Are star ratings in reviews useful?

[Juno]

@Juno I fully agree, it doesn't always have to be about the money. But yet, you spend much time in it.

I'm using VaM for like 2 years now and my characters still changes once in a while. Because i'm not happy enough. But I never tried external programs to be honest. So, I also spend many hours on my characters. But I never planned in releasing them.

But anyway, you could also give away free content and make use of "donations". So, your content isn't being locked behind a paywall and people who still want to support you with money, can still send you something.

You have now a webpage like "buy me a coffee." Easy to set up and easy to use. You don't force people to spend money, but you give people a chance to support you in different ways.

So, your content isn't behind a paywall and you give people a "option" in how they want to support you.

I don't mind in supporting a creator with momey, aslong its reasonable. I supported a lot of clothing creators, VL_13, Mr.Cadillacv8, AnythingFashionVR and many other creators. They make good quality clothing and that deserves my money. But they also doesn't ask insane high prices and I can live with one less sandwhich, which is probably even more expensive.

Dontations don't work, Damarmau setup just this to try and get a vr headset and after almost a year its got fuck all traction compared to what it should be and this is Damarmau man...just the tax implications of an extra £60 -patreon fees and vat so like half that in reality a month is not worth the hassle come tax season.

Again I'm 100% not interested in money for this stuff, its my hobby, I've been down this road a few times, I don't monetise my hobbies as they cease to be my hobby as soon as I'm getting paid to do it and pressured to release stuff on schedule, it just ruins the whole experience for me.

As I said before just write some reviews and leave some likes, encourage more people to do it and we might turn this all around.

 

[Toonen1988]

Dontations don't work, Damarmau setup just this to try and get a vr headset and after almost a year its got fuck all traction compared to what it should be and this is Damarmau man...just the tax implications of an extra £60 -patreon fees and vat so like half that in reality a month is not worth the hassle come tax season.

Again I'm 100% not interested in money for this stuff, its my hobby, I've been down this road a few times, I don't monetise my hobbies as they cease to be my hobby as soon as I'm getting paid to do it and pressured to release stuff on schedule, it just ruins the whole experience for me.

As I said before just write some reviews and leave some likes, encourage more people to do it and we might turn this all around.

Sure, we need to encourage people more to post reviews, including me.

It could also be a idea to get review moderator volunteers. People who monitor reviews and take care of review reports and filter out the reviews that hasn't anything to do with the content. This will also take away some stress from the normal moderators, so they can focus on other stuff.

 

[Juno]

Sadly moderators round here don't actively moderate content so having forums or reviews moderated wont happen ever, its all report based otherwise its all very hands off.

 

[Toonen1988]

Sadly moderators round here don't actively moderate content so having forums or reviews moderated wont happen ever, its all report based otherwise its all very hands off.

Normally i'm against censorship and I want everyone to speak their minds, even though it's positive or negative as long they gave arguments.

But sometimes you need to have enforcement to keep a community healthy. And it's never late to change, better late then never. If this continues like this, more creators will leave and the community will be even more toxic as what it is already.

I find it kinda disappointed that not many moderators are active, while they do have the role. I mean, they don't have to be online 24/7, because they also have their private life. But having almost no moderators active, is a bad thing.

Thank god I don't see much toxic or nonsense happening on the forum itself, but more active being in the review section isn't a bad idea.

The creators keep VaM alive, without it, the software wouldn't be as popular as what it is now. The creators keep the software fun with endless content, some creators make even the software easier to use or add more options.

The creators are the backbone of VaM and this should be protected.

 

[Henriyk]

First of all as someone who creates models themselves, and has spent an indecent number of days / hours on it, I understand the frustrations of the creators. But it`s about recognition, and we humans need it, more than ever before. Social media has made it clear, everywhere there is chat, forum, etc. We are all a part of it, 2 minutes ago I pressed the like button instead of typing because it was easy and fast. Gold shines no matter what, and shit smells no matter how much ... until you flush it.., yes I know - bad metaphor. Anyway, if you like it - acknowledge it, if not ignore it. In general, as more people write here we should and must all become better at recognizing when we find the gold.

