Go Back to Ratings instead of Likes

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    Likes are uninformative and not nearly as helpful to the production of a pre-release game as the ratings system was. With the like system, there is no way of looking at an OP and telling the difference between a post that did not get much attention and a post that is poorly received. So, good ideas get presumed as bad or bad ideas get presumed as good unless you read the entire discussion which Schine's development staff honestly does not have time to do.

    Furthermore, disagree tags open up discussions that lead to elaboration. On several threads in the past, people have disagreed with me which opened up discussions that lead to useful conclusions, and on many threads, certain things were made very obvious by a strong reaction of disagreeing statements.

    While I understand the desire to limit inflammatory behavior, removing it means that useful discussion also gets limited. In the English speaking business world, we often say that things need a "critique" or a "hallway test" before they go to the public. This means you look for opinions (especially the negative ones) of people who were not part of your development process itself, since developers and designers are often too close to the situation to recognize issues that other people will have.

    [EDIT] A compromise may be a simpler Like/Agree/Disagree system to prevent harassing behavior with things like the funny tag. But overall, even slamming an idea with 30 disagrees is not inherently bullying, flaming, etc. It just means that a large number of people see a problem with an idea.
     
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    CyberTao

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    This is the second time disagree was removed, it was only even brought back by ex-mods like Thingie and Crusade. The consensus of the mods when it was originally removed was "It would encourage more discussion as people would have to respond", but that all achieved was bloating of the thread and going in circles.

    While putting your opinion and thoughts into a post is all well and good, sometimes its just better for the discussions health if people can just click "disagree" on a conversation that's already gone full circle and move on.
     

    Blakpik

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    I'm going to keep using the ratings, but I only have one. So now I'm just liking a post anytime I like it, agree with it, disagree with it, find it funny, informative, friendly or useful.

    This is the Aladeen/Aladeen arguments all over again.
     

    Valiant70

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    Likes are uninformative and not nearly as helpful to the production of a pre-release game as the ratings system was. With the like system, there is no way of looking at an OP and telling the difference between a post that did not get much attention and a post that is poorly received. So, good ideas get presumed as bad or bad ideas get presumed as good unless you read the entire discussion which Schine's development staff honestly does not have time to do.

    Furthermore, disagree tags open up discussions that lead to elaboration. On several threads in the past, people have disagreed with me which opened up discussions that lead to useful conclusions, and on many threads, certain things were made very obvious by a strong reaction of disagreeing statements.

    While I understand the desire to limit inflammatory behavior, removing it means that useful discussion also gets limited. In the English speaking business world, we often say that things need a "critique" or a "hallway test" before they go to the public. This means you look for opinions (especially the negative ones) of people who were not part of your development process itself, since developers and designers are often too close to the situation to recognize issues that other people will have.
    *pushes phantom agree button*
     

    Edymnion

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    Eh, now instead of a quick "disagree" or "funny" (which honestly was being used as a personal insult on these boards), you have to actually take the time to write out your response and give your reasoning instead of making a driveby, I prefer it this way.
     

    Valiant70

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    Eh, now instead of a quick "disagree" or "funny" (which honestly was being used as a personal insult on these boards), you have to actually take the time to write out your response and give your reasoning instead of making a driveby, I prefer it this way.
    *presses phantom disagree button*
     

    CyberTao

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    Eh, now instead of a quick "disagree" or "funny" (which honestly was being used as a personal insult on these boards), you have to actually take the time to write out your response and give your reasoning instead of making a driveby, I prefer it this way.
    You'd be surprised how false that is. People get tired of saying the same thing again and again.
    People wont respond more, they'll just start ignoring people outright. Which is honestly just as bad a little red X overall.

    Case and point, I debated a person to a point where they just stopped replying to me in the old alter reee thread. He just stopped responding to me at all and picking at other peoples posts instead. If people cant disagree, they will ignore.
     
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    Eh, now instead of a quick "disagree" or "funny" (which honestly was being used as a personal insult on these boards), you have to actually take the time to write out your response and give your reasoning instead of making a driveby, I prefer it this way.
    Yes, they were occasionally being used as a personal insult, so I understand your opinion here. However, in such cases, they were at least a "soft" insult instead of a "hard" insult. Forum trolls HAVE the time to write a full insult and will they will if that is their only option. For example, if someone found your opinion on something to be wrong to the point of ridiculous, then a Funny tag instead of a proper disagree might be a bit offensive. By contrast, someone responding "You are being so irrational, I literally spit my coffee out laughing when I read this." could be far more offensive... although, I'm pretty sure a lot of people on here would use much more colorful language than that.

    Also, disagree tags can be used for analytics in a way that comments can't, so forcing someone to comment is often less productive than a singular trackable datapoint.
     
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    Edymnion

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    Yes, they were occasionally being used as a personal insult, so I understand your opinion here. However, in such cases, they were at least a "soft" insult instead of a "hard" insult. Forum trolls HAVE the time to write a full insult and will they will if that is their only option. For example, if someone found your opinion on something to be wrong to the point of ridiculous, then a Funny tag instead of a proper disagree might be a bit offensive. By contrast, someone responding "You are being so irrational, I literally spit my coffee out laughing when I read this." could be far more offensive... although, I'm pretty sure a lot of people on here would use much more colorful language than that.
    Yes, but since the board migration it looks like the moderation staff is going to be cracking down on the overall toxicity. So an obvious and open insult will result in disciplinary actions and eventually mean the people stirring the pot will be banned if they don't drop it.

