Can SC.org staff...?

[Ktan]

Can the staff modify votes on submissions? I'm just wondering, due to the fact there are often (unfair) votes put down that are unreasonable or even unexplained. Pehaps an appeal system. Here is one example I found.

http://starcraft.org/fanfiction/shortstories/they+were+all+boys+once

The vote of tossboom.

[GrimTerror]

Even if they could, would it be right for the staff to say "You can't vote because it appears that you are vonting incorrectly?"

It may seem harsh and unfair at times, but would you rather have (some) submissions that have completely unfair ratings, or would you rather have your votes monitored and altered based on what one or more people think should be the right vote? Everyone is entitled to their own viewpoint, no matter how stupid or pathetic it is.

That said, I think there's far too much emphasize on the ratings of content. If it's a good piece of content, you can see it for yourself and comment positivly on it. A piece of content with a rating of Pretty Bad but has 15+ positive comments about it is clearly worth keeping.

While we're on the subject, I do have an interesting thought for this probelm. Get rid of the ratings system all-together and replace it with something more subtle. I think a sort of "recommendation" system might come in handy. If you read a piece of content and you believe it is good, you can sorta place a recomendation point on it. If you don't like it, then you don't give it a recomendation point. That would avoid all unneccesary and unfair bad comments, yet it would give people a chance to approve of work they particularly enjoyed. The popular articles on the list could be comprimised of those that have the most recommendation points (and could possibly called reccomended Maps/strategies/customs/etc.)

So it's like, when you view a piece of content, you will see "This Fan Art has been recommended by 5 members." With no way to give negative feedback (save comments) the worst thing stupid spiteful members could do is not give the content a point, which would not affect the overall rating of the content...

You could even make it simpler by assigning points. Or, better still, a choice to award x amount of points to a piece of submitted content. So you could give a piece of content 0, 1, 2 or 3 points depending on how well you think the content was composed. As before, with no way to give a negative effect on the rating the worst that the unfair voters could do is not allocate a point...

[Jeff]

The problem here is that with so few votes, the rating of even an excellent piece can be ruined by one downvoter, or someone who doesn't like it for whatever crazy reason. If there were many votes it wouldn't be a problem because they would balance out.

I agree with GrimTerror in that a simpler point system would work better here, perhaps something a la bash.org (http://bash.org/?top). I'm not the person to say whether or not it would be feasible or worth the time required to make the change, however.

I also agree with GrimTerror that it's not really right to cancel one vote just because you don't like it. If this particular user has a history of downvoting everything, that's a different story.

[AJ]

For the record, and this is not the first time you guys have complained about the rating system, nor is it the first time you've explained your beliefs in other systems Grim, it is planned to be a different system in the coming revamp of sc.org -- so.

Yeah. We'll look into the ratings in question, and as always take your suggestions into consideration for pending site upgrades.