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Ban Me Can we get clarification on what is allowable in discussing forumbuildr submissions?

Escher

Avatar: Escher's Avatar
13

[SRSLY]

Level 10 Camwhore

really huge titty ****

Here’s the conundrum I see.

On the one hand, totally anonymous submissions are the fairest. Ideas get voted up or down for their merits (or because the voter is a jerk) without involving personal feelings towards the author or klan. Klans can’t throw their weight behind totally anonymous ideas, thus keeping big klans from forcing up crappy ideas that a member posted, or good writers from having to join huge klans just to stay competitive.

On the other hand… writers/designers don’t really get true feedback. If I post an item and it hits -5 in an hour, while I can generally bumume that I suck (or the voters suck), I don’t get any specifics as to why it sucks. Am I misunderstanding what people think the forum should be about, or is it too close to something already posted? Is my joke too subtle, too obscure, or too stupid? There are a lot of reasons things can get downvoted, and it’s hard to improve my submissions with my only feedback being “voted up” and “voted down”. (Which often leads to poor or flawed ideas getting re-submitted because the author bumumed “well, the voters sucked last week, so maybe this week it’ll be better.” )

So I’d like to actually get detailed criticism. The problem is, the best way to do that is to pbum it around via Tubmail or post it in my Klan forums asking for feedback, but at that point I seem to be dangerously close to breaking the rules on Klan voting.

Is there a good way to handle this? I’m asking both Crotch Zombie members for boundaries, and submitters for their ideas on what’s fair and reasonable. I’m not sure that there’s an absolute policy that can be come up with; like obscenity, this may have to be something where we know cheating when we see it, but can’t really set an official policy.

Escher edited this message on 04/02/2008 10:59AM

Kerridwen_Ka-
li

Avatar: Kerridwen_Kali's Avatar
2

Level 29 Emo Kid

I HEART CANADIANS!

I’ve been pondering this issue myself.

I think the wildcard categories are the Enemies and the Angry Replies. I think those both seem (at first glance) like easy targets to hit, so lots of new submitters throw their dice at those walls. Then when their submissions get -5’ed, they get mad and downvote everything else in those categories. (Hey, I did it at first too.)

Looking over my submissions from a few days ago, I can objectively scan them and think, ‘No, that’s too much of an in joke.” For instance — since it’s already been deep-sixed — “Beware the Happy Squirrel.” Yes, an extremely arcane Tarot joke reference. This week’s forum, Wiccapedia, happens to fall into a category I know something about. As a result, I’m watching a lot of submissions from others that I think are hilarious get pummeled by voters who just aren’t hip to the joke. And you have to know the scene to be hip to the joke. That’s all — no h8ers.

I think the best way to get feedback is to have an ex post facto thread here in this forum. If you’re curious why a submission failed, after voting has closed, post it here and ask people what they thought about it, if and when they came across it.

But I’m not a CZ, or even a TS for that matter.*

KK

*Obscure joke — pay no attention.

Kerridwen_Kali edited this message on 04/02/2008 11:56PM

Skyreal

Avatar: Boobs
8

Level 24 Camwhore

“The Lady is a Tramp”

This is actually the reason why I stopped doing forumbuildr. My submissions sucked, I didn’t know how to improve, so I simply gave up.

d35tiny

Avatar: Spider Illustration
2

Level 12 Emo Kid

“Gloomy Gus”

Advice: write smaller posts and ppl will actually read them Log in to see images!

Madam Lash

Avatar: Crying Painting
4

[Fighting bumolinos]

Level 10 Emo Kid

“Gloomy Gus”

Trying to figure out why my submissions do well or badly totally makes my head hurt. I think a mechanism for feedback would be awesome, but I also suspect that a lot of the time the feedback would be “Jerks were in a bad mood today”.

MySpace Tom

Avatar: MySpace Tom's Avatar
7

Level 18 Camwhore

WeChall FOR LIFE

I’m not too convinced about the random haters being responsible for most unexpected -5’s. I had a couple enemy ideas this week that I thought were brilliant (for the record, YES WICCAN and Blessed Beyotch) but got axed within the first day. So I tried slight variations on both later in the week and pretty much the same thing happened. I still don’t have a good theory on why I overestimated their chances so poorly, especially since the first still makes me laugh, but I don’t think random downvoting can be blamed. Another enemy submission that I made at the same time as the first two is doing great – and it was the one I thought was going to die quickly and quietly!