    So win-win.
     

    Valiant70

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    Yes, they were occasionally being used as a personal insult, so I understand your opinion here. However, in such cases, they were at least a "soft" insult instead of a "hard" insult. Forum trolls HAVE the time to write a full insult and will they will if that is their only option. For example, if someone found your opinion on something to be wrong to the point of ridiculous, then a Funny tag instead of a proper disagree might be a bit offensive. By contrast, someone responding "You are being so irrational, I literally spit my coffee out laughing when I read this." could be far more offensive... although, I'm pretty sure a lot of people on here would use much more colorful language than that.

    Also, disagree tags can be used for analytics in a way that comments can't, so forcing someone to comment is often less productive than a singular trackable datapoint.
    *presses phantom agree button*
    Yes, but since the board migration it looks like the moderation staff is going to be cracking down on the overall toxicity. So an obvious and open insult will result in disciplinary actions and eventually mean the people stirring the pot will be banned if they don't drop it.

    So win-win.
    *presses phantom disagree button*
     
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    Yes, but since the board migration it looks like the moderation staff is going to be cracking down on the overall toxicity. So an obvious and open insult will result in disciplinary actions and eventually mean the people stirring the pot will be banned if they don't drop it.

    So win-win.
    I disagree. That is by definition a Win-Lose argument. In order to win you lose something of value. Win-win would be adding inappropriate tagging under the terms of flaming. Then you could use it as a method to oust inappropriate behavior, while retaining the more useful system. Either way, insults will need to happen before action can be taken, but total hurt feelings along the way would be minimized moderating for inappropriate ratings.
     

    Edymnion

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    I disagree. That is by definition a Win-Lose argument. In order to win you lose something of value. Win-win would be adding inappropriate tagging under the terms of flaming. Then you could use it as a method to oust inappropriate behavior, while retaining the more useful system. Either way, insults will need to happen before action can be taken, but total hurt feelings along the way would be minimized moderating for inappropriate ratings.
    Well, we either get a community that goes back to being able to express disagreement in a friendly, polite manner, or we ban the people who either will not or can not act like mature adults.

    Either is a win, in my book. I look forwards to getting back to the boards when we spent time talking about cool builds and things like the drone research thread where we went "Okay, well we know this system is pretty broken, lets go through and research HOW its broken and find work arounds to help everyone out" instead of just yelling and name calling.

    I fully support "You can disagree, but you have to be respectful about it" as a community goal.
     
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    I think we are both in agreement about friendliness being a goal, but removing ratings tags costs too much in other terms to be a good idea. If this is just a place to pow wow around with community ideas with no clear mechanics for aggregating community feedback, then it is no longer useful to schine as a development feedback tool. One of three things becomes true:

    1 - He has to read dozens to hundreds of posts a day to keep up with community feedback, and he does not have time to develop
    2 - He becomes completely reliant on moderator summaries of community feedback which becomes colored by their own bias. IE: "people love the new reactor system... except for all those guys from UIS, NRE, Odium, LAS, etc, but I don't like those guys and they only make up 90% of the veteran player base so their opinions don't matter."
    3 - He ignores player feedback all together and the game fails to pass a basic hallway test; so, drives play testers away and it flops when he releases it.
     
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    Edymnion

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    I think we are both in agreement about friendliness being a goal, but removing ratings tags costs too much in other terms to be a good idea. If this is just a place to pow wow around with community ideas with no clear mechanics for aggregating community feedback, then it is no longer useful to schine as a development feedback tool. One of three things becomes true:

    1 - He has to read dozens to hundreds of posts a day to keep up with community feedback, and he does not have time to develop
    2 - He becomes completely reliant on moderator summaries of community feedback which becomes colored by their own bias. IE: "people love the new reactor system... except for all those guys from UIS, NRE, Odium, LAS, etc, but I don't like those guys and they only make up 90% of the veteran player base so their opinions don't matter."
    3 - He ignores player feedback all together and the game fails to pass a basic hallway test; so, drives play testers away and it flops when he releases it.
    Well, the basic Like system still fulfills the requirements for #1 while removing some of the noise that specialty groups have for #2. If there's something in the suggestion forum and its got 20 or 30 Likes, then clearly a lot of people think its a good idea, so pay attention to it. We don't REALLY need a different feedback system for Like, Agree, Creative, Friendly, etc, they're all just different ways of saying the same thing, "I approve of this".

    #3 was the big one that we were suffering from before, with the toxicity, name calling, and frankly outright harassment some people were dishing out going a long way to ensure that schine DID stop reading altogether.

    Friendliness and respectful attitudes have GOT to be things, or else we're just shooting ourselves in the foot, because frankly if Schine does stop listening and the game fails, its not their fault, its ours for driving them away.
     
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