Although Mekvar's attitude can be sort of irritating, I think he definitely has a point.
If there has to be an "evaluation process", it has to be simple and impersonal. The classic "rate 1 to 5 stars" at the end of the mission would be a good idea. Anything more complex, longer or in any way time-consuming would work initially ,but then fall prey of a small group of people.
This is a well-known pattern. In any environment where people are invited to state their evaluation for something with anything more than a "I like it" or "I dislike it", there is an initial burst of individuals contributing then the whole thing slowly dies down, leaving the field open for the over-obsessed, self-centered, self-defined "experts" and "critics" that are usually known as the "nay-sayers".
A fine example: Youtube. Watch a popular clip, take a look at the "rate" below it: the stars and the " like/don't like". They work brilliantly.
Now take a look at the comments. What if the rating or "like/dislike" depended on those? My point, exactly.
But having a minority ... of people with no objective evaluation skills or knowledge in what makes a story/mission good judge whether it gets passed on to the wider audience? That's just ridiculous.
If you think he's talking about "reviewing" missions, then you have completely missed the point of this post. He's talking about "approving" missions, not "reviewing" them. Those are two different things.
Looks to me he's talking about both approving and reviewing. Otherwise, he wouldn't have made the above comment about what makes a story/mission good or not. Approving a mission really has nothing to do with whether it's good or not.
If you think he's talking about "reviewing" missions, then you have completely missed the point of this post. He's talking about "approving" missions, not "reviewing" them. Those are two different things.
i believe the op is confusing the process of reviewing with the process of approving. he seams to be suggesting that the community is full of untalented hacks as he says it, and that because they dont have any writing skills they should not be allowed to review the mission in the review process and that if they give it a one star rating because they dont like the mission then it wont be published.
im have been trying to explain that its about approving the missions for the wider audience by weeding out bugs and inappropriate content and not the mission quality. my line was a throw away line about everything in the media gets reviewed both internally and externally, because it does.
so i understand his point, i don't think he understand the process.
your mission is made, and available in game for anyone to see.
No, it's available to those who choose to review it for approval to a wider audience.
Ok, so perhaps my analogy wasn't spot-on. But the gist of the example was that there is a professional review process that determines whether or not a movie gets made.
We don't have professionals. We have mums and dads and kids and nerds. 99% of whom don't know a thing about what makes a good mission. Sure, they have an OPINION of what they LIKE or DISLIKE, but that has nothing to do with what is good or bad or what should be allowed to be seen by the greater public.
Putting an approval process into the hands of people who have nothing but opinion and personal bias to judge them by is unfair to the people who will be putting weeks and possibly even months of their free-time into making these missions. This will turn away massive amounts of people. Moreover, it will turn away people who have talent in making missions because the review process is completely arbitrary and not based on any relevant knowledge or skill in reviewing missions for their worth.
If you had written a script you thought was awesome; something you had poured months of your life into, would you trust it to a bunch of randoms off the street to judge it? If that was the review process that determined whether your film got seen by the masses, would you have even bothered with writing it in the first place?
No, it's available to those who choose to review it for approval to a wider audience.
You've got the review process backwards. If nobody flags your mission it goes to the masses unhindered. The people you hold in such low regard do not have to determine what makes a "good mission", only whether or not it has objectionable content or is bugged.
Then their flags are reviewed by Cryptic, who would be the professionals in this situation, to make sure they are legitimate. Somehow I doubt "I didn't like the story" is going to be considered legitimate grounds for a flag.
If that was the review process that determined whether your film got seen by the masses, would you have even bothered with writing it in the first place?
Yeah, they have this too. It's called pre-screening, wherein a bunch of people in the target audience get brought into a room to watch the movie before it is released to the public, often before the movie is even completed.
Also, considering the "professionals" allowed things like Dragonball Evolution to be made...I'd trust the random people on the street more than them at this point.
Sure, they have an OPINION of what they LIKE or DISLIKE, but that has nothing to do with what is good or bad or what should be allowed to be seen by the greater public.....
