Spell Mods

[Palaslayer]

WE NEED NEW SPELL MODERATORS

I'd like to consider two things here. First, we need new spell mods and I think a team consisting of numerous mods would be the best possibility. The team should consist of at least 2 mods, better 2 GUI mods and 2 Jass mods. All of them should work as semi-mods, means, they will replace the missing mods (hanky who is inactive and eccho who is gone for a while) at least until eccho is back.
Second thing is that we have to get rid of the spam-spells that flood the section. therefore hanky had designed some new spell rules i think, we should replace the old spell rules with those if someone is able to get them from hanky or still has them somewhere.

If the administration agrees or not fact is that we are out of spell mods except for dr. super good who has other duties apart from that, right? and that we need spell mods who have the power to judge spells, and if they are unacceptable and not being fixed within a fixed duration to delete all spam spells and clear up the section.

I hope someone has the same opinion as I and will try to do something about that.

Greetings hivers,
~palaslayer

 

[Paladon]

The spell submission rules are currently under re-construction.

 

[Yixx]

I totaly agree with you, i have asked myself why we have all clean resource sections, except for spell and map section,, they are full of spam and other stuff,,
So i think we should get some more spell mods, it might also be a good idea to get one new permanent spell mod, because we got DSG, but he has other dutys, Eccho, but he is also inactive now, and Hanky, but i dont think Hanky reviews spells anymore does he? Or is he going to be back in some time?

Personally, i think we should ask some really good vJasser to become Spell mod, Like Dynasti or xxdingo93xx,, they rule! (xD),,

At least, if other admins/mods AND Ralle agree!

 

[Palaslayer]

hanky will most likely not come back to thehive for at least a long time.
we need both gui and jass mods.
hanky already designed new spell rules, or? at least he told me that.

 

[-Berz-]

Yeah, we need more moderators, spell section is a mess.

It's not like that all spells are bad, but there are many that are... and the good ones gets pushed somewhere in the back and aren't noticed.

Anyway I'm still up for the code/trigger submission;

When you upload a spell you attach a trigger/code to the resource, that makes job for moderators much easier, they don't need to download a map and open it, they can look at he code anywhere they have a computer. And if the code is bad, they can tell what to do...

Also I was thinking of making a "sticky" map, map would have all that a test spell map needs (for those who puts a spell into a blank map)

And another idea, to reduce the amount of spells, each user should make a spell pack(when he has more than 2 spells uploaded) That would reduce the number of pages in spell section.

Who would take a job? Someone that has a lot of free time, knows how the things are... I'm saying it's a lot to handle, and sooner or later you get bored and sick of it...

 

[Hawkwing]

The problem is that there aren't many candidates for the job. The administration has recognized that they're in dire need of more Spell Moderators, but there is no magical pixie dust that will bring those sort of people here. If you think you've found someone capable, then please speak up.

 

[busterkomo]

Spell moderators require a large knowledge of JASS; people THW is lacking.

 

[Pyritie]

I totaly agree with you, i have asked myself why we have all clean resource sections, except for spell and map section,, they are full of spam and other stuff,,

The map section is doing very well though.

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/apps.php?p=pendingstats

 

[Palaslayer]

gui mods:
-kingz, me, someone else

jass mods:
-dynasti
-dingo
there are a lot more

 

[Pyritie]

Ughh, not kingz

I'd had bad experience with him in the tutorial section

there are a lot more

List them all

 

[Paladon]

When you upload a spell you attach a trigger/code to the resource, that makes job for moderators much easier, they don't need to download a map and open it, they can look at he code anywhere they have a computer. And if the code is bad, they can tell what to do...

Yeah, Eccho and Hanky had the same idea.

Also I was thinking of making a "sticky" map, map would have all that a test spell map needs (for those who puts a spell into a blank map)

Happens, thanks god, rather rare. And such spells are mostly not approveable.

And another idea, to reduce the amount of spells, each user should make a spell pack(when he has more than 2 spells uploaded) That would reduce the number of pages in spell section.

But not the work for the moderation. But this point is generally alright.
Packs are better.

