RATING SYSTEM
- I know people can upvote modifications, but I was wondering if you could improve this system by having a 5-star rating instead.
- The rating would be based on an average rating number based on all ratings submitted.
- For example, if someone rated a mod 5 star then another person only rated it 1 star it would be around 3 starts for its average rating.
- You could also add a minimum cap of 10 ratings before showing results this would make it a bit more stable for mods that just got published.
- Some visual indication that the mod does not have enough ratings to display its ratting would help people know that it does not have a low rating. This would also encourage people to vote for the mod a bit.
REVIEW SYSTEM
- Comments are good for a discussion but it would be nice to have a section above it or a second page on the mod topic to display the comments and have reviews on the main page for the download.
- Reviews should help people decided if they want to download the mod and can benefit the creator if they have good reviews for that mod.
- Reviews could use the rating system above instead of just a raw upvote, ratings could require a review to also provide feedback to the creator so they can figure out what areas can be improved in there mods.
- For reviews, I think it would be best if replies were disabled except for the creator, just so it does not get to long and hard to read the reviews.
Anyhow, I just thought this would be a bit nicer than just the basic upvote system currently in place, it would be more community based and help creators find areas they may want to improve their mods and gives the community a dedicated place to give feedback while improving the rating system. Like always I would like to know what the community thinks of the suggestion for the ratings and reviews. Maybe people have more suggestions to add, just comment below on this page.
Issue comments
Some interesting reads:
- https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/87235/rated-with-a-boolean-instead-of-a-5-star-rating-system
- https://medium.muz.li/the-psychology-of-rating-systems-in-ux-9739c6ba6ec4
Plus upvotes are more encouraging for the community and reduce negativity in the community.
Fair enough :)
If there has been research done on ratings then best to keep it the way it is, I still think separating the reviews from comments would help mods generate a bit more downloads, I find my self all ways reading reviews before I buy a product from Amazon or Best Buy even if the rating for the product is high, it offer more transparency and a place for people to express there likes and dislikes, maybe having a way to link a forum topic for reviews would work for now to lower the payload on the website. And making it so a button appears (next to downloads) if its linked to go directly to that forum thread. Comments are good for questions, and discussions.
RATING SYSTEM: We used to have fivestar voting, but upvoting is currently the go-to solution for all websites (YT, FB, twitter, reddit, stackoverflow, ...) as there are studies showing it is a much better system and provides better insights. One can give five starts and on another mod, 10 give 5 stars and 1 gives 1, and now this mod seems to have a lower rating than the first one.
This would mean around 80% or even mods would remain without rating as even now a lot of smaller mods get only a few upvotes.
I see the benefits of fivestar, but studied the benefits of upvotes overweight them.
REVIEW SYSTEM: This might happen in the future, but this is an additional load for the server which already bearly have time to breathe :) For now, linked forum topic is meant to link users to a topic where extended discussion about the mod can be done.