Actually, I like the idea of a review system for UGC. I'd like it to be based on how "fun" the mission is to complete. I know that can't ever be implemented because of the different interpretations of the meaning of "fun", but you probably understand what I mean.
And as far as your obviously high opinion of yourself and your literary talents - if players don't like the missions you create, it doesn't matter how impressive the missions literary value is. If I don't like playing your mission, then what does it matter how well you crafted the plot and the narrative details? If, at the end of the mission, the best I can say was "the story was coherent, and the spelling was good, but I want my hour back!" then you have failed. How about you wait until you have made us a mission or two before you tell us how awesome your work product is going to be?
If you had written a script you thought was awesome; something you had poured months of your life into, would you trust it to a bunch of randoms off the street to judge it? If that was the review process that determined whether your film got seen by the masses, would you have even bothered with writing it in the first place?
Yeah, because people who love to write do it for the art itself and the enjoyment of the process. Maybe you should stay away from scripts as your analogy. Scripts are generally written for commercial purposes, and the only "review" they get is by a bunch of people in suits who decide if there is any economic incentive in producing the script.
The overwhelming majority of players of this game will not have degrees in professional writing or literature or script writing or even a basic understanding of story structure. Therefore a preponderance of those who will judge the worth of a mission for 'approval' will be doing so entirely based on opinion and their own prejudices. There will be close to zero objective evaluation based on any relevant standards of review or basis of knowledge.
This is akin to walking into a random bar and asking five completely random strangers to judge whether a script gets made into a movie or not. Do you believe for even a second that movies like Taxi Driver would ever have been made if they had to be vetted through this sort of process?
Again, I have no problem with the wider community giving their opinions on whether or not they like or dislike my missions. And that can be done through the star rating system. But having a minority (and really, how many people are actually going to click that EULA and review content? Remember, the world isn't made up of obsessive nerds and neither is the population of this game) of people with no objective evaluation skills or knowledge in what makes a story/mission good judge whether it gets passed on to the wider audience? That's just ridiculous.
I'm honestly not getting that assessment from Stahl's quote.
It seems to me that the questions the basic QA screeners are going to answer is A) is the mission completable (yes/no) and is there any objectionable content in the mission (yes/no). If either answer is YES then the mission is flagged for further review (most likely by Cryptic, I would hope).
If it is found that there is "author griefing" as evidenced by there actually being NO evidence as to why the mission was flagged, there will be mud in the face of the person submitting the negative review - after a few of these incidences there will be solid trail of evidence to make a case of bias on the reviewer in question.
If, however, the mission is flagged for review and there is found evidence to support the decision, then the reverse will be true for the author. So it will work both ways provided the questions that need to be answered to allow a mission to be released are clear and direct.
After that point, the broader merits of the mission are open to the 5-star rating system of the general population of players - if the system works in this way I don't see any problem with the design. Yes, there will be the inevitable bumps and a lot of pounding to get it started, but you must expect this anyway when starting a new system and the kinks are worked out.
It seems to me that the questions the basic QA screeners are going to answer is A) is the mission completable (yes/no) and is there any objectionable content in the mission (yes/no). If either answer is YES then the mission is flagged for further review (most likely by Cryptic, I would hope).
If that ends up being the case, if it's nothing more than a binary option, a tick in box a and b, then I won't have a problem with it.
But if there is any subjective evaluation of missions before they are approved for mass consumption, then all of my previous posts apply.
I honestly can't see how you could set up a functional vetting process without it being a simple decision tree like this. Where you are going to run into problems, IMO, is making the decision on exactly what is considered "objectionable". There will need to be some clear guidelines for this.
It seems to me that the questions the basic QA screeners are going to answer is A) is the mission completable (yes/no) and is there any objectionable content in the mission (yes/no). If either answer is YES then the mission is flagged for further review (most likely by Cryptic, I would hope).
