Moddb Blacklist Thread

Hi all!

Since most of my experiences with mods were rather discouraging (some frustrating), I wonder if a "blacklist" of Moddb members would be made use of to a good extent, or if it would just end up in a flaming chaos. I think there could be criteria (like reliability, frequency of contact, dedication, skills, longevity, etc...) to help determine the qualities of moddb members. I'm just starting to get sick and tired of working for mod teams that vanish into thin air, because of some stupid incident and lack of leadership. There are always team members putting the pressure on others.

So, let's say someone is a capable programmer, but hasn't finished a single mod, though he attempted to several times. He naturally assumed his position as mod leader, but sucks at it, which is the reason for his ongoing failure. Wouldn't it make it much easier knowing about this, BEFORE creating a hierarchy for a team and choosing a leader?

Another case: somebody thinks mods can be made in a day and everybody has as much free time as he does. So he gets on everyones nerves and blames the leaders for the slow progress. Wouldn't you want to know that this guy has skills, but most likely will mess up your team, if you recruit him? Wouldn't it also mean he has to change for the better, before attempting to work on something with a team again? There could be some way to show a "tendency" bar, like when somebody received a lot of bad votes in the past, but lately got some good remarks, his tendency would go towards "good" (versus evil).

I believe that might have been the purpose of Moddb's karma stats (btw, where are they now?) Except nobody seemed to understand what that karma thing was about and it didn't help with modding. I believe it would be so much easier to recruit your team knowing what risks you take. Though that would not be entirely possible, it would at least keep you from having to guess for two months or more, how a collaboration works out.

I also think this might work on another level, namely on pace. A lot of times mod teams seem to split up, because people are arguing about who's working the most, complaining, arguing some more - ruining the motivation and insulting people from out of nowhere. This could be helped by finding people, who have an inclination to work fast paced, because they have too much time or live in a cave. This goes versus people, who prefer a slow pace and see mods as portfolio pieces and leisure-time entertainment, which help upgrading their skills. Ambition is a good thing, but it can ruin coherence of a team, if not everybody from the (core) team feels the same way about it.

So what do you think? Good idea or will it lead to flame wars? Can someone please tell me what that Karma thing was about? I felt like this was another little gadget, which Moddb created to no higher purpose. Perhaps a rating system could also be incorporated into Desura. I'm not sure how it will work, but having a little oversight and getting community feedback on people you might not want to recruit could make a lot of mods last longer and eventually be successful, too.

Fuck, I forgot to make a poll...

Edited by: SinKing

Like rating developers?

I like the concept, but that kind of seems like a horrible mark of shame that can go awfully wrong. It can easily be abused.

Maybe the reverse of this. Instead of picking out the bad, what if you could 'recommend' another developer. Then you could see what developer was recommended, and maybe by who, so you could see if they were recommended by a reputable source. That would put a spotlight on more worthy developers.

Yeah I've seen several communities have a private blacklist, but to implement an official dev rating system just seems like it could easily become a blemish to the site. I do however like where Ninjadave is going with it, almost like a member feedback sort of thing. A developer referral system could work, in essence, like the rating system that is already in place. You would earn higher status based upon how much you contributed to a mod or indie's development.

It's not a bad idea, it's just one of those things you have to be careful with. You don't want people to be able to abuse the system otherwise you're just left with an inaccurate depiction of a possible team member.

All systems can be abused, just some more than others. The recommendation systems seems interesting. Less prone to abuse and helps to locate people which have a good chance of being useful to a project. Problem is only that newcomers have a difficult stand. You can be a top-shot but without a project done yet you are overlooked.

It could definitely be abused with a negative feedback ability, but then it could also be abused with a positive feedback ability (e.g, one person getting everyone else to deliberately boost them). A referral system similar to LinkedIn's may work, but ultimately, I'm not sure it's necessary.

this can all be fixed with talking to the person about ther abilities and what ther not good at, b4 letting them join a team or w/e your doing. eg Asking about previous modding experience, if they show good leadership skills and so on. im sure you get what im getting @

Just post in their profile.

