Resource / mod reviews

[Johnr777]

I've been vocal and ranting about this for a long time... and here it is again... the review system is, in my opinion, still flawed.

The up vote / down vote buttons were a good addition (whether they influence the impact of the review on the overall rating of a mod, I have no idea...). But at least it was something.

Now it seems you can only up vote reviews? Random lurkers, unknown community members, with zero messages, zero resources, can still pretty much troll on any mod review, or inaccurately rate something lower because they dont understand the concept of a forum.

Sure, there's a report button that helps, and the RD moderators are usually pretty quick to remove ridiculous ratings. But that only really works if the content creator himself monitors that section, and of course... can't remove reviews based on peoples different point of views, as inaccurate or biased as it might be.

I only ask that content creators get a bit more help and protection from trolls with a fair rating system for their mods. Some of us spend an insane amount of time creating a mod, upload it here for free in hopes for at least some recognition, only to see Jimmy wingnut complain about a cloud not being cloudy enough.

If I may suggest...

- a simpler likes + views + downloads equation to rank mods
- up vote / down votes buttons that can remove the effect / reduce the impact of a dumb "best mod ever - 3/5 stars"
- limit reviews to people that actually contribute / message regularly in the forums

my favorite: allow content creators to review back in addition to comments.... rate the quality of someone's review.



Anyways, boring day at work. Race Department is a great website and happy so say I really enjoy spending my downtime on here. And really appreciate the hassle free mod hosting space

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Good feedback, thanks @Johnr777. I'll see what we can do to improve this.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Downvoting reviews is now possible, fyi

 

[Johnr777]

Downvoting reviews is now possible, fyi

That’s great Bram, thank you!

 

[Johnr777]

On this same subject, when reporting a review, why can’t we reply to the moderator after a decision is made?

“your reason is not valid” - end of story

 

[RasmusP]

In addition to the good points in this thread:

As far as I know, you can only edit your review as long as the creator didn't comment on it.

Which is why if someone gives a weird "review", I tag the user in the support thread to reply to his question.

I had a few edited or deleted "reviews" after solving the issues.

"review" = "I did everything right, why not work?????" - 2 stars

 

[Smokey17]

I believe that a system with 5 stars should not exist in the current community. This is appropriate for paid products. But the modder community works for free. Personally, I spent dozens of hours on an important modification for the community, but then in the review, some newcomer puts a rating of 1-2 stars and writes "how to install the mod? or "i dont like green color". This is very frustrating. Even 4 stars make you think that you personally did something wrong.

The best solution is to make the likes system a priority. Bad modifications will simply get few likes, and good ones will get a lot. Any bug in the modification should be discussed in a separate thread.

The community should fight against toxicity, at least for those who do it for free. I personally know several people who have stopped doing modifications for this reason.

P.S. Thanks for report button, this a useful thing

 

[Johnr777]

I believe that a system with 5 stars should not exist in the current community. This is appropriate for paid products. But the modder community works for free. Personally, I spent dozens of hours on an important modification for the community, but then in the review, some newcomer puts a rating of 1-2 stars and writes "how to install the mod? or "i dont like green color". This is very frustrating. Even 4 stars make you think that you personally did something wrong.

The best solution is to make the likes system a priority. Bad modifications will simply get few likes, and good ones will get a lot. Any bug in the modification should be discussed in a separate thread.

The community should fight against toxicity, at least for those who do it for free. I personally know several people who have stopped doing modifications for this reason.

P.S. Thanks for report button, this a useful thing

Welcome to the club...

Been saying this for a while now, but it is what it is. All the power to the random zero messages, zero resources of their own type of people that love to stand out reviewing mods lower just for kicks.

"Best track ever" - 4 out 5

 

[Johnr777]

Union Island, which will be at the top of the download rankings very soon:

It has since been removed, but an example of what usually happens...



And of course... ZERO involvement with the community.

