Anyone else think that the community should nominate maps for community favorites?

Yes, but...
With a system like you're proposing, the maps that go into final voting would have to be based upon the number of nominations during the month. This would heavily favor maps that are released at the beginning of the month.

I think it should go back to the old system that allowed people to nominate 3 maps at the end of the month. This means that if a great map is released within the last week of the month, it would still have a legitimate shot of getting a spot in the final vote.

 

If that's your biggest concern about it, you're missing the bigger picture.

Also, since ****ing when was FHF explicitly for the month? It may be monthly, but it was never meant to be a "best maps from the month" contest or anything of the sort.

 

#Cesspool2017

 

He was suggesting that every map have a 'Nominate' button attached to it, and that the final voting options consist of the maps which received the most nominations (button clicks) during the month. That doesn't mean you could only nominate maps that were submitted during that month, but with how the maps database works on here there's basically zero chance that anything older would make the final list, just because nobody ever sees those maps unless the map gets bumped constantly.

I have lots of concerns with any form of Community Favorites.
One of the obvious ones is voting manipulation by particular groups, which I'm pretty sure is what you're referring to?

Voting manipulation is going to happen anytime the community is involved in the nomination and voting process. With some of the alternative ways of doing the Community Favorites, manipulation of voting is still possible, but it's virtually impossible to detect. With public nominations and voting, which is what I want to see, it's still possible but has to be done out in the open for everyone to see.

Community Favorites is an imperfect process right now. It's going to be an imperfect process if it's changed also. I would rather see it change from the current system though, even with the downsides that would come with it. What I really liked about the old system (despite its obvious downsides) was that it encouraged interaction, and that it was transparent (you could see who was nominating maps and which maps they were nominating).

I was in favor of the current system for a long time, but I've changed my mind over the last 6 months or so. I feel like the 'community' aspect is really missing. The current system feels stale and uninspired.

For anyone that's not familiar with how Community Favorites (aka Forgehub Favorites) used to be done, here's a link to an old Nomination Thread and a Voting Thread.

 

No matter how FHF is conducted, there will always be flaws to it. That's why FHF's weren't treated as proper "features" in the past. I'm well aware of the flaws of the old system, that still exist in the current one, given I was one of the first people to exploit it back in the day. There was a pretty long period where if one of my maps wasn't the winner, some one from my particular clique was, as we voted as a block and had the numbers to force it.

 

Exactly.
So what part of the bigger picture was I missing? Because I guess I'm not sure what you were referring to. Or is it just because I didn't explicitly mention voting manipulation as a concern?

 

You didn't explicitly mention it, so I assumed you didn't recognize it. My bad.

 

Gotcha. Basically like you said, I consider it an unavoidable byproduct of community involvement in the process. It's a major issue, but I just don't see the point in dwelling on it. We should try to mitigate it as much as possible obviously. I don't have any great ideas for how that can be done though.

All I know is that I used to look forward to participating in and following the process, and now I don't. That needs to change, regardless of the downsides that may accompany that change.

 

So, can't you do (# of votes)/(length of time)? I just worry about having bots and other factors, but those are also problems with how the current community favorites are selected.

 

Possibly. I guess I just prefer having a nomination thread because it's more interactive. Plus, it lets everyone know where different maps stand.

With an automated system, everyone is in the dark until the final voting options are decided. Part of what was interesting to me was seeing which maps would pull in those last few nominations that would set it apart from the others. With that system, even if your map didn't made the final cut, you at least knew where it stood in the court of popular opinion.

 

When we have the time, we will make more improvements to the system. I think public nominations would be great if we can 100% prevent people from creating alternate accounts. Chunk raises a good point, that threads have transparency of who posted but that can still lead to alt accounts exploiting the system or friends boosting maps in cliques.

Proposal:
- Grant 'Forge Critic' members with a nomination button. You can nominate up to 5 maps per month, almost as if you were granted a 'super like' button. This won't guarantee the map's inclusion for Community Favorite voting but it will factor into the total algorithm we currently have established.

- Increase weight of 'Forge Critic' data input entries. If maps are viewed, liked, reviewed, etc. All of this data would be weighted higher than regular members. Currently there is no difference between the data we collect from users and forge critics with our CF nomination system.

Do you think these proposals could create better nomination results? Thanks for the feedback everyone, this is a hard thing to get right the first time but I love having an automated system because I think it will be the most fair in the long run. Plus, it takes a huge load off of the staff's general responsibilities. No need to create, monitor and review threads created via the forums. This also forces us to stay on tempo each month.

Let us know what you think and we'll consider it!

 

@WARHOLIC

I think that would be an improvement, but I'm honestly not in favor of it because it still doesn't address my primary issue with the automated system, which is a lack of investment and interaction from site members.

At one time I would've agreed (and did, lol) that the automated system was the way to go because of how it simplifies the process for staff. I really think that with the amount of people on staff now though, that benefit is overstated. It would probably require less than 30 minutes of addition work per month for the staff (which would consist of the amount of time required to type up threads like those I posted above. And 30 minutes is very generous. 10 minutes is probably more realistic.

Even with the automated system, a lot of time is spent preparing the winners announcement. This part is quite time consuming, especially when a video is part of it. But that needs to be done regardless. The additional time required if it were changed to a manual system is so minimal in comparison that it's almost a completely irrelevant point to make in defense of the current system. What the site needs in order to grow (imo, obviously) is activity. Community Favorites has the potential to produce a lot of activity, but that potential is being wasted with the automated system.

 

Personally I am a big fan of not being allowed to vote/nominate maps unless the voter has played on them. It is entirely possible to implement that requirement into a nomination based system for community favorites through the Halo API. We experimented with it for a while at Forge.World and it worked just fine, although it would definitely need to be scaled and optimized for a larger database. With the recent integration of Microsoft Live accounts into these forums, you should be able to prevent 100% of alternate Forgehub profiles from voting.

Of course this would require a lot of time and money to implement, but I figured I would throw it out there.

 

I think it would be awesome to open up a poll like that. The only issue I see with it though is you can't gaurentee that enough of the community will vote on each map. Also, the poll would have to be published by 343i on an official 343i Halo site or publicly posted across the Halo 5 dashboard allowing you to make a vote as soon as you log on.
I doubt we see any of this happening anytime soon. I'm all in the running for it though!!!

 

There already is a Community Favorites Poll (you can vote in it right now by going to the Maps Database. You'll see the voting button just below the Featured Maps. Or you can try this link to go directly to the voting page.)

This is more a Forgehub tradition than anything else. It's something that's been running monthly for the greater part of the last 8 years on Forgehub. This thread is primarily a discussion of how to improve the existing process. Something on a larger scale like you're suggesting would be pretty awesome too though.