Map Organization Project [Ver 3 - Pg 13]

[WidowMakers]

What exactly is a 1-5 rating suppose to say about a map? I think the purpose is a bit unclear.

It seems we are trying to add some very unhelpful and ambiguous information with a 1-5 rating. You have players rating a map for whatever they feel like, game play, graphics, whether they won their last game, whether or not they hate people from Africa or any other reason they conjure up... and then that information is aggregated and presented to the average user as what exactly?

A feedback system would be better with certain feedback voted 'most helpful' like Amazon or something. Implementing a 1-5 rating is spending a lot of energy to pee on ourselves.

Amazon has a 5 star rating system and feedback/comment section. That is EXACTLY what I was suggesting here.

Suggestion for CC:


Amazon:


There will always be people who give bad feedback for the sake of bad feedback. But most players will wan to keep the site going strong. They can rank 1-5 and give a comment. If a play wants to read through all of the comments they can. They can see why a player liked/disliked a particular map. Just like Amazon.

WM

[boberz]

because im lazy i do not want to read this thread but hey i think some sort of filter; where you can deselect the maps so you can eliminate maps for many different categories so there could be a tick box at the side with everything automatically selected and you can deselect say historical maps or maps of a certain size and so on and so forth.

[WidowMakers]

because im lazy i do not want to read this thread but hey i think some sort of filter; where you can deselect the maps so you can eliminate maps for many different categories so there could be a tick box at the side with everything automatically selected and you can deselect say historical maps or maps of a certain size and so on and so forth.

you should read the entire thread first. Sorry but you should.

[mibi]

the difference with amazon is that people search by category or similar product, then read ratings and reviews. Imagine if amazon just presented every single product and just ranked them by stars with reviews... it certainly wouldn't hel[ a person find sci fi books or bread makers any easier.

likewise, if a player wants a quick game on an easy map they what good is a star rating to them? or are they supposed to read reviews on every map.

the bottom line is that ratings provide a very basic gauge of shifting and arbitrary generalizations. Reviews are ultimately helpful, but are a 2nd tier solution as they require an extra step for the users.

so to complete the efficient amazon trifecta, categories or tags would have to be implemented.

not to mention the bell curve on a 5 point rating system would render the whole thing pointless to begin with. a proper rating system would be 0-100 dismissing the top and bottom 10%

[DiM]

the 0-5 star rating system should and will determine how good and popular a map is and i think that's exactly what a new player needs.

let's say crossword will get an average rating of 1 star and asia 4 stars. it's clear that asia is the better map. now if a player wants to find out why asia is better they click the info link and read about the map and click the feedbacks and read players opinions. then he will learn that arctic is better because of the graphics the gameplay the easy to understand layout etc.

yes some people will put 0 stars just to be bitches but i believe those will be few.

[mibi]

the 0-5 star rating system should and will determine how good and popular a map is and i think that's exactly what a new player needs.

let's say crossword will get an average rating of 1 star and asia 4 stars. it's clear that asia is the better map. now if a player wants to find out why asia is better they click the info link and read about the map and click the feedbacks and read players opinions. then he will learn that arctic is better because of the graphics the gameplay the easy to understand layout etc.

yes some people will put 0 stars just to be bitches but i believe those will be few.

stars will neither tell you how good nor how popular a map is. there is no way to determine what a star rating actually means because there is no way to determine how or why they are rated the way there are nor is there anyway to determine how many people rated a map or how 'weighted' a rating is. Two five star votes for crossword is the same as 250 five star votes for Classic.

Not to mention, with normal distribution, you will most likely have over half of the ratings be three stars, which makes the whole exercise rather pointless.

it's a junk system.

[DiM]

the 0-5 star rating system should and will determine how good and popular a map is and i think that's exactly what a new player needs.

let's say crossword will get an average rating of 1 star and asia 4 stars. it's clear that asia is the better map. now if a player wants to find out why asia is better they click the info link and read about the map and click the feedbacks and read players opinions. then he will learn that arctic is better because of the graphics the gameplay the easy to understand layout etc.

yes some people will put 0 stars just to be bitches but i believe those will be few.

stars will neither tell you how good nor how popular a map is. there is no way to determine what a star rating actually means because there is no way to determine how or why they are rated the way there are nor is there anyway to determine how many people rated a map or how 'weighted' a rating is. Two five star votes for crossword is the same as 250 five star votes for Classic.