Who would take a job? Someone that has a lot of free time, knows how the things are... I'm saying it's a lot to handle, and sooner or later you get bored and sick of it...

Maps and Spells are such disadvantaged sections. You have to play a map before you can give a proper review, and you have to test the spell and review the code in order to give any kind of good criticism on those.

 

[Pyritie]

When you upload a spell you attach a trigger/code to the resource, that makes job for moderators much easier, they don't need to download a map and open it, they can look at he code anywhere they have a computer. And if the code is bad, they can tell what to do...

Yeah, Eccho and Hanky had the same idea.

I think Ralle has something like this in mind.

 

[Palaslayer]

so, i think someone before in this post said that it is a lot of work to do and everybody will get bored of it after some time and for that reason i was suggesting a team of mods so that the work done by a single one will be minimized.

 

[Hawkwing]

Most sections do have teams. But, as said before, there's more to it than simply requesting a team.

 

[bounty hunter2]

This reminds me of mini mods.

 

[Eccho]

We have discussed (at least me and Hanky) which one(s) who could be appropriate for the job. However, it is not enough to select one due to his knowledge of spells/coding in general. You should be able to act with maturity as well (I am not pointing any finger on anyone). It's not just we who can approve a new moderator. It goes through Ralle, Rui, Ghan or Hakeem first (I think).

The spell section is indeed under construction, and it will be changed. When it will be, it's up to Ralle, if he manages to make the trigger extractor work properly. There is a wip stage already, with some conflicts ahead. They need to be solved.

The trigger extractor would work in the way (if I have recalled it right), that, whenever a user submits a spell map, the extractor will find the gui script if placed in the gui category, and add it to the submitters thread. Jass and vjass will ofcourse show the corresponding. And the feature will make the spell moderating alot easier since we're now able to filter out low quality resources which is found violating against the rules by for instance, leaking horribly, or not being original or made with a high distinction.

Hanky is not coming back, that is for sure, when he told me.

About the spell rules, they are suggestivily changing, both from me, DSG and Hanky. We all agree they are not good enough. They just need to be summarised and approved I guess (but don't expect it too soon yet).

In my own opinion, the old system which was used here at thw in the beginning was much better. It involved having solely two "categories" of browsed spells: one Pending and one Approved. Anyhow what the section needs is a fresh start or simply, stop being cared of, like epicwar. But that would be a mess.

I wonder if it could be shutted down completely until the changes are made...

 

[PurplePoot]

There aren't really many (if any) good candidates.

Oh, and not Dynasti. Having to un-teach his students is bad enough.

 

[Captain Griffen]

You have no Jassers anymore.

 

[Yearight]

To sort most of the spell section fast you could just make some temporary GUI mods. As far as I can see many of the newer submitted spells are GUI. And there are also a bunch of people able to reveiw a GUI spell at the moment.

 

[busterkomo]

To moderate GUI spells properly, knowing JASS is a must.

 

[Yearight]

Well was just a quick solution as it is quite a mess.

 

[PurplePoot]

I don't think that solving the problem in terms of the overall number of spells should be the goal, as that's quite unrealistic. Rather, I think it should be to have the amount decreasing significantly per day.

 

[Yearight]

Yea you are right there.

 

[Eccho]

yes... on average there are at least 5 submitted spells per day, but not very seldom, 10.
The majority of them wouldn't be approved...

 

[Dr Super Good]

The problem is currently the spell section rules are not very clear. They are more of a guide line as to what a good spell should be and not what is allowable. They do not even cover systems, making rejecting any of them very hard. Thus curently rules are trying to be created which are just, easy to follow and clear.

 

[Rmx]

Well i can be a GUI mod spell reviewer ... i know alot of GUI .. ...

anyway the spell section is too messy i have seen ALOT of messy spells full of leaks ..

If u need some examples just ask

 

[Deuterium]

To moderate GUI spells properly, knowing JASS is a must.

Umm, yes but only basic Jass is needed not much more

And I must say, the spell section does terribly need more mods since it's being spammed with useless and badly done spells... I see Eccho and Dr. Super Good seem to be around now, but still as everyone agrees, a team is needed.

