[Round 17] Top Sims Contest Discussion

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Please use this thread for any general discussion or questions about the Top Sims Contest. Please do not post praise or criticism for submitted sims in this thread. Instead, post those praise or criticisms in the submitted sim's own thread.

Any discussion about Round 16 should go in the Round 16 Discussion Thread, not here.

[Salak]

Given it looks like the thread just got locked... who won the Round 13 tie-break? How is that being resolved?

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

They'll both go into the running. Not much else I can do, I suppose.

[Salak]

*shakes head*

Yet again (this is perhaps the 3rd, 4th time? 2nd I've voiced it), a good sim from the Tiger list marked down (average of TWO stars before I polled) for no apparent reason.

I'm very tempted to just give up trying to keep pushing this on the Tiger OOC list given it doesn't seem a level playing field. What's the point of submitting the sims of my crewmates if it earns them not recognition, but instead a mere trampling upon by people who care nothing about the great work from other ships?

Any chance of people commenting when polling 3 stars or below? Or making the rating open rather than anonymous. I'm nigh convinced of foul play...

Edited September 23, 2008 by Salak

[Guest]

Wow, really?

I've not voted any sim less than 3 since the competition began as they've all been good.

I certainly think comments should be encouraged (I'm guilty of not always leaving a comment though I do try) for both high and low scores.

I've also got no problem with public scores - if someone is scoring sims low I assume they have a good reason & should leave a post.

[James T. Kolk]

Yeah, that's not right. I think we should have the rating be open rather than anonymous. It would discourage malicious rating, and encourage explanitory commenting.

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Please be more specific about what you're suggesting, and we'll see if it can be implemented.

[Salak]

When the sims are currently star rated, we do away with the stars and have ratings solely by replying to the thread. Such would encourage people to add comments regarding the sim when rating (still 1-5) plus would make it more transparent, making it harder for people to vote a sim down simply cos it's not from their ship.

Admittedly, it would take longer to tally up the average rating to decide which sims make the poll in each round, but given few are eliminated anyway...

Edited September 23, 2008 by Salak

[Guest El-Com Ventu]

I agree. Voting, at least in these prelims, should be done through comments, not through the point system. There's too much anonymity, too much "well, no one's going to see how I'm voting, so I'll give my friend's sim a five and this sim a one."

Edited September 23, 2008 by El-Com Ventu

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Well, I went into the database and took a look at who rated the topic, and how they rated it. I must say, the results are interesting. I'm not going to release the names, but suffice it to say that this is not a case of any given ship trying to throw the poll. I will advise this: starting next round, there will be a disclaimer on the instruction thread (if we keep this system), that any and all polling results can be released. I'm not going to make this a habit, since it's a time-intensive search that requires me to match up member numbers with poll ratings and match those to the names. But at least I'm satisfied that it's not a poll-fixing situation, and if it happens again, the perps will be outed.

That being said: I do not have the time to look through each thread and add up the poll numbers via comments on every thread. Trying to change over the challenges every other week is already a 30+ minute task. The only possible solution I can think of, under your proposed system, would require perhaps a team of 1-3 trustworthy people who would edit the sub-heading of each thread to show the ratings. (i.e.- Someone goes in, gets the ratings, calculates the points, then changes the sub-heading to show what it is, that way I can quickly assess who has been DQ'd.)

[Guest]

Sounds fine to me, the star rating system works fine as long as it's not abused, and that should put a stop to that.

I think comments should be encouraged, still, but they don't have to be mandatory. Sometimes if it's a so-so post I can't really think of anything to say.