Thumbs Downs to Require (tiny) Explanation

Feature Requests Website Features
#1

SECOND-LAST UPDATE: 5/27/14
LAST UPDATE: 6/22/14

NOTE: This is an ongoing thread in the Suggestions & Ideas Forum, this is the Developer Forum rendition. Here it is:
NOTE: Look I wish I could make my points shorter, which I have tried yes this is shortened (but still delivering my point), but I’m not trading making my point for convenience. Please give feedback.

-=[ SECTION 1 ]=- (2 Total) - THE FAIRNESS OF THUMBS DOWN EXPLANATIONS
It’s a mystery why amazing YouTube videos (creations) get thumbs downs like helping out homeless people, a beloved song like something by Nirvana, Eminem, Michael, Jackson, etc. and even things like gay rights movement, cancer stories, thank you messages, just good human things, and that’s solely because there is no explanation behind every thumbs down. Why should those great things get thumbs downs?! For these kinds of things, the things you believe are truly good but wonder why the hell there’s thumbs downs, you would finally get answers if thumbs down required explanation.

You may easily assume that you would write down “I’m not into shooter games.”, honestly? You’re going to drop the games’ rating because you don’t like that it’s a shooter? If you were to allow opinions like that to be valid, fine! But in no way should the rating of the game be called “the games’ rating”, but rather “what players barely think of this”.

Games are seriously thumbs’d down because sometimes they dislike the creator, that it’s a certain category, or that they died “too much”, because they’re just not good or didn’t read something important. This is unfair to the creator of the game since the rating of the game is widely seen as “how good this game is”. With ridiculous “opinions” like that, you can’t truly constitute a games’ quality.

Instead of “I don’t like that it’s a shooter game”, rather say “I don’t like how bad this game is.”, now that’s getting there, you should probably say why you dislike the game… What if people abuse the system and make their opinion LOOK fair but also give it a bad rating? If your sly opinion is on a game that’s truly good, players can deem your opinion as “not mattering”. You won’t be accomplishing your goal. Ultimately, explanation for thumbs down is a fair approach to a games’ rating due to the people.

Wonder why it shouldn’t be required for thumbs ups? You’d think it’d be fair, sure it would be, but it’d also be fair if it wasn’t required, surprisingly. First of all, one purpose of thumbs down explanation is to find what’s wrong with the game to do improvements, thumbs up explanation doesn’t help that. Second, problems lay within thumbs downs, not thumbs ups. If you want explanations for thumbs up, go ahead, but it’s unnecessary.

-=[ SECTION 2 ]=- (2 total) - HOW THIS WOULD WORK
Upon clicking the thumbs down button, you would get a text box asking for your explanation. There would be a “Thumbs Down Explanations” button next to the thumbs down symbol, for everyone to see the Explanations. The only way to thumbs down is to provide an explanation within the character limit 60-300. [strike]Your username goes next to your explanation.[/strike] EDIT: Usernames will ONLY be visible to the creator, this is so the creator can message the thumbs downer to remind them of an update that addresses why they thumbs’d it down. Username would no longer be visible to anyone due to possible embarrassment/harassment. Only reasonable explanations will stay in place, EDIT: ONLY THE CREATOR CAN report any spam/ridiculous thumbs down explanation for moderation for possible thumbs down removal. EDIT: An explanation can only be reported once. If ROBLOX is truly advancing on User-Created Content, they would care about the rating.

In conclusion, if you think the rating is unimportant and I shouldn’t be trying to fix it, then take the rating off completely. Not everyone thinks the rating is to be thought as “unimportant”.

-Din

3 Likes
#2

The Suggestions & Idea Thread of this: http://www.roblox.com/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=129023630, it’s doing fairly well!

#3

No support.

  1. It has been proven time and time again that popular games produce lynch mobs if the popular game is threatened, with an example of that being that Blockr game… thing… where a high ranking person in the fan group told everyone to go dislike a person’s game, and they did. By giving the username of the person who disliked, it allows those who did the above to go hate on anyone who disliked their game with a far greater accuracy. Now, who wants to put up with the trouble of a couple hundred children screaming at you? It would put a lot of people off of voting in the first place, as they neither need nor want the hassle brought about by fangirls.

  2. No one really has the right to say whether an opinion is a valid one, as everyone is allowed their own. You should remember that something you may find a ridiculous, may actually be quite normal to another person. Everyone thinks differently, meaning that allowing people to report such comments would just lead to moderation spam.

  3. By forcing people to leave a comment you put more people off of it. If someone doesn’t like a game, then it’s quite certain that they don’t like the game and shouldn’t have to justify that, just to prevent a lynch mob chasing them. If someone wants to leave feedback, or give suggestions, they can use either the comments or send the creator a PM. Neither actions are trivial and don’t require a whole new section to be introduced.