However, I don't know if there are perfect candidates. I mean a perfect mod would be one who's available on a daily basis (not necessarily daily, but who sticks around from time to time), who knows how to interact with people, who's patient enough to have to go through all the spammed spells, and who is himself good with GUI/Jass.

Actually, I have one person in mind considering GUI but won't be mentioning names here since I find that inappropriate and as a sort of advertisement...

About the "categories of browsed spells". Ok having "categories of browsed spells" wouldn't be much of a good idea, as it might cause confusion to those who aren't well known to the forum and sees the browsing/filtering options on the left...

So the idea I was discussing with Septimus a few weeks ago is two separate the Spells forum into two (or three). As in, when you choose to enter the Spells forum, you'll get a page to two (or three) links: first "Accepted Spells" and second "Pending Spells". The third - "Rejected Spells" - would depend on whether the Mods decide that Rejected Spells should be totally deleted or just moved to a separate forum.

This method would remove any confusion, make things neater and easier to go through. However, I'm not sure however if the spells would automatically go from one category to another or the Mods would have to manually do that once they decided on whether to approve or not.

I think some permanent semi-mods (with not as much knowledge considering spell-making as the real mods) would be a great idea, as they could take some huge load of work off the real Mods by being able of advising rejection to the Mods when it comes to obvious cases such as: plain object editor modifications, 1000-leaks-a-minute triggers, extremely buggy spells, etc... Thus Mods won't have to go through every single spell searching for all the problems and would instead be able of going through the more complicated spells which might contain certain problems to be pointed out...

I still might have some ideas to discuss, but that's it for now, as a start

Good luck guys!

 

[Rmx]

Great idea Msaeed28 ................ I like it alot !!!!!...

 

[Deuterium]

Great idea Msaeed28 ................ I like it alot !!!!!...

Glad to hear that Rmx

EDIT:

Ughh, not kingz

I'd had bad experience with him in the tutorial section

Well if YOU had bad experience with Kingz it doesn't mean he shouldn't be a mod...
And the person that I mentioned and didn't name is Kingz, why?

Kingz is active almost on a daily basis (now it's his last week of school so he's not around).
What's more he knows a lot of GUI and already know some good Jass.
He knows how to judge on spells and locate errors.
He knows how to interact with people in a nice yet serious manner....

So yes I'll advice Kingz...

 

[Septimus]

I think some permanent semi-mods (with not as much knowledge considering spell-making as the real mods) would be a great idea, as they could take some huge load of work off the real Mods by being able of advising rejection to the Mods when it comes to obvious cases such as: plain object editor modifications, 1000-leaks-a-minute triggers, extremely buggy spells, etc... Thus Mods won't have to go through every single spell searching for all the problems and would instead be able of going through the more complicated spells which might contain certain problems to be pointed out...

We have plenty of spells that contain heavy leak and most worst of all is... it doesn't follow rules.. :O

I have make a thread at resources moderation section at spells section an list of spells that violate rules. There is about 15 spells out of 40 spells in within 2 pages I check that deem to violate rules.

Soo far the list had been escalate to 30-50 spells.

 

[Eccho]

Im just going to add. The Gui extractor seems to be working soon. Hopefully it's just a matter of time.

The Jass/vJass extracting is pretty much solved, since the code was stored in the .wct file which is directly readable in notepad.

Edit: And the spell rules have been revisited already too. They are not applied yet though, but decided.

 

[Palaslayer]

So, let me gather all the opinions in this thread and summarize them.

• we need more mods (best would be semi-mods or mini mod teams who care for the majority of the spells and leaver the more complicated ones to real moderators with a great amount of knowledge concerning both Jass and GUI)

• everybody agrees that a new interface is needed for the spell section containing pproved and unapproved spells as well as the ones close to deletition which should have some days before they get removed from the spell section

I'd like to suggest the following moderator system for several reasons:

Their should be two moderator teams and one overall moderator.

