What happened to the ratings?

like i said its only a sugeston.there would be alot of work to do it.but think, friends could not rate other friends tracks or other words bad tracks dont get high rates? i also think there sould be another catigory for rating.this catagory would for new people just geting started building them i see a lot of good tracks from new builders.if i were to rate it high it was to show the new builder not to give up but thank you for sharing your effort.you know we were al there!

i agree! a new catagory would be good this would inspire more new comers to upload tracks

Just tossing this out there to keep the IDEAS flowing...

For a rating to be valid? (Ugh)
1) a minimum number of ratings must be posted
2) the ratings must clearly address a minimum number of areas (e.g.,layout, building technique, use of elements, excitement, setting or theme, supports...give extra points for custom supports, new elements, and original objects.)Allow a moderator to throw-out "invalid" ratings or recommend the rater "back-up" there rating. Is this done with the one-liners?
3) at the end of the week, have a simple final "head-to-head" and vote for the best coasters. The final voters must have submitted a valid evaluation of the coasters in the head to head. Unfortunately, based upon what I see today, hardly anyone would ever get a medal. LOL If I rate a coaster during the week and go out of town on the weekend, the coaster I liked the best gets screwed! LOL

A set panel of raters? Yikes. With all the stuff that gets submitted...I'd have to tell the raters to get a life! LOL

What about "just sharing what I've done", novice, intermediate and master building categories? Give medals and ratings to intermediate and expert builders; constructive feedback only to sharing and novice builders? Expert builders must have some degree of customization, supports, 3DS, car textrures, terraforming, etc?

All of this seems sooooo complicated and cumbersome. Maybe we should concentrate on how to keep the site fun.

Okea, because I'm going to be more active in NL the comming year, I though I could also explain some of my thoughts here.(crappy engilsh[:D])

1) Most of the rating users, rate for the point they can get. But why should you have those points? I only use them to post a thing in the Shout box once per month.

2) Most of the raters overrate, or in some casses underrate. But how can you say its a over or underrate? Yeah by explaining it, but as long a you write enough down your rate will stay. When I build a ride, I like it to have your opinion, but most of the user just
write down(on RCT) 'great job,look great'. I mean most of the people here already know their ride is great so?

3) I've never had a real good rate(okea maby one or 2). When I build a NL ride a rate witch helps me, I don't care about the one or 2 liners.

Ow, and btw. Tconwel and other good rates ,please rate my new ride 'Wondechild'.I want to make it as good as possible, so I don;t care about the rate, as long as it's helping me.

One, you get bombed with hate mail (plus awful grammer and internet abriviations) and I'm sure no one wants to read crap that a twelve year old puts at you.

You're 13, so. I can't do anything about my engilsh right now. I'm 14 years old and I'm from the Netherlands. You can't axecpt from me to have a very good knowlege about engilsh.

^I believe Jimmy is making reference to crappy english and net abbreviations that are typed by people who speak english as their first language.

i will also say some people are gigving awfully low scores for crap reasons like too many attempts at the TTD/KK type-layout; like CK's first coaster a few days back in which one rater (not mentioning names) gave CK a fair score for T and A, but for O, gave it like a 3 because he's seen the design too many times (it's CKs first coaster uploaded, give him a break-- and i dont think if you do a KK design you would be going for being original)

then why dont you rate it better[confused][:D], and i agree with him[^]

I agree with the rating that was given on that track. There are just too many TTD/KK things out there. Probably at least 5 pages of tracks here use that layout. And you did have 3d's and custom supports which is a signal to people that you aren't a total newbie when it comes to NL. I rate lower if I can see that a person has more experience and still puts out a product like the one a newbie does.

[hyyyper]

to add one thing to the KK/TTD clones made, the track might be a bit non-original but then why do ppl downrate the tech and adren? if the track is smooth, without pumps, has great accel and provides a good ride, then why don't ppl rate like 8.5-7.5-4? still makes it a 6,67

Well, if the ride HAD great tech, that'd be a different story, no? But when you've got basically any pumping at all, I'm taking off big for it, since with that layout you've only got 2 actual elements. As for adrenline, I just prefer my rides to have A: Variety and B: Length. The KK/TTD layout has neither.

well thats stupid you shouldnt of it was my first ride it was smooth enough for being my first ride, and i love you how guys are sticking up fotr my ride and it doesnt deserve a 3 but none of you guys do anything about it like rating it lol

I judge based ONLY on results. Designers expirence doesn't factor in at all. I rate your rides using the exact same standards as I use for Buster's or Real's. It's really the only fair way to do it.

I have one possible idea that could work. We could create 2 seperate track exchanges, one competitive and one open exchange. The open exchange would be like the one we have now: everyone can upload, everyone can rate. However in the competitive exchange only certain qualified raters could rat tracks and perhaps there could be a higher word minimum as well. This would make it so that anyone can still feel free to rate or share theire tracks, but this way the experienced trackbuilders would not have to worry about theirs or others's tracks receiving one liner rate from inexperienced raters.

And how would they determine who is eligeble to post there?

I think that as far as the rating issue goes, it is the opinion of the person who downloads the coaster whether it was good or not. They should however be more descriptive in their ratings to let the builder know why it was "awesome" or "the best ride ever". I think that the more experienced builders here all have a universal opinion of what it takes to make a good coaster and they rate as such with lower scores, or what the inexperienced builder/rater would see as lower scores. This same thing happened and in some ways continues to happen in the UR community, where at times it became a war of words between the "vets" and the "noobs". That is never a good thing to see.

