RTB save file submissions -OR- make more public builds and designs

[Sleven]

I'd like them bigger, just for trees.
One of the things I really can't build.

Agreed.
There are builds which work like props but still can be big.

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[Barnabas]

Mods should be able to change tags if needed. Think of someone who accidentally uploads his giant castle as a prop. (Sure, it might sound silly, but it's bound to happen).

Also, a preview screen would be nice. Just to see what we are about to download.

[Ephialtes]

Yeah I agree with all that, I think a size limit for props is both nonsensical and not feasible so I'll probably ditch that.

One thing I'm curious about is why Sleven thinks there should be an approval queue for full size builds though. If you could go into more detail about that then that'd be cool because I was just thinking of letting them go straight up for download by anyone.

I kind of intended for the user ratings to determine what stuff gets to be seen and what doesn't. At the moment ratings are fairly useless for the add-on system since the average file rating is about 4 and a half stars due to the strict quality requirements I enforce.

Moderators would be able to change anything about a submission from tags to screenshots to the description to whatever so they'd have a lot of control there.

I was also thinking about doing automatically generated previews for prop submissions - I can't imagine that being hard to do from a technical perspective. People could of course submit their own previews alongside that.

[Sleven]

Will this go in mod manager as an own sub-section or something completely new?


Also, what about situations like this:

Complete builds most of the times contains its own props. If you release a build but not the props and people just want a specific prop from it, will they have to take out that prop from the save themselves?

And, what about submitting floods. If everyone submit one tree each it would be a pain to go through them all.

One thing I'm curious about is why Sleven thinks there should be an approval queue for full size builds though. If you could go into more detail about that then that'd be cool because I was just thinking of letting them go straight up for download by anyone.

I'm certain that a queue is needed or else you will have to check through the saves later on. There may be false info, inappropriate stuff and so on. If I would had been in charge I also would had rejected stuff builds. I do not want to see a red box- next to a cathedral save. I want a platform where I can view and collect saves and not just a dump.

If you're going to let everything through, it will certainly become a dump and not a system.

Sorry if I speak unclear or generally dumb. I have problems with expressing myself in English..

[Ephialtes]

Don't worry, you expressed yourself perfectly.

Will this go in mod manager as an own sub-section or something completely new?

This would be separate to the mod manager, so there would be a "Save Gallery" button or similar in the overlay which would work in a similar way to the mod manager but the browsing would be more image-based so you know what you're looking at before you need to click.

Complete builds most of the times contains its own props. If you release a build but not the props and people just want a specific prop from it, will they have to take out that prop from the save themselves?

Yeah they'd have to. I can't really think of a way to extract props unless the person who submits the build uploads props individually and links to them from their complete build post.

And, what about submitting floods. If everyone submit one tree each it would be a pain to go through them all.

I kind of think that'd be a good thing. Obviously there's a big responsibility on each user to rate builds they think are good/bad so that eventually you'll end up with a list of all the good trees and you can just ignore the bad ones - then you've got a load of different styles to choose from too.

I'm certain that a queue is needed or else you will have to check through the saves later on. There may be false info, inappropriate stuff and so on. If I would had been in charge I also would had rejected stuff builds. I do not want to see a red box- next to a cathedral save. I want a platform where I can view and collect saves and not just a dump.

If you're going to let everything through, it will certainly become a dump and not a system.

I think that makes sense, yeah. There are a couple of solutions to this problem. The first is that anything that gets a negative rating from too many users would be removed or hidden from the system because we'd assume that it's just really bad quality and nobody wants to see it.

What we could also do is make it so that the moderators get a list of all the newly submitted files whenever they login and they can then check those and remove any that are inappropriate or just awful.

Do you think that'd solve the problem of it becoming a dump?

[Chrono]

I do believe there would need to be some level of quality control.

Yeah, the votes will sort a lot of nice things from bad things, but once there's enough stuff in there, it would be hard to find things that are both new and good.

[King Leo]

This sounds like a very good idea!

If the quality control is done correct, then I can only see positive things with this.  This would probably lead to a lot more diversity among the servers. I'm tired of seeing the same default saves being used over and over, with the only thing varying from server to server being the addons.

