c4countdown

Okay, so we've been through the first cycle of GOTW nominations, voting, and results, and the winner was... TA-DA!

I'm open to feedback. In particular I'd like to look at ways to reduce the number of games that people have to vote on. Maybe make it the Top N games sorted by number of nominations or something. Ideas, and other feedback, welcome.

Some possibilities:

You could exclude games that are only self-nominated. Self-nomination is a good way to bring a notable game to others attention but if no-one else is impressed enough to nominate it then obviously it is not as exciting as was thought.

Perhaps when nominating a game people should have to type in a description of why the game was worthy of nomination. This might put people off from nominating willy-nilly and also it would help make the voting process less laborious we could see at a glance why a particular game was there.

You could split the voting into two periods. Have all nominated games in the vote for, say, Tues-Thurs and then have just the top 5 in the voting at that point subject to voting for the rest of the week, Fri-Sun or whatever. Keen people can vote early, busy people later.

Matthew Tassier wrote:You could exclude games that are only self-nominated. Self-nomination is a good way to bring a notable game to others attention but if no-one else is impressed enough to nominate it then obviously it is not as exciting as was thought.

Yeah, that's definitely a good idea, although it's probably subsumed by the Top N thing anyway.

Matthew Tassier wrote:Perhaps when nominating a game people should have to type in a description of why the game was worthy of nomination. This might put people off from nominating willy-nilly and also it would help make the voting process less laborious we could see at a glance why a particular game was there.

I've thought about adding a more general Comments section to the game page. I dunno if people would want this or if it's just turning the whole site into Facebook.

Matthew Tassier wrote:You could split the voting into two periods. Have all nominated games in the vote for, say, Tues-Thurs and then have just the top 5 in the voting at that point subject to voting for the rest of the week, Fri-Sun or whatever. Keen people can vote early, busy people later.

Hmm, don't like this. Anything which affects the balance of voting on different games is likely to make the process unfair.

Maybe, if only games between humans, counted.

I think some way of limiting the number of nominations (god knows how you'd implement it, though, since I'm not sure banning self-nominations is a good idea; all you'd then get is friends of people nominating games or whatever - who trawls the archive looking for good games?), I didn't vote because I really cba to look through 20ish apterous games, and it doesn't seem fair to vote on games I haven't looked at.

So yes, a complaint without any useful suggestion.

Marc Meakin wrote:Maybe, if only games between humans, counted.

This sucks. I was quite pleased with my game against the Guardian. Would be a shame if that wasn't up for voting.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Marc Meakin wrote:Maybe, if only games between humans, counted.

This sucks. I was quite pleased with my game against the Guardian. Would be a shame if that wasn't up for voting.

Maybe there should be sub-categories then.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Matthew Tassier wrote:Perhaps when nominating a game people should have to type in a description of why the game was worthy of nomination. This might put people off from nominating willy-nilly and also it would help make the voting process less laborious we could see at a glance why a particular game was there.

I've thought about adding a more general Comments section to the game page. I dunno if people would want this or if it's just turning the whole site into Facebook.

I've thrown caution to the wind and done this anyway. Publish and be damned!

When voting for GOTW, is 1 the lowest vote, or is "abstain" the lowest vote? (I.e., are we looking at total points, or average over people who gave it a number, or what?)

Andrew Feist wrote:When voting for GOTW, is 1 the lowest vote, or is "abstain" the lowest vote? (I.e., are we looking at total points, or average over people who gave it a number, or what?)

Average over people who gave it a number.

How about any game needing at least two seconders (not the participants) to make it into the GOTW list?
Edit: If this still results in a high number of games, make it three or four.

Anything and everything seems to be getting nominated for GOTW.
Makes voting very tedious indeed.
Bring back hanging.

D Eadie wrote:Anything and everything seems to be getting nominated for GOTW.
Makes voting very tedious indeed.
Bring back hanging.

Only 8 games go through to the vote.

Charlie Reams wrote:

D Eadie wrote:Anything and everything seems to be getting nominated for GOTW.
Makes voting very tedious indeed.
Bring back hanging.

Only 8 games go through to the vote.

But you have to vote for them before you get to vote for them. Okay, its called a nomination, but you know what i mean. You can't nominate unless you analyse the games to see who deserves to make the final 8. I love bitching about Apterous, it's great therapy.

D Eadie wrote: But you have to vote for them before you get to vote for them. Okay, its called a nomination, but you know what i mean. You can't nominate unless you analyse the games to see who deserves to make the final 8. I love bitching about Apterous, it's great therapy.

That's an inevitable consequence of trying to pick the best game out of the 3000 or so that are played every week. My approach is just to nominate nice games that I happen to see and then vote on the final 8.

Charlie Reams wrote:

D Eadie wrote: But you have to vote for them before you get to vote for them. Okay, its called a nomination, but you know what i mean. You can't nominate unless you analyse the games to see who deserves to make the final 8. I love bitching about Apterous, it's great therapy.

That's an inevitable consequence of trying to pick the best game out of the 3000 or so that are played every week. My approach is just to nominate nice games that I happen to see and then vote on the final 8.

I never imagined it would be 3000 games a week.
Leave it with me and i'll find something else to criticise. It is Countdown's off-air time afterall, so what better way to spend it than annoying you.

D Eadie wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

D Eadie wrote: But you have to vote for them before you get to vote for them. Okay, its called a nomination, but you know what i mean. You can't nominate unless you analyse the games to see who deserves to make the final 8. I love bitching about Apterous, it's great therapy.

That's an inevitable consequence of trying to pick the best game out of the 3000 or so that are played every week. My approach is just to nominate nice games that I happen to see and then vote on the final 8.

I never imagined it would be 3000 games a week.
Leave it with me and i'll find something else to criticise. It is Countdown's off-air time afterall, so what better way to spend it than annoying you.

Doesn't annoy me at all mate, I'm always open to criticism, but some problems [like conundrum lag] are just in the nature of the beast.