I cannot say that I agree with having a non-competitive exchange. Why? Because there is an option already in place to just leave comments on a coaster without rating. If a builder is posting a coaster simply for critique on how to be better then they should state that in their explanation of their ride and then people who download it will know that rates are not what the builder is after. I did that when I posted my one and only SM coaster, and it worked rather well even though people did rate it, they left me some good comments on what I need to improve on. I think that the current exchange is just fine save for the lack of descriptive comments. What I would suggest to the moderating/admin staff is to possibly pm the builder when a member complains about a one-liner rate and ask them to re-rate the coaster in question more descriptively. If after two days the rate does not change then it should be deleted. Doing this will help to eliminate the one-line rates and in time the inexperienced raters will become more experienced in their comments.

Originally posted by Real

Originally posted by ExTraxYz

Actually, I do think Onslaught and The Last Stop deserve to be nr. 1 & 2 of all time, atleast they're better than Orbital imo...

I disagree with those two being 1 and 2 all time but I agree, better than Orbital BUT...remember, things are relative. What was awesome so long ago, may not be now but when it was up, it may have sent larger shockwaves through the community than say, Last Stop or Onslaught have. They are great rides but if you want to compare them evenly, you have to examine what they mean to the community at the exact time they were released.

OMG real, you sounded exactly like my history teacher. But a very good point you made too. I remember thinking hellfire was absoloutely awesome, but if i look back on it now, i know it would struggle to recieve a 9 because of all its technical issues that we now look out for.

[hyyyper]

ok, from the posts above and earlier suggestions, i think the non-rating system would work well, and that we can vote on sundays which coaster of the past week was the best, like a poll on the forum or something,

the other option is to have the mods/admins check each and every rating, but that would be un-democratic and with the speed of our admins/mods take forever

Originally posted by hyyyper

to add one thing to the KK/TTD clones made, the track might be a bit non-original but then why do ppl downrate the tech and adren? if the track is smooth, without pumps, has great accel and provides a good ride, then why don't ppl rate like 8.5-7.5-4? still makes it a 6,67

Well, if it was smooth without pumps, which it wasn't, maybe it would've gotten a higher score. Ever think about that hyyyper, or can your brain just not process jerks and pumps?

Originally posted by hyyyper

ok, from the posts above and earlier suggestions, i think the non-rating system would work well, and that we can vote on sundays which coaster of the past week was the best, like a poll on the forum or something,

the other option is to have the mods/admins check each and every rating, but that would be un-democratic and with the speed of our admins/mods take forever

Well, there's another underlieing problem with that one. Say that Daneil4life had one of his tracks in the exchange that week, and it sucked pretty bad, like a 1.5. But what if Daneil4life just got some of his buddies to go and vote for his ride, thus knocking rides like ish's Van Helsing out of the bronze medal range.

[hyyyper]

Originally posted by Jimmy Yoshi

Originally posted by hyyyper

ok, from the posts above and earlier suggestions, i think the non-rating system would work well, and that we can vote on sundays which coaster of the past week was the best, like a poll on the forum or something,

the other option is to have the mods/admins check each and every rating, but that would be un-democratic and with the speed of our admins/mods take forever

Well, there's another underlieing problem with that one. Say that Daneil4life had one of his tracks in the exchange that week, and it sucked pretty bad, like a 1.5. But what if Daneil4life just got some of his buddies to go and vote for his ride, thus knocking rides like ish's Van Helsing out of the bronze medal range.

making voting accesable for ppl with +... posts?

[hyyyper]

Originally posted by Jimmy Yoshi

Originally posted by hyyyper

to add one thing to the KK/TTD clones made, the track might be a bit non-original but then why do ppl downrate the tech and adren? if the track is smooth, without pumps, has great accel and provides a good ride, then why don't ppl rate like 8.5-7.5-4? still makes it a 6,67

Well, if it was smooth without pumps, which it wasn't, maybe it would've gotten a higher score. Ever think about that hyyyper, or can your brain just not process jerks and pumps?

i'm not talking about one in paticoular, just "a" clone, which would be smooth

[jayman]

no more medals, no more top five, take away the competitive part of the rating system and then we'll probabaly see more honest and accurate rates, and more interesting rides.... or, comments only ratings, and then a contest at the end of the week for those who wish to compete instead of simulate coasters.

[hyyyper]

we could also remove the 20 points ppl get everytime they rate, so the n00bs wont have a reason to rate

Originally posted by coasteragent99

And how would they determine who is eligeble to post there?

Admins would just select about 50 or so people that they feel are eligible. Another possibility would be to have ratings have nothing to do with the medals, which could bve accomplished by holding a vote at the end of the week for the best coaster of the week, and then say the first place coaster in the vote gets gold, second gets silver, thrid gets bronze.

[jayman]

Originally posted by hyyyper

we could also remove the 20 points ppl get everytime they rate, so the n00bs wont have a reason to rate

YES PLEASE. lately i'm seeing new rides that, while they're smooth, look like crap and have no real point.. theyre getting high rates.. i don't mind (much)but lately there seems to be more of a focus on competition rather coaster simulation. give points and medals to those who want to be in the weekly contest, set a deadline and rules each time, and limit each member to one entry per month.. that way people ho care more about building rides than medals can share their rides in the exchage. hyyper's idea is really good...

[hyyyper]

^thanks, and it's with 3 "y"s