NiroZ
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Normally, I would avoid posting this stuff, due to the lack of ability in being able to express myself, and the high sensitivity of these issues(well, I think so anyway). However, these are issues that I really feel need to be brought to attention, as both an Architect and a user.

Well, as everyone one familiar with the hold board would know, to be able to propose a SmS, you have to have a average rating of 8 or higher. However, I have noticed of late that people tend to base their judgements on this fact, and will vote 7.9 for a hold when they think a Architect shouldn't be able to make SmS's, or alternatively, they vote 8+ because they want to Architect to be able to make SmS's, and encourage others to do so. Ratings are supposed to be out of 10, nothing to do with who made it, and the SmS selection criteria is supposed to be based on a honest judgement of that, not the reverse.

Then, there is the issue of what I would like to call "the hold filter". To be honest, I applaud the sentiment of having a block against holds that are broken, buggy or breech the rules of the forum. However, already people are being encouraged to have someone from the 'hold filter' in order to make sure that their hold will pass the criteria faster. While there is nothing wrong with this, other than favourable treatment of those people, what about the people who don't get someone from the 'hold filter' beta testing their hold? They are left at a disadvantage, which is something that can't be good, as they may well go off on a tangent which they will have to delete after they submit their hold for review.

I apologise if I sound like I am making mountains out of molehills, but these are two things that have taken prime priority in my thoughts lately as I make my hold, I really think they need to be resolved.

Stephen4Louise
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Maybe the rules for SMS could be changed to say that if you recieve a certain amount of votes over 8 then you are eligible for to try for a SMS. I know my one and only hold hovered at 8.3 (or so) with ten votes for a while, then one day I had a look and it had dropped to the current 7.7.

So I used to be eligible, but no longer

Steve.

NiroZ
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Stephen4Louise wrote:
Maybe the rules for SMS could be changed to say that if you recieve a certain amount of votes over 8 then you are eligible for to try for a SMS.

While I sympathise for you, I doubt that the people who are basing their judgements on the SmS's is a small minority group, thus it would not make much of a difference.

Blondbeard
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Huh??? That's just plain odd thinking there. Noone will get their hold accepted as a SmS unless it is a hold that the big boys have considered worthy. Even if a really bad architect for some reason got a hoard of friends to rate his hold high he wouldn't be able to produse a SmS hold. And voting someone down is just plain stupidity. All it leads to is that Erik and his team will get fewer capable people to work with. I really, really don't think a bad hold will pass through that system, so why bother. Also: you can't vote 7.9 for a hold, but you can vote 7 (which is a token of apreciation).

NiroZ
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Blondbeard wrote:
And voting someone down is just plain stupidity.

Try going through the hold board and see how many of them seem to have had their score rise above 8, then soon after plummet.

Blondbeard
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You might be right. But it's odd that people smart enough to play DROD can be stupid enough to do something like that, because that's what it is. It's incredibly stupid (not to mention childish).

Stephen4Louise
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If you can provide examples NiroZ, maybe someone (Schik) can have a look and see if your suspicions are well founded. Maybe it's just that the players who take longer to get through holds tend to vote lower than the stronger players who can rush through them as they are released.

Steve

michthro
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NiroZ wrote:
Try going through the hold board and see how many of them seem to have had their score rise above 8, then soon after plummet.

I think you're reading too much into this plummeting phenomenon. Another possible explanation is that some of the author's buddies immediately rate the hold high, just to be nice. Those who give a fair and honest vote only vote later, when they've got around to playing it. I can give you a link (if I could find it) to an example of someone mentioning that they gave a hold 10 (immediately after release). It was a very ordinary hold, and the poster is obviously friendly with the author.

Here's another possible explanation: Early votes come from the first people who play the hold. They have a lot of fun racking up easy #1s, and they confuse that with the hold itself being fun. (I don't really think that happens.)

