| User | Post |
|
12:48 pm
September 13, 2008
|
Orrin
| | |
| Admin
| posts 139 | |
|
|
The game ratings exist so players can give their opinion on a game they have played. You can only rate each game on the site once so please consider carefully the rating before you make it as you cannot change your mind later
This is not a top site and the ratings are not a voting system, rather it is a peer review system for the whole of the MudGamers community. I should also point out that 'Top Rated' is only one metric that is used on the site to present games – there is also 'Most Popular' which measures the number of ratings, so when you rate another game as one star you are in effect pushing that game up this ranking.
I hope people realise that providing useful tools to the player community to allow them to find games to try is of benefit to everyone who is a part of this community and 'gaming' the rating system benefits nobody. It is my hope that players who come to this site will enjoy playing from the many different games we have here and that we can all cooperate to share players rather than compete for them.
|
|
|
12:13 pm
September 16, 2008
|
goran
| | |
| New Member | posts 1 | |
|
|
Sadly enough, I believe you are overly optimistic about the rating system becoming a tool for cooperation rather than competition.
The site has only been on-line for a few days, and already some joker has systematically downvoted all games but his/her own. Unless each new game automatically is assigned the generic rating of 1 on registration, it appears to be far to systematic to be put down to legitimate voting.
Personally I think there should be at least some kind of filter to discourage this type of immature behavior.
For instance, if one isp rates one game as 5 stars, while at the same time rating 10 others as 1 star, this is hardly a case of that player actually playing all 11 games and finding one of them superior, with all the rest were sub-par. It's rather a manifestation of the same biased voting that repeatedly became a problem on MudMagic, to downvote the competition in the hope of making your own game appear better.
I think you should at least consider removing all votes from the isps that show this pattern, to quench it in the cradle.
|
|
|
12:46 pm
September 16, 2008
|
Zenen
| | |
| New Member | posts 1 | |
|
|
Although I agree that the rating down of others' games is pretty immature, it also propels those games up the "most rated" list (as per Orrin's post above). I assume Orrin can see who is doing the rating and will come to a decision about whether or not to deal with the relevant parties if it becomes more of an issue.
I guess we all hope this site will develop a community which is mutually supportive of each others' MUDs rather than turn into a beauty contest between administrators  .
|
|
|
1:00 pm
September 16, 2008
|
Orrin
| | |
| Admin
| posts 139 | |
|
|
I am not sure that a rating filter like the one you describe would have much of an effect. It may well end up blocking some legitimate ratings and those determined to game the system will likely still find ways around it. However I will keep an open mind about it and may look at ways to improve the ratings system in the future.
My main concern however is that no rating system is perfect so I'd rather just have one that is simple for players to use and understand and requires the minimum of administrative intervention. All the ratings are recorded so I do know exactly who is doing it, however I don't want to be the policeman of the ratings system and have to deal with constant complaints of unfairness.
I hope that in time the effects of this kind of rating manipulation will be mitigated in the following ways:
1. When I roll the site out beyond the existing MUD community I hope to get a lot more traffic of casual gamers popping in to check the site out. I may at that point lift the membership requirement to rate so hopefully the games will start to get a lot more ratings. This way the legitimate player ratings should start to outweigh those 'shill' ratings from administrators.
2. Each member can only rate a game once (if I remove membership requirements then it will be restricted by IP) so that should limit the impact of organised rating by administrators. Yes they can create multiple accounts but it's not like a voting site where they can keep doing it every 24 hours.
3. The rating system is only one way that games are presented. The most popular and most recent lists are independent of the rating given (indeed a game given a large number of 1 stars will still be top of the most popular list). I will also be highlighting particular games on the front page and there is a search and tag listing facility too. It won't be that visitors to the site are necessarily drawn only to the highest rated games.
One thing I may do is remove the star rating from the summary display of each game as shown on the front page so it's only visible once a player clicks through to the game listing page. Ideally I would like it so players can only rate the game from the actual Flash client page so at least they need to have connected to it to rate it, however with the plugin I am using that is not easily done but I will keep it in mind.
|
|
|
8:41 am
September 17, 2008
|
Molly
| | 4dimensions.org 6000 | |
| Member | posts 17 | |
|
|
One thing I'd like to see however is the option to change your original rating.
I like the way you can rate the threads on TMC, and then go in afterwards and change your rating. Quite often a thread starts out poorly, deserving only one star, and then turns into a quite interesting discussion, that deserves a higher rating.
Or, of course, the opposite.
Muds change over time too, so being able to change your mind would probably be appreciated. It would not be a new vote, just replacing the old one.
|
Molly O'Hara of 4 Dimensions
|
|
|
2:53 pm
December 11, 2008
|
Orrin
| | |
| Admin
| posts 139 | |
|
|
You no longer need to be a registered member to rate games and you can rate each game once a day if you wish.
|
|
|
4:01 am
January 17, 2009
|
hollis
| | |
| New Member | posts 7 | |
|
|
The site has only been on-line for a few days, and already some joker has systematically downvoted all games but his/her own. Unless each new game automatically is assigned the generic rating of 1 on registration, it appears to be far to systematic to be put down to legitimate voting.
Just a thought… these sorts of problems can be dealt fairly well by, e.g., basing ratings on medians instead of means. There's also other little tricks you can do, like cutting off the top and bottom 10% of the ratings before you calculate an average. Of course, there's no perfect solution, but there's some easily calculated statistics that are (very) resistent to these sorts of problems, as long as they're not epidemics.
If the issue is negative abuse, you can always just remove the possibility for it — only allow people to "support" a mud (say, by clicking on a checkbox instead of providing a scalar evaluation). Effectively, then, you're only counting votes from people who would have voted high (say, 4 or 5). For high quality muds, their ratings will basically come out the same (with a bias towards older muds, since they've had time to accumulate more supporters). And if you want to remove the effect for how long the mud has been listed, you can limit people to, say, an editable "top 3" or "top 5", all of which receive a "support" marker.
|
|
|
4:14 am
January 17, 2009
|
hollis
| | |
| New Member | posts 7 | |
|
|
In retrospect medians probably wouldn't be the best option, due to the small number of possible values ratings can have. But cutting off the top and bottom 10% of ratings before calculating an average will work and pretty much do the same thing as a median, giving you an average measure resistent to people artificially deflating the ratings.
|
|
|
6:28 am
January 24, 2009
|
zivilyn
| | |
| Member | posts 15 | |
|
|
ROfl, just when I thought the downvoters had forgotten about the site, blam blam and we drop points.
I'd actually hoped there'd been a limit to vote for only one game per day…
|
  Zivilyn/Skol/Dave
|
|
Forum
; "Smile"){kind=small}
