That's not really what I mean. I was thinking people making junk posts to try and throw the thread off course ;)
Edit: Sort of mmbossman. However, after they discuss the meh vote, it does sort of degenerate into a discussion about meh vs no because of personal preference. How the the voting system doesn't require knowledge of the game because it's not SDA and other pointless bickering. Even you yourself are telling people to stop arguing by the end of the thread.
And then Hoe sums up my point pretty well:
Hoe wrote:
What the fuck happened to this site? I have not been around in a while, but what I always liked about it, is that it was a programmatic dissection of things which honestly didn't need it, just as a hobby in peoples free time -- people who enjoyed it got together. It wasn't gamefaqs where people would get at each others throats over pointless crap. I, and no one else, really give a shit if you did not enjoy the game, get over yourself. I'm not 14 years old anymore, sorry if you are (even if not physically).
(1) Posts debating the votes:
- I think posts wondering why people voted in a certain way are perfectly legit, and very much on topic of discussing the run. I agree that posts like "OMG, 10 yes votes already" or "a yes votes 2 minutes after the run is submitted" aren't useful at all, but I don't think the majority of the posts is like this. Discussing the reasons for what was voted, and if the votes should indicate publication or rejection seems perfectly fine to me.
I agree with you, however in practice that's not how it's been working. Someone votes no on a popular movie, and a few people complain and call the person out. No one responds, or they respond with "I didn't find it entertaining" and a discussion is launched into the true meaning of the sentence telling you what to vote.
If someone makes a comment about why the movie is bad and there is discussion about it great, but that is separate from the voting system, and they would have likely done it anyways without it.
Baxter wrote:
(2)Posts stating a personal vote:
- I don't see any problem with this. If it states a no-vote, than it's perfect, since especially those need posts attached to them. If it states a yes-vote, then it's fine too I think. People might know the author, and want him to know that they personally enjoyed the run, rather than being just one of the pile of ananymous yes votes. Most of the "I voted yes"-posts contain something like "great movie, yes vote", which gives the author of the run a feeling that his hard work is being appreciated, I think this is a good thing (ok... preferably the reasons why it is a great run should be stated... but I think even without it, it's fine).
Basically you touch on what I want to say at the end. Beyond the fact that there are many yes votes that don't really mention the run, the ones that say "great movie, yes vote" are actually less helpful than you think. If someone votes yes, it's safe to assume that they though it was a great movie. Unless of course they make a post along the lines of, "Although I voted yes, it's a pretty weak one. I think <x> could be improved." Which again, is much more helpful and quite likely would have been posted anyways.
It's also more helpful if someone says "Great movie, I really enjoyed when you <x>", as it gives the judge something to look for.
Baxter wrote:
Well, obviously I disagree with your statement that it's a bad thing if people would start posting their ratings (although obviously better with explanation of course). And you have to agree, someone just saying "8 entertainment, 5 technical", is more informative of someone just saying "yes vote". I also think this system encourages voting, which will be a good thing for the statistics (more ratings = better). I personally wouldn't mind these votes being public before publication, as it's nice to see what people voted (two 7's or a 5 and a 9 are quite different)... but I know this will never be done... so I'm just in favor of an average, and the amount of voters being public before publishing).
As we discussed in IRC, this comment came about because we took different interpretations to the poll. You assumed the judge wouldn't be able to see the ratings until it was judged, I assumed they would. Making such a post if the judge can already see the ratings is pretty useless. If someone wants to rate it anonymously (which I don't agree with, but whatever), then they wouldn't be posting their rating in the thread anyways.
Acheron86 wrote:
I'm still a bit confused as to what was so wrong with the original system. As long as there are forums, people will bicker about something, votes or no votes. How exactly does removing the voting system solve the problem?
There wasn't anything really, beyond the fact that there were so few judges that we couldn't keep up with the tide of submissions. Voting was then added to help pick out the quality runs first so they didn't sit around for literally years. There was alot more poor submissions back then.
Acheron86 wrote:
It seems like you're basically saying that whether or not I enjoyed a video isn't really relevant if I can't write out an essay describing it.
I'm not saying it's irrelevant without an essay, I'm saying a comment like "Why did you jump at the end of level 3?" is infinitely more helpful than "LOL YES VOTE BEST MOVIE EVER!!!!". Making a comment on the run itself to say what you didn't like, or even what you did is what I am looking for. Pick something at random if you need to.
Acheron86 wrote:
So if there's a voting system, the judges will ignore our posts and only look at the numbers? Forgive my ignorance, but where has this been a problem?
