The Video Game Critic

I like the idea of increasing visitor engagement through an interactive feedback system.  Thoughts:

o Comments --> I agree with the AtariFever - I wouldn't do it.  That is a great deal of work and, in all honesty, is just bait for trolls.
o Grading System --> To be consistent, I would stick to the same as what you have (A+ to F-).
o User Average --> When presenting the data, use the mean rather than the average.  That way it will be more accurate and lessen the impact of Fanboy/Hater votes.
o Control --> Leave voting open to all - this may passively drive membership in the forum.  Limit votes to 1 per IP address (not perfect, but still a minor deterrent to cheating)
o GUI --> I like the slider idea, but using a standard dropdown/submit might be the way to go to ensure compatibility across all browsers/environments.

Hope this helps, and thanks for making improvements to the site Dave.

Terry

Just to let you know, I'm still making good progress.  Got a database set up which holds the grades.  And I've modified a review screen to automatically load up the votes and display the grades next to mine.

Now I need an interface to let people submit the votes.  I just finished making a little modal dialog that pops up and lets the user choose a grade.  Now it's basically just a matter of wiring that in so it propagates the vote to the database.

Hopefully I'll have some kind of "beta" page working next week so you guys can play around with it and provide some feedback before the thing goes live site-wide.

Once it gets going I could generate some interesting statistics that could be flashed on the main page.  Stuff like:

- games getting the most votes
- games with most votes in disagreement with critic
- highest/lowest rated games (last 30 days)
- highest/lowest rated games (all time)

...any more ideas are welcome.

Got a nifty little pop-up window that lets you select a grade for a particular game and submit it to the server.  Now it's just a matter of writing the code to process the submission.

Pretty soon I should have a beta page for you guys to test out.

[QUOTE=videogamecritic]Got a nifty little pop-up window that lets you select a grade for a particular game and submit it to the server.  ...[/QUOTE]

Not sure a pop-up window is the way to go with the myriad of ad-blocking/pop-up stopper products on the market.  Also, there may be compatibility issues with mobile devices (or at the very least an irritant on how they process a new 'window'.  Just a thought.

Terry

Thanks for the tip Terry; we'll see how it goes in the testing phase.

I actually have all the functionality working now, as far as voting on a grade goes.

Just need to make some cosmetic changes and add some error handling.