Voting System Overhaul Proposal

[TomFulp]

Quick news: @Troisnyx is organizing a Newgrounds 20th Anniversary Collab! Respond in that thread if you'd like to participate!

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Voting System Overhaul Proposal

Please respond with feedback!

The new voting system will be universal for all Portals (games, movies, audio, art).

You will gain 2 XP for each vote, with a max of 10 XP daily.

On weekends you will be able to log up to 20 XP daily.

XP is logged instantly, no more five vote minimum requirement.

All existing score data will be backed up but no longer used. Review scores will become the new existing score data.

Users can only vote once on each piece of content and can edit that vote whenever they want.

The score that shows in your review is the same score as your vote, there is just one location on the page to enter you score.

You can hide your score or submit a review without a score (many people are anti-scoring).

Combined voting and reviewing box, default appearance.

What you see after voting.

What you see when you click the review text field.

What you see after submitting your review.

Once you write a review, it always appears above the other reviews on the page, so you can see what you wrote and edit (or delete?) if desired.

Let me know your thoughts on this plan!

[Voltus]

sounds fine! Finally you can get some xp in the audio portal as well! exciting!

[RB]

Cool. I may enter the collab!
I think it would be pretty awesome to change the voting system.

[Gianni]

At 1/12/15 09:27 AM, TomFulp wrote: You can hide your score or submit a review without a score (many people are anti-scoring).

As one of them, I'm extremely in favor of this. This overhaul sounds great.

[DjGubkafish]

So are you saying that voting will be replaced by the starts above the review?

I think it makes things easier for newcomers so its a good idea . When i first came here I thought review score was the same as voting .

Also are you saying that we can edit our reviews and votes or just votes? I think we should not be able to do that cuz people gona troll

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:35 AM, DjGubkafish wrote: Also are you saying that we can edit our reviews and votes or just votes? I think we should not be able to do that cuz people gona troll

The plan is to allow review edits but we could log all previous review content. There are cases where developers fix issues with their games and reviewers would like the opportunity to update their review based on that.

[Sectus]

I'm guessing that it will work the same as the forum post system, or perhaps with a shorter time you can edit.

Or maybe I'm wrong, I dunno. I just don't really think it is a good idea to allow for review edits.

EDIT: @TomFulp - Is the flagging system still going to be the same, or is that going to be changed at all to reflect the new system?

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:42 AM, Sectus wrote: I'm guessing that it will work the same as the forum post system, or perhaps with a shorter time you can edit.

Or maybe I'm wrong, I dunno. I just don't really think it is a good idea to allow for review edits.

If we decide long-term editing is bad, we COULD try doing the 15 minute window and just allow a long-term score edit option to reflect a change of opinion.

[Ciullo-Corporation]

In short the voting widget on sidebar will be removed, the old rating will be the starting base for the new score and to submit a new vote you have to write a review?
It seems good, people will give/receive more feedback than just n.n stars...

[ChazDude]

At 1/12/15 09:44 AM, TomFulp wrote:
If we decide long-term editing is bad, we COULD try doing the 15 minute window and just allow a long-term score edit option to reflect a change of opinion.

I think a 15 min window would prevent any abuse.

[adaline]

Love the idea; seems to be geared to get people to provide feedback over the content they're scoring that's more than just a number.

I will say, though, that the part that I'm not really getting is the extension on the weekends.

At 1/12/15 09:27 AM, TomFulp wrote: You will gain 2 XP for each vote, with a max of 10 XP daily.

On weekends you will be able to log up to 20 XP daily.

XP is logged instantly, no more five vote minimum requirement.

First of all, there's the international time zone issue, which shows that it's primarily designed by and meant for people in the US/Canada (primarily the audience here, but still), but also it would give people the incentive to respond on the weekend over a weekday.

Another issue with the whole notion of XP guiding the incentive to review is that after a user hits 10 reviews on a day, or 20 on the weekend, they no longer have any guided incentive to continue reviewing. This also doesn't really cement the incentive to create quality reviews, rather, just reviews. Instead, I think one good idea would be to take a cue from Reddit on this particular issue and make the number or percentage of "People find this review helpful!" votes on a particular review determine the effect of the review on the user's XP and entirely remove the XP cap. The result would be that users would have an inherent incentive to: a) write reviews, but also b) write quality reviews. The total helpful reviews the user makes could be a statistic on their profile as well.