No, as I said, if there is a post saying "First yes vote!" that is no help. Because the poll tells the judge that you voted yes. You are providing no helpful insight into the run, and just repeating information that can be seen elsewhere. Judges are suppose to be fair and impartial, playing favourites in voting goes against that.
mmbossman wrote:
New suggestion
This is a good suggestion too, maybe the best so far. I'll think on it more during my day at work and see if I can come up with any flaws/improvements.
For your point 2), that is why people were suggesting keeping it hidden to members until the judges had finished with it. That said, I don't like the idea of anonymous voting on the submissions any more than you do. If people aren't willing to stand up to their vote, should their vote really matter?
On an unrelated note. Baring a few less than stellar posts off the start, that new submission is doing pretty well without votes if you ask me. (Though i'm sure after I post this, the childishness will attack to try and prove their point)
The 'soapboxing' was partially a way to see some of the newer judges reactions. I'm glad you have enough passion to stand up to it, even if my being inactive doesn't change the fact that it's true. That said, I don't try to hide the fact that I haven't been active in quite some time. Between finishing university, moving multiple times, friends, and now a job that I sometimes work in excess of 55 hours a week my free time has gone down greatly. I rarely have large chunks of time where I can watch, read, capture, and encode movies. That said, I also haven't hid the fact that I plan on doing it again once I get more free time. I've been rewriting my automated scripts for encoding as an example.
Also, while I may not post a lot or edit many pages, that doesn't mean I don't keep up with the site. I haven't ever really posted often.
As for the changing things without discussion. As I said in IRC, I was surprised Bisqwit acted on it so quickly. I bounced the idea off of him to see what he though about it, and it was done. Though as with Bisqwit, I don't regret or apologise that it happened. I don't personally think that anything would have gotten accomplished if he hadn't done it.
For the "I shouldn't have to deal with things that make it easier for me." I don't disagree. Believe it or not the goal wasn't to make it harder for judges. My original goal was to try and clean up all the garbage posting that was going on and try and make the submission forum more useful/helpful. Technically something like banning all discussion directly related to the voting process would have done this, but that is laughably infeasible.
Note: As I've told you in IRC Baxter, i'll put up a reply to your post tommorow, I really need to get to sleep.
I told Baxter I would make a post before I went to sleep, and even though i'm very tired and sick here it is.
First of all, people seem to think that I'm completely against all sort of voting type system. This isn't true. I just firmly believe that the former system was not doing it's job, and was in fact becoming a hindrance. I am more than open to discussion to get a better system, but I do agree with Bisqwit that nothing would have gotten accomplished if we had just started with discussion. Rocking the boat is sometimes the best way to get things changed.
For the people who argue that there is nothing wrong with the former system:
It was originally added to help judged sort through a list of over one hundred submissions to see which they should read/watch first. Since then it has grown into some sort of beast that people argue over, and think actually matters even though they are often reminded it doesn't. I think it's safe to say that at least half the posts in the submission forum now adays is either discussing/complaining about something related to the voting system OR a post just stating what someone voted. (Such as "I voted yes", or "First yes vote. I'll watch it now"). Neither of those types of posts are of any help at all. The posts stating how someone voted, are even less helpful because there is a poll in the thread already telling judges the totals. They just take up space.
Ok, some of the judges complain that they don't want to go through all the posts because there are so many of them. However, they don't seem to remember that if all the posts that were related to the voting system were removed from the submission forum, the total postcount would go down between 50-75%. There would be far less to read. This is a huge part of my desire to remove the voting system. It would remove pages of trash posts that come along with it.
On the topic of the judges are complaining about having too much to read. You have no room to complain. This is what you signed up for. YOU are the quality control, not the people on the forum. YOU are judges because you are suppose to have a good eye and watch the runs and take up questionable TASing with the author. YOU are suppose to sift through the posts to see if the there is something wrong with the run in the posts. YOU are the hidden face of the front page and what gets published. YOU are the 'voice' of Bisqwit. Why do you think there have been so few people to do it? It's a lot of work and Bisqwit puts a lot of trust in those people. If you don't like this, or think it's too much work, maybe you should reconsider your desire to be a judge.
For the voting systems that are currently being voted for:
Just adding "Yes/No/Meh" post buttons won't solve the garbage post problem. It will make it much, much worse. There will be floods of people who just post "I vote yes !!!!!!!" to get past length filters. The idea here is to make the forum more lean, not more spammy.
Just hiding the vote count until the submission is judged is just as bad of a solution. It will only increase the amount of junk posts that go in the submission forum, when everyone and their dog starts to feel it necessary to let everyone know how they voted. In a three word post.
Ratings, assuming they are just an average of everyone's ratings is a slightly better solution. It's already implemented in the site, and can be integrated in, which is very nice. However, it does suffer slightly from the same problem as above. I don't think as many people would make posts just to give their rating scores, but it still might happen. I think we would need a rule trying to forbid this. POSSIBLY don't allow people post their ratings at all, they can have them shown when the run is published.
