Napoleon wrote:I like the idea, but it would require work from staff, and thus, it would require staff
Second, how would you decide the Forum Effect rating? Would you count favorable impressions or something?
On the other hand, I like the idea of an Octopod Effect Rating
Not sure what you mean by requiring staff, Napster. About the other stuff, I don't know if there'd ever be an overall "the site stamps this game to be X" on things. I think that reviews and snippets would stand alone without some overarching "And as a whole we give this game a... mmm... let's say 2.77".
Peacedog wrote:Through the "community game rankings" system. Think Gamerankings.com or Rotten Tomatoes. Only:
1) Only accessable for community members (and by that, I mean people who can use it).
And by that, you mean people who registered and are smart enough to use the system?
Thinking on:
Would you just post a blurb on the forum, and would we try to figure up a way (I'm not websavvy, sirs!) that the blurbs would be put on the frontpage automatically?
or:
Would you post a blurb on the forum, and would the staff pick blurbs to incorporate in the front-page blurb thingy
or:
Would you have to login to the blurb thingy, post your blurb there (meaning, separate from the forum thread) and then have it included in the blurb thingy. Would this require moderation PRIOR to it going "live" or only moderation afterwards?
I love the idea, don't get me wrong, just trying to flesh out how it would work.
Edit: Neal: I think I answered your staff question with this post? You would need staff based on which of the above systems you would choose, I think. And while I agree that an overarching "grade" isn't strictly necessary, I also like the Rotten Tomato rating, for example (This game is so good, it has an EIGHT TENTACLE RATING )
As far as the rating goes, my thinking, and I think the Meal alluded to this earlier, is that the impressions comments will cover the subjective aspects of the game, allowing people to account for specific tastes. The rating would be more of a purely objective statistic. Pretty much exactly like Rottentomatoes (purchase/don't purchase or something to that effect). This way you have both a subjective and an objective point of view on things which will balance the books and appeal to people who put more stock in one or the other, or like both.
Ronin
"The Die is Cast"
-Gauis Julius Caesar prior to crossing the Rubicon River against Rome 49 BC
Hmmm, this sounds like it will be a community run site. Community run... I've heard that before....
Oh yes! This site will be pseudo anarchist! Perhaps it will be Baukinin style anarchy, with a small group of moderators making sure the community isn't overrun with spam!
Either way, I love it.
The Meal wrote:Now if the debate was over whether folks look to the more prolific posters to determine acceptable posting tone, then I think we've got a real doozy of a conversation to be had.
Hehe. What am afraid of is that new people may have some interesting things to say but may be intimidated by the high postcount of other people (usually the more vocal ones). At the same time we have the "I've got 5000 posts so I must be right" people. And why should someone's thousands of posts in the Politics forum give any kind of standing in the Games areas?
As for me, when I see for instance "The Meal, Admin, Posts: 5000" - I am enclined to show respect, but when if I only see "The Meal, Posts: 5000" I am like "ewww, this guy has no life"
I *TOTALLY* understand what you're saying neofit. I don't think (although I may be way too close to the situation to have an accurate assessment!) ANYONE on Gone Gold threw around their postcounts and said, "Listen to me, punk. Here's how this is going to be." Maybe it was so subtle that I never noticed it. Maybe I unintentionally was doing it all along (I somehow racked up the second-highest postcount on those forums -- hello no-life!). I know that if I saw it being done subtly or overtly I'd have piped up (either in an email in the first case, or on the boards in the second) and decried that behavior, but I didn't so I never did. I hate allegations of "elitism," "cronyism," and "cliquism," and tried to nix that sort of behavior when it presented itself (well, cliques are tough to nix when it's just people naturally gravitating towards being buddies, but I meant an "old skool" vs. "new hotness" style of cliques forming).
I'd love to have the magic bullet against pointless spamming. For my own sanity I just got really good at skipping over that stuff and not letting it get to me. Took me, quite literally, years to get in that shape, however.