 

[Juno]

The creators keep VaM alive, without it, the software wouldn't be as popular as what it is now. The creators keep the software fun with endless content, some creators make even the software easier to use or add more options.

The creators are the backbone of VaM and this should be protected.

This right here is gods own truth.

There was a recent post put up having a go at the way the featured resources were managed and bashing a few of our own in the process and it was handled most magnanimously by those who were bashed when in a normal internet forum would have been met with much hostility and I think its a testament to the culture we have fostered that the attitude was to kill kindness! Now if we can flip that and have the users do the same then i think we would off to a great start.

First of all as someone who creates models themselves, and has spent an indecent number of days / hours on it, I understand the frustrations of the creators. But it`s about recognition, and we humans need it, more than ever before. Social media has made it clear, everywhere there is chat, forum, etc. We are all a part of it, 2 minutes ago I pressed the like button instead of typing because it was easy and fast. Gold shines no matter what, and shit smells no matter how much ... until you flush it.., yes I know - bad metaphor. Anyway, if you like it - acknowledge it, if not ignore it. In general, as more people write here we should and must all become better at recognizing when we find the gold.

Thank you for the acknowledgement and engaging as that really what its all about

 

[Acid Bubbles]

I feel like one of the "root cause" of this might be that we have both a "community" which is about recognition, sharing knowledge, and having a good time, and a "store" where people just want to consume content, not engage in the community. While I'm a big fan of the former, the latter is not wrong per se and won't care about rewarding effort. I don't have a great solution to offer, but I think it's important to acknowledge that the "community" part of it is very small, but it's also what makes the whole thing stick. It helps to see comments, reviews, etc. as being one or the other, and treat them accordingly.

 

[Juno]

Indeed your right and I would say the consumption part accounts for a good 98% maybe more of the downloads on the hub but even with the 2% thats left participation is still stupidly low.

I'd be inclined to make downloads unavailable to non logged in users and cap the ability to download unless a % were liked/reviewed but then its still forced and reviews wont be objective just "A" and stuff to fill a quota....cant win!

 

[Henriyk]

As Acid Bubbles and Juno mention, there are no easy solutions, and I should be the last to think I have "the golden answer". But I don't think it's all negative. The community that Acid Bubbles positively describes is pretty amazing in here, I don't know about the rest of you, but I have many times found answers to problems from helpful members. That fact makes the whole hub important to me.

 

[CitizenX]

Coming soon... there will be an update to the Hub adding a "Hot Picks" section. It's auto-generated and auto-updated and looks at several factors to determine a resource's popularity, and should be a very useful tool for finding the actual resources on the Hub that people consider to be the best downloads.

 

[atani]

Cool stuff.
Could you share what kind of parameters and weighting (broad view) it will use, just out of curiosity? I find it an interesting topic.

 

[CitizenX]

Cool stuff.
Could you share what kind of parameters and weighting (broad view) it will use, just out of curiosity? I find it an interesting topic.

Sure... without going into the specific ratios or anything, the score looks a bit at reviews, more at reactions, and considerably more at downloads -- specifically how often a resource is downloaded relative to others in a similar time-frame. Updates (and whether or not people download those updates) is taken into consideration as well.

Earlier someone mentioned looking at how often a resource is used as a dependency... While not a specific test in this algorithm, inherently the more a resource is used as a dependency for other resources, the more popular it will be.

 

[atani]

Thanks. That does sound like an interesting algorithm and I look forward to see it in action.

 

[hazmhox]

Helping out after all the battle : 'D
It was a long read!

So, I'm gonna be super honest about any rating systems... you have two objective reasons to discuss about the rating system(s) in place in a community:

• You do great content, but you're kinda new and it's hard to top the guy who are here since forever. You'd prefer more recognition. This is a "selfish" objective (you think about that because of your specific case).
• You have no opinion on your content, but you're seeing content like the guy from the previous point not appreciated enough because of the way of the algorithm works. This is a "community" objective (you think about that because you want to improve the community).