Not to mention, with normal distribution, you will most likely have over half of the ratings be three stars, which makes the whole exercise rather pointless.

it's a junk system.

actually it's quite simple to know how many people voted since you see how many feedbacks it has

and why do you say it's no way to know what the rating means?

if i see a map has a rating of 5 stars i immediately know the map is good. and if i see the rating comes from 10.000 feedbacks i know that map is also popular since 10k people played it.

[mibi]

the 0-5 star rating system should and will determine how good and popular a map is and i think that's exactly what a new player needs.

let's say crossword will get an average rating of 1 star and asia 4 stars. it's clear that asia is the better map. now if a player wants to find out why asia is better they click the info link and read about the map and click the feedbacks and read players opinions. then he will learn that arctic is better because of the graphics the gameplay the easy to understand layout etc.

yes some people will put 0 stars just to be bitches but i believe those will be few.

stars will neither tell you how good nor how popular a map is. there is no way to determine what a star rating actually means because there is no way to determine how or why they are rated the way there are nor is there anyway to determine how many people rated a map or how 'weighted' a rating is. Two five star votes for crossword is the same as 250 five star votes for Classic.

Not to mention, with normal distribution, you will most likely have over half of the ratings be three stars, which makes the whole exercise rather pointless.

it's a junk system.

actually it's quite simple to know how many people voted since you see how many feedbacks it has

and why do you say it's no way to know what the rating means?

if i see a map has a rating of 5 stars i immediately know the map is good. and if i see the rating comes from 10.000 feedbacks i know that map is also popular since 10k people played it.

yes but what does "good" mean? thats really the only thing a rating can show... if a map is some meandering characterization of "good" or "bad" ...and what does 3 stars mean... what does 2? When I go to the game finder I choose a map based on the stylwe of play I want. If I want a large and long game I choose World 2.1, if I want short and simple I choose Doodle Earth... I would never choose a map because a rating said it was "good" because i still wouldn't know what I am getting into. What if I wanted a complex WW2 themed game, and Pearl Harbour had 2 stars... I wouldn't play because the ratings suggest otherwise, even though its exactly what i am looking for.

I am not sure why this is hard to understand.

[Coleman]

See, I wanted to provide all of that for people like mibi and all of the rating
feedback stuff for people like DiM, because you really are the opposite
extremes of each other even though you both do complicated stuff.

You guys need to compromise and let everything be there so people can use
the tools they want to and find helpful for themselves. I like to believe that
people are capable of helping themselves in the face of a lot of options as
long as they can get to the information they want to get to in a sane way,
even if someone else may find that information completely worthless.

Extra: As thankful as I am for the images WidowMaker's makes and finds for
us I don't like how much it stretches my display. So that's why I post like
this when he does that.

[edbeard]

I think we need to talk about why we are doing this? Are we just trying to make the list view nicer?

I thought we were trying to help out new users? Splitting things up into groups helps. Adding more things to look at only complicates the list. Yes, there's more stuff there to help them, but will it help them or only serve to confuse them?

[DiM]

Extra: As thankful as I am for the images WidowMaker's makes and finds for
us I don't like how much it stretches my display. So that's why I post like
this when he does that.

get the greasemonkey script that auto resizes any image to fit within the screen. and you can view it full by clicking on it

it also crops insanely huge quotes so that only the last 3 are shown

[Coleman]

I thought we were trying to help out new users? Splitting things up into groups helps. Adding more things to look at only complicates the list. Yes, there's more stuff there to help them, but will it help them or only serve to confuse them?

That's the thing. I think if we had a bunch of sorting options in the display the way WidowMakers put it, I don't think it would be confusing.

Same with the rating/feedback. The way we are implementing it shouldn't confuse anyone.

What we need to be sure is that none of the sorting options are completely arbitrary, like my complexity stuff, that's out. It needs to be things that are really standard about the map (outside of dispute).

Things that would be good: Territories, Image Size, Age, Alphabetical, Rating.

[Qwert]

Dim
actually it's quite simple to know how many people voted since you see how many feedbacks it has

and why do you say it's no way to know what the rating means?

if i see a map has a rating of 5 stars i immediately know the map is good. and if i see the rating comes from 10.000 feedbacks i know that map is also popular since 10k people played it.

Can you tell me how many people must vote that these Map feedback be relevant for one map?