I have no answer for the folks intimidated by those bearing high-post counts. That sort of "chilling effect" sucks, but I think it comes from the folks unwilling to jump into conversations and so my hope is to foster a community where folks welcome new people into the flock to try and break that kind of stuff down.
Interesting thoughts, though. Thanks for sharing them with us.
Oh, I'm sure I'll be fired by tomorrow. Actually I'm getting a metric shit-ton done at work right now. Just multitasking really well. I blame the caffeine.
The Meal wrote:Oh, I'm sure I'll be fired by tomorrow. Actually I'm getting a metric shit-ton done at work right now. Just multitasking really well. I blame the caffeine.
~Neal
What brand of caffeinated beverege are you drinking, and can I have some?
Hehe. What am afraid of is that new people may have some interesting things to say but may be intimidated by the high postcount of other people (usually the more vocal ones). At the same time we have the "I've got 5000 posts so I must be right" people. And why should someone's thousands of posts in the Politics forum give any kind of standing in the Games areas?
As for me, when I see for instance "The Meal, Admin, Posts: 5000" - I am enclined to show respect, but when if I only see "The Meal, Posts: 5000" I am like "ewww, this guy has no life"
I believe I broke 10,000 post at GG and I am pretty much known to be consistantly wrong about just about everything.....And I think of myself at the later (the guy with no life, or at least the one stupid enough not to utlilize the life he's got)
I don't think post counts matter either. My post count ended up high, because for me this is just like one big ole' neverending conversation over coffee...at really big table.
The Meal wrote:Now if the debate was over whether folks look to the more prolific posters to determine acceptable posting tone, then I think we've got a real doozy of a conversation to be had.
Hehe. What am afraid of is that new people may have some interesting things to say but may be intimidated by the high postcount of other people (usually the more vocal ones). At the same time we have the "I've got 5000 posts so I must be right" people. And why should someone's thousands of posts in the Politics forum give any kind of standing in the Games areas?
As for me, when I see for instance "The Meal, Admin, Posts: 5000" - I am enclined to show respect, but when if I only see "The Meal, Posts: 5000" I am like "ewww, this guy has no life"
A poll maybe?
It's a minor edit to remove the Post Count from the "Author" area but the system still tracks it and displays it on the profile page. SO if someone wants to see how many posts another person has, they can (just like it was on GG, actually).
We don't need no (prominently displayed) stinkin' post count!
Sponge, 100% agreed, and I'm sure when this forum is in its final format, those things will be snuck away in the back where they don't beat you over the head.
See this post where Peacedog talks about things not yet being in their final format.
- AAR support (blog maybe?) to allow players in a game to write diary entries, etc. Maybe even upload pics.
- Game trading system
- More/bettererer Multiplayer support. A page dedicated to MP with data like IM/XFire/Gamespy names, server IP's, guilds, schedules, etc..
more to come!
Edit: Oh yeah, and a Gold Guide'ish page for games in development with links to previews, screenshots, homepage, downloads, etc..
(man, you guys have your work cut out for you! Let me know if I can assist in any way---FYI, I'm GuildBoss from GG with a new name, new look, new attitude!)
Probably won't be removed entirely (though I've favored that in the past), and we may do a ranking system (which we haven't favored in the past, over a bare minimum - 10 to go from new guy to gonegolder, as you may recall). You're right it's a minor edit. Just comenting out the code to have it displayed from a few places, in essence.
There's two things at work here.
1) You don't want to intimidate new people. It can be difficult to break into a new group when eveyrone is sitting around back slapping and talking about the events of X years ago and all that. Even more so when you start dealing with people who appear to be iconic in the community.
2) On the other hand, it can be helpful to have obvious examples of "accepted" community behavior. And when those same folks are that, well it becomes benefical to say "well, this guy has been here awhile, and this is how he is doing it".
Now, post counts aren't the only way to do that. Registration date can as well. Really, it takes a combination of the two (length of time present, and some frequency of participation).
At Gonegold, we had our problems with people going a little overboard with post padding at times. We cracked down on it a little bit, and that helped (it was a fairly benign crack down). So we'll watch that again.
