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Reisal

Quality control on /idgames/

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Why is there no quality control to keep Terrywads from showing up, let alone showing up in latest files section nearly every time in place of legit maps?

That's the only thing I ask of /idgames/. Reject Terrywads or put them in themes/terry.

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Do you want to volunteer to test and classify each WAD?

This is impossible without someone doing all the work - it'd also be completely counterproductive to what the archive is supposed to be.

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Yes, it's supposed to be an archive of Doom-related works of any quality. Except vandalism has nothing to do with quality.

But I won't pretend I know an effective solution. The usual "stop paying attention, and the retards will go away" is obviously not working, because there will always be someone to rage in the comments. Since there are usually enough incriminating reviews, moderating the front end (instead of the archive itself) may be worth looking into.

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Graf Zahl said:

it'd also be completely counterproductive to what the archive is supposed to be.

This. Regardless of quality, the archive should preserve history, not whitewash it. Yes, Terrywads suck. But they are worth archiving, even though they're not worth playing or giving any attention to.

Still, tagging obvious Terrywads in newstuff to allow those who don't wish to see them to avoid them might not be such a bad thing. Although there has to be somebody dedicated enough to sit down and run every incoming WAD for that to be effective. Might be more effort than it's worth.

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I'm with Mr. Chris on this one.

Yes, the troll wads can stay in the archives.

No, they can't stay on doomworld.com/idgames.

Moderators here on Doomworld ban people or put their stupid threads in Post Hell, so why can't similar rules apply to the /idgames?

Just differentiate between what actually gets uploaded to the archives and what's displayed on /idgames. I don't see the problem.

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Doing so would probably incite an influx of them out of spite, which means the only thing that happens is Ty has even more work to do.

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So, we should just sit back and enjoy the ride? Doing nothing usually is the best way to approach trolls. But in this case, I think something has to be done. We can't base our reations on the assumption that if we do (a) then they do (c). But we wanted them to do (b), so we don't do anything. We have to at least try someting. Because whatever we are doing at the moment isn't really working either.

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Why not a "report" button (or perhaps an additional rating, that's not 0 stars)? If enough reports are filed for a certain WAD within a short time, then it'll be known that either some action needs to be taken on the WAD, or perhaps that would-be downloaders should just ignore it.

Of course this might have to be limited to one report per user per upload, and possibly further to one report a day.

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Jimmy said:

Why not a "report" button? If enough reports are filed for a certain WAD within a short time, then it'll be known that some action needs to be taken.

Of course this might have to be limited to one report per user per upload, and possibly further to one report a day.

Given the sad state of things, such a button would probably be abused, with archive trolls spamming it on legitimate wads to dilute the waters and confuse the system.

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Jimmy said:

Why not a "report" button (or perhaps an additional rating, that's not 0 stars)? If enough reports are filed for a certain WAD within a short time, then it'll be known that either some action needs to be taken on the WAD, or perhaps that would-be downloaders should just ignore it.

Of course this might have to be limited to one report per user per upload, and possibly further to one report a day.


Good idea. I had a similar solution in mind. With the additional rating besides the star system, a user can rate it as a troll wad. If a given number of such votes are cast, or a percentage of them, then a moderator gets notified to check out the wad in question and see if it's legit or not. Best scenario is, that there are more than one moderator. I will happily volunteer to be one of them.

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Graf Zahl said:

Do you want to volunteer to test and classify each WAD?

This is impossible without someone doing all the work - it'd also be completely counterproductive to what the archive is supposed to be.

I want to volunteer.
Somehow Bloodshedder doesn't seem to have any problems detecting these terrywads. So it's probably not too much work.

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esselfortium said:

Given the sad state of things, such a button would probably be abused, with archive trolls spamming it on legitimate wads to dilute the waters and confuse the system.

Hence the limits I suggested, especially the one a day per account one. I theorize that the number of legitimate reports from users discovering uploads to be trollwads would outnumber the ones the trolls can make if this system is in place, especially if the reports are made invalid after 48 hours or something. There's certainly more of us, by some margin. :P

Then again I don't know how quick Doomworld accounts can be registered and verified in order to enable the potential abuse by the trolls themselves.

Maybe a good textual reason would need to be given as well?

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Jimmy said:

I theorize that the number of legitimate reports from users discovering uploads to be trollwads would outnumber the ones the trolls can make if this system is in place, especially if the reports are made invalid after 48 hours or something. There's certainly more of us, by some margin.


I totally agree!

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Personally, I think no action is needed. Terry wads can't do much harm to folks with Bloodshedder marking them out for us, but occasionally you get the one complete moron who just has to tell Terry he is a bad person over and over again.

What could be done is a lock reviews section much like the lock thread option that stops any votes or comments upon somebody finding a Terry wad, it is still there but nobody can review it. But that feature would probably be a bitch to implement just for the small purpose it is made for so I guess that is out the window.

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I don't agree. An archive is supposed to be that - an archive. As Ty said once in this forums, quality is not, and has never been criterion for inclusion/exclusion. And even if it was, where do we draw the line?

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Yes Zed, of course. But Doomworld runs /idgames, which means that it can be moderated! The forums can be moderated and so can /idgames.

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Zed said:

I don't agree. An archive is supposed to be that - an archive. As Ty said once in this forums, quality is not, and has never been criterion for inclusion/exclusion. And even if it was, where do we draw the line?


Not that I'm arguing against it really, but how about simply not including files that are intentionally designed for trolling?