#4

You’re right on your point 1, assuming you’re guaranteed a hate mob if you dislike a game and there’s a lot of hate to be offered consistently, willingly and plentifully, which, out of pure observation, is unrealistic to me. So far this is the only problem I see. Fixes?

As for 2 and 3, you say all opinions are valid, that’s simply not true. Valid meaning effective, reasonable, realistic. Here’s something that’s certainly true about all opinions, you can voice it; but you cannot accept every single opinion in a situation. (that sounded dictator-ish let me do otherwise), you cannot accept an opinion of “the creator sucks, i’ll get at em with my opinion of thumbs downing”, to affect the game rating.

Maybe I’m just looking at “opinion” wrong and maybe all of them really are valid just because of their definition, in that case, SURE, it’s STILL wrong to allow such opinions as “the creator sucks, I’m thumb downing this game”, "this game is too hard (assuming it’s unreasonable, a poorly skilled person calling CoD games too hard is unreasonable (actually extremely unreasonable since PEOPLE (in multiplayer) make the game difficult, not the game creator)), or “I can’t type in this game (ON iOS), bad game”.

1 Like
#5

  1. Simply don’t share the name of the person leaving the review. I’m sorry, but allowing users to see it just gives people a reason to go bully others for their opinion. Also, whilst you may see it as unrealistic, do you not remember what happened with Blockr? They managed to pour consistent hate towards ScriptOn (I believe it was), until the owner told his fans to stop. It’s not an unrealistic assumption.

  2. But how do you define a comment as being valid? Sure, you will have some who will simply say this game sucks because of the creator, but you will also have some who arguably valid comments. Someone may have downvoted a game based on it breaking, however they may be one of a few experiencing such an issue, based on bad luck/server choice. Just because a huge volume of others don’t actually experience the issues, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. But how would a moderator know that when they’re removing comments you, or someone else, has reported? And, as I said, this would just lead to moderation spam.

Oh, and another thing, what one person may find inappropriate another may find appropriate. For example, blood. Blood on ROBLOX isn’t blood per se, just red parts, but you will have a few who will complain about it, disliking the game. That’s a valid opinion as it’s based on their views of what’s right or wrong for a game, even if they don’t match your beliefs. So how would you moderate such a comment? As according to one moderator it’s valid, but for another it’s invalid.

  1. As I said, for number three, by forcing people to leave their opinion you’re going to have far less people disliking games, as if someone wants to leave their opinion they will do so in the already established manners. This includes both comments and PMs. So I really see no need for this, at all. If I dislike a game, I should be able to press the dislike button for the game without having to jump through hoops just to say I don’t like it.
#6

Just prompt the player to select from a list of reasons for either positively rating or negatively rating a game.
Keep the user anonymous.

Datastore, may I remind you, METACRITIC exists?
Games are not Youtube videos.

#7

[quote] 1) Simply don’t share the name of the person leaving the review. I’m sorry, but allowing users to see it just gives people a reason to go bully others for their opinion. Also, whilst you may see it as unrealistic, do you not remember what happened with Blockr? They managed to pour consistent hate towards ScriptOn (I believe it was), until the owner told his fans to stop. It’s not an unrealistic assumption.

  1. But how do you define a comment as being valid? Sure, you will have some who will simply say this game sucks because of the creator, but you will also have some who arguably valid comments. Someone may have downvoted a game based on it breaking, however they may be one of a few experiencing such an issue, based on bad luck/server choice. Just because a huge volume of others don’t actually experience the issues, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. But how would a moderator know that when they’re removing comments you, or someone else, has reported? And, as I said, this would just lead to moderation spam.

Oh, and another thing, what one person may find inappropriate another may find appropriate. For example, blood. Blood on ROBLOX isn’t blood per se, just red parts, but you will have a few who will complain about it, disliking the game. That’s a valid opinion as it’s based on their views of what’s right or wrong for a game, even if they don’t match your beliefs. So how would you moderate such a comment? As according to one moderator it’s valid, but for another it’s invalid.

  1. As I said, for number three, by forcing people to leave their opinion you’re going to have far less people disliking games, as if someone wants to leave their opinion they will do so in the already established manners. This includes both comments and PMs. So I really see no need for this, at all. If I dislike a game, I should be able to press the dislike button for the game without having to jump through hoops just to say I don’t like it. [/quote]

Why was ScriptOn hated on? I’m not active like that I guess, and 1 situation can’t mean it’s always going to happen, I’m going to need more examples for hate to be consistent on those who wrongly oppose a game.