When not taken seriously, though, post counts can be fine. And so can member rankings. Which is why we might do more than 2. And if we do, I'm sure we'll have a big thread about it here. But that's a very minor detail, there are more important things to be done at this time.
Our Own Game Rankings Thingy:
Honestly I have no idea. The easiest thing from staff standpoint would be to have something you submit them to, a la RT. Now, we don't want this to take away from the forums. But this way, there'd be a "OOGRT" page, you'd go to it, enter commentary, put in a score, and everything is processed. I'm thinking we'd track all reviews by individuals, so for example I could go see what Napoleon or The Meal thinks of every game they've ever rated, at a glance. The page for the individual game would display blurbs at random (I *guess*, maybe if there were choice blurbs someone could "sticky" them?), the average score, maybe a few other metrics (curve that SOB, yo!).
Now, maybe your blurb is something you rip out of one of your forum posts - that's perfect. Ronin, yes, I'm thinking it's entirely subjective. Which means you'll get the occasional RT oddity where it sounds like someone is being negative, and it's a tomatoe or whatever. But I like doing it like this.
I'm thinking that to enter reviews, you gotta be registered here. To see it, I suppose any old person will be able to. We're not about to try and take over for gamerankings.com or anythign like that. So it's for people interested in what the community thinks about game X. Some quantification to the forum effect.
I'm not big on numbers myself, but I think alot of people will enjoy it coupled with forum posts. Obviously, details are still to come here. There's other methods to consider, for sure.
Lastly, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by moderation. I assume you mean checking blurb content for offensive material and the like?
I don't know how RT does it. Perhapts we'll have a "blurb report!" ability. And then we'd also know how many times someone was reported, and more importantly how many times they were trying to cause trouble (a report does not trouble make, after all). And you could lose that priveledge.
I liked the two tiered ranking system. I thought it was done to say "Hiya! I'm new. Take me in and make me feel at home," and then after that we are all part of the collective. I could be wrong on the motivation, but that's how I read it and how I treated it.
I like the game ratings system idea. It can help for decisions about game buying greatly, and theoretically that was a major motivation for ever coming buy in the first place. It's an idea I am very excited about much like I used to really enjoy Gedd's purchasing habbits database.
1) You don't want to intimidate new people. It can be difficult to break into a new group when eveyrone is sitting around back slapping and talking about the events of X years ago and all that. Even more so when you start dealing with people who appear to be iconic in the community.
Agreed. Which makes me question the wisdom of calling the place "Brutesquad" (and using brutesquad.net) instead of something more generic and in-line with the hobby of PC gaming.
To a newcomer, "Brutesquad" is gonna sound like an exclusive club or something. Hell, I was a member of GG for 4 years and I still have no clue what it means!
Peacedog wrote:Through the "community game rankings" system. Think Gamerankings.com or Rotten Tomatoes. Only:
1) Only accessable for community members (and by that, I mean people who can use it).
2) They could enter a score and a blurb. A composit (and maybe a blurb that changed periodically) would appear on the Game Guide page, linking back to the CGR page for that game, which would show *all* scores and *all* blurbs.
I think Ronin's idea is awesome. It would also be nice if we could index the members other reviews to make it easy for someone checking out a game to go look at the scores that person had given other games. To see both comparative rating (maybe that reviewer never gives above an 8 so a 7.5 isn't bad from him) and the types of games he likes.
We will have to think about what to do about "rogue" reviewers. Maybe a minimum registration time before you can post a review. Or reviewer rankings that determine the order the reviews are listed in.
Sponge wrote:To a newcomer, "Brutesquad" is gonna sound like an exclusive club or something. Hell, I was a member of GG for 4 years and I still have no clue what it means!
Great points, Kael. I, at one point, was going through the Gold Guide and referencing review scores to their sources with the idea of normalizing all scores from one source and identifying a normalized score (basically how much it deviated from the average score that site would give out, but instead of doing this assuming a uniform distiribution, I did fit them with a normal distribution, which seemed to be the much better fit), then ranking all games based on how much better their reviews were compared to the typical review that a site would give. My results were similar to Game Rankings, but not boot-step. It'd be a pretty easy math thing to add to our code.
