The category of starred movies is now open again as of the site update ― they're called "special stars". Because the name is now different, maybe the criteria should be too, so I'm starting a new thread because the reading of the previous posts in the older thread is not relevant for the new thread.
For starters, I restored the old star list, and upgraded what I could see to account for movies that have been improved since then.
Criteria:
― Special stars are movies that are particularly impressing, and worth being presentational material for this site.
― A sampling of the special stars is randomly picked once every few minutes to be showcased on the front page.
― There are no per-game limits on movies to be listed.
― The general rule is, anything listed in this category – special stars – should be worth watching for most of the audience, new and old alike.
― So far, the list can be maintained by administrators (halfadmins included). If someone has suggestions on how to automatically maintain it, go ahead. Specific selections can be suggested too.
Edit by Ilari:
Relevant links:
[Wiki]Stars[/wiki]
[Wiki]Movies-Stars[/wiki]
[Wiki]StarmanGuidelines[/wiki]
[Wiki]TierMaintenanceLog[/wiki]
What if you had a list of say 20-30 movies. Have a lenient policy for giving out stars (not too lenient of course), then if the new one was put on the list if would kick the oldest starred movie. That way it would be a list that recommendeds the newest most cutting edge movies. It avoids any great bias towards a particular game or game series and prevent a run thats 2+ years old and out of date appearing on the list, and most important of all it would prevent the list from becoming stale in the long term.
I would be against booting starred movies out on age alone; some old movies are still highly impressive when weighed against newer contributions. I wouldn't be against having a quantity limit, though. I'd rather the qualification be on quality, not age.
Yeah, I agree with jupi... it would be stupid to boot movies, just because they were published some time ago, they can still be as great (or possibly even greater) than recent movies.
I was somewhat surprised to find that SMB1 had a star.
I think points made by moozooh in the previous thread are pretty good:
moozooh wrote:
The reason why I don't think giving SMB a star makes sense is:
1) it's going to be checked among the first hits, anyway;
2) the TAS is only a couple seconds faster than the fastest unassisted run — hardly a WOWAWESOME thing. Tool-assistance is not very prominent there, at least not for a first-timer.
Stars might not be intended to be for first-timers anymore, but prodominence of tool-assistence should still be important I think. The point has also been made that it's not extremely audiovisually attractive (and I'll provide the complete quote, not to pull it out of context):
Bisqwit wrote:
It is desirable that all those factors are met, but if some of the factors are fulfilled especially well, a lack in some other factors can be accepted. (SMB1 for example isn't audiovisually very attractive.)
I would be against booting starred movies out on age alone; some old movies are still highly impressive when weighed against newer contributions. I wouldn't be against having a quantity limit, though. I'd rather the qualification be on quality, not age.
I mostly agree with this. However, in practice, this means that there'll be a huge controversy over what movie should or does get removed each time a new one is added. So I'd suggest that any quantity limit on stars is not a firm number, but fluid, perhaps a proportion of all publications, and is open to exceeding when called for.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Hm. I'm glad the stars are back, but having the total jurisdiction not fully in Biswit's hands smells like trouble to me IMO. Not saying that's a bad thing, but the cautionary side of me is detecting future squabbles.
Since SM64 was mentioned, I think the 120 star should be taken off, considering the 0 star is rated higher, has much higher rpecision, and the 120 star is currently being improved, and by a significant amount too.
Additionally, Majora's mask falls under the same 120 star boat in that substantial improvements are being made.
Small only I feel like ISM's upcoming 96 star run will blow out of the water.
megaman 5 and 2, again, are being improved....
yoshi's island is being improved, slowly (and not surely), but with what's known, 2+ minutes, maybe more can be improved... and a 100% (if it was finished) would be more star worthy...
SMB I agree shouldn't be there....
The LoZ 2nd quest is more optimized than the first....
Umihara kawase may be short and impressive, but I think some other bungee type movies are better (like say spiderman 3 GBA). also the game is so unknown, and different that it feels weird having a star.
ALttP is being given major improvements, as Tompa is showing.
So I guess my major beef at the moment is that many of the runs on the list are currently (or being planned on) getting improved. The star list should be the pinnacle of entertainment and optimization.
I also think many runs that are incredibly good have not been considered, such as:
-Any of the DKC series: these games are immensely popular, really glitchy and cool
-Gunstar Heroes 2 player
-Rockman and Forte: zipping galore,e specially the 100 CDs version
-Castlevania: HoD (IMO the fastest of any castlevania game besides maybe SotN, it makes the current starred castlevania look like a snail)
The list does feel old..... I've been here since 2006 and have seen many of those same games remain there forever. I think new runs have been made, and will be made that should replace them.
Perhaps some sort of mechanism to allow users to stack-rank the currently-starred items would be helpful? That would give us an easy way to say "this incoming starred video should displace this other currently-starred video", but I'm leery of any system that involves users voting since they tend to get hairy and provoke all kinds of controversy.