Deeming a comment valid/invalid is merely common sense- but it can get difficult. I can see that this has a potential to overwork mods. Which, by the way, we really need more of… (mods) Not that they’re doing a bad job, there’s a lot on them!

If the game is breaking, it’s then valid to thumbs it down (that’s reasonable!) If it was a bad luck server run, people will be able to deem it as “not mattering” since a big most of the servers don’t break, and if that’s the case the thumbs downer would see the game to not break as much. If that were to happen to me, I’d personally message them saying that they just got a bad server. MAYBE they’ll then lift their thumbs down, I think if they were smart enough to thumbs it down with explanation they’re smart enough to rethink it. It’s an “I think” claim, though, but I think it’s reasonable. I feel we are estimating too low of people, that a lot of them can’t rethink. Believe me I didn’t think too high of people when it comes to doing the right thing but in my personal experience I’ve received a decent amount of gratitude messages, bug reports, suggestions, COMMUNITY interaction, making me think otherwise.

To fix that moderation spam I’d put a limit on how many times it can be reported, 3. Maybe put a “how many times this has been reported” next to it.

Your blood example isn’t reasonable, if you don’t like blood, don’t play it! If you don’t like shooter games, don’t play shooter games! If you don’t like games breaking, thumbs it down!

This is another “I feel”, unfactual, claim, I don’t think 60 characters is a hoop to jump though. Sure the character limit can be worked around a little bit, maybe 50, sadly we’re working with kids, but that’s not saying they’re all kids. The purposes again: to provide effective feedback (comments, PMs are barely effective), to provide fairer ratings, better the community? This could teach reasoning, maturity. (Provide a reason for your thumbs down, provide one within the character limit.)

It’s arguable that this can encourage not thumbing down… ultimately, why not have a test run. Honestly, best way to truly see what an idea would do without all the arguing.

#8

[quote] Just prompt the player to select from a list of reasons for either positively rating or negatively rating a game.
Keep the user anonymous.

Datastore, may I remind you, METACRITIC exists?
Games are not Youtube videos. [/quote]

How many claims are you going to make without explaining them today?

side note
Honestly it’s not like you thumbs down 5+ games per day, what workload is there in thumbs down explanations!

#9

I feel this can be abused heavily if the ratings are visible every user, for example “xxxIKillYallxxx downvoted the game because: join FROST clan!”

#10

Classified as spam, report to mod

Downvoted because: “JIROEWIDEWFWIFMIEWFMEIOWMFOEWIMMIF”

Classified as spam, report to mod

#11

Let the explanations be visible to the dev only FFS.
They are the only one who needs to see them, to see what to improve on.

1 Like
#12

Beginning to lean towards more Anonymous side, can’t risk a mob of hate

Typical Clan Fort
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Civil gets better guns and they spawn closer to the flag, unfairr”
Walk 10,000 Stairs to Heaven
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Really unoriginal, doesn’t even try to be original, lots of free models, boring”
Build to Survive Zombies
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Cool idea but laggy, unappealing, zombies are too strong”
Night Club
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “This is inappropriate for kids because of the music choices”
(i can see your blood example being reasonable now, datastore, this is actually a hard case but this is valid because they’re looking out for the kids and invalid because “if you don’t like inappropriate games, don’t play em”) But seriously what if there was a song with a bunch of cursing in it, not the opinion would be only valid, it’s not appropriate according to ROBLOX
Zombiecon
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Hard controls, laggy, too hard”

Perhaps get rid of moderation option on them, leaning towards more that all opinions are accepted, it can get really hard to correctly judge these opinions.

#13

Beginning to lean towards more Anonymous side, can’t risk a mob of hate

Typical Clan Fort
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Civil gets better guns and they spawn closer to the flag, unfairr”
Walk 10,000 Stairs to Heaven
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Really unoriginal, doesn’t even try to be original, lots of free models, boring”
Build to Survive Zombies
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Cool idea but laggy, unappealing, zombies are too strong”
Night Club
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “This is inappropriate for kids because of the music choices”
(i can see your blood example being reasonable now, datastore, this is actually a hard case but this is valid because they’re looking out for the kids and invalid because “if you don’t like inappropriate games, don’t play em”) But seriously what if there was a song with a bunch of cursing in it, now the opinion would be only valid, it’s not appropriate according to ROBLOX
Zombiecon
Dinizterz Thumbs Downed because: “Hard controls, laggy, too hard”

Perhaps get rid of moderation option on them, leaning towards more that all opinions are accepted, it can get really hard to correctly judge these opinions.

