BLIND'S PROFILE

author=Sooz

author=Marrend
If there is one thing that might be neat, and maybe I'm just talking out loud here, is if it could be set up so that images that are most-liked, highly rated, or whatever, would automatically be shown as the "homepage images" for the gamepage. Though, I suppose a dev could use the built-in option to make an image a "homepage image" for images that they are noticing are getting good ratings (or whatever)?

This has major potential for abuse. Never give an audience control over someone's presentation.

Yeah, totally agreed. We don't want to give away control over someone's game page to other users.

I should have clarified from the beginning that it wouldn't necessarily have to be a numerical score. Some vague form of a "Like" or reaction system that's secondary to text comments, would fulfill the same role.

Ultimately, I agree with Kaempfer's and LBR's comments though. RMN has become very (increasingly) focused on being a tight-knit internet forum, which is great, but unlike InfectionFiles, I don't think we need to limit ourselves to that.

WIP designed this site to be an antidote to GW, which was strictly dominated by the forum banter. Game content isn't allowed on the forums though, besides, say, the screenshot topic; so how exactly do we promote the lesser-known games that aren't as "viral" as One Shot, Ara Fell or whatever? It can't merely hinge on Review Events either, because those only appeal to a small handful of our total members.

RN took the words out of my mouth with this:

author=RedNova
Regarding the "thumbs vs. comment" issue: I hear legit complaints from devs about the lack of activity on their pages more often than I'd like. The bottom line is: there needs to be more interaction on the game pages. We can yell at people to leave more comments all we want, but not everyone wants to take the time to articulate why they like a screen. Hell, I've seen a few posters around the forums complaining about "vapid" comments, annoyed that all they write is "nice atmosphere" or "I like it."

I totally understand Liberty's concerns about RMN becoming too much like other social media sites, where nothing meaningful is written a response to the content. But I don't necessarily see that happening here. To to play devil's advocate further; often times even the comments people leave are equally devoid of anything useful.

If not this suggestion, we need to set up -some- larger incentives for commenting on other people's stuff, besides just whoever might be our friend on the site.

author=Marrend
Hrm. Well, there is a way to set a screenshot as needing additional feedback, and would appear on this page. I'm pretty sure this makes the image not count as part of the three-image limit for the purposes of a gamepage. In fact, I think they don't appear on the gamepage at all, unless a user disables that option! I don't know if anybody disables the option after turning it on, outside of the few times I've done it myself.

I'm neither for nor against the idea, but, food for thought.

Interesting!

That seems like a useful page, and I have to admit I wasn't aware of it. It seems like not too many people are, though, since there are only 21 images displayed since last February.

What I was envisioning is something like Instagram, where people could seamlessly scroll through a page and easily rate each screenshot with a 1-5. It's quick, it's easy, and it could give the developer at least some idea how they're doing, visually, with their game... But on the other hand, maybe most people don't want their screens/videos rated, so.

There's also the issue of everything from the past not having a score, so it could be hard to weigh that stuff.

author=Sooz

tee hee the gremlins are still at it. :3

maybe the -3 is the symbolic likelihood of that actually happening, lol.

It's too bad XD I had been meaning to suggest that for a while, and I must have picked the absolute worst time to do it.

This was an idea I've talked about with a few others here, for quite a while now. XD

I'm not sure how easily this could be implemented into RMN's code (although, we already have a general 5-Star rating system, so it doesn't seem too infeasible), but I think it'd be a great addition. On any given week, there are hundreds of screenshots/videos that get posted on RMN, most of which receive zero response. This trend makes the main site appear a bit useless, compared to its full potential. Unless the game is one of 100 or so that are "popular", it's largely ignored. If we want to encourage more user engagement outside of the screenshot topic, this could be a great/easy way to promote it.

I often think of NewGrounds, where they have a great rating system on all Videos/Artwork/Audio and media in general. In that way, all content on the front page is easily dictated by user interaction. We could have a "buzzing screenshot" section; or even if not, just a simple way to generate numerical feedback for developers here. Similarly, on YouTube, if you glance at the "Likes" for a video, you can (usually) get a reasonably good consensus on its quality.

While numerical ratings aren't as good as constructive text feedback, it's still better than nothing. If it's easy for users to do, I think people are much more likely to rate screenshots with a score rather than type out paragraph-length replies for 10 screenshots. If one screenshot were rated 50 times with a 4/5, that's arguably just as valuable as a comment or two, feedback-wise.

Anyhow, since our community is relatively small, I think it's important to do anything possible to continue promoting interaction on the main site as well as the forums. Similar to Keampfer's post about tagging users, this is a feature that seems like it could be easy to add, but could be a stepping stone to "modernize" RMN.

Any thoughts? Disagreements?