[09-Jun-2008] Ratings & Medals

[zimmah]

I'm not a fan of the new system but I have a couple of suggestions.


First, I support the idea that there should be a rating for gameplay/tactics.

How else do you know if the guy is going to just suicide on people or make really stupid moves that unbalance the game?

Secondly, when you look at the ratings someone has received, you should add a link to the relevant game, so you can judge whether the ratings were fair or not. At the moment you have to trawl through all of their played games and try to work it out.

Would have thought that 2nd idea would have been obvious to the GMs....

suiciding is considered bad fair play and therefore a bad rating in fair play might mean someone is suiciding, or otherwise ruining the game by intentionally playing bad, this has nothing to do with being a skilled player however (skilled players might suicide whenever they tend to lose because of player B, and therefore suicide on Player B giving the game away to player C for example, but that doesn't mean the player in question is a non-skilled player, 'just' a sore loser and an 'unfair' player.

one more time, i am not against a rating for skill, however it needs to be seperate from ratings for behavior. since skill does not have anything to do with being a good sport!

[jiminski]

As to strategy ratings - don't hold your breath. I know that sounds harsh and authoritarian, but it is a basic division between ratings and rankings. Ratings is designed to be a system to rate a user's bahaviour - the stuff that rankings cannot show. It's designed to fill the "other side" not to replace rankings.
If down the line, that needs to change, maybe it will. But, for now, as always, we're going to give ratings 1.0 a chance to get a footing and show its strengths and weaknesses before we go making changes to it.


Have a good one
Twill

it's exasperating brother Twill!
Skill and it's expression in play is behaviour! Rating someone on this is far more important to me than giving someone a gold-star for being perky and of good disposition!

You must have seen the old feedback where a Cook got a Positive from a General saying: "beat us with great tactics, fine and good spirited player, would play again!"

You took that little moment (which transcends scoreboards and rank and can not be replicated or recorded in any other way) .. you took that away from both Cook and General!

What you can do, by giving the rating for Skill, is give a place for that moment, to be read and understood in shorthand.

[lackattack]

Let me say a few more words about why we changed the feedback system.

Feedback allowed anyone to write negative comments on other people's records. And naturally when it's negative the recipient often doesn't agree. Although many people (like myself) don't mind getting a few negatives that we don't agree with, many others take offense and can't live with it. Those people, some of which are paying customers, *demand* that we do something, so doing nothing is not an option if we want to keep them around. But moderating feedback was a losing battle because whichever side you take someone will be pissed off.

The rationale behind ratings is that without written comments people will be much more likely to accept poor feedback and move on. Those of you who say it won't work need to give it a chance. It will take a little time for ratings to accumulate and provide useful information for us. But once it does, I'm sure it will serve to encourage good sportsmanship!

Another thing to keep in mind is that and 70% of our staff hours were spent moderating *thousands* of disputed feedbacks. Conquer Club has limited resources, and those hours could be much better spent answering support emails and hunting cheaters, both of which where suffering as a result of feedback disputes and both of which improve your CC experience. For example, you should expect to see quicker response times when reporting multiple accounts now.

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Since it was obviously needed I just updated the instructions and rate page with a clear scale for stars:

The number of stars given should be based on this scale:

1 = Bad, 2 = Below Average, 3 = Average, 4 = Above Average, 5 = Excellent.

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The new Score, Ranking and Medals section of the Instructions should now answer all questions about medals.

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On a different subject, I'm getting an email every time someone writes on my wall, and I cant find the button to make them stop. what do I do to turn off the emails?

The answer is in the announcement

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That's another thing that is completely wrong with this idiotic ratings system, they aren't game-specific! If you play one game with someone and he/she is a great player you can leave them all fives. However, if the next day you play a game with them and they go nuts and curse out the room you can't do anything to rate that specific game because it will affect your ratings of the other game.

In that situation you just change the 5's to something lower that reflects your overall opinion. No big problem.

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and maybe what each category means. how do you rate attitude if they dont say anything in chat? do you give them a 5 since they didnt say anything mean or a 1 since they don't even say good game?

The attributes are explained in Instructions -> Feedback. If the player showed no sign of good or bad attitude, just rate the attributes you have opinions on and leave that attribute "No Rating".

[suggs]

I'm not a fan of the new system but I have a couple of suggestions.


First, I support the idea that there should be a rating for gameplay/tactics.

How else do you know if the guy is going to just suicide on people or make really stupid moves that unbalance the game?