[Sectus]

At 1/12/15 09:47 AM, ChazDude wrote: I think a 15 min window would prevent any abuse.

Well, see, in the case that someone wants to fix up opinion pieces and grammar in past reviews, I can understand that. Perhaps we can implement a system where the person only has around 10 or 15 minutes total for each review, and any time they start editing a review, the 15 minutes starts counting down again. This way, they can edit their review as many times as needed, but they only have a universal 15 minutes to use.

[JKSSN]

Sounds really good!
I hope we can also get XP on votes at at the Art and Audio portal too though.

[Voltus]

At 1/12/15 09:47 AM, ChazDude wrote:

At 1/12/15 09:44 AM, TomFulp wrote:
If we decide long-term editing is bad, we COULD try doing the 15 minute window and just allow a long-term score edit option to reflect a change of opinion.

I think a 15 min window would prevent any abuse.

if its possible, i think it would be nice if you could change your score/review each time the developers update their game.

[Radaketor]

At 1/12/15 09:27 AM, TomFulp wrote: The new voting system will be universal for all Portals (games, movies, audio, art).

Awesome!

You will gain 2 XP for each vote, with a max of 10 XP daily.

Also awesome!

On weekends you will be able to log up to 20 XP daily.

It will take some time to get used to but hey, 10 extra XP is probably worth it.
Will we be able to see how much more XP we can deposit that day?

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:48 AM, vartan wrote: Another issue with the whole notion of XP guiding the incentive to review is that after a user hits 10 reviews on a day, or 20 on the weekend, they no longer have any guided incentive to continue reviewing. This also doesn't really cement the incentive to create quality reviews, rather, just reviews. Instead, I think one good idea would be to take a cue from Reddit on this particular issue and make the number or percentage of "People find this review helpful!" votes on a particular review determine the effect of the review on the user's XP and entirely remove the XP cap. The result would be that users would have an inherent incentive to: a) write reviews, but also b) write quality reviews. The total helpful reviews the user makes could be a statistic on their profile as well.

The review isn't required to get XP - just voting gives you XP and the review is optional. Making the review required for XP would likely result in lots of "cool!" and "ok" reviews. NG reviews are actually good and helpful compared to other websites so we're hoping it stays that way.

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:48 AM, vartan wrote: I will say, though, that the part that I'm not really getting is the extension on the weekends.

The time zone issue is a concern, hard to say if we could do much about that. Site activity is generally heavier on weekends and people have more time to check stuff out, which is why the double XP concept seems like it could be fun and boost activity even more.

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:49 AM, 123mine123 wrote: Sounds really good!
I hope we can also get XP on votes at at the Art and Audio portal too though.

That's the plan!

[adaline]

At 1/12/15 09:51 AM, TomFulp wrote: The review isn't required to get XP - just voting gives you XP and the review is optional. Making the review required for XP would likely result in lots of "cool!" and "ok" reviews. NG reviews are actually good and helpful compared to other websites so we're hoping it stays that way.

That totally clears it up! I guess my only concern is the boosted weekend cap. Seems rather arbitrary.

EDIT:

At 1/12/15 09:52 AM, TomFulp wrote: The time zone issue is a concern, hard to say if we could do much about that. Site activity is generally heavier on weekends and people have more time to check stuff out, which is why the double XP concept seems like it could be fun and boost activity even more.

In a way, though, by that logic, why limit the XP on weekdays? What's the link between XP and site traffic, and why have such a cap depend on site traffic?

[FinaLee]

I like it! Stops the hardcore zero bombers, encourages reviews, and double XP weekends! What's not to love?

[Intrapath]

Just some thoughts:

- Good to finally see the portals getting a universal voting system instead of Games/Movies giving EXP and not Audio and Art.

On weekends you will be able to log up to 20 XP daily.

This is a nice little touch for people who're busy during the week.

All existing score data will be backed up but no longer used. Review scores will become the new existing score data.