My concern is how everyone can define "objectionable" in their own way. One person may find slaughtering dozens innocent scientists very objectionable while others may think it's fine because you were prompted to do it by an Undine infiltrator and thus not really your "fault".
They definitely need to make it a binary choice however they need to CLEARLY define what constitutes "objectionable" and when reviewing the mission, you have to decide in what specific way it is objectionable.
Personally I'd rather that missions be approved regardless of "objectionable content" and the content review simply gives it a G, PG, R, MA type rating. Alternatively when searching for UCG content you could simply "uncheck" options which are considered objectionable and missions containing those themes will not appear.
No, it's available to those who choose to review it for approval to a wider audience.
Ok, so perhaps my analogy wasn't spot-on. But the gist of the example was that there is a professional review process that determines whether or not a movie gets made.
We don't have professionals. We have mums and dads and kids and nerds. 99% of whom don't know a thing about what makes a good mission. Sure, they have an OPINION of what they LIKE or DISLIKE, but that has nothing to do with what is good or bad or what should be allowed to be seen by the greater public.
Putting an approval process into the hands of people who have nothing but opinion and personal bias to judge them by is unfair to the people who will be putting weeks and possibly even months of their free-time into making these missions. This will turn away massive amounts of people. Moreover, it will turn away people who have talent in making missions because the review process is completely arbitrary and not based on any relevant knowledge or skill in reviewing missions for their worth.
If you had written a script you thought was awesome; something you had poured months of your life into, would you trust it to a bunch of randoms off the street to judge it? If that was the review process that determined whether your film got seen by the masses, would you have even bothered with writing it in the first place?
no, you keep getting it wrong
the review process is to stop inappropriate content. NOT the quality of the mission. it has nothing to do with people not knowing how to make missions or their own personal skill set in mission construction
every single person in the game can check out your mission by agreeing to the EULA and understanding that the content they see might be questionable.
the masses can see the mission if they so choose. its all optional. i dont have to go see a film, i choose to, so does everybody else. i can also choose to review your mision at any stage
every single person can see your mission if they choose.
the review process does not stop your content from being designed it stops people from release inappropriate content to the people who are unsuspecting, not signed the EULA and are only looking for clean missions.
We would like to have different options for publishing missions.
To All Players.
To Only Klingons.
To Only Feds.
To Friends Only if it is something you only want a friend to get access to.
To Fleet Members Only. So we can build our own back story history for our fleet and keep those not part of it out of playing and rating them.
My concern is how everyone can define "objectionable" in their own way. One person may find slaughtering dozens innocent scientists very objectionable while others may think it's fine because you were prompted to do it by an Undine infiltrator and thus not really your "fault".
They definitely need to make it a binary choice however they need to CLEARLY define what constitutes "objectionable" and when reviewing the mission, you have to decide in what specific way it is objectionable.
Personally I'd rather that missions be approved regardless of "objectionable content" and the content review simply gives it a G, PG, R, MA type rating. Alternatively when searching for UCG content you could simply "uncheck" options which are considered objectionable and missions containing those themes will not appear.
It's rather unlikely it will just be a binary list. In order for them to be able to quickly review the flags, we're going to have to give them info as to what it is that was objectionable/bugged so they can find it.
It will probably be to flag it, choose a type of flag, and then describe why you are flagging it.
So: Flag->Obscene Content->"The ground part of this mission is a planet full of giant phallic objects for buildings."
or: Flag->Bug->"This mission infinite loops if you select to hail the Ambassador during the third objective. It will spawn dialog windows until the game crashes."
We could always have a slashdot style review system of having both a review system and a meta-review system.
Slashdot is set up in such a way that participation in the comment system earns you points to mark up posts. You only gain 5 points though every time you get select to mark up posts. People later then review your choice of mark up. The better people agree with your evaluation the more likely it will be that you get more review points.
Now, i dont think the points system will work, but i think a weight review system would work. People would review your review and rate it and then you as a player would have review score. The better your review score the more valued your review would be in the overall score of any mission you review.
