This should be pretty quick and easy to implement, what are you looking for in a board review and rating system? What checks should be in there to prevent abuse (e.g. by designers downrating others boards so their's are promoted in future 'top rated board' lists.

(opens kettle of worms and stands well back)

you should only be able to rate a board after you have played it 3 times. you should be able revise the rating up or down at any time but you can only add to the original written review you can't erase it and start over. after someone gives there 3rd review in a row that is less then a 50% rating it should pop up "If you dont have anything nice to say then dont say anything at all!" and there profile should be flagged for you to check into in case they are being a jackass

I think it probably goes without saying that I disagree strongly with that last part. But, just in case. Yeah.

I think one of the main problems with the Warfish rating system is lack of participation.  Many people play the boards, but only a small percentage review them.  This means it often takes a very long time for a game to get a statistically meaningful rating, and also that a single vindictive reviewer can seriously damage the rating for an otherwise terrific game before it has a chance to flourish.

One possible way to remedy this would be to give every player a personal page that lists all the different types of boards they have played on and invites them to order them from best to worst.  There should be some motivation for the players to do this; perhaps it reorders the main game directory for them to put their favorites on top.  Ratings for the games would be derived by running everyone's rating list through a suitable algorithm every so often.  Games that are high on most people's lists would get good ratings, games that are consistently low would get poor ratings.  Players who have played many games should be given more weight than players who have played only a handful of games since they will be better reviewers.  Players that regularly write written reviews might also be given more weight.

This would be a radical departure from the way Warfish does it, but I think we have to do something very different if we are to have a truly good rating system.

I'm going to put my neck out here and say that I think the best "outside the box" solution to the problem you put forth, Baron -- which I agree is a problem in the Old World -- is actually to limit the number of boards available for play.

I doubt many of you will agree with me. But over the last couple of days I've found myself feeling more and more strongly that fewer boards available is actually a positive for the site, not a negative. After a while, I think WF became bogged down with layers upon layers of crappy boards. The fact that there were so many of them, and so many new ones coming out so frequently, meant that the true gems got buried very quickly. And, by consequence, fewer reviews being written per board.

I honestly think the best solution to many problems at once is to raise the standard to make a board live. Warfish's system made it incredibly easy to create a really poor board and much harder to make a good one. I think WarGear should cut out the first half of that equation altogether.

If you're going to implement a full rating/review system by the public player, it would be very easy to create an incentive for people to rate or review boards. Two ways: Every nth review you write (above some minimum requirement of quality), you get X dollars off your next Premium purchase. Alternatively, if you keep your reviews written to boards played ratio above a certain level (say 75%) you get some given discount off Premium membership (say 10%). I think that would work. Keep participation high and incentivize re-upping Primo membership as frequently as possible.

One idea I've had is to give people the ability to make a board a "favorite." Then, give them a list somewhere that they can keep track of their 10 favorites. (If you saw my mockup drawing of my boards page with additional tabs, make their favorite boards appear on a tab instead of the Fail tab or the review tab.

The scoring is then quite similar to what RedB is suggesting. The more times a board appears on favorite lists, the higher it becomes ranked.

Also, perhaps give each board a Graphics Favorite? and a Gameplay Favorite?. People can make a board one of their 10 graphics favorites, 10 gameplay favorites, or even both.

People will be inclined to add boards to their list, as they will have all the games they like to play most right at their fingertips. Also, if you make a way to view someone's favorites list from their profile, they will want to show off to other people the boards they like in some kind of weird Facebook/Web2.0-touchy-feely-like-anyone-else-really-cares-but-here-look-at-me-anyway sort of way.

The fact that people will have a limited number of favorites makes it less likely that they will waste them.


Shortcomings: new boards will have a hard time catching up to and keeping up with older boards, as older boards will have had more time to accrue favorite votes. Also, this system is still pretty easy to game: bring on some number of friends and have them favorite you mediocre board -- now its the first one everyone sees. Some of the same problems as in the old world. But I guess what I like about it is that a board has nowhere to go but up. There's no crappy 1 star review coming along and misrepresenting the quality of a map.

This may not be a be all and end all solution, but it could be part of a system or larger algorithm.

I do enjoy the competitive edge included in trying to make everyone's favorite map. I also think it motivates all authors to make produce better work.

asm wrote: The fact that there were so many of them, and so many new ones coming out so frequently, meant that the true gems got buried very quickly. And, by consequence, fewer reviews being written per board.

While it wouldn't fix this problem on its own, one part of the solution might be a board categorization system. If boards were tagged with some basic descriptor labels (e.g. historical, duel, 12+ players, parody, theme, etc.), it would be a lot easier to sort through them and find the game you want, without having to sift through a whole smorgasbord of junk.

asm wrote:
I doubt many of you will agree with me. But over the last couple of days I've found myself feeling more and more strongly that fewer boards available is actually a positive for the site, not a negative. After a while, I think WF became bogged down with layers upon layers of crappy boards. The fact that there were so many of them, and so many new ones coming out so frequently, meant that the true gems got buried very quickly. And, by consequence, fewer reviews being written per board.

I came to this same conclusion a few days ago, but I don't like it :P.  I like the creativeness of Board Designers and the wide range of boards available on WF and would like to see that here, but the small board list is sooo nice right now too (as I just said in one of my posts somewhere, the fresh Boards list is one of the nicest things about WG).  I don't think it should be like some sites and only come out with a few boards by the site administrators (at least aren't some sites like this?), but I think I will be a bit bummed as the Board list grows with, IMO, mediocre boards (a lot of people like those types of maps, so they are valid boards too).

I really don't have a solution, "retiring" boards that aren't played much doesn't seem fair or seems easily abused, the review system will filter out some stuff, but I'm not sure how much or if it will keep the list clutter free.  Board tags may be the easiest/best way to go,  *shrug* I'm not sure.

(PS Is there a difference between Boards and Maps?  If not, then I'm calling them maps because I like it better.)

I like maps more than boards.

I like have the variety as long as it isn't a choice between a some good maps, a few good ones and tons of crap. That was the problem with another site I used to play and design on.
The review panel is in place, standards are being adopted, and I think I understand that a classification system will be in the works.
Let's see how this pans out before we start deciding it's a failure. It's not like we're Fox News or anything.

I also wouldnt mind if the default view for the browse page showed all the boards in order of what has had a game started on it most recently. Keep the newest boards list, which is awesome, and expand it to 5 or more.

I like the idea of having tabs for each of the different views. Question is what the default view should be. I think it should be relatively static so that you can easily find a board, if it changes every time someone starts a board it's going to be a bit annoying.

Default view - this would be a split view of the top 5 boards from Most Popular / New boards / Top Rated

Then separate tabs for:

New boards - ordered by date they go live

Most Popular - ordered by game count - possibly split into Today's most popular / All time / This month / This week

Category view - split of above boards into various vategories

My Favorites - list of boards I've favorited.

There could also be filters for each of the above views - e.g. filter by Teamplay / Fog / Turn Based or Simultaneous / Player size.

Big Fan of that

Sounds Incredible!

Yay tabs!