Add-on Ratings changes

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RoyKirbs

RoyKirbs

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Hey all.

Over the past few months the rating system has shown some serious cracks overtime in how it's consistently used without consistent critical results. While there are some of you that do try to put out thoughtful critique on community add-ons, many more amount to simple "This is great/this sucks" without much more to go on or otherwise end up way more unhelpful. There's also a decently large group for "review bombing" either bad or good that has made the ratings system desperate for a big change.

So after some discussion with the rest of staff, we're making the following changes that'll be felt on the whole of the MB:

  1. Ratings are no longer weighted with any sort of point value. You can still rate an add-on 1-5 on your review, but it'll only be for getting a review onto the reviews tab. If you wish to tell a user if you liked the add-on without reviewing it, go and hit the COOL button on their resource to tell them they did a good job. :)
  2. There is now a 100 char minimum for reviews. If you wish to use the review system to review an add-on you will need to put thought into what you wish to say about it. If you wanna post something that's under 100 characters, the discussion thread for each add-on is always open to do so for troubleshooting, bug reports and discussion of that add-on in general. In addition, any means of circumventing this limit will lead into a review deletion, warning or ban if necessary.
  3. The "COOL" button has received a massive upgrade. At the top of each thread you'll find a button that says "Sort by reaction score". This will allow users to see which posts got the most "COOL" reactions in any given thread. This is intended to help find important, meaningful, thoughtful, or just...COOL posts in general without having to dig through 200 pages of posts. So we highly encourage our users to react to these type of posts with a COOL to help everybody find the COOL posts.
We hope everybody understands these decisions and hope you have a very pleasant day.
 
Last edited:
so is anything supposed to be here
1730777773268.png

cause it feels kinda empty without the stars
 
RoyKirbs said:
Hey all.

Over the past few months the rating system has shown some serious cracks overtime in how it's consistently used without consistent critical results. While there are some of you that do try to put out thoughtful critique on community add-ons, many more amount to simple "This is great/this sucks" without much more to go on or otherwise end up way more unhelpful. There's also a decently large group for "review bombing" either bad or good that has made the ratings system desperate for a big change.

So after some discussion with the rest of staff, we're making the following changes that'll be felt on the whole of the MB:

  1. Ratings are no longer weighted with any sort of point value. You can still rate an add-on 1-5 on your review, but it'll only be for getting a review onto the reviews tab. If you wish to tell a user if you liked the add-on without reviewing it, go and hit the COOL button on their resource to tell them they did a good job. :)
  2. There is now a 100 char minimum for reviews. If you wish to use the review system to review an add-on you will need to put thought into what you wish to say about it. If you wanna post something that's under 100 characters, the discussion thread for each add-on is always open to do so for troubleshooting, bug reports and discussion of that add-on in general. In addition, any means of circumventing this limit will lead into a review deletion, warning or ban if necessary.
  3. The "COOL" button has received a massive upgrade. At the top of each thread you'll find a button that says "Sort by reaction score". This will allow users to see which posts got the most "COOL" reactions in any given thread. This is intended to help find important, meaningful, thoughtful, or just...COOL posts in general without having to dig through 200 pages of posts. So we highly encourage our users to react to these type of posts with a COOL to help everybody find the COOL posts.
We hope everybody understands these decisions and hope you have a very pleasant day.
Click to expand...
Epic! If I release a mod, I will most likely have actual criticism I can learn from!
 
I think i would do this a lil differently but I appreciate the dosage, but I'm still waiting for being able to edit reviews, but besides that this is kinda cool ig
 
The change would've made it more significant if this hadn't happened. It's something for sure, I don't mind if this stays on the MB for a long time (As long as it goes through some changes and adjustments).
 
I bet that this change will make some planning modders more brave to start modding without having to fear of being banished into the 1-star realm on their first mod they ever done with zero experience looking for ways to get better.