Example
Lets say I review a mission. I have a reviewer score of 80%. I give the mission an 80%. Another review is malicious and has a review score of 20%. He gives the same mission a 20%.
Now the value of my review is 80% so .8 * 80 = 64. The malicious players score would be .2* 20 = 4 Thus the total points of the mission is 68. Now my weight of the mission is .8 so i count for .8 of a person. The malicious player counts for .2 so together we would count as 1 person.
Thus the score of the mission would be 68%. (64 + 4 ) / (.8 +.2) = 68
Had each person been given the same weight review then the mission would only have a 50% score. (80+20 / 2)
This would keep players honest in reviewing missions. Still it would make the review process more time consuming, and people would have to meta review missions.
Still, one thing that definitely should be added is that people can only review a mission if they complete it. Thus stopping the amazon problem were people review books without reading the book.
Players aren/'t allowed to reject content for arbitrary reasons. If they're shooting it down for things other than profanity (ie. personal canon preference), they'll probably risk losing their reviewing privileges.
If that ends up being the case, if it's nothing more than a binary option, a tick in box a and b, then I won't have a problem with it.
But if there is any subjective evaluation of missions before they are approved for mass consumption, then all of my previous posts apply.
If you make quality missions, not only will they be reviewed by a huge number of players on the review board, but they'll likely get played by a huge number of people who see it show up in the remote contact list.
If however, you want every ugc mission, bad and good, to show up in that remote contact list... well good luck finding an audience when your mission is drowned in a huge list of spam and poorly written player made missions. The "smelly, unwashed masses" will drown out your "civilized" mission.
If your missions are as good as you imply, then I really hope to notice them as quality missions, as opposed to junk that spams a free-for-all remote contact.
The system works in your favor, if you really are god's gift to the Foundry.
If you make quality missions, not only will they be reviewed by a huge number of players on the review board, but they'll likely get played by a huge number of people who see it show up in the remote contact list.
If however, you want every ugc mission, bad and good, to show up in that remote contact list... well good luck finding an audience when your mission is drowned in a huge list of spam and poorly written player made missions. The "smelly, unwashed masses" will drown out your "civilized" mission.
If your missions are as good as you imply, then I really hope to notice them as quality missions, as opposed to junk that spams a free-for-all remote contact.
The system works in your favor, if you really are god's gift to the Foundry.
While I don't feel the need to comment on the OP's opinions of the community, I would like to clear up some misconceptions.
First, I will point out that the Foundry is still in development, and none of our policies are set in stone. I can, however, comment on your specific concerns because that is not the kind of review process we are working toward.
To start with, the review process will be as simple as possible. Any player can sign a EULA and become a reviewer, and all we expect from reviewers is to flag content that is not completable, violates the Terms of Use (or similar legal restrictions), or is not appropriate for a general audience. Content and quality should not be grounds for flagging; we would consider that abuse of the system and deal with it appropriately.
This is separate from rating, which anyone can do (reviewer or not). If your rating is low, it's because your mission doesn't have mass appeal. That's not necessarily a bad thing - if your mission is more of an "art film" than a "blockbuster" you can still have independent reviews on websites and this forum, and include links directly to the mission so that like-minded players will find and play it.
While I don't feel the need to comment on the OP's opinions of the community, I would like to clear up some misconceptions.
First, I will point out that the Foundry is still in development, and none of our policies are set in stone. I can, however, comment on your specific concerns because that is not the kind of review process we are working toward.
To start with, the review process will be as simple as possible. Any player can sign a EULA and become a reviewer, and all we expect from reviewers is to flag content that is not completable, violates the Terms of Use (or similar legal restrictions), or is not appropriate for a general audience. Content and quality should not be grounds for flagging; we would consider that abuse of the system and deal with it appropriately.
