propagating UMC reviews/ratings on forums

[Blarumyrran]

Currently, there are very few ways for a Wesnoth-player to decide which UMC to download. There are ~371 addons on stable addon server so that's a serious problem. There is no organized place of reviews/ratings to turn to, to make such a choice. Writing reviews & giving ratings (as a player) doesn't require any special skills, and surely there are MANY people who play lots of UMC and are at least slightly willing to get integrated with the community and so should be in a position to do exactly that.

I think the problem is that the potential review/ratings writers don't believe their reviews/ratings would be appreciated, or they don't believe they could reach the people who would care, or they think they would be attacked due to the subjective nature of their reviews/ratings. Also, currently there's incentive for someone who has played through a piece of UMC to put his "reviewing effort" into the forum thread of that campaign, to help the authors improve their campaigns rather than to help potential other players to make an informed choice of what to download/play.

Rating systems where the addon interface displays a score, have been rejected (probably since they are too easily abused to promote your own campaign and because they can't handle different versions of the same addon very well), so I'm not proposing that.

I propose there be a separate "Addon Reviews to players" subforum. It would be the opposite of the current "Addon Feedback (to their authors)" forum. In "Addon Feedback (to their authors)" there is one thread per addon, with various people-who-have-played it giving feedback (to its author); but in "Addon Reviews to players" there would be one thread per reviewer, with various addons-that-he-has-played rated/reviewed (to people considering what addons to play) by that reviewer only. There could be a minimum number of addons you should have a review for, before starting a thread there. Thread topics should have the number of add-ons reviewed/rated, perhaps threads in the subforum should be sorted by that number instead of most-recent-threads-first.

To get people posting there, there could be messages of something along Write reviews on forums.wesnoth.org , in the "Addon Reviews to players" section! and Not sure which add-on to try? Read reviews from the "Addon Reviews to players" section on forums.wesnoth.org ! in the Wesnoth client.

[pyrophorus]

It seems to be a good idea.
An attempt has be done in the wiki (http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Guide_to_UMC_Campaigns), but it's much less visible, and there's no rating.
Friendly,

[Pentarctagon]

That page also is only for UMC campaigns, not every add-on.

[ancestral]

Headache.

Ratings and rankings bad, reviews good.

[Blarumyrran]

Headache.

Hangover here as well.

Ratings and rankings bad

on the opposite, ratings are great. Ratings from various people compared against each other are problematic, but ratings from the same person compared to each other (as they would be in this case) are much less so. Hence the "There could be a minimum number of addons you should have a review for", to establish a scale.

[Dugi]

on the opposite, ratings are great. Ratings from various people compared against each other are problematic, but ratings from the same person compared to each other (as they would be in this case) are much less so. Hence the "There could be a minimum number of addons you should have a review for", to establish a scale.

Might not be a good idea, I would never give somebody whose add-on is not a total unfinished and abandoned garbage less than 3/5, and I would probably rank only those who deserve 5/5.

Some dishonest add-on makers would possibly use some proxies and other stuff to pretend to be multiple people and rank their add-on positively. If there are people who can write the name of their add-on in green to attire attention, people who give their add-on an image that comes from the add-on and anyone who doesn't have that add-on gets an error into the terminal that makes him read the add-on's name frequently, I don't believe there is enough rightful people.

But still, I kinda agree with you.

[ancestral]

I guess the only concern I have is that add-ons get updated frequently, and old reviews will get less and less relevant. Keeping a system up-to-date will be quite hard; we have a hard enough time with the wiki, and there’s not a great way to expire, de-rank or ignore forums posts.

[lipk]

Some dishonest add-on makers would possibly use some proxies and other stuff to pretend to be multiple people and rank their add-on positively. If there are people who can write the name of their add-on in green to attire attention, people who give their add-on an image that comes from the add-on and anyone who doesn't have that add-on gets an error into the terminal that makes him read the add-on's name frequently, I don't believe there is enough rightful people.

According to the proposal: 1, people would have to write reviews, not just hit a 'Like' button or such, which is much more of an effort, 2, cheaters would have to review other add-ons as well to be taken seriously, so... if someone is such an idiot that he would spend hours every day typing on the computer just to get more downloads, then, I say, we should not deprive that poor soul of this little joy. For average authors, it'd be more efficient to simply improve their add-ons.

I guess the only concern I have is that add-ons get updated frequently, and old reviews will get less and less relevant. Keeping a system up-to-date will be quite hard; we have a hard enough time with the wiki, and there’s not a great way to expire, de-rank or ignore forums posts.

I think it's actually quite rare for add-ons to undergo notable quality improvements; and if it happens, authors could probably take the effort to drop a note to prominent reviewers. Also, readers would see the articles' age, just like any other forum post's.

[Dugi]

According to the proposal: 1, people would have to write reviews, not just hit a 'Like' button or such, which is much more of an effort, 2, cheaters would have to review other add-ons as well to be taken seriously, so... if someone is such an idiot that he would spend hours every day typing on the computer just to get more downloads, then, I say, we should not deprive that poor soul of this little joy. For average authors, it'd be more efficient to simply improve their add-ons.

They would have to review more add-ons to be taken seriously... what if several fake reviewers' accounts were made, and a group of dishonest campaign-makers united to get higher together, and each of them reviewed his add-on, and moved the account to somebody else, who would have reviewed his add-on, passed it to somebody else...