And there's Stephen4Louise's explanation: Those who vote later got stuck more, so they had less fun.

However, I agree with you that there is a tendency for people to rate the author, not the hold. (My first alternative explanation above already implies that.) I'm not saying it's a big problem, only that it does seem to happen. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get.

NiroZ
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michthro wrote:
I can give you a link (if I could find it) to an example of someone mentioning that they gave a hold 10 (immediately after release). It was a very ordinary hold, and the poster is obviously friendly with the author.

Your talking about this?

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 11-14-2006 11:43 AM]

eytanz
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While I think you may be right that there's some odd voting going on, I also agree that it's highly unlikely people are trying to block people from making SmS holds. I think the explanations given above by other people are far more likely reasons as to why hold scores decrease over time. It just seems that voting to block people from being eligable for SmS requires both a degree of malice, and planning, that I have seen no evidence of here.

Sure, there are some people who released bad holds and made a bad reputation for themselves, who later released better holds that perhaps got lower scores than they deserved. But the probable explanation for this is that some people are just biased against the architect *in general*, rather than specifically aiming to block SmS. But, unfortunate as that might be, that's just human nature and no rating system can prevent that.

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Briareos
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NiroZ wrote:While there is nothing wrong with this, other than favourable treatment of those people, what about the people who don't get someone from the 'hold filter' beta testing their hold? They are left at a disadvantage, which is something that can't be good, as they may well go off on a tangent which they will have to delete after they submit their hold for review.

Ummm... after reading and re-reading this I still can't figure out what you mean by "go off on a tangent" here. Could you please elaborate a bit?

Also, the only difference whether you included hold administrators in your beta test or not makes is that it'll take a bit longer since we have to play through your hold from the beginning. But I really can't find the problem with it - it's not as if hold submission were a contest where he who gets his hold posted first wins or anything...

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zex20913
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As for the hold admin thing, I may be slightly guilty of what you described. But! It was for the good of everybody.

I jumped into MetDROiD: Echoes, because I love the series, and because I know it's long. I spent over 16 hours determining it was completable. Now, if no HA had gone to this hold, when geomatrx submitted it, it would have been several days before enough HAs got their paws on it to determine if it was completable. Now, though, the process has been sped up, because I know it works.

There has only been small discussion on this in the HA end of things. Basically, some of us think it's a good idea to get into beta tests on LONG holds (I'd say 10+ hours) so the upload process goes faster. For shorter holds, this process is not necessary, as many of the HAs can test holds pretty quickly. There is a minimum wait period of 24 hours anyway, and the criteria do not take subjective factors into account.

The only disadvantage (as mentioned by Briareos) is that long holds without beta HAs may take a bit longer to get to the holds board. But, this really isn't a disadvantage, just an inconvenience.

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eytanz
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Note that the hold admins will never tell an architect to remove content, as long as it's not A - copyrighted, or B - obscene. I can't see a situation in which a hold architect will be required to remove even a single room from their hold unless it was plain out copied from a different hold without permission.

(Note that of course hold admins may make suggestions for revisions, if they don't like rooms. We are not barred from expressing out opinions. But we don't promote or reject holds based on this criteria. There is currently a hold up for review that has a room in it some of the admins really dislike (because they feel it's not fun). The hold author doesn't want to change it, and he doesn't need to to get his hold approved).

Holds submitted for Smitemaster Selection are different - Smitemaster architects are sometimes asked to totally rewrite whole sections of their hold, either for story reasons or other reasons. But if they don't like the requested changes they can always withdraw from the SmS submission and just release the hold normally.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 11-14-2006 02:01 PM]

michthro
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Yes, about this hold filter thing, NiroZ: People are encouraged to *invite* HAs, for reasons mentioned above. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you make it sound as if getting an HA on your beta board will require having to bribe the right people. The HAs are active testers, who regularly get involved in Architecture uninvited, regardless of who the authors are. So I don't see that you'll have a problem getting a few HAs on your beta board. It may even be an idea to guarantee architects that they can have a couple of HAs if they want them.

