Abolish the positive/negative rating system in Steam workshop

[Airmaster]

The thumbs up / thumbs down rating for users Steam workshop should be ended and replaced with the awards system. Steam users badly abuse the thumbs up / thumbs down rating system in place to harass or take revenge on other users when they are angry, banned or lose a debate in the game forums and take it out on other users Steam Workshops.

Please get rid of the thumbs up / thumbs down rating in Steam workshop. Its just being abused.

[Crashed]

Awards get abused too.

[Mad Scientist]

The thumbs down let you know out of the total how liked or disliked something is. What you're suggesting, is to be shielded from reality that your work might not be that great, and you need to work on it more before people like it.

Everything can be abused, I doubt a group of people are following you around just to give you a thumbs down.

[nullable]

In my experience amazing content isn't negatively reviewed into oblivion. Vote brigading can occur sure, but any system that relies on users input carries that risk of some users using those systems negatively on a whim. If it concerns you that much, you'll just have to think about the effects on your content before you get involved in topics or fights.

[Airmaster]

All good points Gent's but yet the potential for abuse is nonetheless still there. Replace it with the awards system may curb some of the abuse from angry users . Yes I do agree there is potential for abuse using awards system but it can't be used to harass you through your workshop with negative thumbs down on all your contributions.

[Mad Scientist]

No replacing it with a feel-good-only option would just open it up to the reward version of "Rep for Rep" as already demonstrated within the first week where things were changed. There's a whole thread on that.

People also need to know if their stuff is disliked, it helps them to realize what is and isn't liked by the community. Thus they can work on it and make it better.

[Brian9824]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Airmaster:

All good points Gent's but yet the potential for abuse is nonetheless still there. Replace it with the awards system may curb some of the abuse from angry users . Yes I do agree there is potential for abuse using awards system but it can't be used to harass you through your workshop with negative thumbs down on all your contributions.

There are no negative rewards that carry any weight, and even if they added it then that means you'd have pay the person who made the workshop item in points to leave then a negative mark. Something that makes absoultely no sense at all.

Heck it would encourage people to make crap items just so people would give them points telling others its crap.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Airmaster:

All good points Gent's but yet the potential for abuse is nonetheless still there. Replace it with the awards system may curb some of the abuse from angry users . Yes I do agree there is potential for abuse using awards system but it can't be used to harass you through your workshop with negative thumbs down on all your contributions.

That doesn't help separate good Worshop mods from the bad one though and that is what the up/down system is intended for.

Yes, there will be some abuse. That is natural as people will always abuse something in some way. With the removal of down being displayed, it is far less abused though.

A good mod will always be voted up and ranked higher then the downvoters abusing the system can compensate for.

Awards can not be a replacement for the current system.

[Reggaejunkiedrew]

There's potentially abuse in any system, it doesn't mean it's actually a widespread problem. I think you massively overestimate the amount of people who use workshop ratings in the way you describe. I also dislike the idea that anything with a potential for abuse needs to be changed, Steam wouldn't have very many features left if that was their philosophy.

E: also the thumbs up and thumbs down are used to calculate a 5 star average. I wouldn't want to be the one who has to somehow code how that is supposed to make sense with awards.

[Airmaster]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Mr. Gentlebot:

No replacing it with a feel-good-only option would just open it up to the reward version of "Rep for Rep" as already demonstrated within the first week where things were changed. There's a whole thread on that.

People also need to know if their stuff is disliked, it helps them to realize what is and isn't liked by the community. Thus they can work on it and make it better.

But that is not what is happening, some users are using it to harass someone with whom they lost an argument with on a game forum and got a warning from a moderator or banned from the forums. I see this quite often on my Steam workshop.

I know you can't please everyone and I am not going to try to but if they using it for revenge and harassment it should be changed to something that prohibits this kind of behavior to use it for revenge and harassment. That's all I'm saying.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Airmaster:

But that is what happening, some users are using it to harass someone with whom they lost an argument with on a game forum and got a warning from a moderator or banned from the forums. I see this quite often on my Steam workshop.

