I suppose this should be in this forum. So all of the sudden (at least to me) the ratings system has been overwhelmed with trolling ratings as well as the "this member found this helpful" ratings. I can't think of a better way to do the ratings system, but there has got to be a way to handle troll comments and troll reviews. I've reported these such comments/reviews, and I'm sure the moderators will deal with comments as they have before, but this is getting out of hand.

Just look at BxBugs most recent CVPI file. The ratings are a mess.

Now I wanted to open this to a discussion. I was trying to think of a way that could prevent trolling comments and the like. I think giving the author the chance to review the ratings gives the author too much power, and can limit the amount of real/critical feedback that the file might need.

Maybe limiting reviews to post count or rep? Then that might eliminate trolling comments from new or relatively inactive accounts. I dunno, just a thought.

What are some of your ideas?

9 minutes ago, MikoFiticus said:

I suppose this should be in this forum. So all of the sudden (at least to me) the ratings system has been overwhelmed with trolling ratings as well as the "this member found this helpful" ratings. I can't think of a better way to do the ratings system, but there has got to be a way to handle troll comments and troll reviews. I've reported these such comments/reviews, and I'm sure the moderators will deal with comments as they have before, but this is getting out of hand.

Just look at BxBugs most recent CVPI file. The ratings are a mess.

Now I wanted to open this to a discussion. I was trying to think of a way that could prevent trolling comments and the like. I think giving the author the chance to review the ratings gives the author too much power, and can limit the amount of real/critical feedback that the file might need.

Maybe limiting reviews to post count or rep? Then that might eliminate trolling comments from new or relatively inactive accounts. I dunno, just a thought.

What are some of your ideas?

I personally agree with you with improvements on the rating system.  I think an end-all solution is to just remove the rating system all together since about 90% of reviews are 1 star, 3 stars, or 5 stars, and they don't accurately reflect the file.  The review system may have the best intentions, but some users unfortunately abuse the review system with "you should DO this" or leave a one star review without any criticism or advise.  

2 hours ago, MikoFiticus said:

I've reported these such comments/reviews, and I'm sure the moderators will deal with comments as they have before, but this is getting out of hand.

A report is the way to go for all rule violations. I have to say though that I haven't seen a dramatic increase in trolling as you describe it. To prevent trolls is very hard, as anyone who really wants to troll will find a way to do so. Me personally is not much for limiting other members based on their post count or rep count, as that is just another number on the internet. 

I will, however, keep an extra eye open on the reviews and see if there is a need to implement some extra restriction upon reviews. 

 

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Edited August 9, 20169 yr by FRGamer

I can't help but agree with you @MikoFiticus 

Up until recently I would post fairly in-depth reviews, with pros/cons and constructive criticism. After looking back on those reviews I see that something like "2/6" or "1/4 members find this helpful". Yet someone who posts something like "Super hot" or "Worst mod ever" will have 4/6 or 3/6. 

It totally screws up the point of the review system, which is to find a helpful review. A review with a 1/4 rating is not going to be looked at but some bare-bones review will.

But as inseri said, this is almost impossible to stop. Trolls will Troll and flame wars will continue needlessly.

something needs to be done about the ratings...I see a lot of car models that are not the greatest yet they are rated 5 out of 5...complete bs. a lot of people rate things based on pictures without actually trying it in game and for this reason we get a lot of cars being made with little to no effort put into them it makes this site look like its full of mindless drones and I think the team needs to start banning people to clean this site up....we didn't have this problem as much for iv because people actually released good looking cars and listened to constructive criticism and improving upon them, now we have a bunch of cry babies that don't like constructive criticism im getting tired of it                                   ...

3 minutes ago, A knight said:

something needs to be done about the ratings...I see a lot of car models that are not the greatest yet they are rated 5 out of 5...complete bs.                            ...

How something is rated is very subjective. One might like something someone else does not. 

