Greetings to all,
As a previously made post outlined, Roblox’s like/dislike voting system is a little clunky and bypassable. One problem that is widely known is the mass dislike botting where thousands of bots join a game for not even a second, then they dislike that game to sabotage its ratings. Although smart developers and the Roblox staff have taken measures (i.e. through modules), the problem is still existent. But, I believe that I have found an antidote for that.
Problem Overview
As a Roblox developer, I (among others) feel very insecure in publishing a game because I know, some time or another, my game is going to be the victim of dislike botting. Ratings determine the quality of a game, and it is unfair when a bunch of things run by computer code come and sink the reputation of a quality game.
Potential Solution
But I do think that there may be an easy fix for this. First, Roblox can create an algorithm to verify that players are human. Perhaps, Roblox can automatically mark all DevForum members and new members verified because they successfully passed its entrance requirements (which has no flaws for the most part). Anyways, after that, any of a verified player’s like/dislike votes can be amplified by a certain factor (greater than before) because that person is genuinely human. This is why this solution has a strong potential: every bot is a newly made account that is not even close to being verified (depending on the algorithm that Roblox would set) and thus, their unfair dislike on a game would be no match to the real votes by real people. This would stabilize and secure a game’s ratings prevent it from being damaged too much from any attack such as these.
For example, while a non-verified players’ votes would be 1 each, all verified players’ votes can be a 5 each (or just any reasonable number higher than 1).
Effect of the Solution
If this feature is added, then it would not only ensure that all games’ ratings are genuine and not unfairly influenced, but it will also mean that more developers would be encouraged to create a game. They would know that their game is safe and secure.
Verifying “Humans”
Although there’s no perfect way to detect bots vs humans, there are certain characteristics that a bot does not have. Here are a few.
TL; DR
To combat against mass dislike botting, Roblox can simply value verified-as-human players’ votes more to stabilize and bring games’ ratings to its true number.
I understand that this is more like a temporary fix, but it will handle the majority of this bot issue. We need to take precautionary measures first, then work on completely eradicating the problem.
I hope you support this idea,
thank you for reading!