Voting a rule for "lame Scores" submissions.

greenspun.com : LUSENET : MAME Action Replay : One Thread

I think it's the time to vote for a clear, additional rule, in submitting recordings, to avoid the "spam" we're assisting at in the last weeks.

I hope this proposal won't be read as an "elitist" censorship, but the main reason for that is just to encourage anyone to submit "quality" scores, and, on the other hand, to save nowadays precious server CPU time (and disk space).

My proposal is : scores worthing less then 50 points (means 59% of the top score) will be refused. Of course, if a score drops down below this value (but was above when submitted) due to better scores submissions, it will be kept! An alternative could be to set the limit to 50% of the top score (that means to worth the player 43 points) (this one easier to calculate!!! :-)) . The only exception to this rule will be to accept a recording if it ranks #2 or #3 (look at the Amidar scores, for example!).

If you think this proposal is too restrictive, feel free to suggest lower limits.

The way that will be implemented is up to Zwaxy: could be a script running (yet another one!!!) at any upload, or someone receiving the e-mail notification, whith "deleting power" (the notification will have to be slightly modified to show the points worth by the submitted recording.)

Please, vote!

Ciao Cicca

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), September 06, 1999

Answers

To be honest with you... 50 points or 50% of top is WAY too restrictive... I'll go with a 5 or 10 point minimum... then again we do need to acknowledge the little CPU time we've got...

I guess my answer would be an unaffirmative I don't know :( I guess 25 points is much more reasonable... Or the top five.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 06, 1999.


I think the keyword "spam" may be useful.

Instead of rating a score for an individual by setting a standard from previous players scorings for other players which may not ever be attained by lesser individuals. Thus never letting a subplayer from ever participating in a particular event.

A "spam" uploading rule may be a better alternative then limiting a players ability for submiting scores.

Would it be easier for Zwaxy to limit all individuals to say 10 submissions a day or calculating a score for submission material?

I think a daily submission limit would alleviate part of the "lame" score submissions as it would promote getting a better score since the individual would have more time to gain a better score by more game time. Unless they used that extra time to have a life or something. ;)

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), September 06, 1999.


I think it'd be best to have only top 3 scores of each game, if it's necessary to have some restrictions. Different games have different scoring systems, so 50% is too much. Think about "marathon" games, Galaga, Gauntlet...

-- Tommi Tiihonen (tiihoto@hotmail.com), September 06, 1999.

One problem with restricting scores with only a certain number of top score. For me, there will be no way ever in HELL I could get within 1% of Krogman's score in Galaga. Does that mean it is lame??? HELL NO... To me, 100,000+ is a damn good game... Banning those takes away from MARP's original idea in the first place.

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), September 06, 1999.

Yesterday, I was talking to SportsDude on ICQ, when I sort of came up with the idea of having a threshold score for each (or most) games. For most games, this threshold could be set to the game's default high score, although this obviously would need to be changed for some games (eg: TMNT). Anyway, anyone under that threshold score (ie: deemed to be a "lame recording") would get maybe 20-25% of what they would normally. Hopefully, this will decrase the effect of people like QT Quazar (he does have a number of good recording though) and others of uploading scores for virtually every game there is. Anyway, this is just an idea, and you can all debate all you want...

-- Barry Rodewald (bsr@hn.pl.net), September 06, 1999.


I've thought about a lot of the points here, and just add my views:

1) I really don't see the point of uploading scores that only get 1 point or so. They're certainly not going to be downloaded by anyone, and are obviously only there for the leaderboard points; is it worth it? I'd agree with a minimum of 5 points, or maybe even 10.

2) Delete all games that max out - Domino, Bowling etc... Or give everyone max points on all of them. I'm as guilty as many of grabbing the 100 points on a few of these.

3) Games like Pacman, Galaga etc - there's obviously an element of skill somewhere here, as following the patterns requires some skill. Surely these are worthy for people to download, to see how the patterns work for example? Also, if someone plays the game for that long like Galaga for 20,000,000+ then they deserve the leaderboard points. And I too would be proud to get 1% of that, and not care about the 1 point :)

4) Clones - keep the clones. Most of them are different enough to be classed as different games. For example, here in the UK I never saw Donkey Kong - only Crazy Kong (mainly the Scramble h/w bootleg version).

5) I think there's a point to keep more than just the 3 top scores as well - some of the 4th placed scores are quite close to the top, and losing 50+ points when you get a 3rd placed score beaten might be a bit painful.

6) Stop letting people get an email for ALL submissions - they are too lonely and need to go out more.

That's it for now - I'm sure I'll think of more.

-- Crash (crash@tcp.co.uk), September 06, 1999.


I, too, am for keeping the clones, but not ALL clones. The ones that are identical shouldn't be included. In that case, I think only the "main" version should count. A good criterium for determining if two clones are identical is by creating an inp on one and seeing if it plays back correctly on the other. Yes, I know that MAME stores the name of the romset in the inp, but that's easy enough to change when testing if it plays back on another clone. For instance, although I haven't tested any of this yet (and forgive me for bringing Crazy Kong up again, but it's just about the only game I play), I am pretty sure that the inps created by ckongalc and monkeyd (I'd call this version "Crazy Kong") are interchangeable, and I am pretty sure the same holds for ckong, ckonga, ckongjeu, and ckongo (I'd call this version "Crazy Kong II"). ckongs, dkong, and dkongjp are all distinct versions. This would at least cut the number of CK/DK variants down from 9 to 5.

As for minimum scores/points: Perhaps some script could be written that is run once a week or so and that purges the system from submissions with too few points. Obviously, submissions that have 0 points can always be removed, and as long as a submission doesn't take a top 3 spot, points that are below a certain number (5 or 10 sounds good to me too), should be removed then too. Sure, people may be very proud of their achievements, but, as said before, nobody really will download those, so the proud people should just keep the recordings for themselves (hey, maybe even put those on their own websites).

