Staredit Network

Would you consider my Rep & Rewards system for v5 (outlined in the other thread)? That would take away practically all the work of needing judges, a seperate map reviews forum, etc. I think that would be the best way to go.

There should simply be a post in the rate and review forum that has a list of "premium maps."

And one problem with this, is after a while a premium map would go out of style. There would be better reproductions of it, or at least something there that has qualities like it that replaces it, who decides which maps would have to be weeded out after a while. I know I loved playing team orion defence back in the day, but now there are much better maps out there.

Just leave our dldb the way it is dude...

Only thing different that you should do is to make the Map Reviews Database available for everyone to write one. I myself (or someone else) will look at every single review that comes in, play the map to see if the review is accurate, and approve it. I will ensure that quality, accurate reviews will come in. This way, people can't just submit half-assed biased reviews that overrate/underrate maps. Any map can have as many reviews as possible.
You know those websites that rate teachers/professors like http://www.ratemyprofessor.com and such? Well this map reviews database will work exactly the same way. I will ensure that only high quality and accurate reviews get in.

And if you people want maps to be recognized, word of mouth is ALWAYS the best way to achieve it. Think about it, how did all of these past "premium" maps get so famous? Simple: word of mouth. Someone plays it, really loves it, and tells others about it. Tell me when has this method ever overlooked a good map?

The only thing wrong with our DLDB is the quality of maps accepted. Some of the maps are unbearable. Our DLDB needs higher quality standard, rather than "If there's start locations, it can go in".

Actually, I have to admit, after being one of the biggest supporters of the premium map section, I think reviews for every map and much higher quality standards for the DLDB is a much better idea. That way we can just skip this entire process, and people can just read the reviews for every map that is submitted, most of which would hopefully be fun to play with higher standards and good descriptions through reviews.

You can't avoid it. People all end up making their own little personal "premiums" lists anyway. Rather than letting them do their own thing for only the few popular or well-publicized maps they hear about, it would be better to have people who know what they're doing help suggest the maps they should play instead. That would do more justice to the true quality maps out there failing to get the appreciation they deserve than simply leaving things as they are.

Avoiding bias, elitism, etc. would all be a function of how well the reviewing system is setup. Hence what we've been discussing up to now.





ADDITION:

That would be a great way to set a base to build off of for helping people to decide which maps they should play, but I think we've established going through the entire DLDB to review everything is an impractically large amount of work. Some sort of compromise is almost a requirement (or else a new system from scratch, ala Rep & Rewards), given the number of entries there would be needing to be reviewed.

More power to you if you're up to the task, though.

These map reviews, they probably don't have to be all that lengthy, they can just be objective and straight to the point. We don't need one for every map in the database.

Now think about this; if someone plays a good map, they'd probably want to let everyone know about their thoughts of the map, which usually means a good review. If someone plays a crapty map, I highly doubt they'd give a decent review, if any at all. So if you see that a map has tons and tons of reviews, it'd let you know that this map really was something unique enough for people to mention, whether it be good or bad (based on the ratings it got.)

I agree that a reward system would be good for submitting map reviews. But then people like me (hopefully) can make sure people don't submit half-assed reviews just for the prizes (like minerals.)

Wait wait wait... who said that we will need to review the whole DLDB ?

Well I assume "higher standards" for the DLDB implies coverage of existing maps as well as the newer ones. Unless you want to find some way to be exclusive about which maps get the "higher standards" treatment, or something.

Millenium, that only covers the popular or semi-popular maps. If watching bnet is anything to go by, quality != popularity. You'll get good maps that likely won't get much attention every now and then, like either for just having bad luck or being too 'new' for most to make anything out of.


The idea I hoped would be to make a system to help recognize the good maps that might not necessarily also be the 'popular' ones.

But also consider, some files in the DLDB can't be reviewed. For example, how are you going to review a grp file? And you can't rate an experimental map for fun factor.

I though that we are discussing the idea of members introducing a map that they think should be premium. And not looking through all the DLDB.

We were. I was just replying to this post:

To be honest, finding a good map to play in our DLDB is real pain in the ass. The ratings are just abused to the limit, nobody gives anything but 1 or 10. There are so many maps and there are very less maps worth to try.

I want it so I can click on a "premium maps" and get all the good maps without spending hours to find something decent.