[Herakilla]

i think feedback should dissapear after say 6 months or if you drop of scoreboard

this would allow for a more current version, i mean cmon, do you ever look at feedbacks you leave for other players? what if you suddenly like it so much time later, i would rather just fill out a new one since if i dont like a map i wont play it and thats not fair to the map since it wont get any chances to change the person's mind. i started out liking middle earth but now i absolutely despise it and as a result i dont play any more games on it. ive played only like 10-20 games on maps that are foreign (to americans) since i keep misdeploying my armies due to very similar names i never look at feedback i left even if it was negative since i dont care what the person may have responded or if it got ticketed since they are on my ignore list either way

[wcaclimbing]

I think if we had a bunch of sorting options in the display the way WidowMakers put it, I don't think it would be confusing.

Things that would be good: Territories, Image Size, Age, Alphabetical, Rating.

YES.
I like that. Having multiple categories will make it really easy to find just what you want.

You should add in selection for the style of map (geographic, historical, fantasy, abstract, misc) also, cause then the people that only play geography maps would have an easy way of getting to all of those. And the ones that want to see all of the major military battle maps (pearl harbor, WWII, battle of actium, etc) would be in the same place if you want them to be.

[Coleman]

Well, there would be too much arguing over which is what. DiM hates that idea and I share his view to a lesser degree, there just isn't a good way to place the ones that appear in multiple categories.

[DiM]

here we go again with tons of categories

i want them sorted according to the shoe size of the cartographer.
it's a well know fact that cartographers with big feet make better maps.

for example amerigo vespucci was a size 45

piri reis was also 45.

coincidentally i'm also 45. i rest my case.

[Herakilla]

i would say just make them show up in all those catagories, battle of actium is both historical and geographical (real place on earth) so just make it show up whenever you search for historical or for geographical

you could make it so when you hit start a game or game finder or maybe (i wouldnt do this one though) join a game you see what we see now but with buttons at the top that sorts it according to catagories, just make maps that show up in more than one spot show up in both spots, they will only show up once for "all" after all

[wcaclimbing]

Well, there would be too much arguing over which is what. DiM hates that idea and I share his view to a lesser degree, there just isn't a good way to place the ones that appear in multiple categories.

then we let them be in multiple categories.

If a map fits in multiple categories, list it in each one.

Take Battle of Actium for example.

It could fit into the list of:
military battles
abstract maps
Large maps (90+ territories)


Basically, there could be a drop-down menu above the list of games that includes each section, and within that section it would list all the maps that fit that category. Maps could be in multiple categories, because many of them fit more than one. So all the site would need is a list of every map for a given category, and have the drop-down menu have each category given. when you click the category, it only shows the maps in that list.

Wouldn't be too difficult to do. someone would just need to compile lists for each category of map.

EDIT: dang... herakilla fastposted me with pretty much the same post...

[Herakilla]

lol beat ya to it wca! but we disagree on the catagories of battle fo actium lol

[wcaclimbing]

here we go again with tons of categories

If you don't want to use the categories, just dont click the button that shows each one. let someone else compile the lists, you can just sit back and use the "sort by rating" or "sort by map size" or whatever you want to use, and just don't click the ones you dont want.

[wcaclimbing]

lol beat ya to it wca! but we disagree on the catagories of battle fo actium lol

lol. I was thinking Geographic would be maps that actually represent land/countries.

Since Actium is a bunch of hexagons in the ocean, and hexagons arent countries or landforms, I thought it would fit better in abstract maps.

[Herakilla]

lol beat ya to it wca! but we disagree on the catagories of battle fo actium lol

lol. I was thinking Geographic would be maps that actually represent land/countries.

Since Actium is a bunch of hexagons in the ocean, and hexagons arent countries or landforms, I thought it would fit better in abstract maps.

but it happened at the same location on earth

[wcaclimbing]

lol beat ya to it wca! but we disagree on the catagories of battle fo actium lol

lol. I was thinking Geographic would be maps that actually represent land/countries.

Since Actium is a bunch of hexagons in the ocean, and hexagons arent countries or landforms, I thought it would fit better in abstract maps.

but it happened at the same location on earth

then that is one thing everyone will have to decide on. what fits in a group and what does not.

[DiM]

putting a map in more than 1 category is wrong. it means classic will only appear in geographical, while other maps will be in 2-4 categs. is that fair? i think not.