FreeGameDev

Were trying to decide how to rank addons for the web site. Right now, 3 stars appears to be the best way to do it. Post a reply if you agree with this, or if you have another way of doing this.

Thanks!

-Nick G. (computerfreak97)

The add-on ranking would be a great feature for add-ons! The three stars are a simple way to rate, easy and clear.
+1

Here is a cool GPL-licenced star icon.

Maybe some more detail here:

Voting could be done either just as a 'like' button, so people could only click on things they like; they would not be able to differentiate and say "I like this", and "I don't like that". Alternatively people might give stars (say between 1 and 3).

Some people are afraid that the latter would result in abusing the voting system (people voting down other addons in order to promote their own). On the other hand the first one would not give anyone a chance to express that a certain addon is not really up to a certain standard.

Also we would like to have a system in which good new track makes it to the top of the list quickly, but also avoid the issue that addons with a low number of votes might appear to be much better. E.g. an addon with one good vote, compared with an addon with 1000 votes with an average of 'quite good'. This could be achieved by adding a certain number of 'average' dummy votes to each addon. Say we have votes between 1 and 3 with an average of 2, and we would add 50 dummy votes: the actual average for a track to be displayed would be: (number of stars from all votes + 50*2)/(number of votes+50). So a new track with one 3 star vote would have 103/51=2.019, while a track with 200 votes with an average of 2.5 would have: (200*2.5+50*2)/250 = 2.4.

Those are just some ideas. Ideas and brain storming welcome

Cheers,
Joerg

The dummy votes seem a good idea to take in account the average score AND it's reliability (i.e. how many people voted). It would also limit the cheat effects (if there are any, because I honestly think this kind of behavior is rare in such a community).

The "featured" tag could also be included in the final score of the add-on ?

hiker {l Wrote}:Voting could be done either just as a 'like' button, so people could only click on things they like; they would not be able to differentiate and say "I like this", and "I don't like that".

This is even a simpler way to vote... I think it would would be fine even if people are not able to say "I don't like this", because what's needed here is to identify good quality content, to pull it up to the top of the list. The rest will automatically be pushed to the bottom...

But I like the stars, it's more comic-looking, and less facebook/G+ looking ^^

computerfreak and I have started implementation of the 3 star vote system. You need to be logged in to vote. At this time you cannot change your vote, but that will be fixed. Rating shown is simply an average rounded to the nearest star\, eventually an algorithm to calculate the average will be put in.

Do we want rounding? Because it is really easy to display 1/2 a star, or 1/3 of a star just by taking the rounding out of a formula.

(@computerfreak, when I moved all the code into a class, I modified it so the number of stars is easily changeable if needed)

[edit]as noted below, it's not rounded to the nearest star - that only happened because I made a typo[/edit]

1. I don't think it actually rounds if I remember correctly (or did you change that?)
2. Thanks. Its amazing how much a bit of time with Java can do to how you code .

My humble opinion: there should be a "fav" aka "like" button and nothing else.
1. OpenGameArt.org does it.
2. No negative feedback (since we're not rating Newgrounds/YouTube comments but content creator's work)
3. No confusion about what the rating means
4. Enough people will check new content so it can get high ratings (STK has enough players and replayability and not a low enough number of addons for this to work)

PS: just to inspire others to make mockups(?) here's one that I made during talking on IRC about favorites

I agree with qubodup, and that's what I proposed in the comments of the Trac ticket. We could call it to 'Recommend' instead of 'Like', just to keep it clear it doesn't interact with Facebook, Google+ or similar.

Star-ratings are fine too, but with more possible "negativity" for the addon creator, who may become disheartened with low ratings.

However, with only a "like" equivilant, you can't give "this is bad" feedback. So lack of "likes" could either mean it's bad, or people were too lazy, which is not too helpful. (besides, you can't end up with a rating of less than one full star, so it's not possible to look THAT bad)

Yes, there are upsides and downsides of both methods, and 3 stars is a good way not to make it difficult to decide ("hmm, should I give this 7 or 8 out of 10").