Before that, there could be a situation where they would only get a one sentence review that just states the most obvoius thing. ”It’s bad” And what about? Nothing, just a statement that causes the modder to worry for no reason seeing that the only addon their posted has 1 star and desperatly trying to search for issues in a mod that they thought was flawless because of no actual feedback.

And I was also getting tired of people looking at a good addon that had some small tiny issues like lacking in some departments. And them looking you straight into the eye and... ”1/2 stars” they won’t even acknowlage the effort that IS present in the addon, they just pretty much dunk on it forcing the modder to again stress for no reason thinking that they’re a bad modder and other negative thoughts that could be stopped if the reviews weren’t point based and didn’t have such a big impact on the mod itself BEFORE even someone would play it. (Speaking from experience... I think, I mean the feelings were present but I’m not sure if they were justified. I just worry about stuff too much. :C)

And apperantly youtube is testing removal of views, which kinda reminds me of this change here, but unlike in youtube, here it’s actually helpful and not a burden for an average user.

A lot of people probably judge addons by the rating and not by the actual contents of it, which will mean that some people won’t even play it which will finally cause less feedback that will cause the modder to stay in the same hole because he can’t build a ladder by himself.

And the removal of ratings will probably make users more curious to at least take a look at the overview page at worst. And at best they will actually play it and give feedback that they wouldn’t give if they saw that this addon had 10 1-star reviews. (But there are still people that care about making ”bad” addons better either way.)

And won’t lie, some people just aren’t the best people to make reviews honestly... Which will cause yet a g a i n unnecesary stress to the modder because they got a 1 star review that’s just straight yapping without any substance, sense nor the original vision of the addon.

And some people in their reviews compare other addons to other better ones... Like dawg, are you reviewing MY addon or praising someones else unreleated work...

To me, the best way to review an addon is to act like it’s in a limbo. There’s no M.sonic’s nor any X.sonic’s. The only addon that exists is the one you review. (And comparing addons is just a jerk move in my opinion. This can really ruin the self esteem of the modder knowing they will never reach the level of someone like motdspork or blueblur which will cause them to at worst quit srb2 modding forever.)


Summirizing this wall of text.

Thanks for making this change, it will make modders feel more welcome and will get rid of any possible mental issues (like low self esteem) that could’ve been, and now will be avoided.


PencilVoid said:
Add a downvote/unCOOL button.
Click to expand...
Why? So you can downvote hard work of people? >:C If something requires a downvote (In a moment where most people barely use upvotes) then it’s probably a situation that should be reported to the staff...

And this could also cause the same issues that were JUST fixed by getting rid of ratings. :|

And there’s a chance that people would missuse downvotes as 1-star reviews instead.


Sorry If some of my points don’t make sense or sound rude, most of the time I tend to not interact with such topics because I might just start yapping without sense, but this one is a special case because it’s pretty much close to my heart.
 
Maverick said:
as someone who has a hard time describing things, the 100 char limit is going to make reviewing a pain in the ass
Click to expand...
Your message alone has 90 characters... :oh: And from what I noticed only the symbols count towards the limit. So you don’t have to merge words together.

But I feel like still the best way to make reviews is in the discussion thread itself because you can actually SHOW what is wrong or how it could be changed visually. Mainly through images and in-game screenshots.
 
A change for the better I think. A lot of addons were unfairly banished to no-rating hell and didn't encorage people to give them a shot because "no stars = bad addon". Weird not seeing the stars by addons though, I think there should be something to fill that gap, or just close the gap entirely.
 
ehhhh, I don't know about this, on one hand, I really dislike the 100 char limit, I think long reviews that go into detail can be more helpful then ratings but whatever, I guess this kinda encourage using the discussion page more and on the other, I'm mixed on the removing the stars rating as I personally liked the 5 stars system, it's tells me what's addon ""bad"" and good/what's worth checking out (saves me time lol) also, this so oddly similar to what YT is doing with the removing dislikes and now, the likes thing so, I rate this change 3.0/5 stars, not as bad as other pervious system change (now, pls add like dislike or un-cool. button or something and the empty space now looks so weird/stick out more)
 
I do agree with this to a point. Yes, it can't be guaranteed that star reviews can be relied upon as an accurate judge on quality, but I do believe we need something to allow the addons that really stand out to be found if one was to search based on overall quality, and I do believe this can be done while retaining a positivity aspect.

