I have been saying this for a while, despite that I really have no voice of power as far as something like this would be concerned, but I believe that when the downloads are transferred from the current J2O to J2Ov2, that they should be (in a manner of speaking) elutriated.

That is to say, it is my belief that every file that has rated a 5.0 and less should not be transferred to the new version and should be deleted. I know this is controversial in a sense that probably a handful of people will be angry that their first level or some hotel was deleted, but in the end I think it would sort of cleanse out some of the needless junk that is stored pointlessly on j2o.

People don't download things that are 5.0 and less unless there is some specific reason they need the file. But that case is rare, and it's just common sense that some downloads that are far under a standard don't need to take up space needlessly because they aren't going to be downloaded, aren't fitting to a suitable standard, and more or less do nothing but clutter up things and take up file space.

As far as I can see the benefits outweigh the losses. People are going to be annoyed, but any rational person is going to understand at some time or another. Moreover, it would increase people's level ratings.

Just a suggestion...

I think 5.0 or less is hard for new levelmakers. It takes several tries for most people to get above 5.0. Besides, 5.0 is average. Allowing only average or better levels is not necessarily a great idea.

~ Traft

I would hope the new levelmakers would understand that if their levels don't meet standards they simply aren't worth taking up space if no one is going to appreciate it. Besides, they can get bad scores once, that gets deleted over time, they make more, and eventually they will improve to above a 5.0.

Perhaps the "standard" could be lowered to a 4.0? Or lower.

Edit: Spelling and crap

I personally think 3.5 or so would be good. That would allow for "okay" first levels. Still, I can imagine that some would have reservatations about reviewing any levels that I know will be deleted.

~ Trafton

Originally posted by Spaztic
People don't download things that are 5.0 and less unless there is some specific reason they need the file.

I may be an exception, but this is the kind of file I download most often.

Originally posted by Spaztic
I would hope the new levelmakers would understand that if their levels don't meet standards they simply aren't worth taking up space if no one is going to appreciate it. Besides, they can get bad scores once, that gets deleted over time, they make more, and eventually they will improve to above a 5.0.

Perhaps the "standard" could be lowered to a 4.0? Or lower.

Do you feel that the levels of less skilled levelmakers is hindering the levels of levelmakers with a higher amount of skill? This idea hinders newer levelmakers and their chances for improving. Your idea of J2O being a level download site is inaccurate from my point of view; it is a site that the community visits, both for entertainment and for raising the standards for the levels on the server. Delete old content by force and nobody can look at it for a viable exemplar or base, to either follow or avoid. After all, it is due to the community's reviewers' opinions that various new levelmakers get the low ratings they get. I agree that the standard should continuously be raised for incoming levels, but if you trash the bad examples, who is to say that those bad examples will never come again because people did not know they were bad examples? If you forget history, it will most certainly be repeated against will, and that is not always a good thing.

I mostly agree with Derby in this case. However, I do think that there are plenty of exemplars of what to do and what not to do, and that having an examplar is not necessary the reason levels should stay. I agree that deleting total trash that is absolutely no effort whatsoever is not a bad idea. However, I think that the way levels are judged at the moment is perfectly acceptable. If it is simply an unneeded upload, it should be deleted.

By the way, my previous post was assuming that this would be a definite implementation in the new J2Ov2; I would rather have no minimum review to stay on the site at all.

~ Traft

I can understand total trash (i.e. those levels that people often wish they could give below a one for, and ratings in that vicinity) being trashed. There are never too many good exemplars, and unfortunately, there are never too many bad exemplars, as some still have not taken a hint. An automatic mechanism like this could not be used without certain conditions, as it would most certainly be abused. It also does not help if all the reviews for the poor level were deleted because the levelmaker cannot get any tips, where they may have been expecting to review them at a later time, maybe even several times to become better. Their own caching of this information is not expected; after all, how many users do cache this information if they initially expect it to remain there? As such, if an idea like this is implemented, I would advise against making it an automatic mechanism.