Mod Team 1 (GUI)

• one mod
• one semi-mod
• a few mini moderators

Mod Team 2 (Jass and vJass)

• one mod
• one semi-mod
• a few mini moderators

The mini moderators will be elected by the mod and the semi-mod. Both teams should work and the overall moderator will only interfer when it is needed. For this position I'd thought of one of the existing moderators who does not have too much time left.

 

[Hawkwing]

• one mod

It would be better to have multiple moderators if possible to ease the job, but, as said many times, there's hardly one capable moderator.

• one semi-mod

What's a semi-mod? :S

• a few mini moderators

Everyone is a mini-moderator.

 

[Rmx]

Everyone is a mini-moderator.

But they don't use the Accept or Reject button for mini-moderators ...

Just set a poll and u will see 1% use it and another 99% don't ...

This is why wee need Spell MODS.

 

[Palaslayer]

a semi-mod is someone with not as much knowledge as the main mod who has a lot of spare time and will care for spam spells and still everyone might be a mini mod but no mod would approve a spell just because some guy said it is good, therefor some trusted mini mods are needed. as well as is did not think of the actual mini mods but of some less important mods who help the mods judging easy spells.

 

[Paladon]

Guys, just give an encouraged guy who knows some facts about GUI the power to reject spells. Nothing more.
Then unleash him and let him do his job.
He could, for example, use the search function and pick all those spells with a public rating between 1 and 2 to moderate. Those are usually instantly rejectable since they leak, are neither mpi nor mui etc.
You'll be pretty surprised how the section is getting clearer.

"Why do we moderate just the rejectable spells?"
Since the spell section is a mess, the people download pending and approved spells in equal amounts.
Our aim is the protection against leaking or insufficient spells, so let's reject those who cause errors or those who may decrease a map's quality only.
Later on, when the section is a bit cleaned, you can review by authors.
That means that you choose an author with a large amount of unreviewed spells and test all the unmoderated submissions.
Since the coding style of a user is in most cases noticeable all over his spells, this way is much more efficient than reviewing the submissions in a random order.

Just felt like giving my opinion on this.

 

[-Berz-]

Guys, just give an encouraged guy who knows some facts about GUI the power to reject spells. Nothing more.
Then unleash him and let him do his job.
He could, for example, use the search function and pick all those spells with a public rating between 1 and 2. Those are usually instantly rejectable since they leak, are neither mpi nor mui etc.
You'll be pretty surprised how the section is getting clearer.

"Why do we moderate just the rejectable spells?"
Since the spell section is a mess, the people download pending and approved spells in equal amounts.
Our aim is the protection against leaking or insufficient spells, so let's reject those who cause errors or those who may decrease a map's quality only.
Later on, when the section is a bit cleaned, you can review by authors.
That means that you choose an author with a large amount of unreviewed spells and test all the unmoderated submissions.
Since the coding style of a user is in most cases noticeable all over his spells, this way is much more efficient than reviewing the submissions in a random order.

Just felt like giving my opinion on this.

The thing I was saying yesterday about that hard leaking spell...

I know the person who would fit the job(there are two actually), but I'll name only one:

Septimus (I know he's not in the spell section for a long time, but he dares to say what others don't + he has experience from map section)

 

[Yearight]

"pick all those spells with a public rating between 1 and 2". But be sure to check the spell anyway. I had some bad experience with down-rating and I don't think I'm the only one. And if GUI mods is decided to be created here is a list of some qualified people:

Palaslayer
Rmx
Septimus
Baassee
I think Deuterium would be able to fit the job to as he seems to review most spells.

Also they seem to have only some minor flaws or none when typing English.

 

[Paladon]

Of course >.< "Pick them to moderate" is the point, just as explained later on in the text.

 

[Yearight]

Ooh didn't notice that. I don't get it. You want people with spell rating of 2 to moderate?

 

[Paladon]

No. I want the moderators to moderate their spells.

 

[Yearight]

Ok I get it now.

 

[Captain Griffen]

Actually Paladon has a good idea there.

