings our attention to an excellent point no one seems to have considered.

xVxCrushloaderusSupremusxVx wrote:Yet again mintnut brings our attention to an excellent point no one seems to have considered.

It's been mentioned in thread already: hot maps does all you need if you know what you're doing.

a happy song wrote:

xVxCrushloaderusSupremusxVx wrote:Yet again mintnut brings our attention to an excellent point no one seems to have considered.

It's been mentioned in thread already: hot maps does all you need if you know what you're doing.

Which wasn't this point:

mintnut wrote:They have a choice of a near guaranteed selection of all the good maps, or those same good maps, but with the poor-average maps mixed in. I know which I would choose. Giving this kind of choice is bad for the development of new authors.

Which is that bitesize siphons attention away from average maps. We have a good deal of hullabaloo from time to time over constructive criticism and the lack of ratings and comments on most people's maps. By implementing bitesize, we give people the opportunity to be completely ignorant of maps which aren't of a certain quality level. This will hinder the progress of new mappers who need advice and guidance.

The argument for bringing back bitesize comes down to two points of view.

1. "Bitesize numa would be a cool thing which I'd enjoy quite a bit."

2. "Bitesize numa is not beneficial for the community as a whole, and could have negative long-term effects on the state of numa."

mintnut wrote:

a happy song wrote:

xVxCrushloaderusSupremusxVx wrote:Yet again mintnut brings our attention to an excellent point no one seems to have considered.

It's been mentioned in thread already: hot maps does all you need if you know what you're doing.

Which wasn't this point:

mintnut wrote:They have a choice of a near guaranteed selection of all the good maps, or those same good maps, but with the poor-average maps mixed in. I know which I would choose. Giving this kind of choice is bad for the development of new authors.

Which is that bitesize siphons attention away from average maps. We have a good deal of hullabaloo from time to time over constructive criticism and the lack of ratings and comments on most people's maps. By implementing bitesize, we give people the opportunity to be completely ignorant of maps which aren't of a certain quality level. This will hinder the progress of new mappers who need advice and guidance.

The argument for bringing back bitesize comes down to two points of view.

1. "Bitesize numa would be a cool thing which I'd enjoy quite a bit."

2. "Bitesize numa is not beneficial for the community as a whole, and could have negative long-term effects on the state of numa."

Right, overlooked that one and I totally agree. That's probably the best argument against the system and goes hand in hand with Maestro's criticisms.