In general, I think a useful way to analyze why a submission succeeded or failed is to keep in mind that the vast majority of voters are only giving things at most a few seconds consideration before voting. Any joke that takes more than a few seconds to appreciate is doomed, which means your references need to be very accessible (and you need to know your audience pretty well, of course). I have to admit that I’ve downvoted a couple items that didn’t “click,” only to get them later and wish I could go back and change my vote.

Log in to see images! MySpace Tom edited this message on 05/18/2008 9:58PM

Vuron

Avatar: 4928 2011-07-31 00:39:10 -0400
13

[Team Shortbus]

Level 40 Emo Kid

Vile serpent! I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

MySpace Tom Posted:

In general, I think a useful way to analyze why a submission succeeded or failed is to keep in mind that the vast majority of voters are only giving things at most a few seconds consideration before voting. Any joke that takes more than a few seconds to appreciate is doomed, which means your references need to be very accessible (and you need to know your audience pretty well, of course). I have to admit that I’ve downvoted a couple items that didn’t “click,” only to get them later and wish I could go back and change my vote.

I generally concur with Tom on this one, I sometimes will powervote my way through forumbuildr suggestions and some of the subtle humor found in some submissions likely bypbumes my until it’s too late.

Elwood Moose

Avatar: Toilet 2

[AfterHours]

Level 6 Troll

“Jerk Chicken”

Yeah..unfortunately this is true.

For the majority of Forumwarz players, unless it is an overt homo joke, or has the word fap in it… it probably won’t do well.

I’ve seen some AWESOME suggestions tank…and know full why….The humor is lost on the majority of retards out here.

Escher

Avatar: Escher's Avatar
13

[SRSLY]

Level 10 Camwhore

really huge titty ****

MySpace Tom Posted:

I have to admit that I’ve downvoted a couple items that didn’t “click,” only to get them later and wish I could go back and change my vote.

I’ll certainly cop to that as well. And those are very good points you make; the reaction to subtle or eclectic jokes does tend to be ‘meh’.

Wishlist

Avatar: Schoolgirl Uniform
5

Level 10 Camwhore

“Leave it to Cleavage”

When it comes to actual forum submissions in the buildr, I feel that the title has the most to do with the success/failure. My newest submission is doing the best out of any I’ve ever submitted. When I made it, I felt it was, as Escher says, “Meh.”

ravenblooDDa-
rkdreams

Avatar: ravenblooDDarkdreams's Avatar
1

[Team AWESOME]

Level 10 Emo Kid

“Gloomy Gus”

MySpace Tom Posted:

I’m not too convinced about the random haters being responsible for most unexpected -5’s. I had a couple enemy ideas this week that I thought were brilliant (for the record, YES WICCAN and Blessed Beyotch) but got axed within the first day. So I tried slight variations on both later in the week and pretty much the same thing happened. I still don’t have a good theory on why I overestimated their chances so poorly, especially since the first still makes me laugh, but I don’t think random downvoting can be blamed. Another enemy submission that I made at the same time as the first two is doing great – and it was the one I thought was going to die quickly and quietly!

In general, I think a useful way to analyze why a submission succeeded or failed is to keep in mind that the vast majority of voters are only giving things at most a few seconds consideration before voting. Any joke that takes more than a few seconds to appreciate is doomed, which means your references need to be very accessible (and you need to know your audience pretty well, of course). I have to admit that I’ve downvoted a couple items that didn’t “click,” only to get them later and wish I could go back and change my vote.

For the record, I upvoted both those names. Log in to see images!

I submitted blessed_bee with that bug picture, DefyingGravity, BloodSugarSexMagick, and HoodooVoodooYouDo almost immediately after the forum went up, and they all got immediately exploded. Now I just wish I hadn’t submitted them in the first place, because now my buildrscore’s gonna go down. Log in to see images! What was so ****ty about those, by the way? I’m agreeing with a bunch of people in this thread that yeah, I dunno how to improve.

Also, if anybody saw that post I submitted for God Hates Facts about telling a kid that since God made [vegetable] and she didn’t think God was gross, she didn’t think [vegetables] were gross- I was curious to see if that’d do well, cause that actually happened to me when I was a wee one.