I was also thinking about some sort of "strike" system. If a user submits a save that gets more bad than good ratings, (s)he would get a strike. When the user gets a certain number of strikes, (s)he would lose the ability to submit any more saves, at least  for a certain amount of time. This system could work alongside with having moderators, making their jobs a bit easier.

[Ben Grapevine]

I like this idea, but I think that displaying the build needs to be optimized (over something like server preview which generally sucks).  I think it should maybe be an automated system because some people upload pretty crappy pictures for things that may not display the build in it's full potential (they also add maker's marks that take up the whole screen aaa-)

EDIT: by automated system, I mean for EVERYTHING and not just props

[Ephialtes]

I do believe there would need to be some level of quality control.

Yeah, the votes will sort a lot of nice things from bad things, but once there's enough stuff in there, it would be hard to find things that are both new and good.

Sure there can be quality control, I just don't think builds should have to be approved before they can be available for download. Trying to find out if anyone has any strong feelings about that one.

Perhaps if a new submission meets a threshold of positive ratings within the period that it's considered "new" then it would be floated to the top for a while much like new add-ons appear at the top of views in the mod manager?

I was also thinking about some sort of "strike" system. If a user submits a save that gets more bad than good ratings, (s)he would get a strike. When the user gets a certain number of strikes, (s)he would lose the ability to submit any more saves, at least  for a certain amount of time. This system could work alongside with having moderators, making their jobs a bit easier.

I think it'd be best to see if this does become an issue before a strike system is implemented. Moderators would be able to prevent people uploading things so they'd still have the control they need to do a good job and keep things running smoothly.

I like this idea, but I think that displaying the build needs to be optimized (over something like server preview which generally sucks).  I think it should maybe be an automated system because some people upload pretty crappy pictures for things that may not display the build in it's full potential (they also add maker's marks that take up the whole screen aaa-)

EDIT: by automated system, I mean for EVERYTHING and not just props

I'd have to do some experimenting to see how feasible it would be to do automated previews for submissions. There would definitely be edge cases where the system does a crap job so maybe taking pictures from various angles and allowing the user to pick the best one would be the best way to go about it. I'll have to do some tests at some point and see how well it works. But yeah I agree - people tend to take really bad pictures or not take any pictures at all. Both are really unhelpful when the preview is the most important part of a submission. I'll be fixing the screenshot uploader to accept all resolutions so maybe people will be less lazy about screenshots.

[-Jetz-]

You could go for some kind of Newgrounds system where low rated stuff gets marked as "verge of death," and continued negative ratings get it discarded automatically.

[Chrono]

Sure there can be quality control, I just don't think builds should have to be approved before they can be available for download. Trying to find out if anyone has any strong feelings about that one.

Perhaps if a new submission meets a threshold of positive ratings within the period that it's considered "new" then it would be floated to the top for a while much like new add-ons appear at the top of views in the mod manager?

Some kind of vote weighting. Earlier votes are heavier than later votes. This way, when something's new and gets 30 positive votes right away, it can sit with something 2 years old that has over 1000 positive votes already.
Maybe if you include sorting options "Hot" can be default, where old great things and new good things are all displayed near the top, with other options like "New", where of course all the newest stuff is shown regardless of rating, and "Top" where it shows the highest rated builds regardless of age.

[Ephialtes]

If "hotness" were a combination both of ratings and downloads I think it'd be a true reflection of what's actually hot at the moment. But yeah, to be able to sort by things like "all time top" and "latest" and "hot" would probably be really beneficial.

You could go for some kind of Newgrounds system where low rated stuff gets marked as "verge of death," and continued negative ratings get it discarded automatically.

Yeah I think that makes the most sense for sure. I like the idea of ratings having more impact based on the length of time between the rating being submitted and the submission being added, too.

I'm stuff at math so working out the ratings algorithms for all of this stuff is going to be crazy fun.

[heedicalking]

top of the month?

[Ephialtes]

Yep definitely. Some sort of weekly showcase chosen by the moderators could be possible too. Then badges could be awarded if your build makes it into a showcase or something.

[King Leo]

I'm stuff at math so working out the ratings algorithms for all of this stuff is going to be crazy fun.

All you need is some basic statistics :P

Or you could just "borrow" a suitable algorithm from here