I know you can't please everyone and I am not going to try to but if they using it for revenge and harassment it should be changed to something that prohibits this kind of behavior to use it for revenge and harassment. That's all I'm saying.

Ignore them. I know I do. They want the reaction.

There is no way to really tell why someone downvoted a workshop item, so there is no way for Valve to tell if it was harassment or revenge. Even if it is, like I said, a good mod will have far more upvoted then the user could make downvotes to counter.

[Brian9824]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Airmaster:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Mr. Gentlebot:

No replacing it with a feel-good-only option would just open it up to the reward version of "Rep for Rep" as already demonstrated within the first week where things were changed. There's a whole thread on that.

People also need to know if their stuff is disliked, it helps them to realize what is and isn't liked by the community. Thus they can work on it and make it better.

But that is not what is happening, some users are using it to harass someone with whom they lost an argument with on a game forum and got a warning from a moderator or banned from the forums. I see this quite often on my Steam workshop.

I know you can't please everyone and I am not going to try to but if they using it for revenge and harassment it should be changed to something that prohibits this kind of behavior to use it for revenge and harassment. That's all I'm saying.

There is no way to prevent that. Steam can't magically read the mind of the person leaving the rating to know if they are leaving it because they don't like it or if because they don't like the person.

If a handful of users are indeed doing that then feel free to report the users and it can be looked at by support.

Charging people to leave negative reviews will never happen

[Brian9824]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Spawn of Totoro:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Airmaster:

But that is what happening, some users are using it to harass someone with whom they lost an argument with on a game forum and got a warning from a moderator or banned from the forums. I see this quite often on my Steam workshop.

I know you can't please everyone and I am not going to try to but if they using it for revenge and harassment it should be changed to something that prohibits this kind of behavior to use it for revenge and harassment. That's all I'm saying.

Ignore them. I know I do. They want the reaction.

There is no way to really tell why someone downvoted a workshop item, so there is no way for Valve to tell if it was harassment or revenge. Even if it is, like I said, a good mod will have far more upvoted then the user could make downvotes to counter.

I mean if you suspect a user of doing it you can always report them and Valve can investigate. If that user for instance marked down every single item someone did that is a big flag, but that is for support to worry about.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Opprinnelig skrevet av brian9824:

I mean if you suspect a user of doing it you can always report them and Valve can investigate. If that user for instance marked down every single item someone did that is a big flag, but that is for support to worry about.

But how do you know they didn't just not like the mod, even then?

Even if they think the user did abuse, is it a big enough issue to do anything about a single user or a handful vs many more that may like the mod? Is it worth doing anything about?

[nullable]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Airmaster:

All good points Gent's but yet the potential for abuse is nonetheless still there. Replace it with the awards system may curb some of the abuse from angry users . Yes I do agree there is potential for abuse using awards system but it can't be used to harass you through your workshop with negative thumbs down on all your contributions.

As long as there's users involved, users will do things you don't like. No matter how much you sterilize the system, any opportunity for user interaction carries that risk. At some point though you can leave your system an unappealing husk trying to micromanage users to oblivion. And that has more undesirable long term consequences than dealing with a few malcontents directly.

[Brian9824]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Spawn of Totoro:

Opprinnelig skrevet av brian9824:

I mean if you suspect a user of doing it you can always report them and Valve can investigate. If that user for instance marked down every single item someone did that is a big flag, but that is for support to worry about.

But how do you know they didn't just not like the mod, even then?

Even if they think the user did abuse, is it a big enough issue to do anything about a single user or a handful vs many more that may like the mod? Is it worth doing anything about?

You could do analytics, like if they only mark down items from certain people and mark down all their items across multiple games for instance.

Again though, no idea if they WOULD investigate, just that would be the only way to really tell.