Both objectives are great. But! you can fix both by fixing the second one


It's kinda great that I'm late to the party, 'coz the hotpicks with the new algorithm show their limitations:

• Hotpicks "All" and Hotpicks "plugins" shows at the top of everything: Supa Additional Cloth Physics. It has not the downloads, reactions, reviews to be "objectively" here.
• Hotpicks "Scenes" shows at the top of everything: TittyMagic Laboratories inspection. Like the previous one, it is nowhere near close to the best scenes on the hub.

Don't get me wrong, I love Supa and everlaster's content, I'm just here to react based on facts


So, to get back on the rating system(s), you have several aspects that make them less relevant:

• If the rating system is driven by the persons who are the most active in the community... there's likely to be a "bias" to the reviews.
• If the rating system is not clear as to its objective, there's likely to be "incorrect reviews" (like the ones mentionned in this discussion).
• If the rating system is based on a simple scale (the stars), it makes the content itself disappear behind a subjective opinion.

To me, for the VaM community there is only one solution to fix that, it's called "UX" + improved algorithm.
The hotpicks is a great start, but it doesn't help new people to find something usefull on their first journey on the hub.

You could have something like this :

The advanced filters being the original system.

Of course, "best something" means a combination of all parameters as you said @CitizenX , but I would go in direction that is more related to VaM itself than the hub. So I would drive the algorithm of "Best something" to something like this for everything but standalone resources (from higher priority to lowest) :

1. Resource as a dependency ( sum of resources using this as a dependency )
2. Downloads same time frame
3. Reactions
4. Number of Reviews averaged with the review score

For "standalone resources" ( Scenes and looks ) the "resource as a dependency" can either be stripped or simply lowered in priority. A scene will rarely be implemented as a dependency (if you do your job right ), and looks can be downloaded and used without ever using them in a scene.

You could also add a secondary dropdown with "All time" and "This month". All time should be by default.

The reason behind this idea is this:

• No one active in the community ( beyond people fans of metrics and self-masturbation on numbers ) will ever use that screen. It is not meant for us, it is meant for new people.
• People new in the community want efficiency, they want to know in a matter of one, two or at worst three clicks what the should download and play with as fast as possible.
• They want top notch content or what can help them to understand VaM or things that will improve their scenes

We have to be extremely clear and give the best possible answer to "what is the best content around here". The best content around here is not driven by a subjective star rating or quick reactions first. The best content is the one the community will use the most. We have the dependency system to make a great algorithm for that.

It is obviously gonna be hard to reach the popularity and dependency count of Timeline, or Divining Rod, or VAMMoan... as a newcomer with a plugin. But for pretty much anything else, it would be a better scenario.

I am sure and convinced that if tomorrow, somebody would bring a direct opponent to Timeline or VAMMoan, it would get the love it deserves. Great content is celebrated and used. And I'm not afraid to say that I don't have all the answers nor that anyone can be better at my own job. If the community suddenly shifts to another animation or moan plugin, it will be seen immediately in the "This month" section based on the releases and dependencies of the new content. It will take a bit of time to get in the "all time" part... but it'll get there : )

To go back on the two objectives of the beginning of this post. By improving the overall sorting of the best content for the community (objective 2). You allow new creators (objective 1) to get a spot quickly in the best content.

If a new creator comes with mad "hairstyling" skills, and becomes one of the most used as hairs dependency compared to the rest of the hairs available on the hub. He will be higher or at least on the same spot as any other OG of the community.

So... I think I've covered everything I guess

Other side notes:

• "Hotpicks" is not really obvious as a term to find great content. This might be something that should be more visible: First spot on the submenu with a "tag-like" appearance like hub-hosted var, and a more noob-friendly name "Find the best content" or whatever.
• Shoot at least 50 ressources in the hotpicks
• Remove "All", all is useless, people don't get in Wallmart to find "all groceries" they always have something specific in mind
• Remove "Top Resources" in the left column everywhere.
  Or make it so that it's "Hotpicks compliant" (it should be the hotpicks algorithm, not the blend dumb default one based on ratings). It's not relevant.
  If you're making it use the hotpicks algo, then redirect to "Hotpicks" when clicking on it.