New feature - topic rating

[Trigger Happy]

Hi guys.

For your pleasure I added a feature for rating of topics by 1-5 stars.

For using it open a topic, look on right of the ''Post reply'' button in top or bottom of the topics and rate by pressing the number of stars, which you intend to give. The average rating is there then shown, also on page with list of topics (when hovering of mouse above the stars you see: average rating, number ratings and your personal rating if you did already).

This feature is limited only to registered users (no guests ratings and you cannot rate own topic of course) and to subforums, where appropriate - Game addons and all its subforums and Championships subforum. In future (when we'll have appropriate number of ratings and if the feature will be applied reasonably) sorting topics by rating may be added.

BTW work on this caused some short moments, when the forum wasn't available today. Sorry for inconvenience.

Have fun, guys.

[DuklaLiberec]

New forum features FTW!

[LongBow]

Good job
I also like the small link icons on the top right but I dislike the change of the forum logo. That "mirrored" text doesn't really fit in IMO.

[Lukeno94]

I agree with the mirrored part not fitting.

[Bouncebackability]

its because its too dark imo, if it was say 20% opacity, it would work better

[Trigger Happy]

I agree with you, guys, we were discussing its tuning in similar spirit today with Rudy (who works on it several last days - thanks!).

[Trigger Happy]

OK now, gentlemen? (If needed, press ctrl+F5.)

[XYY]

Better
How did you manage not to let your double post merge together to one?

[Lukeno94]

It was over an hour later, that's how he did that - and it does indeed look better.

[LongBow]

Much better

[Trigger Happy]

Just to let you know:

Because of abusive use of this feature the user Joey Zyla is no longer allowed to rate threads, also all his past ratings were deleted.

Details: Ratings by 1 star for threads like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (sic!), 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 (sic!) and several other cases has nothing with honest evaluating of the content and won't be tolerated no matter, who is its target.

[Trigger Happy]

The case two:

Because of abusive use of this feature also the user C-DAC is no longer allowed to rate threads, also all his past ratings were deleted.

Details: Lowest ratings for threads like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (sic), 6, 7, 8 (sic!), 9 (sic), 10 (sic), 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and several other cases has nothing with honest evaluating of the content.

[Glen]

I'm often concerned

[Von Mantov]

Hello mates ...
I thought it would be nice to implement the stars with a bar indicating the number of downloads ....
I think the stars are not quite true ... a lot of tracks that have a low rating are more downloaded of other ... would be a new compass for users ...or it would be nice to have a second set of stars with the votes of a jury of users (maybe the moderators or a group of members elected reviewers ) ... like Metacritic do....but it's only an idea

[Martyn]

Would it be possible to change the system so that only people that have posted in the thread can rate the thread?

[Von Mantov]

Would it be possible to change the system so that only people that have posted in the thread can rate the thread?

This is also a good idea

[Trigger Happy]

I'd like not going by this way of ''rate only if posted bellow''. The star system is rather separate additional way, how to express your feelings about tracks etc, independent on posts - for cases such language barrier preventing posting or when you feel your impressions were expressed by other persons already well enough or (most importantly) when a topic flows beyond of possibilities of comments due the bump rule. Also the posting in a topic isn't actually very good secure-measure, that the person really knows about the track anything more than vague impression about appearance from attached screenshot.

For similar reasons I'd like to keep it available to all - no matter if has thousand of replies/dozens of released pieces or is here for first time and incorrectly thinks that his humble opinion isn't enough worthy of being voiced fully by a written reply. So no formally established elitist group of those, whose taste got some reputation, which would be permitted to rate the others without possibility of equally being subject of same rating by the others, when the situation will be up-side down.

Finally the idea of download number advantages older stuff available for long time for downloads over the fresh which has just been made.

But I can see, that the rating feature isn't as smoothly working as I hoped. In ultimate case (if people aren't interested in it), I can disable it, but first I'd like try some tweaks too. IIRC its setup allows some limited display depending on amount of rating persons to be displayed on page with index of topic (ATM 1 is enough, but maybe more will be better - 3, 5?).

[bduddy]

I think there are two main problems with the current system:

1) Not that many people use it - I just checked and most tracks on the front page only have 1-4 ratings. (I must admit that I don't, either...) I think it's a better system if more people use it, but I have no idea how to do that...

2) Most topics are rated 4 or 5 stars, and nearly all are 3 or more. On one hand this reflects that most tracks and cars are high-quality, but on the other hand it doesn't make for a very useful system. Maybe if possible it could be a "out-of-10" system?

[Trigger Happy]

The first, hard to blame a system for how it's used. It's up to us, people, but it's right not a duty to rate. On other hand I hoped in more ratings, when I was adding it, I remember lot of people was adding to replies rating by numbers/smilies/bananas/stars, that's why I worked on it.

The second, it's possible, the idea was put 5 to keep the topic indexes not flooded by stars and also because 5 was used at RSC, so we were used to that number (so the star icons btw). I did it for now in Cars (10 stars) and I'm still thinking, that it simply doesn't look good. What do you think, guys?

[XYY]

I did it for now in Cars (10 stars) and I'm still thinking, that it simply doesn't look good. What do you think, guys?

That certainly looks like a mess

[ACM]

Ten point scales are even worse at gauging the proper value of something, and now it looks ugly. I'd stick to five.

[Lukeno94]

Agreeing with ACM. It looks horrible.

[TuomoH]

I agree with the others about 10 stars.

[Trigger Happy]

Nice to see you all verifying my judgement. Switched back to 5 there.

On other hand we're back on start. And actually I'm not sure, how or if to motivate anyhow. After all, it's a hint, which by individual ratings we are creating for ourselves. The ratings will be as much useful as much we'll make it useful, if all or majority will individually not care about it, then obviously nobody of us individually will have anything useful from it. It should be enough as motivation for every each of us to pay a time once for a while to come back to a thread after little bit of playing to rate and/or comment. If not, then the system simply won't work, but certainly not to shame of the system itself.

[Lukeno94]

I must admit, I rarely pay attention to the rating.