I agree 100 percent. An official review team is needed badly.

[This message has been edited by spbogie (edited 01-10-2004 @ 05:26 PM).]

I would be all for an official review team, however, don't count the popular vote out, for that says far more than any rating team can say. For example, ask the OSU coach if his team is cool, now ask the fans, which said more? yes, I like OSU

I couldn't agree more either.
I'd also add,a strict reviewing team.

[This message has been edited by apolos (edited 01-10-2004 @ 05:37 PM).]

Our reviwers should follow this system:
we need a Randy Jackson(knows whats good and bad, and is nice about it)
Paula Abdul (always nice)
Simon Cowell (grumpy old fart who wants nothing less than perfection)

here here ^^ one word/sentese reviews are not acceptable. A reviewing team would be great...also, i tihkn the best reviewer out there is The Bard

Whoever is Randy Jackson,he sounds like the man for this job.Can you get in touch with him?

i think that a review team would be much easier to have if we could get rid of these "OMG NEW HELMS DEAP BAESD OFF TEH MOVIEZ, MUCH BETTER TEN TEH BOOKS" noobies

anyways, on a lighter note i would love to see an official review team

Bard can really be the leader reviewer. and i agree. there are many bad reviews that dont support the rating which was given to the person.

[This message has been edited by auron 2 (edited 01-10-2004 @ 08:10 PM).]

Don't worry, once Kumar's back, everything will be fixed.

I agree, The Bard rules.
He should be the head reviewer...

An official review team would solve the problems of smurfs and people trying to be nice ("I quite like it, that's a 4.6, don't worry about the bugs, everyone makes mistakes and it was quite good for your first scenario..."), but it would create some other problems:

The amount of work. How would this team handle everything that's uploaded and offered for review? An official team would not only gain the right, but also the RESPONSIBILITY to review. Are there enough people willing to take that kind of responsibility?

The scope of the reviewers. Speaking from my own point of view: For everyone here trying to boost my ego I can produce two people who will complain about how unfair and harsh my reviews are, how I didn't appreciate their hard work or the fact that it was their first scenario. Right now we have dozens, even hundreds of potential reviewers, and they all have a different view on things. How will a team of four, six, ten (?) people achieve this kind of versatility? The 'public voice' needs to be in there somehow.

The truck factor. Again speaking for myself: If there had been an official review team on this site when I joined I'd never have had the chance to review anything. So how do new people get into this team? And new people will be needed sooner or later because people will drop out of the team, even if no one gets run over.

Mind you, I don't think it's a bad idea. We definitely have a problem here, but we should make sure that the cure won't be worse than the disease. How did the people at AoKH solve these problems?

Btw, no matter whether we get an 'official' review team or not, what I'd like to see was some authority to (sort of) review all new reviews and immediately delete everything that's not done according to the guidelines. There is some work done here in that direction, but not enough in my mind. Which is of course easy to say when it's not me who has to do all the additional work...

Perhaps TWO ratings... the Official Review and the Public review?

Quote:

Quote:

Basically, the question here is whether or not the public should keep the downloads section tidy or the staff members to do so. With a review team, anyone who has proven a good writer, staff or forumer, can keep it neat and post good reviews. Of course it won't work if no one wants to do it, but several people here have already showed interest.

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That it does, and AoKH I believe solved the problem by doing as Mythos_Ruler suggested, "TWO ratings... the Official Review and the Public review?"

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Joining will probably be based on previous reviews or a sample of writing. Now, saying people will leave is a valid point; however, people leave scenario design teams, the HG staff, even business in the real world. Recruiting someone new usually solves the problem. If not, being down one or two members short is alright for a period of time.

Basically, you are right Bard. There is a lot of work involved in having a review team. If a team is formed though, it would be for the better as long as people on this forum are willing to take some time and write a decent review.

[This message has been edited by Byzantine_Warrior (edited 01-11-2004 @ 09:11 AM).]

ONCE KUMAR SHAH IS BACK THIS PROBLEM WILL BE SOLVED

how about appointed review team leaders, then a bunch of sign-ups so that a large group of ppl have access to reviewing instead of just a few. the work load is too big for a few people. the sign-ups won't have any responsibilities, they are just there to review whenever they like, and if anyone's caught doing bad jobs frequently all we have to do is ban the guy from reviewing.

IMO i'ts not that hard to implement this,quite the opposite i'd say.The AoK Heaven model is very good and it's there to copy.All that is needed is a handfull of people who
a)Speak good english-obviously
b)Have some previous experience with reviewing or generally they can write acceptable reviews
c)Have experience from custom scenarios/campaigns or other files from other games and especially the age games.This is important because there have been no really good projects in AoM thus far(except some utilities) and it would be hard for someone who has only experience from AoM to recognize what's good and what's not.

Indeed it is to much work to review every file in the download section but the point is that there is no need to review every single file that is spammed there.
The job of the official reviewers will be to write reviews only for files that worth one.People may start complaining why their "go across the river and kill the huge fire giant and you win" scenarios have not been officially reviewed or why their mega super s4x0r bla bla bla projects have gotten a 3.2 rating,but who cares really?The smart ones will fix their mistakes and improve and the others will whine until they get bored,it's their choice.

Finally in the best_of or spotlight or such section there should be only projects that have been officially approved.
Byzantine_Warrior is right,something serious must be done about the designing community here-which is the heart of AoM designing-if we don't want it to keep being laughable at.

[This message has been edited by apolos (edited 01-11-2004 @ 09:14 PM).]