Improving add-ons, that is easy to say, but hard to do (I am not a case, I am still expanding my add-on, but I have ideas what to expand, I somehow decided to make enemies sometime drop items when killed, then I started refining the item system until it got insanely complex and there are still lots of things to work on, and also my whole campaign was supposed to be finished 2 years ago, I just decided to expand it later), but most people simply finish an add-on and start working on another. What can you improve on a story that is finished except for minor changes like improving some scenarios, animating units (a lot of people actually should do this) and so on?

[nuorc]

Currently, there are very few ways for a Wesnoth-player to decide which UMC to download. There are ~371 addons on stable addon server so that's a serious problem. There is no organized place of reviews/ratings to turn to, to make such a choice.

When I'm about to download I usually know what I'm looking for, either some specific addon has caught my attention (in the forum), or I'm looking specifically for map packs/eras/RPG/sx/campaigns etc, so ~371 is reduced significantly. There's also other parameters like DLs, Race, version number, thread activity, user's comments in the thread....

Why don't you start "Blarumyrran's addon rating" thread? You could either just have your reviews/ratings or accept others' too (maybe with a sticky with "top rated"/"top reviewed".

[Pentarctagon]

They would have to review more add-ons to be taken seriously... what if several fake reviewers' accounts were made, and a group of dishonest campaign-makers united to get higher together, and each of them reviewed his add-on, and moved the account to somebody else, who would have reviewed his add-on, passed it to somebody else...

There is no "reward" for getting more downloads (money, status, recognition, etc) except you have a slightly larger number next to your add-on so the incentive is already really small. Even if some people do decide to band together and do this, the worst that will happen is that people download whatever add-on(s) they are conspiring to promote, play it, see that its bad, then uninstall and move on (and maybe even write their own review saying they were misled).

[Dugi]

You don't seem to have written a campaign or era (everything the search for your name found were things you are maintaining, what you've ported, etc.), so you probably don't know how good it feels when your add-on gets more downloads than others, if it is somewhere high on the list, when a lot of people know about your add-on, and so on. Why would somebody colour the name of his era green otherwise? Why do so many people hurry to publish their add-on into the new add-ons' server when it comes out? How can something have 100 uploads (I am partially guilty for this too, I have 76 uploads, but from the first version uploaded I added 60 scenarios, about 20 units, about 30 abilities, a complex inventory and stat system and fixed hundreds of bugs)?

There should be a better solution for this, let's say more than 50 posts and not being friends with the author instead of 5 reviews. Or by people proven to be able to write 'this campaign is mediocre, worth playing, but only if you have finished better ones' or 'unfinished, useless garbage, though the original idea seemed to be good'. Maybe a forum group 'add-on' critic' could be created for this.
And if the possibilities of misuse get solved, maybe it would be useful if some reviews were also visible on the add-ons' server.

[Pentarctagon]

You don't seem to have written a campaign or era (everything the search for your name found were things you are maintaining, what you've ported, etc.), so you probably don't know how good it feels when your add-on gets more downloads than others, if it is somewhere high on the list, when a lot of people know about your add-on, and so on.

Thread for my stuff, very first thing is something I made myself. Started working on it over 2 years ago and have not had 1 person has mention it either in the thread or anywhere on the forums (so yeah, I guess you'd be right ). I made Debug Era and the CaveMPS scenario pack as well, but have since removed them. I also helped out with the (now dead) Era of the Future.

Why would somebody colour the name of his era green otherwise?

Its worth noting that the ability to color add-on names has, iirc, been removed since 1.10.1.

Why do so many people hurry to publish their add-on into the new add-ons' server when it comes out? How can something have 100 uploads (I am partially guilty for this too, I have 76 uploads, but from the first version uploaded I added 60 scenarios, about 20 units, about 30 abilities, a complex inventory and stat system and fixed hundreds of bugs)?

Personally, I publish them as soon as they work and upload new versions if/when I find and fix a bug or add a new feature (currently at 59 uploads). Not to mention (at least for the development version) testing out new features.

[Dugi]

That was not my point. I was speaking about writing campaigns or eras, simply classical add-ons. Resource packs (also that Debug Era) serves rather UMC writers, and not too many people use custom music (well, in the case of A New Order, it is the main source of size). And if you wrote something and then removed it, I just didn't know about it.

Edit: Dammit, you're editing your post too quickly.

Its worth noting that the ability to color add-on names has, iirc, been removed since 1.10.1.

I am not speaking about the method, I am speaking that people want to cheat, even if you consider it useless.

Personally, I publish them as soon as they work and upload new versions if/when I find and fix a bug or add a new feature (currently at 59 uploads). Not to mention (at least for the development version) testing out new features.

Yeah, I said I also have a lot of uploads, even more than you, I also upload it whenever a I make a change worth mentioning (new units, important bug fixes, important changes), but I read somewhere around (cannot remember where) that some people make new versions with the tiniest changes to increase the downloads count up.

EDIT2: Readers, please take into consideration that the post above has been edited after that I wrote this, so some dialogue consistency might be lacking.

[Pentarctagon]

Yeah, sorry about that, I should have just taken more time when writing it the first time.

If people really wanted to cheat in higher download numbers, all they'd have to do is repeatedly re-download their own add-on or someone else's (or just make tiny changes constantly, which as you said is already done). Both methods would be a lot easier.

But let's say that a group of people do actually get together to promote each other's add-ons as much better than they actually are. They are successful and get a bunch more downloads than they would have gotten otherwise. It won't last, since people who read the reviews and downloaded it would come back and say that it actually is really bad. So in the end the only thing they'd really harm is their own credibility and possibly be banned from the "reviews" forum (one of the bonuses of having a forum for it, since you can't ban people from a single topic), similar to how a couple people have been banned from the Art forums for giving bad feedback.