Petrie: well-knownness isn't itself a good reason to star something. The movie has to be really impressively done in some way -- highly entertaining, very obviously tightly optimized, or something along those lines. Just "we should have more than one 3D starred game, and this one is popular" isn't what I'd personally consider adequate justification.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Idea: In the submission forum polls, add a secondary "Should this movie be starred? Yes/No/Meh" poll to every new submission. This way people can easily express their opinion if they think a new movie should get a star.
Interesting how the people who disagree with me offer no alternative that differs from the old policy. It does at least solve some of previous problems. I did get the feeling that there was some sort of partial agreement on what I said. I disagree on the term the term that older movie would be 'booted off' the list, when moved off would have been a more accurate term. The main reason I suggested it was that it would be easier to maintain and would minimize controversy in the longer term. Still, we need to establish policy before we start suggesting movies that should be on the list.
Warp wrote:
Idea: In the submission forum polls, add a secondary "Should this movie be starred? Yes/No/Meh" poll to every new submission. This way people can easily express their opinion if they think a new movie should get a star.
I don't think being able to vote formiley on what should be starred would help at all. Newbies and anyone whose even remotely a fan of a particular game, movie or author will vote yes to it. It should purely come down to discussion as more justification would be given.
On topic of star selection method, I have discussed it with Baxter recently, and we came to a following conclusion. Basically, there are three options in regards to selecting what's worth being starred.
1. Only Bisqwit can select movies.
Pros:
• a personal opinion presented as a personal opinion is fine;
• Bisqwit has enough TASing and TAS watching experience to tell what's what, even if he isn't always correct in his judgements.
Cons:
• single opinion = many missed and/or misjudged aspects in process of selection;
• personal bias will be most prominent (forget about opinion diversity).
2. A small (ideally 7-10) group of people.
Pros:
• perhaps the best choice in terms of diversity (several people with strong opinions will counterweigh each others' biases, and there won't be enough people for game popularity factor to kick in);
• the choices will be argumented in order to count, which will make the whole process a lot more reasonable;
• it will be easy to keep the list up to date.
Cons:
• people will whine a lot if they don't make the "star committee" members;
• some opinions may become unrepresented even if as much as 10 people will direct the selection.
3. All users can vote upon star selection.
Pros:
• everyone who cares will be able to vote;
• all opinions have a chance to be represented.
Cons:
• diversity will fall a victim to popularity (any unpopular opinion will be trumped by statistics);
• with a large number of votes, it will be hard to give significance to every single one of them, and it's likely they won't even be argumented;
• gauging opinions might become a technical problem (or, it will complicate the regular site activities even further).
In my opinion, the only option that makes sense if it is the result (and not the process) we are after, is #2. If it is the process, then it is #3. If no-one gives a shit, it should remain #1.
Clarification on option #2, since it is the most controversial one (and also the one I personally vote for).
As you can see, its strongest aspect is having many (but not too many for it to become inconvenient to gauge) opinions that are all argumented and potentially diverse. Unpopular opinions will count. Personal bias will be counterweighed thanks to the amount of members in the committee. The only real problem is getting into this committee.
As I see it, a committee volunteer must, to a certain degree:
1) give a shit about stars and their discussion, otherwise there's no point to it in the first place;
2) be intelligent, able to communicate their thoughts very clearly and without resorting to stupid and/or irrelevant arguments;
3) have watched at least half the site's publications, including most critically acclaimed ones;
4) have a keen eye on entertainment and technical qualities of a movie;
5) be able to discern "good game" from "good movie of a game", "good movie for a first-time watcher" from "good movie for an expert", "highly entertaining movie" from "technically well-done movie", and other such things;
6) be free of strong biases and other attachments (perhaps not having many personally made movies published is a good thing here).
Opinions?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Warp wrote:
Idea: In the submission forum polls, add a secondary "Should this movie be starred? Yes/No/Meh" poll to every new submission. This way people can easily express their opinion if they think a new movie should get a star.
I can only think of ONE case where this worked. In almost all other cases, people would post "vote yes and it should get a star!!!" and the movie would get published without it. In reality, saying "this should get a star" more often than not simply ended up as being "this person liked this movie a lot" because it was so commonplace and, in the end, Bisqwit's decision.
Edit: moozooh's on the right track. I vote for #2. heck, what if there was a vote for who could be on the committee? for instance if I couldn't get in, I'd want people I know who can represent me.
#2 is fine as long as I'm on the committee :P
Seriously though, I like it and Comic's voting for voters idea... kind of like the US "electoral college" (and we all know how well that works... wait maybe it's not such a good idea.)
Idea: In the submission forum polls, add a secondary "Should this movie be starred? Yes/No/Meh" poll to every new submission. This way people can easily express their opinion if they think a new movie should get a star.
I can only think of ONE case where this worked. In almost all other cases, people would post "vote yes and it should get a star!!!" and the movie would get published without it. In reality, saying "this should get a star" more often than not simply ended up as being "this person liked this movie a lot" because it was so commonplace and, in the end, Bisqwit's decision.