Secondly, when you look at the ratings someone has received, you should add a link to the relevant game, so you can judge whether the ratings were fair or not. At the moment you have to trawl through all of their played games and try to work it out.

Would have thought that 2nd idea would have been obvious to the GMs....

suiciding is considered bad fair play and therefore a bad rating in fair play might mean someone is suiciding, or otherwise ruining the game by intentionally playing bad, this has nothing to do with being a skilled player however (skilled players might suicide whenever they tend to lose because of player B, and therefore suicide on Player B giving the game away to player C for example, but that doesn't mean the player in question is a non-skilled player, 'just' a sore loser and an 'unfair' player.

one more time, i am not against a rating for skill, however it needs to be seperate from ratings for behavior. since skill does not have anything to do with being a good sport!

Yes, all of which you could do under the old system eg "Tom was a fun player, took his turns quickly, but seemed to struggle with the tactics of an escalating card game".

Easy. And you good get rid of those silly stars at the same time.

[cre8tiff]

The low rating block will be added down the line, it's not in yet, we want to see how the ratings distribute before we add it in.

As to comments going AWOL, we hear you. We have a couple of plans that may come down the line (emphasis on "may"). We, again, want to give time for ratings to settle in and get through teething issues before we add, remove or tweak anything. There are a whole host of issues that come with commenting on players which lead to a lot of complaints and bad blood between user and user and between user and mod when they make a decision one way or another. We have to see how this system pans out with issues and benefits before we go changing things.

As to strategy ratings - don't hold your breath. I know that sounds harsh and authoritarian, but it is a basic division between ratings and rankings. Ratings is designed to be a system to rate a user's bahaviour - the stuff that rankings cannot show. It's designed to fill the "other side" not to replace rankings.
If down the line, that needs to change, maybe it will. But, for now, as always, we're going to give ratings 1.0 a chance to get a footing and show its strengths and weaknesses before we go making changes to it.

I think those are the two main issues people are having - comments and strategy, and we've discussed both at length and are watching them as the system pans out.

As to game references, we intentionally removed that because you can have an experience that changes over time with a player. In the previous system where the ratings were tied to a game and you could rate a player only once, this meant that you'd have to tie a single game to an overall rating, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. By uncoupling specific games from general ratings, we hoped to allow people to give, and thus get, an idea of the player as a whole rather than a mashup of games parading as one.

Have a good one
Twill

So basically "shut up and drink your juice". "Teething" indeed, as if we are babies crying.

This is a very poor way to approach a major change to a site. "Just get used to it" is never an answer in the development world. You should have spent more time knowing how your users work the site (Though this is not surprising given the usability issues here). Many folks here are trying to tell you what they want, but ya'll appear to be too much wrapped around the axle of "what we admins want" to hear it.

[suggs]

Sorry Lack, but you have made a mistake. Be a man, admit it's a bodge up, and change it back.

[zimmah]

The low rating block will be added down the line, it's not in yet, we want to see how the ratings distribute before we add it in.

As to comments going AWOL, we hear you. We have a couple of plans that may come down the line (emphasis on "may"). We, again, want to give time for ratings to settle in and get through teething issues before we add, remove or tweak anything. There are a whole host of issues that come with commenting on players which lead to a lot of complaints and bad blood between user and user and between user and mod when they make a decision one way or another. We have to see how this system pans out with issues and benefits before we go changing things.

As to strategy ratings - don't hold your breath. I know that sounds harsh and authoritarian, but it is a basic division between ratings and rankings. Ratings is designed to be a system to rate a user's bahaviour - the stuff that rankings cannot show. It's designed to fill the "other side" not to replace rankings.
If down the line, that needs to change, maybe it will. But, for now, as always, we're going to give ratings 1.0 a chance to get a footing and show its strengths and weaknesses before we go making changes to it.

I think those are the two main issues people are having - comments and strategy, and we've discussed both at length and are watching them as the system pans out.

As to game references, we intentionally removed that because you can have an experience that changes over time with a player. In the previous system where the ratings were tied to a game and you could rate a player only once, this meant that you'd have to tie a single game to an overall rating, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. By uncoupling specific games from general ratings, we hoped to allow people to give, and thus get, an idea of the player as a whole rather than a mashup of games parading as one.

