making lemonade?

Hrmm... 4 pages of posts. Godwin should be stirring soon.

hey Tom, that fix you made on jump to unread posts broke here. it sent me to top of page 3 insteda of jumping to Crams post (#62)

I think there should be a minimum of 3 votes cast before a board is either passed or failed. I think the 'pass' vote should be unanimous for a board to go live. If somebody votes 'fail' there's obviously something seriously wrong with the board. I think a 'fail' vote should require explanation from the voter.

Also, the board review page has some issues. First of all, every review game I've ever been invited to is listed there, which isn't necessarily ideal. Also, I have the pass/fail buttons for games I've never participated in - notably review games that I was invited to but were terminated before they began, whether I ever joined them or not.

asm wrote: Also, the board review page has some issues. First of all, every review game I've ever been invited to is listed there, which isn't necessarily ideal. Also, I have the pass/fail buttons for games I've never participated in - notably review games that I was invited to but were terminated before they began, whether I ever joined them or not.

I kind of like being able to see every review game invited to, to be able to see discussion and even launch the player.  There are some bugs though and it could be cleaned up (Hide terminated or review or something, but optional so that it is possible to see old completed games).

I don't really want to get into reviewing maps, but I do want to get my sticky fingers mixed up in everything related to map-making/publishing. Could you please add me to the list such that I can see what's going on behind the scenes from an author's perspective? Thanks.

Reich's post has actually forced me to reconsider my position to agree with Yertle. I'm in a bit of a metaphysical bind here.

Reich, it's the easiest thing in the world to get added to the Reviewer list and just ignore all the Review game invites.

By the way, is there ever going to be a cap on how many people get added to the Review list? At some point it's going to be too big and will need some sort of system to rotate reviewers or something.

Cramchakle wrote: I don't really want to get into reviewing maps, but I do want to get my sticky fingers mixed up in everything related to map-making/publishing. Could you please add me to the list such that I can see what's going on behind the scenes from an author's perspective? Thanks.

Added!

asm wrote: Reich's post has actually forced me to reconsider my position to agree with Yertle. I'm in a bit of a metaphysical bind here.

Reich, it's the easiest thing in the world to get added to the Reviewer list and just ignore all the Review game invites.

By the way, is there ever going to be a cap on how many people get added to the Review list? At some point it's going to be too big and will need some sort of system to rotate reviewers or something.

Yeah, I guess at some point reviewers will have to be added to the list by rotation...

As regards the minimum standards for acceptance for a board, I'm now moving towards the 'it must be a good standard' - i.e. no circle mode jobs dropped straight onto a google search map image. Those boards can stay as Private use only.

Edit. Think I'm starting to sounds like Cramchakle.

There is hope for us yet!

EDIT: This other issue has caused us to get off track with what I think is the real discussion we need, to wit:

"I think there should be a minimum of 3 votes cast before a board is either passed or failed. I think the 'pass' vote should be unanimous for a board to go live. If somebody votes 'fail' there's obviously something seriously wrong with the board. I think a 'fail' vote should require explanation from the voter."

Sounds reasonable. So a Fail fails the board completely regardless of how many pass votes there were, correct?

Everyone else agree with that?

No, I do not think that is a good idea. Not every map is or should be special. There should be different strokes through the world. I think 2 is good and 3 is too many and I also don't think that 1 fail should fail the map. That's just not right.
If there are 5 people playing the review and 2 say yes, it gets in. The 3 that fail it just won't play it when it's live.
Really, this should be a way of making sure maps are playable and keeping total garbage off the site but not a way to incidentally limit the types of maps that are on the site.
Just what I think anyways.

Ok, I'll weigh in: 1 Fail is not enough. Especially because there is currently no guideline, and even if there is one this whole thing is still subjective. Risky is probably right that 3 is too many. If a map gets 3 fails, it's crappiness must be blatantly obvious. If 1 isn't enough, and 3 is redundant, then 2 is where it's at.

Also, we REALLY need to put together some published guidelines. Bullet points is good. Sticky it somewhere and lock the the thread once its finalized. I'll go start a thread for this. I'll set some ground rules for how we'll determine the rules, and Yertle can manage it cause he's crafty like that.

That would be great, thanks Cramchakle. Yertle has access to update the help pages so it could go up there under the Designing Boards section.

Just need to work out the mechanics of voting - i.e. it still needs to work for a 2 player board vs a 16 player board.

Also another point... I'm a bit concerned the review system might already be turning into a de-facto Testing system... Is there a need for a separate board testers group vs the reviewers group?

If it's not a problem then fine but I don't think the reviewers should be the ones picking up all the broken border type issues, that should happen before they see the board.

Agreed. Your Dev mode works great. I think all the broken borders/simple issues should be fixed by the time a board gets to Review stage. Review should be for big-picture evaluation only IMO. Pass or fail. I don't see a need for a pre-approved Testing group though. Too much work for site admins to worry about. Create a board, do it well, find help if you need to, and when it is *READY*, get the Review people to look at it.

tom wrote: Also another point... I'm a bit concerned the review system might already be turning into a de-facto Testing system... Is there a need for a separate board testers group vs the reviewers group?

If it's not a problem then fine but I don't think the reviewers should be the ones picking up all the broken border type issues, that should happen before they see the board.

http://img8.yfrog.com/img8/8664/possibleboardspage.png

As shown, set up a couple of tabs on the board page (sorry its dark, I'm in a rush and cant clear it up right now). This way the Review Panel doesnt end up testing maps.

One tab for submitted boards that are approved. Pretty much as it is now, everyone can see it.

One tab for boards authors would like to have tested. Boards remain on this list for no more than a week if they haven't had some change in the board designer. People repeatedly submitting boards to this in an abusive way can simply be banned at tom's discretion.  Players should be presented with a big disclaimer warning them that games are in a test phase and may not be fully functional, and count towards nothing. Host gets terminate game function, but not reset. Anyone can see this and start games from it. Games started here need their own queue list, too. Also subject to DEV mode changes.

One tab for boards which have been submitted and disapproved. This is the island of misfit toys. If an author really wants to share a board that the Review Panel doesn't like, then it can go here. Again, big disclaimers.

And a tab for boards submitted to the Review Panel. Probably not necessary, as only the review panel could see it. And, that works ok the way it is now, as I've seen it.

Looks very cool... although I'm not sure that as a newbie to the site I would want to see that sort of thing on the boards page?

However I think tabs like that would be perfect for tabbing through New | Top Rated | Most Popular boards in a quick and easy way.