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@Marceak: It's a script which handles all new additions to the archives. I'm no expert in programming, but it'll have to be really Skynet-like to distinguish normal wads from troll wads :)

We have to let them slip through the net and sort them out afterwards. It's the most reasonable thing to do from a moderator's point of view.

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I agree with people that say they should all be kept on the archive.

I agree with the idea that it would be nice if there could be an easy way for people to identify, and thereby not waste their time downloading, garbage. Practicality of implementation is, of course, an issue (or series of issues). Mind you, it could be said that the review/comment/star system is already there for that purpose (though, clearly, it isn't perfect - can any system be?).

I do not agree that there should be a flag/button/whatever named for "TerryWADs" because, IMO, doing so would give such WADs the notoriety that their authors crave. Making them an identified and "official" special case would be a bad thing IMO. However, the more general term of "troll wad" would be fine. Again, however, the practicalities of identifying implementing and perhaps monitoring the use of the troll wad button/feature are potentially problematic.


Usually if I download a troll WAD, it can be identified pretty quickly and then disposed of accordingly. I don't really have a huge problem with them. "Oh, it's shit. Fine, delete, move on." It only takes a matter of seconds. I don't see it as a huge problem personally. It doesn't really impact on my life much at all. It is a shame that the archive is being diluted with shit though.

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Zed said:

As Ty said once in this forums, quality is not, and has never been criterion for inclusion/exclusion.

I'll repeat: quality has nothing to do with it.

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Enjay said:

Again, however, the practicalities of identifying implementing and perhaps monitoring the use of the troll wad button/feature are potentially problematic.


You might be right. But we can't know for sure until we try. And I feel it's worth going for, as I really do feel it's necessary to at least try and address this problem. We are dealing with a problem now and are trying to come up with a solution. It might not work 100% but then it can be adjusted and finetuned.

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I feel like the term "Terrywad" has become very confused. What does it even mean anymore? What do people here define as a terrywad, just something that's intentionally shit?

Maybe there could be a way to link the newstuff review to the wad in question directly on the wad's page, as they usually provide a better idea of what to expect. Of course, that requires people to actually write the review first, much in the same way that the current system requires people to actually down-vote bad wads when they play them in order to work.

Seriously, if you find a bad wad, vote 0 and move on, and if you play a wad you like, vote it 5. The bad wads will sink into obscurity very quickly if people do this. Every time you play a mapset, do this. You won't, of course, because you're lazy. Yes you, the reader.

If someone can come up with an effective system that doesn't require a gatekeeper to spend significant amounts of time vetting all wads and isn't open to abuse then I'm happy to hear it, and you should probably get a job with the latest social media site hotness too because your idea would be worth a lot of money.

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It's not even about the whole "terrywad" gibberish, it's the fact that the archive has a loophole, that is anyone can upload anything and possibly clog archive to the point that it becomes useless.

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If archive clog is the problem, then maybe the best solution is better searching/filtering functionality.

The top rated wads list always returns the old classics that will rarely ever get dethroned, maybe we need a better way to see the more middling rated and newer stuff. Some sort of multi-faceted filtering would help, ways to search for wads uploaded within various dates, with at least x votes and at least x rating etc. might make it more usable.

Of course, here I am spouting this off as if it would be easy... I know nothing about how this sort of stuff works on the backend.

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Melon said:

If someone can come up with an effective system that doesn't require a gatekeeper to spend significant amounts of time vetting all wads and isn't open to abuse then I'm happy to hear it, and you should probably get a job with the latest social media site hotness too because your idea would be worth a lot of money.


Aww, come on. It's not that complicated. If a forum of this size and a billion just like it can be moderated, then /idgames can too! It's not rocket science and most definitely not something that requires a completely unique and never before seen idea! A voting and alerting system with a handful of dedicated moderators and you're well on the way.

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Chris Hansen said:

Aww, come on. It's not that complicated. If a forum of this size and a billion just like it can be moderated, then /idgames can too! It's not rocket science and most definitely not something that requires a completely unique and never before seen idea! A voting and alerting system with a handful of dedicated moderators and you're well on the way.

The big difference between forum posts and wads is that forum posts are quick and easy to verify when they're shit. Reported wads would have to be played by one of the moderators before any action could be taken, and while this isn't necessarily massive amounts of work, it's significantly higher than forum moderation. Forum moderation is also doable during e.g. your work lunch break because it doesn't require you to have access to special programs installed on your machine.

Look at newstuff, that has a potentially massive amount of users to validate wads and we still have unreviewed wads in there all the way back from July 2013. Everybody wants the quality to be gatekeepered but nobody's actually prepared to do it.

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Memfis said:

prophet mode: Bloodshedder won't do anything about this.


No, he will solve it. I believe in him.

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Melon said:

The big difference between forum posts and wads is that forum posts are quick and easy to verify when they're shit. Reported wads would have to be played by one of the moderators before any action could be taken, and while this isn't necessarily massive amounts of work, it's significantly higher than forum moderation. Forum moderation is also doable during e.g. your work lunch break because it doesn't require you to have access to special programs installed on your machine.


Yes, you are right. There is more effort required, no doubt about that. But that's not how it sounded from you the first time. Unless, even after having written the above, you still think that it needs a software of epic proportions to help moderating /idgames?

Look at newstuff, that has a potentially massive amount of users to validate wads and we still have unreviewed wads in there all the way back from July 2013. Everybody wants the quality to be gatekeepered but nobody's actually prepared to do it.


Yes. But the main difference here is, that /newstuff is based on people volounteering to do so. And /idgames has to have appointed moderators. Don't draw parallels where there are none.

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