This is separate from rating, which anyone can do (reviewer or not). If your rating is low, it's because your mission doesn't have mass appeal. That's not necessarily a bad thing - if your mission is more of an "art film" than a "blockbuster" you can still have independent reviews on websites and this forum, and include links directly to the mission so that like-minded players will find and play it.
The overwhelming majority of players of this game will not have degrees in professional writing or literature or script writing or even a basic understanding of story structure. Therefore a preponderance of those who will judge the worth of a mission for 'approval' will be doing so entirely based on opinion and their own prejudices.
The same could be said of you - both on the matter of not being a professional writer, and your sweeping generalizations of people as unskilled hacks. So what you're saying is, those people who write for fun and are actually good at it should have no say, just because you think they're unprofessional?
While I don't feel the need to comment on the OP's opinions of the community, I would like to clear up some misconceptions.
First, I will point out that the Foundry is still in development, and none of our policies are set in stone. I can, however, comment on your specific concerns because that is not the kind of review process we are working toward.
To start with, the review process will be as simple as possible. Any player can sign a EULA and become a reviewer, and all we expect from reviewers is to flag content that is not completable, violates the Terms of Use (or similar legal restrictions), or is not appropriate for a general audience. Content and quality should not be grounds for flagging; we would consider that abuse of the system and deal with it appropriately.
This is separate from rating, which anyone can do (reviewer or not). If your rating is low, it's because your mission doesn't have mass appeal. That's not necessarily a bad thing - if your mission is more of an "art film" than a "blockbuster" you can still have independent reviews on websites and this forum, and include links directly to the mission so that like-minded players will find and play it.
Are you developing ways for us to limit to whom we're publishing the mission to? Like only, friends, fleet members, federation, klingon, neutral?
Are you developing ways for us to limit to whom we're publishing the mission to? Like only, friends, fleet members, federation, klingon, neutral?
That is not currently a feature we are planning to implement, except the last part: you will have to pick the faction of your content before publishing. We expect that content will be written specifically for either Federation or Klingon players, and will not make sense for the other faction.
Later on, we would certainly like to use the Foundry to create faction-specific missions or social hubs, but right now we're focusing on the core feature set as much as possible.
Maybe rating is good maybe its bad its still something that is gonna be implimented imo, I guess other ppl should be able to write good reviews, on lets say a community webpage to "link your" creation/creation's to something good so I dont see a problem.
No, it's available to those who choose to review it for approval to a wider audience.
Ok, so perhaps my analogy wasn't spot-on. But the gist of the example was that there is a professional review process that determines whether or not a movie gets made.
We don't have professionals. We have mums and dads and kids and nerds. 99% of whom don't know a thing about what makes a good mission. Sure, they have an OPINION of what they LIKE or DISLIKE, but that has nothing to do with what is good or bad or what should be allowed to be seen by the greater public.
Putting an approval process into the hands of people who have nothing but opinion and personal bias to judge them by is unfair to the people who will be putting weeks and possibly even months of their free-time into making these missions. This will turn away massive amounts of people. Moreover, it will turn away people who have talent in making missions because the review process is completely arbitrary and not based on any relevant knowledge or skill in reviewing missions for their worth.
If you had written a script you thought was awesome; something you had poured months of your life into, would you trust it to a bunch of randoms off the street to judge it? If that was the review process that determined whether your film got seen by the masses, would you have even bothered with writing it in the first place?
You're forgetting a major part of the movie making process. Focus testing. Where they really do take random people off the streets sit them down in a movie theater and show them a movie. Entire films have been canned, endings re-written characters taken out entirely just from the opinion of "random unwashed masses". This is also a more fitting analogy to what you're talking about, as the missions you'll be publishing are finished and not still in the script approval stage.
*edit* Actually on further reflection this also is sort of like the MPAA. Where a finished product is placed in front of a review board who are specifically looking for objectionable content. The key differences is in this case anyone can be on that board, even the creator of the content, and that this is an either yes or no thing as opposed to a g-nc17 thing. The MPAA is not really a group of "Professional" critics either, and in many cases their ratings are politically motivated.