Using an automatic mechanism was ruled out long ago for the obvious reasons. If there was to be such a thing as deleting levels below x rating, it would be manual. There is far too much potential for abuse otherwise.

~ Traft

What about a category system? Like different lists - 9 or above, 6-9, 3-6, 1-3, or something like that. This way people looking for quality levels will find them easily and people looking for non-quality levels will find them easily. No reason to delete them, just have them separate.

Originally posted by Link
What about a category system? Like different lists - 9 or above, 6-9, 3-6, 1-3, or something like that. This way people looking for quality levels will find them easily and people looking for non-quality levels will find them easily. No reason to delete them, just have them separate.

That would not really serve any purpose; you can already sort uploads by rating.

~ Traft

You can sort by rating, yes, but that only works if you want to see 39+ pages starting going gradually from 9.7 to N\A, or N\A to 9.7. It's kind of useless right now, at least if you wanted to get a list of "everything with a rating of 4.7".

A much more advanced search script is required - I don't know if this is planned or not for J2Ov2, but it should be. We need a search that lets you order by multiple fields, each with its own choice of ascending or descending, as well as the options of exact values and ranges. For example, I should be able to search for "all files with an E in the author's name uploaded before January 27th 2003, with ratings between 3.7 and 6.5 ordered by average rating ascending then level name descending". This is completely possible with MySQL queries, so it should be able to be made into a search script. Also, the user should be able to save these results for a "default level view" (say they never wanted to see levels rated exactly 6.0 or 3.9, they could have it default to this all the time).

I guess categories really wasn't a good idea - a much more advanced search script is what's really needed. Also, the page number bar with 39+ page links should have an option to be alphabetized. The JCF member list really needs this too; if I'm looking for a member who's name starts with "P" in the member list, it takes much longer than it should (click "List Alphabetically", decide whether there will be more names before or after the ones starting with "P", click "Last >>", click "34", click "31", click "28", click "25", click "22" oops went to far, click "25" again, check if name is on this page, if not click "24", if not on this page go back to beginning and end to see if it starts with any special characters, etc. The same inconvenience applies with downloads, but at least you get a full page number bar)

We'll prolly make a more advanced search.

I am not fond of the idea of deleting everything under 5. I do however think that anyone with common sense can make a 5.0 level very easily. I might be ignorant but iho relatively old people who only make levels below 5 don't get it at all. I mean, how hard is it to see how the official levels are made and that levels with tiles that don't match are ugly? As someone who maintains the downloads section i am just fed up with stuff like that. It can get me quite irritated. Perhaps we should just ban dutch people with ages below 15 from the downloads section. ;p

That said, I think we should install a rule so we can delete the crappest of the crap. Also, I think I want to have a 1 level per week per author limit to cut down on the crap.

I am not sure that is such a good idea. Oftentimes, an author needs to upload the tilesets for a large pack seperately, or the music. And sometimes the upload just will not fit into one upload. Besides, sometimes, one can release two 8+ things in one week.

~ Traft

It would be better to delete all the things that should of been deleted, like reuploads of the same level, files saying "Please delete this" or things like that. There are at least 20 files that fit what I said before, deleting those could be a start.

We should delete everything that has at least 3 reviews with ratings under 1.5 after 3 weeks. That way, ratings of 10 won't count if most people don't think it deserves it, but ratings of 1 won't delete a level. It also leaves the author enough time to make bug fixes or improve the level.

Originally posted by KRSplat
We should delete everything that has at least 3 reviews with ratings under 1.5 after 3 weeks. That way, ratings of 10 won't count if most people don't think it deserves it, but ratings of 1 won't delete a level. It also leaves the author enough time to make bug fixes or improve the level.

I think that would work fairly well, assuming those three reviews are rated and that the three weeks is since the third review was posted. Otherwise, someone could go back and just rate the level with three accounts.

Still, however, I am against the idea.

~ Traft