I don't see too much difference between that, and 10 people voting "yes" for the publication of a submission (with the old system) and 3 voting "no", and the submission not being published. The votes are, after all, opinions.
Btw, I don't see what's the problem with the same people who decide if a submission is published or not, also deciding whether it gets a star or not.
For #2, why not have Bisqwit assign judges to people who typically give good feedback in the workbench or WIP areas of the site?
If the list is known only by Bisqwit (and, of course, the members), and said members are sworn to secrecy, then there wouldn't be any "Wait, sticky is SO much of a better voter than Alden. Alden is a bad person. Kill Alden." or something of that nature :)
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
I'd like to point out two things:
* For option 1, another downside is that Bisqwit has to take a more hands-on approach to watching the workbench/newly-published movies. Much of the point of adding moderators was for them to be able to handle the day-to-day running of the site without his involvement. In general, depending on a single person to handle something that could change regularly is asking for stagnation.
* For option 2, you now need to get many more "blessed" people involved with studying the movie than currently. What happens if you can only find two of the star-selectors willing to take the time to watch the movie? Do you stage another election? What if you'd just run one?
So here's my suggestion: let the moderators (+Bisqwit) decide amongst themselves about stars. Maybe add in a few "regular people" who are well-known and trusted to be impartial to this group; selection into the group would be by informal nomination. One of them nominates a movie to be starred, they all watch it at some point, and decide via informal debate if it should be starred or not.
The important differences between this and Moozooh's #2 are:
* Starring is explicitly done orthogonally to normal publishing. Moozooh may have intended this to be the case in his suggestion as well; I'm just making it clear. Publishing a movie should not be gated on getting the star-selectors together to discuss a movie.
* Not every published movie needs the star-selectors' input. It's assumed that the people in that group are, between them, able to watch every movie that goes by and decide on which ones are worthy of discussion, without having to have every individual member involved on a daily basis.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Derakon:
Obviously, there's no need to involve starring in the publication process. Moreover, I am of the opinion that it's best if the stars are assigned after the general public excitement has toned down.
Actually, I portray it as making a star nominees thread only visible to the committee members; the rest would be pretty similar to what we've had in the previous star nominees thread (sans most of the off-topic). For instance, someone proposes a movie to be starred, explains the reasons, the others provide feedback to the best of their ability. If there are no strong counterarguments, the change is made. This topic can be used for announcing changes and discussing them between the general audience.
Obviously, it can be done differently just as well (for instance, via private messages between Bisq and committee members).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Finally!
We have something to argue about again!
Here is a funny (maybe?) idea: give stars to movies based on user votes. Which voters affect the star ranking is unknown to both themselves and other users. Bisqwit selects which voters contributes to the star ranking, but cannot elect himself.
I actually like your idea a lot, because it will make those who care participate without knowing for sure whether their choices will affect anything, making the whole process more honest. But knowing Bisqwit as much as I do at this point, I expect him either to consider/cater to every opinion presented (casting it into the abyss of statistics), or allowing his own opinions to interfere with choices. :P
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Petrie: well-knownness isn't itself a good reason to star something. The movie has to be really impressively done in some way -- highly entertaining, very obviously tightly optimized, or something along those lines. Just "we should have more than one 3D starred game, and this one is popular" isn't what I'd personally consider adequate justification.
Hmm, well, I probably been more specific about that. It is very well done, and IIRC from the submission topic most people really enjoyed it, which is impressive for a >2 hour movie. Of course, comicalflop does bring up a good point in that there is an improvement in the works, but it seems to have been indefinitely delayed due to the restart that was forced upon it.
Here is a funny (maybe?) idea: give stars to movies based on user votes. Which voters affect the star ranking is unknown to both themselves and other users. Bisqwit selects which voters contributes to the star ranking, but cannot elect himself.
This gets us to the Slashdot style moderation:
Every day, a limited number of new moderators are selected randomly by the site engine from users who have recently been active, doing metamoderation* and commenting. Those moderators have five (5) moderation points, which they can use as they choose to demote/promote posts; after which they have none remaining and they're back to regular users. They will also lose them if they don't use them within the 24 hour window.
Metamoderation is a Slashdot feature available for all registered readers. Users get a list of randomly selected anonymized moderation decisions, and they can vote whether the moderation decision was fair or unfair. Supposedly, people who are consistently reported being unfair as moderators, will not be elected as moderators that often, and conversely, fair people are more commonly elected as moderators.
A similar approach could work here: It would then not require any attention from me, and it would be also resistant for abuse.
Every day, the site would elect a new Star Committee from a few registered users (with criteria such as recent rating activity perhaps), and those users would be given a chance to give -1/+1 votes to movies' star-worthiness. Those votes would be tallied, and only movies having >= +4 votes would be Special stars. The number of votes they can give would be small, conversely proportional to the number of people in the Committee.
A metavoting system similar to Slashdot's metamoderation could also exist and be available for all users, registered or not.
Opinions?