Some maps are better than others, I want to play those maps. Anything bad with it?

Then just post a topic in StarEdit Related... "What is a good RPG map?" or something.

Anyway, here's how I'm envisioning a system:

1. Any registered member can write a review for a map and give it an overall rating of one through ten.

2. Some review rater takes a look at the review to decide if it is valid. He can either delete the review or accept it. An accepted review may recieve minerals... none if it is barely a valid review, or something like 5, 10, 20, or 30 depending on how well it was written. This is the incentive to write reviews.
Perhaps to encourage reviewers to get maps that aren't very popular, the first review of a map will get a +10 mineral bonus?

3. Once a map gets two or three reviews it becomes eligible for "premium" status, but it must have an average rating by the reviewers of at least seven or eight. Then somewhere there's a big fat list of all these maps.

I'd go with average rating of 9+.

Otherwise, that sounds good.

From all this I do not understand one thing. To review a map you must create a topic, and then all the next reviews (if other people want to review it as well) are written in the same topic ? So it will be a topic per map ?

Ok, I will make a topic every time I want to play something good? And wait till people post thier maps? I don't think so..

Hopefully between several hundred active members there would be more than one map mentioned. Perhaps you could even start your own "BEST MAP EVER!!!!!" contest.

Jammed, no. The reviews and downloads database would be improved for v5 and these things would be automated with code. Even if the downloads and reviews databases weren't integrated, it would still be a big improvement.

So you don't want premium maps on v4? Lazy ass.

i so want this to happen!! It sounds great and would help getting new "WoW" maps to play and enjoy. Ill judge btw I am almost 0 bias because i dont care who made it ill judge on what it is. If its a clan member and the map is crap ill tell them, and not play it anymore. though my rating skills are not great i can tell good maps from crap and well made

Minimooses idea sounds kind of good.
Well I'm fine with anything as long as we dont end up having an "elite" map category in which the supposedly "better" maps get placed in after lots and lots of ratings.


I don't get why some of you people want to make it so that these maps, even after getting lots of good reviews/ratings, would become it's own seperate "higher class" category. It seems as though you guys think that you'd be one step closer to fame by having your map placed in a "higher class" map category, which will pretty much attract all the traffic in the DLDB, leaving the other maps in the normal categories untouched.
Even though you guys are saying that placing maps in a more elite category would make it easier for you guys to find good maps, you guys also see this as an opportunity to try to bring recognition upon yourself by getting one of your maps into that category. When people visit this section, they'd probably take special note of who made what map, which is what you guys pretty much want to happen.


But if it isn't about fame, then reviews are way more than enough! All you gotta do is have a little function that sorts maps by overall ratings (factoring in the number of reviews it got.) Making a seperate category for the maps that have lots of good ratings/reviews is unecessary.

The problem is that nobody is interested in writing reviews if it does close to nothing.

But I guess this was a bit too big step for a website like this....

To be honest with you, I don't believe that v5 will come out in the next 1-2 years.

The only thing I never fully weighted and considered during all of this was the fact that it would draw an unfair amount of attention away from the other maps, which really isn't a good thing. I'm for moose's idea, too.. even though we will have to wait a couple years

And you don't think people would end up only downloading stuff with the higher rated reviews then? Might as well put it all in the same place.

Hate to break it to you but exclusivity, elitism, etc. are all facts of life. Along with limits in human energy, time, and patience. There's I think enough entries in the DLDB to make reviewing each and every one of them impractical by a judges panel (over the long term). Plus most of the time it's easy to tell at least when a map sucks, which doesn't take an expert to do. You likely can rely on the public at least for that much filtering.


Anyway, as I said, if you want to avoid unfairness then it's not a matter of avoiding any kind of "Premiums" section so much as it is engineering the criteria to define "Premiums" to be fair in the first place. As I said, people all end up making their own selections of prefered maps for themselves in the end anyway. I'd rather have a set prescribed to them from people who know what they're talking about than to let them pick only the popular and obvious stuff, and never even get to see the bigger picture.




Anyway in order to define "Premiums" at all, again, you have to define quality in the first place. Getting the basic system for reviewing maps in the first place will be the prereq for that. I like Moose's outline, but I think it could use a few improvements still. It'll do for now, though.