Arktor

Avatar: Schoolgirl Uniform
24

[Smooth Town Rebels]

Level 10 Camwhore

Medal Ninja

YES WICCAN actually made me laugh irl. I was a fraction of a second from downvoting it (I mean, it is in all caps and seems pretty lame at first glance), then suddenly I got the pun. I suspect a lot of people didn’t get the joke, at least not before downvoting it.

Arktor edited this message on 04/05/2008 12:19AM

MySpace Tom

Avatar: MySpace Tom's Avatar
7

Level 18 Camwhore

WeChall FOR LIFE

Yeah, and I also suspect that the other two Barack Obama avatars with great puns didn’t help. (Hey, how come there is only one avatar of a black man? Racists!Log in to see images!)

Back to Escher’s question, though, I wonder if there couldn’t be a separate subforum for getting feedback on submissions, with forced anonymity for all posts there. That would allow submitters to request feedback while the ideas are still fresh, without the risk of klan based voting or the like. Alternatively, it could be a private subforum, where you need to meet some criteria to gain access (such as a minimum forumbuildr score or voting ratio, or pledging to vote fairly, etc.). I think either would be a useful addition to the creative process.

Log in to see images! MySpace Tom edited this message on 05/18/2008 9:58PM

Sux2BU

Avatar: Sux2BU's Avatar

Level 10 Troll

Sucky sucky 2 dolla!!!

MySpace Tom Posted:

Back to Escher’s question, though, I wonder if there couldn’t be a separate subforum for getting feedback on submissions, with forced anonymity for all posts there. That would allow submitters to request feedback while the ideas are still fresh, without the risk of klan based voting or the like. Alternatively, it could be a private subforum, where you need to meet some criteria to gain access (such as a minimum forumbuildr score or voting ratio, or pledging to vote fairly, etc.). I think either would be a useful addition to the creative process.

An anonymous forum sounds really good. The private subforum sounds decent, but I don’t think minimum forumbuildr score is necessarily a good criteria- people who have low scores may be those who most want/need advice. I think maybe a minimum number of votes (not tied to ratio) would be a good criteria – you’d be getting feedback from those most likely to be voting.

Skyreal

Avatar: Boobs
8

Level 24 Camwhore

“The Lady is a Tramp”

I wonder if anyone noticed this is a forum thread suggesting making a forum for discussing how to make better forums for a game in which you post in forums.

Skyreal edited this message on 04/06/2008 12:45AM

rohina

Avatar: rohina's Avatar
2

[Fighting bumolinos]

Level 10 Troll

Queen of Mean

I did. And then I went and posted about it on another forum.

inks

Avatar: Red Green Flashing

Level 10 Troll

“Pain in the ASCII”

Hmmmm… **** it it’s enough effort slogging through 100’s thread posts already you want an essay about why it’s good / sucks too?

Keep it as it is, just fine. I like the harshness of the numbers: watching a carefully worked, contrived and crafted submission tank. While some ideas creep slowly upwards.

Ok, it’s early days for me but the rawness of the numbers response is helping me in shaping my submissions.

evilhamster

Avatar: evilhamster's Avatar
10

[The Fondler of Bal-
lsacks
]

Level 34 Emo Kid

“Cutty Cutterson”

Apparently jokes about hillary, bill and bush as enemies just get instantly downvoted no matter how funny they are.

Edit: or as funny as I think they are!

evilhamster edited this message on 04/06/2008 10:42PM

Kerridwen_Ka-
li

Avatar: Kerridwen_Kali's Avatar
2

Level 29 Emo Kid

I HEART CANADIANS!

evilhamster Posted:

Apparently jokes about hillary, bill and bush as enemies just get instantly downvoted no matter how funny they are.

Edit: or as funny as I think they are!

that’s because you’re a republi-can’t. fallen angels in hell weep brimstone tears over you. Log in to see images!

evilhamster

Avatar: evilhamster's Avatar
10

[The Fondler of Bal-
lsacks
]

Level 34 Emo Kid

“Cutty Cutterson”

Kerridwen_Kali Posted:

that’s because you’re a republi-can’t. fallen angels in hell weep brimstone tears over you. Log in to see images!

I am NO SUCH THING. I make fun of all politicians equally. Because they all suck.

“‘Politics’ comes from the Greek ‘poly’ meaning ‘many’ and ‘ticks’, which are blood-sucking parasites.” — Andre Marrou

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