Reposted to a thread that might not actually die over it's own weight in spam.
What if you have 4 stars.
4 = Great
3 = Good
2 = Could be better
1 = Bad
And in order to give a 1, you're required to submit a reason why, and you can only do 1 bad rating a day.
1 can have thumbs up or thumbs down. If the ratio of thumbs down beats the ratio of thumbs up after 3 ratings, then that rating is automatically revoked, because obviously a majority found it inappropriate.
2 can have a similar thumbs up or thumbs down, and if the ratio of thumbs down beats the ratio of thumbs up after 5 or 8 ratings, then the person who posted it can choose to either revoke or change it. If the person doesn't respond in a week, the rating is automatically rounded up to a 3.
Sounds like it may take a tad extra work to implement, but it seems solid for a small community like this. It's just a matter of putting it into action and seeing how it fairs.
muz, please understand this. The only problem with the ratings system is the small sample size. The more popular a game, the more accurate its score. Obviously games with the minimum amount of votes shouldn't outrank those with 3000 downloads as the "Top Rated", and the downvoted games are just those who don't have enough ratings for it to even out.
Hmm.. that's not a bad idea. There could be like a calculation for (standard deviation/squareroot(sample size)) as a "rating inaccuracy" value.
Thus, a game with stddev of 3 and 3 votes would be 1.73 inaccurate, but a game with std dev of 3 and 30 votes would be 0.548 inaccurate. That's brilliant! Central limit theorem FTW!
It also provides a good way to consider the top 10 downloads, rather than just picking the ones with the highest average.
I also like the idea of making reviews count for more. It'll encourage more reviews, which is, at its worst, much better than a person saying "tis game rocks!" and rating 5 stars.
Hmm.. the problem with that method is that it still doesn't get rid of outliers, in the case of overhyped games like Knytt Stories and Eternal Daughter. Games like ED are bound to have a lot of people downvoting or upvoting them. Looks like I'm one of the people who downvoted ED
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Outliers could still affect the game score by writing an illusively genuine review, giving it a bad score and laughing along the way.
The only way to get rid of outliers, ney, dedicated outliers is to delete the entire voting system. Then you get game outliers who post chains of crap games, and you fixed that by regulating the submissions. You can't do that for votes. Or can you?
Your voting is voted on. Your voting quality determines the weight you can add to the rating.
Or, depending on your voting authority, you get a different voting weight. If your vote is contrary to popular opinion, your vote weight goes down, but alternatively, popular opinion sends it up. As you spend time inactive on TDC, your voting weight tends toward a normal voter. This system works as long as there are more clickers than outliers.
or
I think I read it earlier in the forum, but give everybody a certain allowance for votes. The more they submit games/articles/previews and talk of the forum, the more voting points they earn. Or, give them 2 a day or something.