RMN V4.3 APPROACHES! COMMAND?

Well, to be honest the blogs don't bother me nearly as much as the reaction this kind of issues tend to get. Yes, the site would be better, even if slightly, if those things didn't happen. And you'd think anyone with a few seconds to spare would reach this conclusion and act accordingly; But somehow that's just not enough because they keep happening over and over... Suggesting that the moderation should do something about it is always an uphill battle because they don't seem to care. And talking directly to people is a gamble because some of them are so alien to the concept of exchanging ideas with other human beings that they immediately dismiss everything as "drama".

So what else is there left to do? Nothing? ...Pfft! Even feeling upset is more responsible than that. xP

I always liked the idea of an developers blog seperate from game profiles, with the possiblity of subscribing to them. Although getting notifications about thier forum posts would be stalkerish :/

I think I could be behind having a setting where certain portions of the gamepage would not generate buzz. Like, it would be a tab property, or something? Not sure how feasible this idea is, though.

I don't think Creation was talking exclusively about blogs but more like in a general sense regarding "quality control". Heartache 101 doesn't always generates "actual discussion", half of the time is just casual conversation between the same handful of users. Besides, due to the nature of the game even some of the legitimate discussion seem utterly masturbatory superfluous. I mean, it's mostly talk about imaginary animu girlfriends... but that's besides the point.

The thing is... Remember when Heartache 101 was every week on the front page in the 'Latest download' section? Well, apparently that got fixed and they could no longer exploit that. But with the buzzing mechanic in place they started pumping "actual discussion" in that 'Custom Content' tab of theirs generating loads of artificial buzz on a regular basis. That tab alone was like a bazillion pages long until recently when it got axed in favor of two other different tabs...

Now, I can't prove if any of this was intentional. This is mostly just speculation on my part. But I find it very suspicious and it wouldn't surprise me if there is in fact even the slightest intent to 'game the system' coming from them. Not really unlike to those people who blog a lot or post tons of images of their games in hopes to catch some attention... A stricter "quality control" around these parts should come in handy to discourage all those kinds of dubious behaviors.

I don't know whether to be amused or offended by this. It's a bs accusation, of course, but I suppose there will always be somebody who thinks that way.

As to the topic at hand, although I'm not particularly invested in how things like buzz are handled on this site, it's hard to picture many developers voluntarily clicking a "No Buzz" flag, I would think. Just my 2 cents. Now back to being discouraged over my failure to create an RPG that anyone cares about....

I agree with Tau, basically, but the staff is pretty capable of weeding out bad content, I would say.

and you used a macro :o

Haha quality control for the front page. Deciding if something is good or bad is subjective to each person. Asking the staff to weed out the "bad" to make way for the "good" is an awful idea. What gives them the right to make such a decision?

I disagree. Link _2112 gave a good example about this:

Imagine if a newspaper ran stories like "City Hall decides on the green drapes in the lobby". You wouldn't see that on the front page. That's a "shitty" story. I don't think it's wrong to show off the best looking information. Or at least push the nonsense aside.

Good and bad is not only subjective to each person although it’s relative to a general point of comparison. There’s such a thing as mediocrity although there will be a range of opinions as to what it constitutes.

Generally speaking, this screen:


Will be considered more beautiful than this one:

What gives them the right to make such a decision?

What prevents them to? They already select the game of the month and accept/reject game reviews. Following the logic you’ve mentioned, there’s shouldn’t be a game of the month and all reviews should be accepted no matter how bad they are since there’s no standards and everything is just a big mess of subjectivity.

This is why I disagree with you.

I also wanted to respond to:

-Blogs that are utterly worthless (one or two sentences with no useful or discernible content) will generally be deleted. Double posting blogs is similarly prohibited.

-Some leniency will be given to obviously new users who clearly don't know the rules yet.

-Repeat offenders will be contacted privately by a staff member.

-If you see a blog of questionable quality, please contact kentona or Deckiller privately with your concerns so that they can take care of it, rather than confronting a user yourself. No backseat modding.

-Please remember that kentona and Deckiller are the final arbiters of what is acceptable material and what is not.

Perfect, although I’ll miss backseat moderating.

Users can only post "Creation approved" blogs?

That’s a pretty good idea. I’d say I have a pretty good judgment.

Just so you know, I'm recommending that we move the Blog posts that show up on the front page to a less prominent spot so they aren't as highlighted as they currently are. This should help actual content additions like Media and Reviews get more views - you know, the things that (should) garner attention (and MS)?

This is such a good idea! I approve wholeheartedly.

it's hard to picture many developers voluntarily clicking a "No Buzz" flag

Why so? If you’re aware that a specific conversation would probably only interest a handful of people who will reply back and forth msn style, it seems to me like a very good option to have on hand. I could certainly use a break from the custom content buzzathon.

One more thing:

Still, I'm fairly convinced I'm not the problem here, and I think I can illustrate this somehow. Not too long ago I approached somebody with advice for his drawings. This person had made two drawings, one a little better than the other. I complimented the better one and pointed at flaws of the worse one; You know, with the best of intentions to help someone develop his style. Well, soon after my critique, people flocked to discourage the author from taking it into account... What do I get from this? That people is unable to discern quality, or that they are just to happy conforming to pleasantries and silly jokes. Anything beyond that is frowned upon.

It's the same with blogs, or reviews, or anything else. People would rather forget that things can be improved than having the subject being brought up in the first place. "Is easier to ignore blogs", they say. But my whole premise is based in the idea that blogs are a fundamental part of game development too. People constantly ask for feedback in them, and hence they should not go unnoticed. But for people to pay attention to blogs, I believe these need a minimum grade of quality that invites for that feedback...

I think the thing is that some people just don’t really care about anything improving. They’re happy with things staying stagnant because changing something might involve making it worse. From the time I’ve been around here, there’s always a strong reaction to any change, no matter how significantly small. People were raving about the “Ignore” function, foreseeing doom and the end of RMN. Obviously things didn’t turn out to be that way and this new function is just a nice addition.

The same goes for drawings or screenshots. Some people show their stuff exclusively to be told they’re good and are super hostile to any sort of criticism because, let’s face it, they just want to be praised.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to create a new section in the Game Development where people who want criticism and who are willing to make changes to improve their works could post? That would weed out everyone who just want a pat on the back? I’d personally like to give honest feedback but I’m worried someone won’t be able to handle it and delete their game.

I think the "problems" with Buzz are more emblematic of problems with user mindsets than with the buzz systems. People love to heap tons and tons and tons and tons of attention on terrible games and tend to ignore a lot of decent-to-good games. This results in bad games getting a ton of buzz while good games wallow in obscurity. A miscarriage of justice!

You make it sound like Heartache 101 is a bad game :(. This being said, I'd say you're generally right about the user mindset. We probably should focus more on encouraging good elements as opposed to discouraging awful ones.