#14

[quote] Let the explanations be visible to the dev only FFS.
They are the only one who needs to see them, to see what to improve on. [/quote]

That’s good! The reason for usernames to appear is really to contact them to say that what they complained about is fixed/updated or if they misunderstood something, not for humility or something like that. Maybe the Explanations should be publicly visible without usernames, it provides answers when people wonder why people thumbs it down.

Yeah I’m leaning more towards opinions now, what I meant before is that “the creator sucks, so i hate this game” is NOT EVEN an opinion, yet it gets passed, which is wrong! I can understand what you mean I believe, DataStore.

Mods are to be treated as the ultimate judge in this situation and have the power to remove thumbs downs, only the creator can report explanations, so the mods get smarter, more valid reports to make their work easier.

#15

Yes, but a person may not know that when they’re entering the game. And you’ve just proven my point perfectly with what you’ve just said. Disliking a game because they dislike gore is a valid reason, yet in someone elses book it isn’t simply because they don’t care. Now, who’s side do you lean against when it’s being moderated? Both sides are valid arguments.

Also, just as an FYI, I see none of my claims as unfactual or unrealistic. It’s a matter of perspective and opinion, which is the reason I’m against this. You have also proven at least one of my points for me.

#16

[quote] Just prompt the player to select from a list of reasons for either positively rating or negatively rating a game.
Keep the user anonymous.

Datastore, may I remind you, METACRITIC exists?
Games are not Youtube videos. [/quote]

METACRITIC isn’t overrun by pre-pubescent children who derive pleasure from creating inappropriate games and bullying others.

MetaCritic != ROBLOX[/quote]

I do not think they get pleasure from creating those type of games. I do think they create them because, it gets a lot of hits. As far as the bullying goes. I mean they can do that just by down voting your game for no reason.

But if somebody downvotes what I do I’d at least like to be able to fix it.

#17

[quote] [quote=“Ripull” post=53523]Just prompt the player to select from a list of reasons for either positively rating or negatively rating a game.
Keep the user anonymous.

Datastore, may I remind you, METACRITIC exists?
Games are not Youtube videos. [/quote]

METACRITIC isn’t overrun by pre-pubescent children who derive pleasure from creating inappropriate games and bullying others.

MetaCritic != ROBLOX[/quote]

I do not think they get pleasure from creating those type of games. I do think they create them because, it gets a lot of hits. As far as the bullying goes. I mean they can do that just by down voting your game for no reason.

But if somebody downvotes what I do I’d at least like to be able to fix it.[/quote]

Yes, and I respect that sentiment Flatline. But people shouldn’t be forced to leave their opinion or named and shamed just for that privilege. If someone wants to give you feedback then they will find a way to do so with the already available avenues. I mean, having a forum thread where users can compile ideas has been quite a successful endeavour for some games, such as HatHelper’s RTS game.

#18

[quote] Just prompt the player to select from a list of reasons for either positively rating or negatively rating a game.
Keep the user anonymous.

Datastore, may I remind you, METACRITIC exists?
Games are not Youtube videos. [/quote]

METACRITIC isn’t being overran by pre-pubescent children who derive pleasure from creating inappropriate games and bullying others.

MetaCritic != ROBLOX

@Dini,
ScriptOn was targeted by a group of Blockr fans, if I remember correctly. The group’s upper echelons told the fans that he was copying the game, which prompted innumerous people to post on one of his games saying how unoriginal he was, etc. I would also like to point out that this example isn’t the only one which can be given, and it was merely given to demonstrate that it is possible.

Yes, but a person may not know that when they’re entering the game. And you’ve just proven my point perfectly with what you’ve just said. Disliking a game because they dislike gore is a valid reason, yet in someone elses book it isn’t simply because they don’t care. Now, who’s side do you lean against when it’s being moderated? Both sides are valid arguments.

Also, just as an FYI, I see none of my claims as unfactual or unrealistic. It’s a matter of perspective and opinion, which is the reason I’m against this. You have also proven at least one of my points for me.[/quote]

Was he truly copying the game? (was his hate mail just a matter of time?)

Read my most recent post to Ripull, DateStore. I’ve misunderstood the definition of opinion which is what I was wondering. I don’t know what point I’ve proven, disliking gore isn’t a valid opinion to thumbs it down, that’s like a metal fan going to rap music and saying “I don’t like rap”, that can’t mean the rap music is bad. Disliking the quality of how well gore is executed, now that’s valid.

A person may not know that when they’re entering the game, so? What do you mean by that?

#19

I never said METACRITIC is ROBLOX. I was just stating that we need constructive critisism rather than these ratings for unknown reasons.

Nothing is more annoying than not knowing why people dislike what you make.

#20

Ratings are about judging the quality, not a subject. That’s the mindset that should be followed.