In fact if you think about it almost every form of art that is going for mass consumption has some sort of ratings committee, this is the first instance that I'm aware of where that committee is actually the community the content is aimed at. In many ways this really is the best possible way to screen this content.
I really think this is another ball-dropping on the part of whoever's naming and describing things at Cryptic/Atari. If they had just said "in order to play UGC, you need to sign a separate EULA & agree to report offensive content," everything would be fine. Instead, they split the players into "reviewers" and "non-reviewers" and made a whole mess of things.
Comments
If there has to be an "evaluation process", it has to be simple and impersonal. The classic "rate 1 to 5 stars" at the end of the mission would be a good idea. Anything more complex, longer or in any way time-consuming would work initially ,but then fall prey of a small group of people.
This is a well-known pattern. In any environment where people are invited to state their evaluation for something with anything more than a "I like it" or "I dislike it", there is an initial burst of individuals contributing then the whole thing slowly dies down, leaving the field open for the over-obsessed, self-centered, self-defined "experts" and "critics" that are usually known as the "nay-sayers".
A fine example: Youtube. Watch a popular clip, take a look at the "rate" below it: the stars and the " like/don't like". They work brilliantly.
Now take a look at the comments. What if the rating or "like/dislike" depended on those? My point, exactly.
Looks to me he's talking about both approving and reviewing. Otherwise, he wouldn't have made the above comment about what makes a story/mission good or not. Approving a mission really has nothing to do with whether it's good or not.
i believe the op is confusing the process of reviewing with the process of approving. he seams to be suggesting that the community is full of untalented hacks as he says it, and that because they dont have any writing skills they should not be allowed to review the mission in the review process and that if they give it a one star rating because they dont like the mission then it wont be published.
im have been trying to explain that its about approving the missions for the wider audience by weeding out bugs and inappropriate content and not the mission quality. my line was a throw away line about everything in the media gets reviewed both internally and externally, because it does.
so i understand his point, i don't think he understand the process.
No, it's available to those who choose to review it for approval to a wider audience.
Ok, so perhaps my analogy wasn't spot-on. But the gist of the example was that there is a professional review process that determines whether or not a movie gets made.
We don't have professionals. We have mums and dads and kids and nerds. 99% of whom don't know a thing about what makes a good mission. Sure, they have an OPINION of what they LIKE or DISLIKE, but that has nothing to do with what is good or bad or what should be allowed to be seen by the greater public.
Putting an approval process into the hands of people who have nothing but opinion and personal bias to judge them by is unfair to the people who will be putting weeks and possibly even months of their free-time into making these missions. This will turn away massive amounts of people. Moreover, it will turn away people who have talent in making missions because the review process is completely arbitrary and not based on any relevant knowledge or skill in reviewing missions for their worth.
If you had written a script you thought was awesome; something you had poured months of your life into, would you trust it to a bunch of randoms off the street to judge it? If that was the review process that determined whether your film got seen by the masses, would you have even bothered with writing it in the first place?
No, Grand Negus is right and you're missing the point.
You've got the review process backwards. If nobody flags your mission it goes to the masses unhindered. The people you hold in such low regard do not have to determine what makes a "good mission", only whether or not it has objectionable content or is bugged.
Then their flags are reviewed by Cryptic, who would be the professionals in this situation, to make sure they are legitimate. Somehow I doubt "I didn't like the story" is going to be considered legitimate grounds for a flag.
Yeah, they have this too. It's called pre-screening, wherein a bunch of people in the target audience get brought into a room to watch the movie before it is released to the public, often before the movie is even completed.
Also, considering the "professionals" allowed things like Dragonball Evolution to be made...I'd trust the random people on the street more than them at this point.
Actually, I like the idea of a review system for UGC. I'd like it to be based on how "fun" the mission is to complete. I know that can't ever be implemented because of the different interpretations of the meaning of "fun", but you probably understand what I mean.
