The problem with that idea is that it could be subject to cheating. Example: User A and User B are friends. User A uploads a level that is very good. Even though User B did not do anything with the level, User A claims that User B did a huge part and shares the rating with User B. Still, if it was refined, that idea would make good sense.

I basically thought that people talented enough to make stuff that gets good ratings would be sensible enough not to cheat.

That's true, but the problem is that people will evidentally credit people for small things. Someone who did 1% of the level would end up getting as much credit as one who did half of it.

*posts merely to claim page 5*

J20 VS 2>????? WOHOOO
YAY
YAY
THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE

It seems that excitement is brewing. ;P

It's still about two and a half months away, but it sounds great. I can't wait.

Alright, first, here's how ratings should be handled:

1) User A submits item.
2) Users B-K review said item as follows:

  B - 1
  C - 10
  D - 7
  E - 8
  F - 8
  G - 6
  H - 7
  I - 5
  J - 6
  K - 9

3) The lowest 5% of ratings, and the highest 5% are ignored as follows:

  B - 1 (low 5%)
  C - 10 (high 5%)
  D - 7
  E - 8
  F - 8
  G - 6
  H - 7
  I - 5 (low 5%)
  J - 6
  K - 9 (high 5%)

4) The remaining reviews are averaged together to define the adjusted rating.

You could even take it further if you wanted, allowing users to vote on individual reviews (rather than reviewing reviewers). In other words, do something like amazon.com does with their reviews. Whenever you see one, you can say whether or not it was useful or valid. The percentage of people who find the review useful is the weight that review has in the overall adjusted rating.

Anyway, just something to think about. Throwing out the extremes will do a lot on its own. It's actually common in many official statistical studies to do this. It accounts for the 10% of the population that are weird, or something.

-----

Next suggestion: This may already be the way it's done, but I'm not sure. The top 10/20/whatever downloads should only take the past week or couple of weeks into account. Who really cares if a file has 10000 downloads if none of them were within the past month?

-----

When submitting articles, there should be a broader range of categories, and users should be able to sort/search based on these categories, or other fields, like auther, date, rating, reviews, etc.

-----

The screen shot idea is absolutely wonderful. I'd like to see shots of both levels and tilesets. At any rate, I think they should be limited in file size and have suggested dimentions (i.e. 160x120).

-----

Being able to submit links would be nice, but just remember who's going to get all of the complaints when the older links start dying.

-----

If you need any mild help with anything, let me know. The majority of the work I do now is on the web, and PHP is basically all I use.

-Onag

Welcome, Onag!

Great suggestions. Especially the ratings one is one we will have to take into consideration. The top downloads is a good one, I believe it was like that but it broke.

We'd use the screenshots one but I am not sure if we should do it now - we're low on bandwith at the moment and it would only boost the data transfer. I still have to talk to Bobby about this.

Considering we have a small community, I am not sure if we should use the rating reviews idea. People would vote down reviews by enemies and vote up reviews by friends, and things like that.

I look forward to speaking to you.

While I do like Onag's idea, I still think that keeping the rating system the way it is would be good enough. Complex formulas really won't change much other than to add code overhead. But that's just my opinion.

low on bandwidth? hmm...

::wonders if the pictures section will survive::

Originally posted by Nebula
::wonders if the pictures section will survive::

::wonders if an excuse is even needed to get rid of it::

;P

who knows?

let me put it this way...is the pictures system that important that you'd rather us run out of bandwidth and have it completely unaccessable than shut it down?

Maybe we could shrink the file size limits...or prune pictures/sounds that are X days old.

It's the JCF that takes up bandwith more than anything else anyways.

The JCF does account for much of that bandwidth, but getting rid of the JCF would be a shot in the foot. :P

I've a few suggestions more.

IP adresses matching the same IP adress as the uploaders should not being able to rate the upload, the same account should not being able to rate its own upload

A report option in bottom of reviews so you can repport unfair reviews instead of bother with a PM

Ability to ingore PMs from non-moderating users

Must have e-mail for sign up, and only one account per email (only for new accounts in v2)

Remove the rating ability from links, and give ability to the athour of the link to delete it (It's a link, it shouldn't be reviewed, only commented)

Originally posted by Moonblaze
I've a few suggestions more.

IP adresses matching the same IP adress as the uploaders should not being able to rate the upload, the same account should not being able to rate its own upload

I have to agree with this, to an extent. I'm not sure what the rules on J2O are about relatives rating eachother's downloads, but generally I believe this is a good idea.

A report option in bottom of reviews so you can repport unfair reviews instead of bother with a PM

I think this is already slated for J2Ov2, and I think it is a great idea.

Ability to ingore PMs from non-moderating users

I'm not sure what you mean or why you would want that. Please explain further.

Must have e-mail for sign up, and only one account per email (only for new accounts in v2)

Agreed.

Remove the rating ability from links, and give ability to the athour of the link to delete it (It's a link, it shouldn't be reviewed, only commented) [/I]

I'm not sure about this one. Link rating really isn't a necessity, but I have no problem with it. I'm fine either way. ;P

Originally posted by Trafton
I'm not sure what you mean or why you would want that. Please explain further.