Kyou. wrote: this can all be fixed with talking to the person about ther abilities and what ther not good at, b4 letting them join a team or w/e your doing. eg Asking about previous modding experience, if they show good leadership skills and so on. im sure you get what im getting @

While I do think there should be more oversight involved on the part of teams looking to recruit new members it is pretty easy for one to "play-up" their work or in other words make it appear as if they are more qualified than they actually may be. I know it can be common when you see examples of a members work for them to say things like "This work is old" or "This work does not really represent my current skillset". People mean well, but their ambition often exceeds their ability.

If the system were to be implemented it would likely have to be objective and impartial. It would have to give credit to those developers who earned it, but obviously as Dragonlord stated you wouldn't want newcomers to be overlooked based solely on the fact that they hadn't completed a project.

Just to throw another idea out there; Perhaps a leveling system based on the rank of the project you were a member of. For example, you start off at level 1 just as you do when you join the site. You become part of a team and eventually complete a mod. The higher the community votes your mod the faster you would progress, this would also be based obviously on how many votes your mod receives. In essence the modding community would decide on how much they value your work. Maybe even have the option to show or hide developer ranking on your profile.

I'm not sure how much sense that made, I tried to make it as clear as possible, but it's getting late here and I don't know how eloquent I am at this hour.

can i join the blacklist?

Hatel3reed wrote: Just to throw another idea out there; Perhaps a leveling system based on the rank of the project you were a member of. For example, you start off at level 1 just as you do when you join the site. You become part of a team and eventually complete a mod. The higher the community votes your mod the faster you would progress, this would also be based obviously on how many votes your mod receives. In essence the modding community would decide on how much they value your work. Maybe even have the option to show or hide developer ranking on your profile.

Given the popularity of mods which never see completion or progress amongst the non-developer community, I can never see this working.

Unless you believe that all the more competant developers are all working on Stargate / Anime mods for this, that or the other.Other popular projects are only relatively small and easy changes, whereas many of the less popular ones are potentially far more significant.

It also severely punishes newer people and projects on the site, as projects listed for ten years are going to be voted for a lot more than those that have been there for ten days, regardless of quality and developer skill / maturity.

DonPunch wrote: Just post in their profile.

Profile owners can delete comments, won't work

I'm all for the idea for recommendations for Individual modders or MOD teams that's acquired once they've worked on a completed and shipped MOD. It could be a simple number/star ratio and for every completed MOD the person receives one. That way it's easy to spot those who don't always work on vapourware.

My idea is a mixture between the recommend and blacklist you can give feed back like youtube with a slight variation. 2 thumbs down (could be like very bad) 1 thumb down (bad or poor) like a sideways thumb (neutral) one thumb up (good) two thumbs up (great) newbies could start out as neutral (or something like untapped potential just something that sounds like they could be good) so they aren't over looked. It could be abused but what can't?

Hatel3reed wrote: While I do think there should be more oversight involved on the part of teams looking to recruit new members it is pretty easy for one to "play-up" their work or in other words make it appear as if they are more qualified than they actually may be. I know it can be common when you see examples of a members work for them to say things like "This work is old" or "This work does not really represent my current skillset". People mean well, but their ambition often exceeds their ability.

If that's the case then saying "Let's see something newer" or "I want to see something along these lines" would be how you respond.

I've got lots of work I don't show on moddb.com because it's not related to modding & if someone wanted to see something more recent I'd mail them a DVD or put up some clips.

Beyond the ability of producing quality work there are many other factors, which are hard to take into account. I mentioned "pace". I know we all wish that mods had perfect design documents and an accurate timeframe for each of the development stages. However, something like this is very hard to accomplish, because of real life issues and fluctuation in mod teams. If you know from the start that the people you're working with are dedicated and hard ass and will do anything to push their mod to completion within 15 months, you will know that there will be little to no time to slack around. If you have just one skilled team member, who believes this, he can ruin motivation and tear the team apart just because of his attitude.

