[General Battuta]

You all have my feelings on the matter. I don't think further discussion is going to be very productive, especially not with TopAce (who handles so much wiki stuff) against it.

[TopAce]

I have as much impact on the matter as any regular member here. I don't have any privileges.

[Mobius]

people hardly read them [reviews] and prefer numerical rankings more.

How do you know?

As I said, I have access to that data. People tend to read FAQs more and buy games after hearsay: those who use reviews constitute a minority (15.9% is the value I can see right now).

That's why I stopped reviewing space and flights sims - it wasn't worth the effort.

[Droid803]

I'm of the persuasion that a numerical score will not help less-played campaigns more noticed. It will not help popular campaigns that are widely recommended be played more. It will not stop people from asking for recommendations.

Ergo, it is useless, worthless, and a waste of everyone's time and effort.

In fact, I can imagine it having the opposite effect. Less-played campaigns will be even more forgotten as noone will bother to vote for it or whatever.

I am of the firm belief someone's work is worth more than some stupid number.

If a flat numerical score like game reviews ever comes into effect, rest assured that not only will I not participate, but I may as well quit FS modding. I do not want my work judged based off of an arbitrary number. Thank you.

[General Battuta]

I am pretty much in that camp.

[Black Wolf]

If a flat numerical score like game reviews ever comes into effect, rest assured that not only will I not participate, but I may as well quit FS modding. I do not want my work judged based off of an arbitrary number. Thank you.

If you don't want to use it, you wont be forced to. That's what this thread was about.

And threatening to take you bat and ball and go home is just childish.

[Narwhal]

I agree threats like "If this passes, I leave" are not very mature.

I used to be in favor of such a rating - even started a thread asking your opinion on it - but after reading all the opinions I was convinced by the "other side" and I am now  moderately against.

If it was to be done, it would need in my opinion a very strict implementation :

- Like / Dislike only answers, no numerical rating
- Number of votes
- Only completed campaign, i.e. someone (me?) would have to make a separate page with completed campaigns only. Actually - that was one of my projects, but even though I have some time I always find better occupations. I don't want people to vote on unfinished / demo / partial release, and then skewing the result when the campaign is finished.
- No way to vote when you have selected a "best campaigns" filter. This skews results an awful lot "Oh, yes ! This campaign was good ! I will vote for it too."

[I am still in favor of a short-list of outstanding campaigns, but for other reasons and that's another issue]

[NGTM-1R]

If you don't want to use it, you wont be forced to. That's what this thread was about.

That's like saying if you suppress one person's free speech, it doesn't effect anyone else. It doesn't work for the same reason. The legal term is "chilling effect" and Droid quite ably explained the problem in his post. Read the following again.

In fact, I can imagine it having the opposite effect. Less-played campaigns will be even more forgotten as noone will bother to vote for it or whatever.

Now refute that and we can say you actually have an argument.

[Black Wolf]

If you don't want to use it, you wont be forced to. That's what this thread was about.

That's like saying if you suppress one person's free speech, it doesn't effect anyone else. It doesn't work for the same reason. The legal term is "chilling effect" and Droid quite ably explained the problem in his post. Read the following again.

In fact, I can imagine it having the opposite effect. Less-played campaigns will be even more forgotten as noone will bother to vote for it or whatever.

Now refute that and we can say you actually have an argument.

Prove that it will happen and you might have an argument. You're making assumptions that are yet to be tested. Hell, you're the one advocating "repression", to use your own words. Consider:

I'm yet to find anyone who has an objection to a rating bar for individual ship mods. That's what I wanted it for in the first place, and that's a project I'm going to take on personally.
Once the script is implemented, the functionality will be employable by anyone, for any purpose they wish, just like any other tools on the wiki.
What you're proposing is to forbid people from using this functionality, if they so choose, to generate feedback about their particular campaign. There are currently no rules forbidding the use of functionality on the wiki, and there flat out shouldn't be any rules like that.

Let me also remind people of the current implementation plan to address some of Narwhal's concerns:

• This will not be being applied wholesale to all campaigns, so there's no chance of incomplete ones getting it. Well, I suppose there is, if someone put one on on a campaign page which was as yet unreleased, however I plan to word the template to make it very obvious that the rating is meant to be about the experience of playing the campaign, so it wont apply to unreleased campaigns.
  
• It will be entirely at the discretion of the creator of any campaign if he wants to implement one of the bars.
• No top ten lists or anything like it will be compiled due to concerns raised about these. The only place the scores will be visible will be on the pages of the campaigns which choose to use the bar. This is a direct result of it not being applied wholesale, since it would obviously not be representative.
• The script does show how many votes have contributed to the aggregate score.
  

The other factor I want to address is the idea that seems to be developing that there is some kind of zero sum game between a numeric rating bar and written reviews. There isn't. A lot of people who've played a campaign will likely not want to sit down and write a review, but they might be willing to click a few buttons and rate it. This gives the authors more feedback, admittedly of a limited type, but of a type that they have chosen to receive. Moreover, the template can be written like this:

"If you have played |CAMPAIGN NAME| please take the time to ratet he campaign, and possibly write a short review it in the space below:"

This could very well increase the number of written reviews as people will feel the need to justfy their score. And yes, I realize that that's an equally untested assertion to the one I was annoyed about at the beginning of the post, but it's not the basis for my entire argument, so I'm happy enough with it.

[General Battuta]

I'm still thinking I will remove them where I see them. The community has indicated it does not want them. You may say that a campaign creator should have the right to deploy anything he wants, but Wiki standards hold: the campaign creator does not have the right to post blog-style veteran comments per se. If the community doesn't want them I think they're a no-go.

[Black Wolf]

Well then you're going to put me in an awkward position if you do. But I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

[General Battuta]

I don't know. I do see the point you're making.

[Angelus]

I voted no.

[Vidmaster]

I WANT MORE PEOPLE TO WRITE REVIEWS. I'd "campaign reviews" by people, linked to the campaign's main article. No scores permitted, just a description aka review of the personal experience with the thing.

[Nohiki]

Definitely. Even the verbal ratings are too individual, and from them you can at least understand what that specific user didn't like.

[TopAce]

I WANT MORE PEOPLE TO WRITE REVIEWS. I'd "campaign reviews" by people, linked to the campaign's main article. No scores permitted, just a description aka review of the personal experience with the thing.

I'd post a new thread about it in the Missions and Campaigns forum. It's a better place for this kind of thing. Those who visit the Wiki board are already aware of this possibility.

[Mobius]

I haven't followed the debate for quite some time, but I have something to add:

No top ten lists or anything like it will be compiled due to concerns raised about these. The only place the scores will be visible will be on the pages of the campaigns which choose to use the bar. This is a direct result of it not being applied wholesale, since it would obviously not be representative.
The script does show how many votes have contributed to the aggregate score.

The other factor I want to address is the idea that seems to be developing that there is some kind of zero sum game between a numeric rating bar and written reviews. There isn't. A lot of people who've played a campaign will likely not want to sit down and write a review, but they might be willing to click a few buttons and rate it. This gives the authors more feedback, admittedly of a limited type, but of a type that they have chosen to receive. Moreover, the template can be written like this:

In my opinion, if these can be done, it'll be very, very nice.