Bad addon at the Motherlode

[Michael Kilderry]

I don't agree, especially about fictional addons being considered as fan art.

Huh? But that is what it is! The term does not devaluate the value of any good work, it??s just a distinction
to separate it from the astronomy contributions (which furthers the main premise for Celestia??s existence).
Don??t take it so seriously...

Sorry, got my words a little mixed up in that post. What I especially didn't like was the part about fictional addons not being considered as addons anymore, not so much the fan art name, although I still do prefer the name "Fictional Addons". I actually think this name explains the type of addons better than fan art, but it was worth Runar making a suggestion. To me Fan Art sounds more like designs of Celestia logos and CD covers, I'm with Dollan on this one, except I would also consider Star Trek and stuff to be considered Fictional Addons too, if we want to get specific, we could have two sections, "Fictional Addons from TV etc." and "Original Fictional Addons for Celestia".

I see no need to have an "official" committee rating fiction, the User Vote System takes care of that...
And would still work for the Science Addon section too, as an additional popularity meter.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with this too. If a panel of critics is going to be rating paritcular types of addons, fictional addons should have people rating them too, people who make fictional addons so they appreciate the difficulty of making them.

But I do think the general public should still be able to put down their opinions, maybe we could give the official critics some symbol or something to give them a rank?

Michael Kilderry

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I think a committee is going a bit too far in general. Maybe the most realistic addons can be approved by a knowledgable group of people, but if there's an ability to comment on individual addons on the ML site that should provide ample opportunity for people to give their opinions on how realistic an addon is or not.

[Harry]

I'd like to make a propsal, hoping that this is something we can agree on:
- known good addons (i.e. good quality, scientifically sound) will be marked with a nice icon in the catalog, so visitory can quickly recognize them. This avoids complicating the addon submission procedure while still clearly identifying high quality addons. This will require some changes to the Celestia Motherlode, creating the icon(s?) etc., but this shouldn't take very long - and we can use different criteria using different icons (e.g. texture quality)
- a (possibly private) forum on the Motherlode is set up specifically for discussing such addons. There we can discuss which addons should get what icon. It may be a good idea to restrict access to that forum to keep the discussion on topic.

In fact we should start with just the forum, that way we can quickly find out if there is enough interest by qualified "Celestians" to participate to make the whole thing feasible.

Harald

[Dollan]

That sounds like a great idea, Harald! Quick, easy, done at a glance.... Sounds good.

...John...

[Michael Kilderry]

I like the forum idea too, can I join?

Michael Kilderry

[Harry]

I've created a new forum for Addon Reviews here: Addon Reviews

People with solid experience and knowledge who are willing to contribute to this should post there, just so we can see if there is enough interest and if so can work out the details.

Thanks,

Harald

[t00fri]

during the weekend, I took some time to compare my careful personal evaluation of quite a few earth textures in the Motherlode with the 'quality labels' that were given so far anonymously.

The result was not at all very encouraging. Many got 'average' which at least can't do much harm.

Notably, however, one texture by Don.Edwards, namely his most careful 18kBC rendering of earth, got 'Bad'. This characterization was grossly inappropriate to say the least!

For curiosity, I carefully examined the texture myself: Sure, it was only 4k in size and for that reason has a strongly limited amount of detail. But that's physics and not the fault of Don or his texture. The texture itself was carefully rendered with Don's familiar expertise. After I added a little LAB-based sharpening, the texture turned exceptionally good for its 4k size. But probably Don wanted to leave it with a certain soft touch.

So this example once more underlines what I kept saying: judging textures requires expertise! Also it remains unclear whether the texture was judged to be 'bad' by only one guy or 10 or 100??

Bye Fridger

[ajtribick]

Notably, however, one texture by Don.Edwards, namely his most careful 18kBC rendering of earth, got 'Bad'. This characterization was grossly inappropriate to say the least! [/quote]

This is the problem of public rating systems: they are vulnerable to trolling. Unfortunately, as Celestia becomes more widely known such incidents are going to increase. You also have the problem that people generally only tend to rate items which they consider particularly good or bad, which tends to skew results.

[t00fri]

Notably, however, one texture by Don.Edwards, namely his most careful 18kBC rendering of earth, got 'Bad'. This characterization was grossly inappropriate to say the least!

This is the problem of public rating systems: they are vulnerable to trolling. Unfortunately, as Celestia becomes more widely known such incidents are going to increase. You also have the problem that people generally only tend to rate items which they consider particularly good or bad, which tends to skew results.

As you may have read in other posts of mine, I am strongly opposed to such public rating systems (including corresponding practice at amazon, ebay etc). For me the total lack of transparency as to the qualification of the reviewers makes this scheme not desirable.

Bye Fridger

[Harry]

Some background information:
The lower limit for the number of votes needed is (currently) 2. I'd like to increase this, but people aren't voting enough to allow this.

Don's texture was rated exactly two times, by apparently two different persons (one is in the US, one in the UK), so this may indicate a real disappointment by these two. The reason may be a somewhat unclear labeling of this texture - maybe they didn't notice that this texture does not show the current Earth surface (I just updated it, maybe this helps).

I certainly agree that a public voting system is far from perfect, but if an Addon gets a good (bad) rating by many visitors, then there must be a reason for it, even if the visitors are no experts - so the rating may not reflect the scientific or technical quality, but it still has some value for other non-expert visitors.

A panel of experts would certainly be preferrable, but the reaction to my proposal was underwhelming. So yes, the current system is not perfect, but sadly it's the best we can have at the moment (I am open for suggestion on how to improve this).

Showing the number of votes for an addon would be trivial, but I am a slightly worried that this may skew the results or tempt people to only vote where their vote has a significant effect.

Harald

[t00fri]

Some background information:
...

Don's texture was rated exactly two times, by apparently two different persons (one is in the US, one in the UK), so this may indicate a real disappointment by these two. The reason may be a somewhat unclear labeling of this texture - maybe they didn't notice that this texture does not show the current Earth surface (I just updated it, maybe this helps).

....

Harry,

let's hope that your suggestion was NOT correct, namely that the two "referees" might have overlooked that this texture does not show the current Earth surface! Because this would reflect an unbelievably superficial attitude and a "respectable" lack of general education...If I contrast this with the huge and most careful amount of research Don has put into rendering these prehistoric textures, it's just a slab into his face!

Things like this SHOULD NOT be allowed to HAPPEN!

Bye Fridger