Consider the idea of three possible ratings based on Sonic terminology.

Cool
Way cool
Way past cool

People who are new to mapping won't get a reprimanding rating while being incentivized to get better in using the tools and in making an engaging map. The fact that reviews are expected to be more detailed now (and possibly more helpful) should also help make such a system work.
 
I liked the new change. I feel like I'm more ready to upload one of upcoming mods without fear that i'll be in the 1-star realm and could fix a mental issue.
 
RoyKirbs said:
Hey all.

Over the past few months the rating system has shown some serious cracks overtime in how it's consistently used without consistent critical results. While there are some of you that do try to put out thoughtful critique on community add-ons, many more amount to simple "This is great/this sucks" without much more to go on or otherwise end up way more unhelpful. There's also a decently large group for "review bombing" either bad or good that has made the ratings system desperate for a big change.

So after some discussion with the rest of staff, we're making the following changes that'll be felt on the whole of the MB:

  1. Ratings are no longer weighted with any sort of point value. You can still rate an add-on 1-5 on your review, but it'll only be for getting a review onto the reviews tab. If you wish to tell a user if you liked the add-on without reviewing it, go and hit the COOL button on their resource to tell them they did a good job. :)
  2. There is now a 100 char minimum for reviews. If you wish to use the review system to review an add-on you will need to put thought into what you wish to say about it. If you wanna post something that's under 100 characters, the discussion thread for each add-on is always open to do so for troubleshooting, bug reports and discussion of that add-on in general. In addition, any means of circumventing this limit will lead into a review deletion, warning or ban if necessary.
  3. The "COOL" button has received a massive upgrade. At the top of each thread you'll find a button that says "Sort by reaction score". This will allow users to see which posts got the most "COOL" reactions in any given thread. This is intended to help find important, meaningful, thoughtful, or just...COOL posts in general without having to dig through 200 pages of posts. So we highly encourage our users to react to these type of posts with a COOL to help everybody find the COOL posts.
We hope everybody understands these decisions and hope you have a very pleasant day.
Click to expand...
I guess everyone's on the same plane here, huh? I mean, everyone has a chance here at modding...
 
I admit that it is usually useless to remain a rating in terms that if I want to describe a lot, in the review I usually write "see discussion" because it is inconvenient to communicate between the player and the author of the addon. Although maybe I agree with @PencilVoid the fact that players can’t just put 5 with the word “yes, it's cool” is cool, because I believed it strange that I can say that the addon is peak and put this 5, but I could not put 1 and say that the addon is bad and I'm obliged to give this a more detailed review than if I put this 5 with the word cool and I'm not obliged to argue why this addon is good.

And I wonder which addons had Review Bombing?
 
Kudos for the good move. Bold.

I think this will be good in the long run, especially for newcomers. Also, the 100-character minimum is something I would never think about, and it's kinda genius. Makes it clear that if you want to say something without giving detail you should just use the COOL (or maybe the report) button, though I would appreciate having the COOL in a more convenient place, as the current location feels kind of off. Maybe it could be a the top? Maybe at multiple places? I dunno. I'm no UX guy.

Also, is it just me or the adjectives for the 5 stars were a little weird and out of line with a typical 5-star system?

The Okay option, if i'm not mistaken, was 2 stars, so I would always feel bad giving it to things I thought were just okay, and in response I would inflate it to 3 (which is what I would give if the stars weren't labeled that way). And since the 3 upper stars were all so positive, I felt like 5 stars would imply that the addon changed my life or something. Also, grading someone who's clearly new would always feel kind of rude. Just saying where they should improve instead of gutting their ratings feels a lot better.

Anyway, where are the trolls accusing you of censorship? I'm not used to a place on the internet being so accepting of a change like this.
 
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