Some centrain people accused me for review harsley and send me PMs over Jazz2online saying "I HATE U I REVIEW ALL U LVLS 1 HAHA".
An ingore would delete all PMs from that user, just like JCF's ingorelist.
It isen't a must, but it's nice to avoid thing you wouldn't like.

Originally posted by Unknown Rabbit
*Cough*Overlord*Cough*

That didn't make any sense either, explain further.

*Cough*Overlord*Cough*
http://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showt...&threadid=6883

I'm not sure why people don't all just sign up for a Yahoo account for these purposes and just check it occasionally so it isn't deactivated.

Originally posted by Unknown Rabbit
*Cough*Overlord*Cough*
http://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showt...&threadid=6883

If you enter a false email, you automatic break the agreement for sign up, and there because deserves a warning or even a ban.
If people want to cheat, then let them do that, because I'm pretty sure on false email accounts giving unfair reviews will not get pretty much accepted.
Unless YOU have a better idea?

Fake emails are often used for completely valid reasons. Some people don't have emails. Others hate giving them out for privacy reason. I don't think it deserves a ban or a warning.

Another suggestion is that when you view all reviews by a user, you should choose whether they be sorted by name of level reviewed, date of review or rating. Just a suggestion though....

I like that idea, especially if there was also "sort by review length."

Yes, that would be cool.

hi, this isn't on the subject I just wanted to harass NOBODY

it would be cool if there was an advanced preferrenced area, where you could edit your profile to such detale you could pick any colors for you windows, what kind of border they have, what the emoticons show up as (I have seen downloads for alien face emoticons) + such. well, thats it.

:arasses NOBODY::

Originally posted by Robbo
:arasses NOBODY::

That's why you should disable smileys.

Originally posted by Robbo
hi, this isn't on the subject I just wanted to harass NOBODY

it would be cool if there was an advanced preferrenced area, where you could edit your profile to such detale you could pick any colors for you windows, what kind of border they have, what the emoticons show up as (I have seen downloads for alien face emoticons) + such. well, thats it.

:arasses NOBODY::

*wonders why no-one reads the thread*

Yes, themes are possible. Custom smileys however, are not. If you want to change the color of the windows you will need to set that in the windows control panel.

Quist, what about the thing me and Trafton mentioned a few posts back? The one about viewing all reviews by either lenght, date, name of level or rating...That would be a good idea.

dumb emoticons always geeting in the way of my evil plots to harass people!

:ecides to hate emoticons for rest of life and never speak to enyone again::

::Plan goes well::

Originally posted by Blackraptor
Quist, what about the thing me and Trafton mentioned a few posts back? The one about viewing all reviews by either lenght, date, name of level or rating...That would be a good idea.

It's not a priority but I will add it to the To Do list.

I have a suggestion, it's probably been already asked though...

Most levels here use tilesets which are already uploaded on J2O. So, why not add a 'tilesets used' field on the submit download screen, with links to the download screens for the tilesets. Then the zip can be made smaller by not including the tilesets, while if the player doesn't have the tileset they can download it via the tilesets field.

A very good idea. Consider it added to the To Do list.

I like that idea a lot...it would be extremely handy, free up space, etcetera.

Regarding the execution, would it be two fields where the user inputed the link and the tileset name, a dropdown box that displays a list of tilesets and whatnot, or something else?

I'd say a drop down menu is the best way to do this..but that's just meh..

What about level packs that include lots of tilesets?

Also, you know...tilesets don't take up very much space. At all. Although I guess in the long run little by little it could save some nice space.

Hmm...maybe multiple tileset fields?

Another way would be something that unzip the files midtransit, looks at the filenames, and searches for them on J2O...then again, that would be pretty complex to program.

Ignore me if this has been suggested...

Sometimes when designing a level, I have an idea of what kind of tileset I'd like to use (spacey, indoors, snowy, etc). However, I do not follow up on every new tileset, and if I've been out of practice for awhlie I have to look through many tilesets before I find one that uses the theme (if that seems like too much work, then I resort to the tilesets I know). Would it be reasonable to have a "theme" field for tileset downloads? I know that most creators write a description of the tileset in the "description" field, but this would allow someone to sort the archive by "theme" (in theory), and not have to skim through all the tilesets.

Some issues to consider if this was done:
- Current tileset archive's compatibility
- A standard for the "theme" categories

(I say "theme" in quotes because I use this as a generic name, I couldn't think of anything more descriptive at this moment.)

I like that idea a lot. The compatibility problem would be solved if the default was "not specified".

Two suggestions, number one, make it so your rating must be within 5.0 points of the average rating, so, for example, you can't rate Rabbit Honor Guard 1.0, or rate (no offense to you people) levels that people submitted just for a joke a 10.0. Also, you could be able to get a notification when somebody reviews your level.

And I just thought of the last one, you could be able to browse the "Did you Know?" section.