And as far as your obviously high opinion of yourself and your literary talents - if players don't like the missions you create, it doesn't matter how impressive the missions literary value is. If I don't like playing your mission, then what does it matter how well you crafted the plot and the narrative details? If, at the end of the mission, the best I can say was "the story was coherent, and the spelling was good, but I want my hour back!" then you have failed. How about you wait until you have made us a mission or two before you tell us how awesome your work product is going to be?
Yeah, because people who love to write do it for the art itself and the enjoyment of the process. Maybe you should stay away from scripts as your analogy. Scripts are generally written for commercial purposes, and the only "review" they get is by a bunch of people in suits who decide if there is any economic incentive in producing the script.
I'm honestly not getting that assessment from Stahl's quote.
It seems to me that the questions the basic QA screeners are going to answer is A) is the mission completable (yes/no) and
If it is found that there is "author griefing" as evidenced by there actually being NO evidence as to why the mission was flagged, there will be mud in the face of the person submitting the negative review - after a few of these incidences there will be solid trail of evidence to make a case of bias on the reviewer in question.
If, however, the mission is flagged for review and there is found evidence to support the decision, then the reverse will be true for the author. So it will work both ways provided the questions that need to be answered to allow a mission to be released are clear and direct.
After that point, the broader merits of the mission are open to the 5-star rating system of the general population of players - if the system works in this way I don't see any problem with the design. Yes, there will be the inevitable bumps and a lot of pounding to get it started, but you must expect this anyway when starting a new system and the kinks are worked out.
If that ends up being the case, if it's nothing more than a binary option, a tick in box a and b, then I won't have a problem with it.
But if there is any subjective evaluation of missions before they are approved for mass consumption, then all of my previous posts apply.
My concern is how everyone can define "objectionable" in their own way. One person may find slaughtering dozens innocent scientists very objectionable while others may think it's fine because you were prompted to do it by an Undine infiltrator and thus not really your "fault".
They definitely need to make it a binary choice however they need to CLEARLY define what constitutes "objectionable" and when reviewing the mission, you have to decide in what specific way it is objectionable.
Personally I'd rather that missions be approved regardless of "objectionable content" and the content review simply gives it a G, PG, R, MA type rating. Alternatively when searching for UCG content you could simply "uncheck" options which are considered objectionable and missions containing those themes will not appear.
no, you keep getting it wrong
the review process is to stop inappropriate content. NOT the quality of the mission. it has nothing to do with people not knowing how to make missions or their own personal skill set in mission construction
every single person in the game can check out your mission by agreeing to the EULA and understanding that the content they see might be questionable.
the masses can see the mission if they so choose. its all optional. i dont have to go see a film, i choose to, so does everybody else. i can also choose to review your mision at any stage
every single person can see your mission if they choose.
the review process does not stop your content from being designed it stops people from release inappropriate content to the people who are unsuspecting, not signed the EULA and are only looking for clean missions.
To All Players.
To Only Klingons.
To Only Feds.
To Friends Only if it is something you only want a friend to get access to.
To Fleet Members Only. So we can build our own back story history for our fleet and keep those not part of it out of playing and rating them.
It's rather unlikely it will just be a binary list. In order for them to be able to quickly review the flags, we're going to have to give them info as to what it is that was objectionable/bugged so they can find it.
It will probably be to flag it, choose a type of flag, and then describe why you are flagging it.
So: Flag->Obscene Content->"The ground part of this mission is a planet full of giant phallic objects for buildings."
or: Flag->Bug->"This mission infinite loops if you select to hail the Ambassador during the third objective. It will spawn dialog windows until the game crashes."
Slashdot is set up in such a way that participation in the comment system earns you points to mark up posts. You only gain 5 points though every time you get select to mark up posts. People later then review your choice of mark up. The better people agree with your evaluation the more likely it will be that you get more review points.
Now, i dont think the points system will work, but i think a weight review system would work. People would review your review and rate it and then you as a player would have review score. The better your review score the more valued your review would be in the overall score of any mission you review.