That's to say, people who link with each other on more than a superficial "I want to make a mod" attitude should be able to find like-minded spirits. At the moment it is more a lottery to be lucky enough to find a few decent people, who will hang in a development and overcome obstacles. Overcoming obstacles is much easier if you are like-minded.

Well, what's the difference if someone interviews for a job & it turns out they get hired but are horrible (for various reasons posted above) at the job? They're pretty much fired & someone replaced them.

I'm not seeing a reason why that's not the same with mod teams, no need to make reputations for people, etc.

The problem is more a reputed company does not take harm from such "seeking" for the right person but with mod teams it can be quite a time waste and depressing to switch people around until you find the right now. Keep in mind mod teams, especially at the beginning, are rather loosely coupled until the grow together over the course of a project. It would help a lot to avoid such problems in such situations.

Kyou. wrote: this can all be fixed with talking to the person about ther abilities and what ther not good at, b4 letting them join a team or w/e your doing. eg Asking about previous modding experience, if they show good leadership skills and so on. im sure you get what im getting @

Basically an interview process ... which probably should be done in the first place.

I know for a fact I would get black listed ... I just don't have the enthusiasm as I used to have when it comes to modding, thus, making things really tough ...

I seem to currently be stuck in a limbo where I want to mod in my free time, but when I start doing stuff I immediately get bored of it.

This was made obviously apparent to me when Plinkotink gave me a simple test before joining his team and I failed horribly at it ... (took about two months to complete a simple model of a building )

Dragonlord wrote: The problem is more a reputed company does not take harm from such "seeking" for the right person but with mod teams it can be quite a time waste and depressing to switch people around until you find the right now. Keep in mind mod teams, especially at the beginning, are rather loosely coupled until the grow together over the course of a project. It would help a lot to avoid such problems in such situations.

If a team wants someone who's serious they should put in the effort themselves to find someone who's serious.

It's not moddb's job to find modders for lazy people. Lazy people is why this whole thing would get started in the first place.

TheHappyFriar wrote:

Dragonlord wrote: The problem is more a reputed company does not take harm from such "seeking" for the right person but with mod teams it can be quite a time waste and depressing to switch people around until you find the right now. Keep in mind mod teams, especially at the beginning, are rather loosely coupled until the grow together over the course of a project. It would help a lot to avoid such problems in such situations.

If a team wants someone who's serious they should put in the effort themselves to find someone who's serious.

It's not moddb's job to find modders for lazy people. Lazy people is why this whole thing would get started in the first place.

That's kinda silly to tell people to find the right people "just like that". If it would be so simple there would not be the majority of projects hitting douche-bags.

The problem is that good people are very rare. Even if we had the perfect system to filter out problem people, it wouldn't solve the problem that there's more wannabe leaders than people with time to help them.

On a much earlier note, I was thinking along the lines of named recommendations, such as:

"SinKing was recommended by Ninjadave, Dragonlord, etc."

I could toss a PM to one or two of the reviewers, find out a little back story. If they are very busy, worked well on a team, and so on. Even if they haven't finished any projects for whatever reason. Fakers can be noticed too:

"GenericUser was recommended by NeverOnline, BunchOfNumbers, Spambot, etc."

Or if I think GenericUser is the real deal, maybe I'll e-mail the reviewers anyways.

I don't think this idea was to skip the interview process or learn for yourself, just a step to make it simpler.

^ This is pretty much how the LinkedIn recommendation system works. It's all positive feedback and requires a written summary of the recommendation.

I've only read the original post, so please disregard this reply if this has all been said before.

LinkedIn has a "Recommendations" system that I usually refer to when I'm not sure about whether to add someone to a development team (likewise, if someone isn't sure of my capabilities, I refer them to my recommendations on my own LinkedIn profile). It's not simply a "yay or nay" system, but requires that something be written about the "recommendee" as well.

So far I've not seen much positive use of LikedIn though. It has the same "facebook" type connection system. I would definitely not trust a LinkedIn profile at all.