 

3 minutes ago, A knight said:

a lot of people rate things based on pictures without actually trying it in game

If you think this is taking place, please report any such reviews you might come across and the Community Team will handle it. 

 

4 minutes ago, A knight said:

I think the team needs to start banning people to clean this site up...

I'm uncertain removing members will solve anything in the long run. Banning someone for making a review seems a bit harsh. 

 

5 minutes ago, A knight said:

we didn't have this problem as much for iv 

I hear this a lot, but the fact is we did always have people disrupting the Community, be that via file reviews or trolling. Everything is just on a much larger scale now. There's going to be more of everything.

Again, content violating the Community Guidelines should be reported!

8 minutes ago, A knight said:

we didn't have this problem as much for iv because people actually released good looking cars and listened to constructive criticism and improving upon them, now we have a bunch of cry babies that don't like constructive criticism im getting tired of it                                   ...

You don't have to look very hard at the download section for IV to see that there's more crap than there is for V. Nothing has changed, and it won't change unless LCPDFR implements a quality system like AccurateStudio has. However as that seriously limits new modders, a system like that won't be implemented here.

2 minutes ago, ineseri said:

How something is rated is very subjective. One might like something someone else does not. 

 

If you think this is taking place, please report any such reviews you might come across and the Community Team will handle it. 

 

I'm uncertain removing members will solve anything in the long run. Banning someone for making a review seems a bit harsh. 

 

I hear this a lot, but the fact is we did always have people disrupting the Community, be that via file reviews or trolling. Everything is just on a much larger scale now. There's going to be more of everything.

Again, content violating the Community Guidelines should be reported!

but yet giving me a warning point for defending myself because you didn't take action against an unruly member is harsh and ridiculous but anyway

I don't know who rates a file a 5 out of 5 it doesn't name the person, I am just saying that there has to be a way for people to actually rate it more accurately and not mindless...almost every file is a 5 out of 5 star and doesn't reflect the model

iv was not nearly as bad because there wasn't as many immature people as there are now this site isn't as enjoyable as it use to be so some things need to be changed

9 minutes ago, Illusionyary said:

You don't have to look very hard at the download section for IV to see that there's more crap than there is for V. Nothing has changed, and it won't change unless LCPDFR implements a quality system like AccurateStudio has. However as that seriously limits new modders, a system like that won't be implemented here.

I know but I just noticed that more people don't appreciate constructive criticism and I am the bad guy, what they fail to realize is I am just trying to help them with improving models

8 hours ago, A knight said:

but yet giving me a warning point for defending myself because you didn't take action against an unruly member is harsh and ridiculous but anyway

I don't know who rates a file a 5 out of 5 it doesn't name the person, I am just saying that there has to be a way for people to actually rate it more accurately and not mindless...almost every file is a 5 out of 5 star and doesn't reflect the model

iv was not nearly as bad because there wasn't as many immature people as there are now this site isn't as enjoyable as it use to be so some things need to be changed

I know but I just noticed that more people don't appreciate constructive criticism and I am the bad guy, what they fail to realize is I am just trying to help them with improving models

Since Uploads are broken today, i decided to browse the forums. 

Whie i do agree with what seems like some overly toxic people not receiving steep enough punishment, i also see that that is our personal opinions. Banning someone for reviewing a file would be, probably the most contradictive thing for a review system. Yes, there are some people who abuse the review system, for example i had a member, who i will not name, review my file 2 stars because he couldn't install the vehicle. I had another member go and rate it 3 stars because of an issue with a car when i modded for IV. Then there are the people that go and rate someones models 5 stars, just because of who they are, not what they actually do.

There has always been cars and models on this website that people upload with little to no effort, to go and just slap a lightbar on the car and call it a day. There isn't much the moderation team can do unless, like sharp said, they implement a Quality control system. Its going to be worse when ELS comes out for V because the people who dont want to spend the time and effort learning the default lighting system will be able to just glue and distribute. 

