Hack Moderation: Loosening the moderators' grip.

Now that the new hack sections are in play, I'd like to announce what will hopefully be the final change we will ever need to do in terms of hack moderation.

In the past, there have been a lot of complaints about subjectivity in hack moderation. We have known for years that rejecting certain hacks may lead to backlash from people who have different design tastes than our moderators. I recently spoke to a couple members of the hack moderation team and we shared very different opinions on what constitutes a removal reason and what doesn't.

THEREFORE: It is time that SMWC finally opened its doors to all kinds of hacks and the opinions of the userbase. To do this, we are going to take a romhacking.net styled approach:

-As hacks are submitted, the hack moderations will play them. Instead of writing a giant removal log with pictures, however, they will write a couple of paragraphs on their opinion of the hack. This will occur in the Hacks forum and the newly submitted hacks will be posted weekly (or thereabouts on the main page).
-Once the hack moderators have posted the thread, users may also play the hack and offer their feedback on it as well. This will offer the uploader a wider variety of opinions than just one or two from a particular hack moderator.
-If the feedback for the hack is positive, it will be accepted. If many people unanimously agree that it needs work, it will be rejected.

ALSO: To add a bit of incentive, we will also be keeping track of who plays and offers feedback on hacks. Offering opinions on a certain number will result in various prizes, such as a custom title, a badge, the ability to change your username, and perhaps more!

I don't know about you guys, but I have personally felt for a long time that the subjective nature of hack moderation has led to several angry uploaders (and even ridicule from other websites). I hope this new solution will be a workable alternative.

HILARIOUS

...Well, this sounds really interesting! But will this apply to every hack or will hacks that clearly shouldn't be accepted (not only breaking hacks, I mean also hacks with completely plain levels, clear blatant edits or anything that clearly breaks the guidelines) be rejected instantly? I dunno, maybe it would be renundant in some cases to have to wait for popular feedback when it's clear that a specific hack by no means would be accepted.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to help out!

Obviously horrible hacks (as in, objectively trash) will be removed immediately, yes.

Also, you may have noticed the new "Score:" on the sidebar. This should hopefully provide even more incentive to do a bit of reviewing. Huzzah!

Two One question:

1. Where do you get "score"? Can you only earn score points in the Hack Moderation subforum? Never mind! A recent thread answered this question.

2. Will it be possible to submit hack reviews to the new SMW hack section? It looks like they'll be phased out. For whatever reason, having hack reviews in the hack database produced less-than-pleasing low-quality reviews. I guess having them on the forums would be better.

Reviews AND ratings will return soon - however, terribly written reviews will be removed.

JackTheSpades: I think I answered this in the other thread, but let me know if you're still confused.

The way I'm understanding it, you'll have to go and manually look for the thread for a hack. It would be pretty convenient if the mods could link a hack's thread to its page in the hacks list so it would be really easy to find a hack's discussion.


Edit: This isn't exactly related to hack moderation per se but I feel it doesn't warrant a thread on its own.

As pointed out in this hack by Supertails his hack doesn't work on all emulators. Maybe an entry for hacks to be able to list what emulators they're known to work on would be helpful?

So wait, no more removal logs?

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Kinda in hibernation for a while. I hope to be back in full swing soon.

Well it is still technically a "removal log" if it is rejected but the nature of it has changed.

I'll miss the old styled removal logs but times change and I guess this is the way forward.

This is really interesting. I think this is a really positive direction for the site and possibly might even encourage others to get more active in hacking SMW or at least be active in the community.

I might give some hacks a go and see if I can be of assistance in this.

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Where I am found.

Quite the opposite. Rather than having your hand held and being pointed out every single minor bug, you'll now get a whole bunch of feedback (ideally) from a wide variety of people (also ideally). If you're an eager hacker who is willing to learn, this feedback should be very useful.

Yes, that's the point of the scoring system. The threads for any "likely to be added hacks" can be found in this forum.



I agree with you. I think a few days should be sufficient for a deadline.

Just a little heads up for everybody. We appreciate you're helping the moderators by posting your opinions about hacks as well, but since the purpose of this new moderation system is to be less restrict and to not use nitpicks as reasons for removing a hack, don't you guys think you should be less restrict as well?

Therefore I'd like if you use actual reasons for thinking a hack should be rejected in your opinions, nitpicks aren't going to make a hack get the verdict of rejection, as well some of you aren't really doing reviews at all, you're just giving your self-opinions about a hack like it was a beta-testing, which isn't the point of the new moderation system, since many of you have different opinions about how a hack should be done.

I won't be mentioning names, but I'd like if you think more about it and not give feedback to hacks as you were doing beta-tests of them, otherwise the point of the new moderation system would be lost.

Well, how are we supposed to know what you want us to post? I personally gotta say that by what you just said I don't have a clear image of what you want at all. I'd way rather have you point out specific names, than being all wishy-washy. I believe people are mature enough to take the criticism, especially since no one should feel guilty, because no one really told us what we were supposed to do in the first place.

We told you to write a paragraph or two (or more if you wish) explaining what you think of the hack and then state whether or not you think it should be accepted or rejected. We didn't tell you to write removal logs for the hack and post a million screenshots. If you're essentially doing what the hack moderators USED to do (eg. load up a post with screenshots), you're wasting your time. We're trying to make the system easier on everyone, as well as easier on the users who submitted their hacks. A few screenshots are fine if you want to get the point across, but you don't need to point out every single bug. I mean, if the hack is THAT buggy, then you can just write that you think it should be removed due to the plethora of glitches.

It's a very flexible system (or at least, we're trying to make it as such). If you're still confused about something, let us know.