Downvoting; Vote system change request.

The new layout has been here for a few months now, everyone is very excited about the NG comunity growing, thanks to the new features and all the cool new stuff to come. But there is a very real problem that has always been a part of newgrounds in a small way that, this past summer, became very hard to ignore.

I'm talkign about downvoting. The Rock Ount contest itself was a great oppertunity for people to attempt to win some huge prizes (myself included). But it had a horrible side effect. For 2 months, rockout games were vulnerable to downvoting by they're competition, and with over 100 games in the contest, thats alot of competition.

People like Johnny Sedona, creator of We Are Legend:Arockalypse have talked about this in they're userpage, and they have every right to be mad. We Are Legend:Arockalypse is an awesome game, but when Johnny Sedona made his post, the game was at a score of 3.15, that is a travisty.

What I'm proposing is a change in a system that has been generaly the same for years. There is no reason why we need to vote multiple times on one entry, even over the course of multiple days. The score we give to a movie or game is what we think of that submission on a scale of 1-5. Why would we need to vote again if we already gave our opinion. Perhaps we would be able to change our one vote at a later date, but we should only actually be able to count for one vote. Its the fair thing to do, and I'm asking Tom and the rest of the NG staff and community to take this idea seriously.

If you support a change in the voting system, or some way to prevent down voting, please make a post in your user page and syndicate it to the front page. Lets make a change and make the voting system fair.
Some links:
Userpage post by Johnny Sedona
Userpage post by OneStarIdiot
PBot's top 5 post on one of the last few days of the contest, with a discussion about downvoting.
Google search with every mention of it.

Comments

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Combatd 2007-10-24 23:05:13

Yeah I agree some people vote 0 on submissions everyday to try and get it blammed.

squeakytoad 2007-10-24 23:41:36

The voting system has worked fine for years.
Sure, there will always be people who abuse it, and like all things, there will be flaws for as long as it exists, but there's not really much anyone can do about it but grin and bear it.

JohnMazz 2007-10-24 23:41:36

That may end up being the case, but I'll I'm asking for is for Tom and the guys to sit down and look into it, and if they have already, to let us know the details and why some of us are wrong to think its broken

clixels 2007-10-25 00:01:15

I do agree with you on most levels. There are movies that I myself would like to vote on multiple times to raise the score, but you are right, that isn't really fair. But I'm sure that with a system like that, somebody will find a glitch or something like that and there will be a problem. But once again, I agree.

JohnMazz 2007-10-25 00:01:15

Well yore right. It occured to me that maybe being able to vote multiple times is a reward for the more active users; they are on NG more, so they get to vote more, but really, thats what user levels are, higher level users' votes are worth more.

I just see the voting system as a tool for viewers to tell the author how they liked it. Why would I have to tell them every day? I should get one vote per movie, representing my opinion on it.

Dazmi 2007-10-25 00:47:32

3.15 is bad???

It's not about popularity, or winning prizes.
It's about making a game or moive & getting better at it

JohnMazz 2007-10-25 00:47:32

You make a good point, we should be here for the love of making movies, but the fact is that there is a large number of opportunities for flash artists that simply rely on score. Whether its getting portal awards, leading to just more exposure, or its for those of us who are trying to make a living at this, getting paid to make popular movies or game.

Its hard to say that making flash should be totally pure, if some one has the opportunity to make a living doing something they love, then thats great!

Tystarr 2007-10-25 01:34:38

I agree with Dazmi. Let your work speak for itself, you should never have to change a rule or speak to the people for your stuff to be rated higher.

JohnMazz 2007-10-25 01:34:38

Its not actually about getting rated higher, its about getting rated fairly. I want the number of votes to reflect the number of people motivated enough to vote, not the number of people who vote multiple times because they really love or really hate you or your work, or even worse, because they are trying to make their work win an award.

Eilikrinis 2007-10-25 04:09:51

The NG staff will never do anything that will cause less people to come here and forcing Joe newgrounds to only be allowed to vote once will do that and he will have considerably less motivation to come here. Not to mention, there are thousands of flash that down right deserve to be down played over time to make room for newer work or even something not as appreciated. I agree that it's a shame that people will cheat to win prizes but this isn't a realistic solution.

molkman 2007-10-25 07:45:56

I don't think there is a problem. Some really great things get bad scores and some crappy things get good scores. Things that are popular on other sites get ignored and all that. You can't change that by changing the voting system, you just have to deal with it. And, speaking of rock out games, I guess not really many people are interested in rythm games, such games have always been rated worse than normal games.

JonBro 2007-10-25 09:06:40

I don't think Newgrounds' entire voting system should be changed just because of this one problem.
As squeakytoad said,
"The voting system has worked fine for years.
Sure, there will always be abuse it, and like all things there will be flaws for as long as it exists . . . grin and bear it."

As Dazmi said,
"It's not about popularity, or winning prizes. It's about making a game or moive & getting better at it"

As Tystarr said,
"you should never have to change a rule to speak to the people for your stuff to be rated higher"

This should not be taken THAT seriously. If someone makes an amazing movie, it probably will be rated high for a while. Then, of course, there will be the downvoters for people who think the movie is overrated. That's just the way Newgrounds is.

MitchLordofFire 2007-10-29 01:18:41

When are you going to make a new video