Of course, those who *choose* not to invite HAs are at a disadvantage (and it's only a matter of a little delay), but I don't see what can be so bad about having a few HAs hanging around. Some of them are fairly decent people, even.

Ezlo
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So who besides Zex is a HA? Is there a list somewhere?

eytanz
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Schik is going to add the list to the beta test creation page (so you don't have to search for it when deciding who to invite), but in the meanwhile, I think there's no harm in posting the list:

Current Hold Administrators: AlefBet, Briareos, Doom, ErikH2000, eytanz, jbluestein, michthro, mrimer, Oneiromancer, Rabscuttle, Schik, Stefan, Syntax, Tim, trick, VodkaAndCoke, wallu, zex20913



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Ezlo
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That's more than I expected!

eytanz
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Well, it's intentional that there are a lot of hold admins. It only takes two admins to approve a hold, so having a large list speeds things up and spreads the work around, rather than the other way around.

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Stephen4Louise
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eytanz wrote:

Current Hold Administrators: AlefBet, Briareos, Doom, ErikH2000, eytanz, jbluestein, michthro, mrimer, Oneiromancer, Rabscuttle, Schik, Stefan, Syntax, Tim, trick, VodkaAndCoke, wallu, zex20913

Does this put Hold Admins at an advantage for getting #1 scores in easily optimised rooms? By the time the holds are released chances are that these scores will already be taken.

As most of the top players are in there, that leaves the rest of us fighting for ties.

The most obvious examples are level entrances and uninteresting rooms. Which leads to the question, can Hold Admins stop a hold being released until these rooms are marked as uninteresting?

Steve.

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[Last edited by Stephen4Louise at 11-15-2006 09:29 AM]

Briareos
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Stephen4Louise wrote:
Does this put Hold Admins at an advantage for getting #1 scores in easily optimised rooms? By the time the holds are released chances are that these scores will already be taken.

I wish.

But, as usual, the beta test versions of holds we're getting aren't considered the same as the finished versions, and thus the saves, demos and highscores aren't compatible.

So every time I want to look at a room image for "The Slayers Revenge" in the H&S forum I get a "room image not available", and to fix that I'd have to delete the hold and re-import it, losing all my saves and demos so that I'd have to play through it yet again - which is why I'd rather play other holds first before doing that.

Not that I'd complain about this, though.

So that's another reason for having many hold admins - not everyone is going to throw him-/herself at every hold...

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[Last edited by Briareos at 11-15-2006 09:40 AM]

michthro
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Stephen4Louise wrote:
Does this put Hold Admins at an advantage for getting #1 scores in easily optimised rooms? By the time the holds are released chances are that these scores will already be taken.

Speaking for myself: I would never take advantage like that. When I beta test, for example, I wait before playing the hold once it's released (usually longer than necessary).

The most obvious examples are level entrances and uninteresting rooms. Which leads to the question, can Hold Admins stop a hold being released until these rooms are marked as uninteresting?

This part of the HA stuff hasn't been implemented yet, and I'm not sure how it's going to work, but that's irrelevant. The question of whether all trivial entrances should be marked non-scorable has been debated to death, and the majority has decided "no". I personally feel they should be marked non-scorable, and not being a hypocrite, I don't take them. I have a total of something like 5 trivial #1s (and that includes at least one debatable case, where I was only about the 10th player to play the room), which were uploaded accidentally, while I have far more often gone to the trouble of disconnecting to avoid uploading a trivial #1.

Blondbeard
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michthro wrote:

Stephen4Louise wrote:
Does this put Hold Admins at an advantage for getting #1 scores in easily optimised rooms? By the time the holds are released chances are that these scores will already be taken.

Speaking for myself: I would never take advantage like that. When I beta test, for example, I wait before playing the hold once it's released (usually longer than necessary).