Have a good one
Twill

well i can tell you it's quite random ATM, have a look at this and you'll see what i mean: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=53393&start=75&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

sollution: make guidelines or something, and at the very least when you mouse over your cursor over the stars while rating someone make a text say 'bad, 'below average' 'average' 'above average' 'excellent'. (just like http://www.youtube.com )

there are more things that need improvement but at the very least first get this to change, so at least there will be less confusion around this.

[Anarkistsdream]

I also think this system can be abused way too much. First of all, from my personal experience over the past 2 days, I'm either going to rate someone with all 5 stars (If I like them and enjoyed the game), all 1 stars (If they pissed me off), or not rate them at all... I'm pretty sure most people will do the same...

I also think it's stupid how you can see who gave you what ratings. If I originally leave someone all 1 stars, and they originally leave me all 5 stars, once they see that I have given them a low rating (after the game is archived), they can just change it... Once you rate someone you shouldn't be able to change their ratings unless you play them again (or is this how it is currently).

Also, it doesn't even link a game # when it shows who rates you...

[jiminski]

Let me say a few more words about why we changed the feedback system.

Feedback allowed anyone to write negative comments on other people's records. And naturally when it's negative the recipient often doesn't agree. Although many people (like myself) don't mind getting a few negatives that we don't agree with, many others take offense and can't live with it. Those people, some of which are paying customers, *demand* that we do something, so doing nothing is not an option if we want to keep them around. But moderating feedback was a losing battle because whichever side you take someone will be pissed off.

The rationale behind ratings is that without written comments people will be much more likely to accept poor feedback and move on. Those of you who say it won't work need to give it a chance. It will take a little time for ratings to accumulate and provide useful information for us. But once it does, I'm sure it will serve to encourage good sportsmanship!

Another thing to keep in mind is that and 70% of our staff hours were spent moderating *thousands* of disputed feedbacks. Conquer Club has limited resources, and those hours could be much better spent answering support emails and hunting cheaters, both of which where suffering as a result of feedback disputes and both of which improve your CC experience. For example, you should expect to see quicker response times when reporting multiple accounts now.

No worries Lack, I can see you had to change it! However and i keep harping on about this, you have taken too much away from it... and unnecessarily! .. really, what is the problem? You don't want us to rate peoples skill? Why?
this seems incredible to me!

Fine get rid of the comments, i see it, it must be a nightmare!!
But a feedback system based on not being able to rank someones Skill in the game, largely makes it pointless for me to participate in.

Aside from wanting to leave feedback on how they played, as a point of mutual respect.
If i want to use other feedback to see whether to take a chance on a new partner or join a public game ...yes attendance and attitude are important... but how well they play is more so!

unless we are to infer that no good player will rate someone with '5' for good attitude if they play badly?

[zimmah]

There are a whole host of issues that come with commenting on players which lead to a lot of complaints and bad blood between user and user and between user and mod when they make a decision one way or another. We have to see how this system pans out with issues and benefits before we go changing things.

wrong, now players not only can get a bad rating from someone, they will also have no clue why they got a bad rating. comments are not a bad thing, i think we should have the right to comment on other players, what's the point of a rating system if you can't even specify why you rated someone? and so what if someoen flames you in their comments? does that make you any worse? no! it doesn't, i'd actually even make them the bad guy. so who the f*ck cares! and by adding the comments to the ratings, moderaters won't be able to remove/edit them so they won't be bothered, there! everyone happy! (with linking comments to ratings i mean give us the opportunity to add a comment allong with the rating and give us the ability to withdraw it or edit it the same way ratings are withdrawn/editted)

remember a bad comment won't hurt you, but the writer will get hurt more likely. and now they will still give you the negative (aka bad rating), just without the flaming, well that really is an improvement! (not!)

oh btw. allong with comments the reciever of the comment should be able to reply to his own comment just like with feedback!

But, for now, as always, we're going to give ratings 1.0 a chance to get a footing and show its strengths and weaknesses before we go making changes to it.

don't stick your head in the sand, the system clearly has flaws, and you should not wait too long to fix them, i like the new system but it needs improvements, and not after a few months, but as soon as possible.

As to game references, we intentionally removed that because you can have an experience that changes over time with a player. In the previous system where the ratings were tied to a game and you could rate a player only once, this meant that you'd have to tie a single game to an overall rating, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. By uncoupling specific games from general ratings, we hoped to allow people to give, and thus get, an idea of the player as a whole rather than a mashup of games parading as one.