Rogue reviewers are going to happen, and you have to hope the law of averages takes care of them. If comeone rogue scores RTW, for instance, it's probably not going to really affect the average that much, but if someone snipes a lesser-known game, say Botango, then it may have a much larger effect.
Of course with one of the site focuses being on indy games, there may be a discrepency as to which reviews are of "lesser-known games" as opposed to the biggies. Part of the charm of our site, I suppose.
~Neal
"Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet." — Elontra
Sponge wrote:To a newcomer, "Brutesquad" is gonna sound like an exclusive club or something. Hell, I was a member of GG for 4 years and I still have no clue what it means!
Ditto.
"Welcome to The Brute Squad! Inside, you will find the best bunch of people assembled anywhere on the internet. Our rules aren't too strict or too numerous, but if you're willing to follow them, you'll be welcomed with hearty slaps on the back (since men in power armor don't hug too well or too eagerly). Those who intentionally break the rules will be fed to our Octopus Overlords (trust us...you don't want that)."
And that's just off the cuff. I still think it's a more welcoming name than OctopusOverlords.com.
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” -Thomas Jefferson
Finding Red Riding Hood well-armed, the wolf calls for more gun control.
Sponge wrote:To a newcomer, "Brutesquad" is gonna sound like an exclusive club or something. Hell, I was a member of GG for 4 years and I still have no clue what it means!
Ditto.
"Welcome to The Brute Squad! Inside, you will find the best bunch of people assembled anywhere on the internet. Our rules aren't too strict or too numerous, but if you're willing to follow them, you'll be welcomed with hearty slaps on the back (since men in power armor don't hug too well or too eagerly). Those who intentionally break the rules will be fed to our Octopus Overlords (trust us...you don't want that)."
And that's just off the cuff. I still think it's a more welcoming name than OctopusOverlords.com.
Oh, so it's a power-armor fetish thing. I'm hip with that. 8)
One thing I thought of a while ago (and never voiced) was this:
It seemed to me that after Bill departed, anyone who wanted to write front page articles would be a little intimidated. I mean, who would follow Bill? So here was my thought: Seven days a week, seven article writers. The writers could change from week to week to allow people with something interesting to say to speak their mind. Every day, they would post a basic little post, some things they found interesting (game-related articles or not, not anything politcally charged, though) and then on with the show. Have different features for each day, like a bargains of the week one day, a review extravaganza another day (to keep them organized). Something like that.
I dunno. I'm just babbling.
Downwards Compatible
We're playing every NES game alphabetically! Even the crappy ones! Send help!
Also, another thing is either eliminating custom tags in the forum or just giving people custom tags after, say, 500 or 1000 posts. This way you don't have to post FOREVER for one (like me ), and/or it doesn't become a reason to post pad. I know there were times I would pad just to attempt to get NEAR a custom tag.
Downwards Compatible
We're playing every NES game alphabetically! Even the crappy ones! Send help!
Eel Snave wrote:Also, another thing is either eliminating custom tags in the forum or just giving people custom tags after, say, 500 or 1000 posts. This way you don't have to post FOREVER for one (like me ), and/or it doesn't become a reason to post pad. I know there were times I would pad just to attempt to get NEAR a custom tag.
I think a karma system would be good for this, say you reach +10 karma or so then you get a tag.
I think a karma system would be good for this, say you reach +10 karma or so then you get a tag.
When I used to hangout at Arbornet, we used to give Gribbles. I am not sure how they got put into circulation nor what you could actually use them for.
I was thinking of a series of tags that fit the theme. Two different kinds depending on if you are a "supplicant" or "malcontent" (with or against the overlords). Tags titles get more and more elaborate the more posts you make, reviews you do, etc.
Either that or you create a title list going from unbeliever up through the malcontent stages and then into the supplicant stages as you post more frequently (if it is to difficult to have two paths).