 

[Ghoults]

I think it would already help a lot if the review posting page had some instructions so people don't accidentally use the reviews for bug reports. The current disclaimer is kind of vague. Something like:
When writing a review try to think whether your opinion is useful to others or helps improve the quality of the mod. Take time to explain your opinion instead of just saying mod is good or bad.
Reviews are not for bug reports or questions. Please report bugs and issues in the discussion thread of the mod <link>. Unconstructive reviews will be removed.

I think having minimum word count could help. I think in general the perceived issue is the really short non-sensical reviews. Like 50 words minimum? That already would convey the idea that review should be more than "great mod thx".

Also if there is going to be up/downvoted reviews I think by default (default sorting be most helpful, not the newest on top) the most upvoted (most helpful?) review should be at the top. I don't think allowing mod creators to choose the top review is a good idea for obvious reasons. Also reviews with score less than -3 should be ignored from the averages and -10 maybe marked for moderator review?

But then again is a review saying 5/5 "great mod thx" any more useful than 1/5 "don't like f1 cars"? In my mind both are bad reviews because they are both useless.


This may not be the right topic but why is there an option to down vote or down rate posts? What possible positive thing could come out of it? I can already see someone disagreeing with someone else and then just going and down rating all their other posts they can find as a revenge.

In my mind if you disagree with someone then there should be only couple of options. First is the purpose of the forum in itself. Talk about it. Quote the post and address the issue. Or ignore the person or the issue. If you don't want to read their posts put them on your ignore list.

Now with the down rating system people can just downvote a person to disagree with their opinions without contributing in any way to the discussion. The person making the opinion does not learn anything from having his post with 5 thumbs up and -15 ratings. He is being downvoted by invisible persons which can lead to false accusations and trolling when people think someone is downvoting their posts when it is someone else. Or some people will downvote someone just for kicks. It has happened before on every forum that has had any kind of downvote system. Upvotes for forum posts should be enough. After all, voting only means the post is popular. Not whether it is true, well written or well meaning.

I think upvoting is great and good enough as is. There is a reason why most platforms don't have downvote buttons because it always leads into weird and bad situations. Overall for reviews the up/down voting is good addition. But please don't introduce that feature for the forum discussions!

 

[Poubelle]

I'm also very frustrated with the ranking system . We work for free and honestly, our free mods are the main value of this website . And regularly, we have random guys with no involvement with the community, no previous contributions, who make evaluations that make no sense, no interest or mostly to show that they're not making any effort to figure out what they downloaded.

It's very boring and honestly I'm sick of trying to answer every time and defend a job that sometimes takes hundreds of hours. The majority of reviews are ok, and a lot of people are playing the game correctly. But it's too easy for some monkeys to post bullshit . And when I look at this guy's profile, it's always the same thing: an empty profile.

Limiting reviews to people who regularly contribute/post to forums and rate the quality of some reviews might be a good idea to consider.

Otherwise, we end up wondering what we gain by sharing our work for free and getting bored by "managing" this kind of profile.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Limiting reviews to people who regularly contribute/post to forums and rate the quality of some reviews might be a good idea to consider.

Great idea, however this is not part of our software and would need a custom developed (no pun intended) mod to function.

Not very easy to implement on the fly.

For now just report reviews that are not fitting the description via the report button.

 

[Poubelle]

I understand.

Another idea is perhaps to use something like youtube for example, and separate the comments (or keep the thread link to the mod) and the rating. And for the rating, maybe just to have a "Like" button, not a 5 star rating, which is usually used for rating commercial products. Nothing more.

It's more positive. If a guy wants to make a comment (positive or not) he can go through the discussion thread. And the "note" is still there but only with the "like" button.

I think it's more suitable for free/non-commercial content.

 

[Johnr777]

Yeah, its a challenge for content creators... the better mods seem to attract trolls with nothing better to do.

Bram did incorporate the upvote/downvote of reviews, which can clearly point out when someone is trolling or have no business in rating something. That's a good step forward, but at the end of the day... gotta take peoples opinions with a grain of salt.