While i do agree that the review/rating system could use a revise, with the addition of a reply button on each review so the contributors/authors of each files can reply to specific users for their reviews, like thanking MrOxplay for his videos on vehicles. I think that honestly the review system is quite good as it is, but there will always be people who abuse everything on a website, like the people in BxBugs' recent download.

There does however seem to be A LOT of people that are posting uploads that can not for the life of them, take constructive criticism. Its quite unfortunate when you try and help a person that uploaded a model, make it more accurate, and they just start cussing at you, saying that they don't care what you say. 

10 hours ago, Thehurk said:

Since Uploads are broken today, i decided to browse the forums. 

Hehe.

Personally, the only thing I'd like to see changed is having the 'reply' feature brought back (it disappeared a few weeks ago during a site update).

Apart from that, I'm pretty happy with the review system. While I do get the occasional 'it doesn't work 1 star' review on my files, my reports usually get dealt with pretty swiftly by the moderation team.

A rule I'd personally like to see added is that suggestions for future updates must not be posted in a review. A review should not be used to suggest features, i.e. "I'll give 5 stars if you add feature x, now only 2 stars because I really want that". Reviews that are posted where the author complain about a lack of features when the feature is actually already included in the file (e.g. "Why can't I turn ambient event messages off in Traffic Policer? 3 stars") should be removed too as it only goes to show the author hasn't used your work (indepthly enough).

Reviews are purely subjective, and their ratings cannot necessarily be compared across different modifications. As an example, someone recently reviewed Traffic Policer as 4 stars because he didn't "like the way the speed radar zone looked". The same person then reviewed Pursuit Callouts 5 stars for "the hard work of the author and how fun it is to play". The reason for this is that currently most review authors see the base for giving a rating as the modification itself, not how it compares to others' work.

It is therefore relatively common to see, say a simple text edit mod that took 5 minutes to create get 5 star ratings, while an extremely complex mod that may have a few tiny issues and took tens of hours to create gets less than that.

The only way to solve this would be for the site staff to draft guidelines of how many stars to give for what kind of work. I personally wouldn't advocate such a system. The way it works now is that mods that are good (i.e. have little to no issues) get higher ratings than mods that may have some more issues, but took far more effort to make and are much more powerful. This is good in the sense that a user gets a good impression of the problems he may face when downloading and installing a modification.

As for trolls, as a script modification author I can say that I haven't really encountered them in any alarming quantity yet. If the occasional one does come along and post something spiteful, a simple report is usually enough to deal with the matter.

At the end of the day, though, the rating system should only be a small side thing for mod authors. Worrying about it is just about the last thing you should be doing, and I personally really wouldn't mind if it's just the 4 stars appearing next to my work rather than 5 (so long as this is not due to the reasons I mentioned at the beginning of this book post). As long as you enjoy creating the modifications you put out and most of the people enjoy it to some degree, I'm perfectly happy.

Edited August 12, 20169 yr by Albo1125

About the only thing I'd like to see changed about the review system, is to only allow posting once the user has actually downloaded the file. Sure, this'd mean you'd need to be logged in to download plugins, but hey, maybe the site would be up more often then ;)

17 minutes ago, Darkmyre said:

About the only thing I'd like to see changed about the review system, is to only allow posting once the user has actually downloaded the file. Sure, this'd mean you'd need to be logged in to download plugins, but hey, maybe the site would be up more often then ;)

I don't see how those things go hand in hand. We personally take the approach of not limiting guests because there is no point in making people sign up just to download, as these users are less likely to actually interact with the site in any way so we are left with more worthless accounts than we need.

2 minutes ago, Cyan said:

I don't see how those things go hand in hand. We personally take the approach of not limiting guests because there is no point in making people sign up just to register, as these users are less likely to actually interact with the site in any way so we are left with more worthless accounts than we need.

Well, I've heard that some of the times the site goes down, has been from DDOSes aimed at the download system. Surely that'd be easier to mitigate if an account was necessary, since presumably there's some security to prevent/limit automated accounts.