Just a little confused by what this means, exactly. Let's say a submission has a score of 3.0, but the reviews (currently) average out to 7.0. Would this mean that the new score for the submission is 7.0?

- The drafts look fine and all, but I think it would just be a damn shame to lose the Pico voting icons; they've been around for so long that I'm positive a lot of people are nostalgic for them. I know that it'd be awkward to have them work on a scale of 0-10 (since they're currently 0-5), but maybe this shitty MS Paint-style mockup could show what I'm trying to get across:

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/ee0d0ce02fe96517532c34707863932b

In this case, the user would be voting a score of 7. Obviously the 0-5 written on the icons would be changed, and there'd probably have to be better visual communication, but I hope it gets the idea across.

All in all, this doesn't seem like a bad idea! I think this'll work out well.

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:49 AM, The-Eternal-Abyss wrote: so the idea , if I understand correctly is that you are forcing the user to write up a review on the flash in order to be able to vote on it?, as it is you have implemented the system so that we actually have to watch a flash before being able to vote on it . this sounds like a needless change , also what about our levels and B/p ?, will they still have effect ?, you know you might as well get rid of those actually, and make it so that all users have the same level and voting power.

We may need to figure out how to make this more clear. Reviewing is not required to vote. You can vote on something, or you can review something, or you can do both.

The current system is weird because we have a vote bar in the left column and then a second vote bar for the review in the right column. We want to get it down to one vote bar while also solving all our other long-standing problems.

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:50 AM, Voltus wrote: if its possible, i think it would be nice if you could change your score/review each time the developers update their game.

That's a good idea, we could try that!

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:51 AM, Radaketor wrote: It will take some time to get used to but hey, 10 extra XP is probably worth it.
Will we be able to see how much more XP we can deposit that day?

Good point, we should include a note for that.

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:53 AM, vartan wrote: In a way, though, by that logic, why limit the XP on weekdays? What's the link between XP and site traffic, and why have such a cap depend on site traffic?

I guess another thought behind it is that it would "feel" special; knowing you have a limited window to get more XP would make it more compelling / exciting to take advantage of the window, vs having the same window 365 days per year.

[Voltus]

At 1/12/15 09:55 AM, TomFulp wrote:

We may need to figure out how to make this more clear. Reviewing is not required to vote. You can vote on something, or you can review something, or you can do both.

an idea would be to have a small "tutorial" when the update hits. say you have a dummy page with a lot of tooltips, which shows users the different possibilities to scoring/reviewing something.

[LucidShadowDreamer]

Hmm... Change is always weird, but I think I can get used to this. The new system sounds fine to me :)

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:54 AM, LDAF wrote: Just a little confused by what this means, exactly. Let's say a submission has a score of 3.0, but the reviews (currently) average out to 7.0. Would this mean that the new score for the submission is 7.0?

Yes, although everything would still be represented with a 5 star scale, so the score would visibly become 3.5 stars. One thing that has become painfully obvious in recent years is that our review scores are WAAAAAY more accurate than our voting scores.

- The drafts look fine and all, but I think it would just be a damn shame to lose the Pico voting icons; they've been around for so long that I'm positive a lot of people are nostalgic for them. I know that it'd be awkward to have them work on a scale of 0-10 (since they're currently 0-5), but maybe this shitty MS Paint-style mockup could show what I'm trying to get across:

I've been conflicted on this one for years and it is one of the concerns that has held up progress on a change. Part of it comes down to how much we let nostalgia hold us back, when NG needs to also bring in new users, to whom the vote bar has no relevance and can even be a detriment. We're walking a fine line between making the site appealing to new users and making the site not "compete" with the content on the page, while also making oldschool fans feel at home and feel like this is still Newgrounds.

[TomFulp]

At 1/12/15 09:58 AM, The-Eternal-Abyss wrote: you are talking about the stars that i can give to a flash right now in the current review system, you are saying that those would become the new voting 0 1 2 3 4 5 buttons ? or remain as stars and act like the voting buttons

They would remain stars but act as the voting buttons.

[Wegra]

Hmmm I like how this is looking although I am a bit concerned whatll happen to Pico and the gang. I mean its good to change but dont change too much

Just throwing it out there