This said, in my perfect world, as infeasible as it would be, there would only be posting. However, all posting would be directly about the movie. Basicaly asking questions and providing improvement suggestions. There would ideally be a bot similar to the ones in those chatrooms that ban people who say a sentence that has been said before. No repeat posts, only raw content. Praise and such can be done elsewhere mostly likely in the game related post where WIPs are posted. Granted, this wouldn't ever happen, and would upset a lot of people if it did. I'm just writing it here so people get some reference if they think I'm trying to be some sort of monster for suggesting removing the voting system.
My reaction to this thread:
Overall I'm glad there has been at least some helpful discussion and ideas to come out of it. However, it also reminds me why this site isn't a democracy. Certain people have been extremely childish, and quite frankly don't deserve a vote in this. There is a reason why companies don't give control of operations to everyone in the company. I would have liked to see someone submit something major so we could have seen a thread in action without the voting system, but from people's reactions, and someone suggesting to me that people are avoiding submitting for that reason, I unfortunately don't see that happening.
That's it for now, I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of what I was going to say because of sickness/tiredness, but I'll post more when I remember it. I greatly encourage people to read this post and discuss my points further with me.
<BoltR> I'd rather the user have to type a three letter word in themselves. That way they won't be as encouraged to just write a template post
<BoltR> which is just "voted YES !"
<BoltR> If you are too lazy to spend less than [an extra] second to voice an opinion after spending 30 minutes watching a video, why bother commenting at all
I'd rather have half the posts disappear if it meant a much leaner forum. The signal to noise ratio on this site has gone way way down over the years. "Voting yes because <author> is cool!" posts are of no help at all.
As for "players being discouraged", or "players not being motivated".
What?
You do realize this site existed before the voting system right? People were still motivated back then. People got encouragement from constructive posts stating what people liked about their movie.
Popularity was visible through the amount of posts, rather than an arbitrary number which tended to get skewed by people randomly voting.
If you want an example of this go read the Banjo Kazooie thread where Sami is making his run. He is getting encouragement through posts. It doesn't matter how many votes he gets, it's already been shown people love the run. People are posting their gripes and he responds to them, making a better finished product in the end.
While it seems justifiable to ask judges to read through an entire thread, most Mario/Zelda/Metroid runs draw 10 or more pages of comments, and a lot of bitter debate. I can't stand reading page after page of people sniping at each other, even if I had the time to read through that many responses.
Yes, but how much of those 10 pages are people bickering about voting rather than the actual movie?
Plus it's not like you read all 10 pages at once how many judges do you really think ignore such threads up until they decide they want to publish it?
Having to sift through garbage is part of the job description of being a judge.
hopper wrote:
The concern I have about not having polls, or hiding poll results from non-judges, is this. If a run is obviously exceptional, the first page may be all that you have to read to get a sense for how the run is regarded.
This is exactly why you aren't suppose to use the votes to decide if you are going to publish it or not. What happens when someone posts on page 3 a huge easily fixable mistake in the run after everyone else has already voted yes? It's still going to look like a really good movie from the votes and first page of comments, even though it should probably be rejected pending a fix.
Technically you are suppose to be doing that already, maybe that wasn't made clear. Even so, it takes less than a minute to get an idea if the movie is good or not by skimming through posts. No difference in getting 0 yes and 20 no votes than two pages full of "This movie was very unoptimized" posts.
mmbossman wrote:
2) It makes it harder...
Yeah not everyone is active as they were at their peak, but it doesn't change the fact that we have two-to-three times the amount judges, and a tenth the amount of movies to go through.
mmbossman wrote:
3) It removes yet...
They can still get their ego boost by comments made. If you mean 'the person can't brag that they got 50 yes votes more than any other movie' that is no different that having 5 pages more of nice comments than every other movie.
mmbossman wrote:
4) We lose the opinion...
If they REALLY can't speak english, they could just copy paste "Yes" into a reply if they really want to. Sure it might not be of the most help, but it's no worse than just voting yes without saying anything.
mmbossman wrote:
5) The voting system...
I didn't suggest it be removed permanently, but as a test to see if it would be viable. Plus, if you want to play the favoritism card, it might have even been me that suggested adding in the first place. I at least remember discussing it with Bisqwit in a private message. As Bisqwit has said in the past, this site is not a democracy. This definitely isn't the first time i've made a proposal to him, and there is nothing stopping you from doing it. If it's an idea that he agrees with, he might act on it.
mmbossman wrote:
6) Whether you scoff...