Have a good one
Twill

very big mistake, one of the best ways to figure out if a player is worth playing or not, is to see for yourself, so at least provide a link to like let's say, the latest game player a and player b played together or something.


do i have to remind you most of us are paying costumers? so i think we have the right to demand good service.

[zimmah]

The rationale behind ratings is that without written comments people will be much more likely to accept poor feedback and move on.

Another thing to keep in mind is that and 70% of our staff hours were spent moderating *thousands* of disputed feedbacks. Conquer Club has limited resources, and those hours could be much better spent answering support emails and hunting cheaters, both of which where suffering as a result of feedback disputes and both of which improve your CC experience. For example, you should expect to see quicker response times when reporting multiple accounts now.

no lack, you're wrong on this one, now you'll just leave us guessing in the dark for why someone got a good or bad rating, or even if it's considered to be good or bad at the first place, since a 3 star rating can mean anything between 'a good sport' to 'a pretty bad person' (i know 3 is supposed to be average, but apperently not everyone knows that, and it is not stated anywhere on the website, you can off course fix this as i have told you before but then STILL you wouldn't know why someone got that specific rating, and therefore still leave us guessing. besdies, even if everyone would agree on the following: 1 star = poor 2 stars = below avrge. 3 = avrge 4 = above avrge 5 = perfect then STILL someone could have other standards for what he/she considers to be 'average' or 'good' as someone might think missing 4 turns is average in a 30 turn game, someone else might think missing no turns in a 90 turn game is 'normal' you see my point? i'd be much better to rate a player like 3 stars rating on attendance and adding a comment 'took all his turns in a 90 turn game and only missed 1 turn (warned beforehand) also did take almost al his turns within 12 hours. and even better add a link to the game, or the latest game those two players played together, or whatever. anything bette then just a few stars.

now that would tell much more about a player then just giving him 3 or 4 stars or whatever amount of stars. stars tell you nothing about a player at all.

giving us the ability to at least comment on a rating will make it much easier to state why we think someone deserved a rating like that, and if you flame in it, it will only make you look stupid for flaming someone, the mayority of CC-society doesn't like to see flamings even in someone elses feedback, they'll just read the comment and think 'wow that guy is really flaming for nothing, i'd better put him on ignore before he flames me too/gives me a bad rating for nothing and only i think hardly anyone would put the one who recieved such a rating on ignore (unless they got many of them maybe, but then it's often for a reason)

it's not the comment that makes a rating bad. and besides, you might as well have no rating at all, because the ratings we have now are a total joke and just leaves us guessing. it doesn't even matter how high your rating is now, because whether you have 1 or 5 stars, it does tell you NOTHING

[cre8tiff]

The rationale behind ratings is that without written comments people will be much more likely to accept poor feedback and move on.

Another thing to keep in mind is that and 70% of our staff hours were spent moderating *thousands* of disputed feedbacks. Conquer Club has limited resources, and those hours could be much better spent answering support emails and hunting cheaters, both of which where suffering as a result of feedback disputes and both of which improve your CC experience. For example, you should expect to see quicker response times when reporting multiple accounts now.

no lack, you're wrong on this one, now you'll just leave us guessing in the dark for why someone got a good or bad rating, or even if it's considered to be good or bad at the first place, since a 3 star rating can mean anything between 'a good sport' to 'a pretty bad person'

giving us the ability to at least comment on a rating will make it much easier to state why we think someone deserved a rating like that, and if you flame in it, it will only make you look stupid for flaming someone, the mayority of CC-society doesn't like to see flamings even in someone elses feedback, they'll just read the comment and think 'wow that guy is really flaming for nothing, i'd better put him on ignore before he flames me too/gives me a bad rating for nothing and only i think hardly anyone would put the one who recieved such a rating on ignore (unless they got many of them maybe, but then it's often for a reason)

it's not the comment that makes a rating bad. and besides, you might as well have no rating at all, because the ratings we have now are a total joke and just leaves us guessing. it doesn't even matter how high your rating is now, because whether you have 1 or 5 stars, it does tell you NOTHING

ZImmah it's nice to see you are trying very hard to get them to see, but it appears they are blinded by arrogance. They are not behaving as professionals at this point. I had held better hope for them. I think we need to just resign ourselves to the fact the rating are nothing more than rather garish eyesores that hold no meaning whatsoever. Except in the future where if you are a noobie who has pissed people off in your first few games, you will be barred from getting in others. Guilty until proven innocent indeed.