Ha! I was just wondering if I should post this guess. I had observed that michthro didn't start playing Beethro's Generic Quest, despite the fact that it's a very good hold where he ought to have an advantage due to testing. It's nice to see that my conclusions where correct.

zex20913
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I hadn't seen this topic until after I posted in your 1st Place thread in Bugs Apparently, wallu did take advantage of some easily optimizable rooms, and that's wrong.

While I'm not at michthro's level of "that's wrongness" (I.E, I feel it's okay to start playing a hold through the second it's released) the beta demos seem to upload as hold demos. There seems to be no distinction, and I think there needs to be. This gives the beta testers unfair first place advantage, and that's not cool.

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Stephen4Louise
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I was about to post saying there are mixed messages about this. Briareos was under the impression that the demos wouldn't work, but wallu's post here seems to confirm that they will.

It doesn't seem very fair. Imagine when TCB comes out if the beta testers all uploaded their scores a couple of minutes after release. Does it seem fair that they get all the top places for room entrances and easily optimised rooms?

michthro should be applauded for his approach to high scores, but I for one don't see where you find the patience to disconnect before completing some rooms and not others!

Steve.

Stephen4Louise
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wallu wrote:
I already mentioned this in "1st place" topic. I admit that my upload wasn't fair. It's completely fine, if Schik removes all my scores for that hold. I can upload them again.

I don't think there is any need to delete your scores for the hold now, it is only a few points and there was no discussion before now about whether it was right or wrong.

wallu wrote:
There isn't any rules about uploading demos. From this point I won't upload category 1) and 2) demos before someone has conquered the hold.

It would be good if this was something that all HA's have to sign up to before being accepted into the group. If a HA wants to compete for easy scores they have the option to replay it as soon as it is released.

Steve.

eytanz
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wallu wrote:
There isn't any rules about uploading demos. From this point I won't upload category 1) and 2) demos before someone has conquered the hold.

It doesn't matter when you upload them. If you recorded the demos before someone else did, you'll get the #1 first, even if you upload them later.

Yes, there's a slight advantage to being a tester, at least in the cases where the hold ID remains constant. But it's not fundamentally different than the advantage people get for being online at the time the hold appears on the board.

I'm trust all the hold admins to not deliberately try to replay a room to get an optimal score while the hold is unavailable to the public. But if any of us happens to get the #1 on first try, then yeah, there's an advantage there.

(And as someone points out above, once HAs get the ability to mark rooms uninteresting, I think most of the trivial rooms will not be highscorable anymore anyway so they won't be an issue).

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zex20913
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I thought time of placing depended on time of upload, not on demo creation.

And we're not exactly talking about trivial rooms. We're talking about rooms with a known optimization, like in the 1st place thread. This room is not trivial, but it is known optimizable.

And I would argue that it is different, as the testers are supposed to play the hold. HAs too. Whereas people who are lucky enough to be on at hold release just have the option. Plus, we are made more aware of testable holds, than people are of playable holds (there's still a bug about the number of holds on the main page.)

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Schik
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wallu wrote:

eytanz wrote:
It doesn't matter when you upload them. If you recorded the demos before someone else did, you'll get the #1 first, even if you upload them later.

I thought that when demo is uploaded matters, not when demo is recorded. But I'm probably wrong.

Yes, when it is uploaded is what matters.

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eytanz
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Oh, ok. I was sure I once heard the opposite.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 11-15-2006 03:00 PM]

Syntax
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eytanz wrote:
Oh, ok. I was sure I once heard the opposite.

Yeah me too... Otherwise that doesn't explain #1s being handed out and then delegated to #1 ties *later*.

[EDIT]

Rest of this post probably belongs in the other #1 thread in General so edited out.

[EDIT]

Erm... in Bugs. Confused today...

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[Last edited by Syntax at 11-15-2006 04:13 PM]