Example
Lets say I review a mission. I have a reviewer score of 80%. I give the mission an 80%. Another review is malicious and has a review score of 20%. He gives the same mission a 20%.
Now the value of my review is 80% so .8 * 80 = 64. The malicious players score would be .2* 20 = 4 Thus the total points of the mission is 68. Now my weight of the mission is .8 so i count for .8 of a person. The malicious player counts for .2 so together we would count as 1 person.
Thus the score of the mission would be 68%. (64 + 4 ) / (.8 +.2) = 68
Had each person been given the same weight review then the mission would only have a 50% score. (80+20 / 2)
This would keep players honest in reviewing missions. Still it would make the review process more time consuming, and people would have to meta review missions.
Still, one thing that definitely should be added is that people can only review a mission if they complete it. Thus stopping the amazon problem were people review books without reading the book.
This.
I do not believe that the 'review' system is beneficial, workable, or sustainable either, but good grief, OP.
If you make quality missions, not only will they be reviewed by a huge number of players on the review board, but they'll likely get played by a huge number of people who see it show up in the remote contact list.
If however, you want every ugc mission, bad and good, to show up in that remote contact list... well good luck finding an audience when your mission is drowned in a huge list of spam and poorly written player made missions. The "smelly, unwashed masses" will drown out your "civilized" mission.
If your missions are as good as you imply, then I really hope to notice them as quality missions, as opposed to junk that spams a free-for-all remote contact.
The system works in your favor, if you really are god's gift to the Foundry.
That's a good point.
First, I will point out that the Foundry is still in development, and none of our policies are set in stone. I can, however, comment on your specific concerns because that is not the kind of review process we are working toward.
To start with, the review process will be as simple as possible. Any player can sign a EULA and become a reviewer, and all we expect from reviewers is to flag content that is not completable, violates the Terms of Use (or similar legal restrictions), or is not appropriate for a general audience. Content and quality should not be grounds for flagging; we would consider that abuse of the system and deal with it appropriately.
This is separate from rating, which anyone can do (reviewer or not). If your rating is low, it's because your mission doesn't have mass appeal. That's not necessarily a bad thing - if your mission is more of an "art film" than a "blockbuster" you can still have independent reviews on websites and this forum, and include links directly to the mission so that like-minded players will find and play it.
thank you for the much needed clarification.
The same could be said of you - both on the matter of not being a professional writer, and your sweeping generalizations of people as unskilled hacks. So what you're saying is, those people who write for fun and are actually good at it should have no say, just because you think they're unprofessional?
Are you developing ways for us to limit to whom we're publishing the mission to? Like only, friends, fleet members, federation, klingon, neutral?
That is not currently a feature we are planning to implement, except the last part: you will have to pick the faction of your content before publishing. We expect that content will be written specifically for either Federation or Klingon players, and will not make sense for the other faction.
Later on, we would certainly like to use the Foundry to create faction-specific missions or social hubs, but right now we're focusing on the core feature set as much as possible.
You're forgetting a major part of the movie making process. Focus testing. Where they really do take random people off the streets sit them down in a movie theater and show them a movie. Entire films have been canned, endings re-written characters taken out entirely just from the opinion of "random unwashed masses". This is also a more fitting analogy to what you're talking about, as the missions you'll be publishing are finished and not still in the script approval stage.
*edit* Actually on further reflection this also is sort of like the MPAA. Where a finished product is placed in front of a review board who are specifically looking for objectionable content. The key differences is in this case anyone can be on that board, even the creator of the content, and that this is an either yes or no thing as opposed to a g-nc17 thing. The MPAA is not really a group of "Professional" critics either, and in many cases their ratings are politically motivated.
In fact if you think about it almost every form of art that is going for mass consumption has some sort of ratings committee, this is the first instance that I'm aware of where that committee is actually the community the content is aimed at. In many ways this really is the best possible way to screen this content.