Heck half the time I decide to enter a game based on what other people have said about the participants. I also know not to attempt to get into a truce with a backstabber, for example. Or am prepared when a loudmouth trash talker starts up. None of this information will be there for me any more.

[zimmah]

ZImmah it's nice to see you are trying very hard to get them to see, but it appears they are blinded by arrogance. They are not behaving as professionals at this point. I had held better hope for them. I think we need to just resign ourselves to the fact the rating are nothing more than rather garish eyesores that hold no meaning whatsoever. Except in the future where if you are a noobie who has pissed people off in your first few games, you will be barred from getting in others. Guilty until proven innocent indeed.

Heck half the time I decide to enter a game based on what other people have said about the participants. I also know not to attempt to get into a truce with a backstabber, for example. Or am prepared when a loudmouth trash talker starts up. None of this information will be there for me any more.

well at least they heared me by posting a "100 post per hour" to get the mouse-over thingy in i like to see. so it's not all 100% waste of time.

but yes, still it needs improvement. and i really think comments should be integrated into this system.

and yes, you are right about the last part, the system is supposed to show us whether someone is trustworthy, a good sport, fun to play with etc. but what it actually does now, is nothing but generating numbers more random then a dice suggestion: add a 6 to the rating and use the digits created by the random star generator to replace the dice generator.

or fix this to get a truly amazing rating system. either way i'm happy

[Ignite]

The new ratings look good, but can we still have the link to the game in which you are being rated for? Getting random negative ratings for a game you can not see prevents people from seeing why you got a low rating. At least with the old system a negative rating could be checked by looking at the game and usually it was noted by someone being vindictive for losing.

[homes32]

I agree we need to have a link to the games in the ratings. even though the ratings are not tied to a a particular game per say I still like to look back at the game logs and chat to get a feel for how everybody plays. espically if they have a low rating.

my solution would be a drop down box showing all the games with that particular player. selecting a game number would send me over to that game. even a simple link that would run a search for finished games with that player would be satisfactory.

[Mr_Adams]

to bad Ryan32 got a ban before we could all make him the first ever -1 star player

[t-o-m]

What kinds of things would fall under "Special Contributions" to recieve that medal? And so the MODs hand the Map Maker Medal, Tornament Medal, and Special Contributions Medal out manually?

--lanyards

As I mentioned earlier, it's hard to say any one thing is a "Special Contribution."

Once we get out the backlogged Tournament and Cartography medals, the manual process will be smoother.


--Andy

i think lanyards wants one for the XML checking he did!

[lackattack]

A handy [find games] link now appears for each rating on a member's ratings page

[CandaVespin]

A handy [find games] link now appears for each rating on a member's ratings page

Lack,

Am I correct in assuming this just does a search for the user that received the feedback and the user that gave the feedback and provides all matches?

[zimmah]

A handy [find games] link now appears for each rating on a member's ratings page

wow you're pretty fast. another great improvement to the new rating system.

[jangler3]

Well, here is a crappy problem. I left a 4.3 rating. That player left me a 5.0 rating. I guess when he saw my lower rating for him he withdrew his rating for me. If that keeps up. the rating system is flawed and means nothing!

[zimmah]

Well, here is a crappy problem. I left a 4.3 rating. That player left me a 5.0 rating. I guess when he saw my lower rating for him he withdrew his rating for me. If that keeps up. the rating system is flawed and means nothing!

i thought you both had to agree on withdrawing?

[Esn]

Thank you for providing the link to games with the two players! This is very helpful.

Until further notice, I'll be using the system in this fashion: anyone who doesn't break any rules gets a "5" on "fair play". Anyone who doesn't say anything bad in chat gets a "5" for "attitude" (anyone who doesn't speak in chat gets no rating). The "attendance" ranking will be "5" unless they've missed turns. If they missed three in a row, they get "0".

[zimmah]

Thank you for providing the link to games with the two players! This is very helpful.

Until further notice, I'll be using the system in this fashion: anyone who doesn't break any rules gets a "5" on "fair play". Anyone who doesn't say anything bad in chat gets a "5" for "attitude" (anyone who doesn't speak in chat gets no rating). The "attendance" ranking will be "5" unless they've missed turns. If they missed three in a row, they get "0".

actually that's considered 'average behavior' should be rated 3 stars IMHO (look at the instructions page)

[homes32]

A handy [find games] link now appears for each rating on a member's ratings page

thanks lack! that is defiantly an improvement!