t00fri wrote:As I wrote several times, I dislike feedback systems entertained by non-experts.
Well, I agree with you that feedback from non-experts can be a slippery slope. Kinda like an unscientific poll. The results are not necessarily accurate. However, they ARE useful in the sense of getting a "feel" or for "putting your ear to the group" so to speak of the general impression in the active community. And, combined with comments, even an non-pro reader can very easily get a sense of the competence of the poster... and judge the ranking and merits of the add-on accordingly. No doubt, like other ranking systems, completely screwy comments will be balanced by experts weighing in, also.
So we would end up with a mixture of random rankings from non-pro's combined with corrections/rankings from the pro's. Surely that will result in something better than a newbie user PURELY randomly downloading an Earth texture add-on? Which is their only option now as they're getting their feet wet.
t00fri wrote:There are quite a few things about Celestia add-ons that might be unsatisfactory. Only very few can be spotted and /located/ by non-experts.
No argument there. But this is exactly my point. Not everyone has the ability (or bandwidth) to download every add-on and try it and compare to others.
Even if they could they will still be relying on a non-expert's opinion of its worth... and what's worse, they will only be relying on ONE non-expert's opinion... namely their own. They will be, as you have said, incapable of judging on their own (other than their own aesthetic opinion) the worth of an add-on.
Sadly, I know the value of MY opinion... and it's bubkis (your English is fantastic... now let's try your Yiddish!). I wish I had a chance to read what YOU had to say about various add-ons... even just a line or two in a comment field. If I had to dig through other ka-ka, so be it.
t00fri wrote:I don't want feedback about books at Amazon, possibly by someone who has perhaps just managed to read his first book
I agree. Feedback about art is almost completely worthless as there is no "metric" of objective truth. Things based in fact, however, are a bit different. VersionTracker.com has a feedback system (yes, filled with lots of crap) but I have been amazed how accurately the "overall" impression one gets usually points the user to the best software.
What one ends up with is a "dialogue" between people about the merits of a piece of software. Yes, there is lots of B.S. thrown in but one can still be educated by (fairly easily) culling the "good" postings and seeing what the experts are saying.
It is no different from any thread on this forum. There are experts talking Expert Talk and there Ka Ka People talking Ka Ka. I am just talking about specifically focusing that process down to the various add-ons.t00fri wrote:Get to know the experts in this Forum (which takes a while) and then you trust their know-how and chose add-ons essentially from them!
Doesn't this only work if a great add-on maker has a presence in this forum? Do they all? That is not a rhetorical question.
But the real issue is not the merits of user-rankings and should we have one or not. Last time I checked, there IS a feedback system on the Motherlode. And it IS being used - with all the drawbacks you are writing about. It is just HARDLY being used, thereby potentially amplifying those drawbacks.
It would be great, not only from a Picking The Best Add-On (whatever that means) position, but also from an educational position to pull up an add-on and see snippets of comments from the Giants of The Board... talking about the pro's and con's. Not as a master lesson that is ten pages like (like Amazon comments)... just bits and pieces to start to give newbies (like me) a VOCABULARY on what to look for.
As you have said, a user who knows the experts on the board, will know which comments are the real McCoy and which are bogus.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to writing my editorial on The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe on barnesandnoble.com....
. I don't want an exciting report about a network router, for example, by someone who has no idea about the meaning of the technical data and gives ***** because he managed quickly to configure that router. And so on...