Nice idea on making a official review team, but it would be more helpful if you guys thought of ideas on how to make the official review team rather than saying what it would be. It's one thing to have an idea, and another to make it happen

I'm not too convinced about this because we're going to end up with 3 active reviewers out of 20, and also people might just start dissapearing after the excitement goes down.

Also, if we have an official review team then I would really like them to nominate a spotlight download every 2 weeks or so However the official review team must be active, accept the commitment, and work together. We can't build in special features in the download database to allow the review team to do special things, and we can't make you guys staff either.

So start thinking of a good sollution and we'll see if we can do it.

[This message has been edited by CheeZy (edited 01-11-2004 @ 07:13 PM).]

The general idea is quite simple the way i see it.Here's a first thought:
1)First of all,since as-far as i have seen-there aren't too many people with much experiance here,but there is a sufficient number of mature persons with adequate potential,the team must have a leader.
The leader,should be obviously a capable reviewer with previous experiance on this and his job will be to approve the joining of less experianced reviewers by simply taking a look at a sample review and maybe check the reviews before they are posted,if the original reviewer feels he could need a second opinion.In the latter case the leader wouldn't have to post reviews him/herself if he finds it to much of work.Dedication here is obviously important.
2)There is no need for the reviewers to belong to the staff,but at least one staff member must be in the team or work actively with it.There has to be someone with modification access because modification will be most likely needed.Ideally the leader will belong to the the staff and- as people say and as far as i remember -ideally it will be Kumar Shah.
The rest of the reviewers can be any forum members,but an indicator under their name would be good,because-although it's quite silly -people in forums tend to see "officials" like cops who stopped them for some checking or like govermental officers or something like that.In other words this could save the team from some whining .An "Official Reviewer of AoMH downloads etc." label in their sig could also work just fine.
3)The official reviews must have some kind of indication that they are official.That would be very helpfull for people who are not frequent members of the forum and make up their minds through reviews.
4)There must be a seperate section that will hold the officially recommended files.Its content will have to be approved by mutual agreement of the team members or at least most of them.That's i.e. where a staff member is needed.

Now about the prerequisites for the potential reviewers:
They must first of all be mature persons who know what's happening around them and to them.In other words they must be able to fullfill a commitment if they decide to make one.The work that the will have to do is not too much IMO,it's not that the downloads get loads of worthy files.
Simply,if someone wants to join the team he/she must be sure if he/she is available to wright up to couple of reviews per week for at least a decent number of months.Not every worthy file has to be reviwed by every member obviously.The reviewer must also be able and available to communicate with the rest of the team members via mail/messenger/etc if needed. The rest prerequisites of the reviewer i mentioned above.
I don't think people will start dissapearing after the first time if the whole thing is official.In most cases official=serious and only serious projects attract serious people.

Personally although i won't have too much free time in the near future and i spend most of my AOM time on my campaign,i would be willing to help on this if my native language was english,since good spelling and structure in reviews is important(although i can't really judge myself exactly how good my english is).Anyway i'm personally willing to help if needed.

[This message has been edited by apolos (edited 01-11-2004 @ 09:15 PM).]

I love this idea, just like described above would be great, but I would recommend creating another new downloads section that is for newbs, learning to build their first scenerios and that are not that good, you should not be ashamed to submit downloads to this, as there will be a small amount of good newbie work displayed.
Something to that effect.

I hope this idea becomes a reality.

I would look into these ideas more carefully later (i.e. when I have time while in the US).

When the present downloads system was initially implemented we did ask if it would be possible to have a official review team and a system like AoKH. The thing is, in AOKH the system was implemented after around 2 years of AoK's release. By then, there were people active, mature and responsible enough to follow their duties. Its been quite a bit of time since AoM's release, but it remains to be seen how feasible would it be to have an offical review team.

A review team would be amazing. I think we should ask people if they are interested in becoming a full-time reviewer now so we can review (corny joke i know) the situation.

Yeah, it'd be nice... but at this point it seems a lot of talk and no action. I think debate time is over... formulate the team... rrriiiiiggggght.... NOW!

Also, someone should be in charge of removing the stupid little "smurfs" and reviews and whatnot, one of the moderators perhaps.

I think apolos has a good structure there. I think it would be something to look into. Two things I wanted to suggest though:

Quote:

Before being accepted as an offical reviewer, previous writing work, preferably a past review, would be required.

All reviewers accepted must promise to remain impartial and fair., not grading a scenario by author, but by actual design.

Great ideas though, I'd love to see this work. Now CheeZy, as you said, its one thing to talk about doing it but another to actually do it. However, us forumers can't do it alone and would need help from you and the staff.

---

Byz
Tsunami Studios
"People are born to succeed, not fail." - Henry David Thoreau

[This message has been edited by Byzantine_Warrior (edited 01-12-2004 @ 03:30 PM).]

You can make an apeal and petition in the Website Comments and Announcements forum

Really, I'm totally nuetral on this and unless I get a thumbs up from Socman I probably won't do anything about it. Unless Kumar steps in and decides to take command, because he is the download section administrator, not I.

Pardon my style, but first you don't want ideas but ways to do this.You get some, then you like this, yet you're neutral.You're the scenario design admin and say you need thumbs up from Socvazious with whom you obviously are familiar, yet you tell us to make an apeal to an empty forum?Or rely on Kumar who is obviously busy moving around?Huh?

The whole thing starts to remind me of an old fashioned public service; too much buerocracy for nothing.
Sorry, but if the admins work for themselves how can you expect the community here to produce something good?I wonder why my recent first sight of the forum was a spams' advertisement page and some people complaining about this.

Pfff,see you all.