The level of JASS skill required to note that a spell sucks is below that to say it's good. You could probably scrounge together enough people with knowledge of leaks, GUI, etc, to disapprove a considerable majority of the incoming spells, and then let the few decent Jassers review the rest.

 

[Deuterium]

Also they seem to have only some minor flaws or none when typing English.

Exactly! No one mentioned this idea... we need Mods who are able of communicating almost flawlessly in English and to be understandable.

It's not necessarily that the Mod has perfect English (although that is preferable).

I mean if the mod types: "he take" instead of "he takes" it's no big deal but still flawless English would be preferable since then there would be zero confusion considering what the Mods say, and I think since Mods write rules, well rules shouldn't have English mistakes...

Plus, and this is a VERY important aspect... Mods should be typing real English and not MSN english when rating the spell

I mean no one wants to read a rating as such:
"spells wrkng gr8 but gta rmove all the leeks nd make it mui!"

However, in open discussions language shouldn't be a must for the Mods, let them feel a bit comfy


And what Paladon says is very important!

However to comment now on Palaslayer's plan:

I'd like to suggest the following moderator system for several reasons:

Their should be two moderator teams and one overall moderator.

Mod Team 1 (GUI)

• one mod
• one semi-mod
• a few mini moderators

Mod Team 2 (Jass and vJass)

• one mod
• one semi-mod
• a few mini moderators

Well, I agree on the fact that two teams are needed, one GUI and one Jass. However, I believe that two Main Mods for everything should be needed, instead of one for GUI and one for Jass.
We separate the teams at the level of the semi-mods.

I think a number of two semi-mods per team would be better than one.

Also, mini-moderators should be like 5. This small number would make the judging more precise and less crowded.

Now let me explain why I gave such a plan:
Having 2 Mods for GUI and JASS together would decrease the probability that teams are mod-less if the mod has to take a break or leave for some time.
What's more, the two mods would have knowledge in all spell-making aspects, thus able to judge on everything. Also one mod would be relieving the other from time to time.

Why 2 semi-mods per teams? Well, since they're semi-mods, there might be gaps considering their knowledge, so their interaction as a must to reach a final wise judgment.

Why 5 mini-mods? Well, five would give the spell a fair chance, I mean there's a variety of opinions, so if I agree it's badly-done you might agree it's well done (although that's not much of a possibility, since if it's bad then everyone will notice it is ). But also, that would allow a fast judgment and not a crowded one.

Although I also think 5 is too much and 3 would be enough for GUI and definetly enough for Jass (we dont get as much Jass as GUI)

So to wrap things up, there's my modification of Palaslayer's plan:

The Overall Mods

• 2 mods

The GUI Mods

• 2 semi-mods
• 3 or 5 mini-mods

The vJass/Jass Mods

• 2 semi-mods
• 3 mini-mods

I'd be happy to discuss the "spell-rules" but I'd do that later at night...

Hope this helps

 

[Palaslayer]

approved.

 

[Rmx]

Approved.

 

[Deuterium]

Ok guys, but now, before we go into further planning, I think the mods would like to know who is up for the modding task (main, semi, and mini) so that they can also consider the mod numbers and teams depending on the people who are willing to help..

Palaslayer, since you opened the convo and you've got the first post, I'd agree that people should start PMing you on whether they're willing to help and which task they're up for, and then you'll start making a table/tables by editing the first post and filling it out everytime someone proposes his help...

You people agree on that?
And more importantly, do you agree on that Palaslayer?


Edit:
If you don't want that task I'll be willing to help with that...

 

[-Berz-]

I can be a mini-mini-mini mod That means that I do what I do now...

Yes, someone make a list of people, then make someone(current moderators) decide who is good enough to take a job.

 

[Deuterium]

I can be a mini-mini-mini mod That means that I do what I do now...

Well, actually BZK you can be very useful as a mini-mod since you're the best SFX judge around... true indeed!

Yes, someone make a list of people, then make someone(current moderators) decide who is good enough to take a job.

I'm waiting to see whether Palaslayer would like to do it

 

[Yearight]

Ugh... I just want MY spells approved :'( But I am willing to help, semi-mini whatever.