The fact that you seem to forget is there have always been random unexplained no votes. Even on the most popular movies. If there was no post to go along with the no vote in the Zelda thread it would have been ignored. Coming back to the original problem, the votes don't really mean anything without context. Beyond that, how many submission threads have been taken over with arguments about the voting system, and people's opinion on what it means. It's become a huge pattern.
I would be curious to hear from a judge... has the poll ever tipped the scales for a movie? It seems that watching the movie, reading the submission text and discussion should be more than enough.
And while I do see the point that it can be a "fun" statistic, I feel that it mostly feeds the ego of the author and colors the opinion of viewers before watching the movie (well, discussion could do that as well but discussion is easier to avoid).
You already heard from Bisqwit. The polls were added when there were over 100 submissions in queue; in order help judges pick a popular movie without having to read through all the submissions.
As a judge you are suppose to read through the whole thread before accepting or rejecting a movie, so when there are 10 movies in queue the poll is not really any help. I know it's been said 100 times, but a post saying "Yes" doesn't mean very much, while a post full of quality questions suggesting why it is, is.
I'm very much against the practice on this site of people watching a TAS of a game they never even played before, voting "no because this game sucks," and causing rejection due to game choice. That's another topic though I guess.
A topic that seems to seems to have everyone agreeing upon except us two.
Solon, it's not always required that you play on the highest difficulty. If the only difference is the player takes more damage, or the enemies take less there often is no point as it will just make the game more repetitive.
In short, while i'm sure Tompa would argue with my about the Super Star Wars series. I would say you are fine to play it on normal since it's not like there are more enemies or something.
Probably because he already got his answer and explanation of why it was happening in IRC (multiple times). Apparently he didn't didn't like it/chose to ignore it and came to the forum to try and rally support.
Yeah, days ago a whole bunch of the 'blog' video game sites were all told that it wasn't coming out for XBLA and PSN. It had just accidently been sent to the ratings board saying that it was.
That said, video game companies tend to lie a lot. So who knows.
Err, sorry to have caused you grief with the camera Bisqwit. Reading what I typed out again it could have been clear. I should have said that it's possible to get a better deal at smaller shops because the owners tend to be much more flexible and customer friendly. They are often willing to spend some time and make a deal, rather than just having the sticker price in stone. HOWEVER, your mileage will vary on this from location to location and owner to owner. Giving a best offer for something like a TV at a smaller store isn't overly rare, but there is still normally a price listed in some form. It's not normally full on haggling. Doing something like doubling the price by adding a bunch of taxes on an item which had no price makes it sound like he was trying to take advantage of you for being a tourist...
Again, i'm very sorry about the whole thing.
Doesn't sound like a "best buy" to me, lol. Out of curiosity, how much does the same kind of card cost in Finland? Cause I know I can (and did) get 4 GB for the same price here in Moscow quite easily.
The about electronics retail stores in North America is that you will get a terrible deal from them.
Here is a random example using microSD cards in Canada:
Online $14 for 2GB (Note certain online sites have sales too)
Boxstore sale for $29.99 regular 48.99
Note: I used Futureshop because apparently BestBuy Canada doesn't seem to carry the popular brands of SD cards on it's online store. However, Futureshop is owned by BestBuy, and prices tend to be pretty even between the stores.
Now, it's possible that is just a sale price that will last forever (that tends to happen at the boxstore's online store here for some reason), but even with that sale price it's more than twice the price than online. For the smaller 'mom & pop' stores prices tend to be more inline with the online stores, but the average person just goes the the boxstore out of ignorance so they tend to die out...
As for the currency exchange thing. Yeah... that does suck, normally it's that the banks use figures from a few weeks ago rather than current ones. Though I guess maybe in the States they just take a larger cut for themselves? Not sure there.
AND FINAL NOTE. Does everybody here think the game is difficult?? I used to walkthrough it on real console, and don't think it's so hard - it just requires some time to master, after that it's easier than Mario. :)
I had this discussion on #SDA a while ago, and I couldn't tell you. On my first try I made it to the boss of the skyscraper stage before losing, and I had no idea what the controls were. As a result, I did stupid things such as running through those electricity hallways because I didn't realize you could backflip. I also ended up dieing on the boss because I accidentally backflipped INSIDE of him and died in the confusion of what just happened.
Now I wouldn't call it an easy game, but I don't see how this is any harder than most challenging NES games...
I would say the honking gets worse the further you go east, and the further south on the continent. To the point where in some places people honk in traffic because it's "just what a normal person does".
Also, they checked your bags in Subway of all places? Or do you just mean in general. I didn't know that the USA were THAT out of control...
I've never had my bags opened up and searched up here; not even in an airport. (I used to fly 6-7 times a year too)
Edit: --Reading comprehension. No wonder it didn't make any sense. A library isn't nearly as strange, but that's still bizarre.