I also agree that games for which a maximum can relatively easily be reached (so that would not include Pacman) should be excluded. I have actually changed my scores for those games to 0 on the leaderboard. Now if only Zwaxy would simply delete the files...

Pattern games should be kept in. To some extent at least, lots and lots of games are pattern games. Most people have learnt those patterns the hard way (using trial and error while spending lots of time, money, effort, ...), and even if they hadn't, then still it requires skill to master the patterns. Pacman has been discussed so often and for so long, and patterns that work are common knowledge. But it still requires skill, and I think the fact that a perfect score on Pacman is so rarely achieved is proof of that. The same goes for those other games. If Steve Krogman scores over 20M points on Galaga, and his inps are readily available, then why aren't there lots and lots more of multi-million point Galaga submissions? Because it still requires skill.

I think that limiting the number of submissions per individual per day is not going to work. People can too easily just save the surplus for a day on which they will not reach the maximum number...

In addition to the point limit, there could also be a position limit. Keep only the top 10 scores or something for each game. Let's face it, nobody is going to download the number 17 recording. BUT... I have sometimes downloaded a recording that wasn't one of the top scores because the recordings for the top scores wouldn't play back on my version of MAME. I know that on my .35 version of MAME32, I can't play back any inps created on .34 or earlier versions (or even some of the .35 beta versions). And downloading an earlier version of MAME doesn't always work either, since lots of the roms have been renamed, and it's extremely hard to find older romsets. I don't know exactly what the solution is... as long as the emulation itself hasn't changed, a conversion tool (that converts older inps to a format that can be played back on newer versions of MAME) can easily be written. I may actually do that because there are some recordings created on earlier versions of MAME that I'd like to see and can't because I don't have those earlier versions and because my romsets don't work with those earlier versions. And I'm not even talking about merged romsets.

Just my thoughts. Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), September 06, 1999.


No more comments in the last 48 hours, so I think it's time to conclude this thread, and take a decision.

OK....let's summarize:

my proposal (more likely a provocation): refuse scores worthing less then 50 points (unless they are #2 or #3)

Gameboy9 : 5 or 10 points minimum (25 more reasonable) or if within the Top 5. IMHO: 10 points is reasonable, but refusing recordings below #5 will discourage "good" submission, and will bring us back to the 10-3-1 scoring system.

Dave Kaupp : limiting the number of daily upload for each player. IMHO: sounds a good idea.

Tommi Tiihonen : having only the top 3 scores. IMHO: back to the 10-3-1 scoring system.

Chris Parsley : No restrictions IMHO: do you really want MARP bombed of 1 or 2 points scores !?!? :-)

Barry Rodewald : give 25% of the score worth if below the game default hi score IMHO: default scores are usually TOO low, and also cannot easily be done with a "light" script, I guess.

Crash : a minimum of 5-10 points. Ben Jos Walbeehm : remove submission that worth 0 points or don't reach #3 or worth less than 10 points. IMHO: see above.

Weel, it seems that a points limit is the rule preferred by most of the contributors (10 points is the most reasonablelimit), and should be applied. D.Kaupp idea is fine too, and could be applied (1, 2, max 5 uploads a day per player) in addition to the points limit rule.

Now it's up to Zwaxy, and to his time!

Cicca

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), September 08, 1999.


Cicca, I never said I wanted MARP bombarded with, as you put them "lame" scores. But, there are WAY too many problems with trying to deal with what you see as an issue. I guess I will have to go through them one at a time. A) Who is to define what is lame? Simply put, if you can score only 20,000 in bagman, and BBH can score 230,000 in his sleep, does that make your 20,000 score lame? That score would only get less than 10 points for the uploader, but it doesn't mean it's lame. B) Who's to police what is a lame score? As it is right now, there isn't enough manpower to keep up the ban list, the confirm list, or anything else at MARP, and you want to add another to the list. C) What you want to do is against MARP philosophies... MARP is the Mame Action Replay Page, and that is what it should be and remain forever. Does that mean we only allow the action of the top few players in a game, or everyone like MARP was started for, and should be? For instance, next to nobody would be able to post in Galaga under the rule you are trying to get voted in. Steve Krogman monopolizes that game, with good reason, he is DAMN GOOD at it, but that means most normal of the road players wouldn't have a chance in hell of posting under the proposed rule of yours, Cicca.

MARP has been, and I hope will be forever, a place for all to come, not just the best of the games. We always try to encourage new players to join us, but with the rule you want to impose drives anyone new away. If you see a 15M score on Galaga, and know, unless you can get credit for 10 pts on that game, you will never be able to submit, why even try??? Is that what we want, a MARP that shrivels up and dies?? BTW - for 10pts at galaga, someone would need to do a game of over 3M (Considering first at 15M)

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), September 08, 1999.


OK, maybe another way of doing this is to leave it to those who verify the scores. Each score uploaded will start with a pending status. Verification would be either that the score is either reasonable or below par (sounds better than "lame"), and best out of 3 (or 5, maybe) is what would be shown on the search pages. Those with "below par" scores would get reduced points (25%?).

- Barry Rodewald

-- Barry Rodewald (bsr@hn.pl.net), September 08, 1999.



Barry, your suggestion I feel would fall due to two reasons... One) How can someone else decide what is lame to a particular's person's skill For instance, I can't do anything against Krogman's Galaga score here. Does that mean any score I post is lame? I WOULD CERTAINLY HOPE NOT. 2) You suggestion would be rather memory and resource intrusive. The thought when starting this banning "lame" scores was to save on MARP's system resources. What you want to do would take a rather heavy usage script. I've wrote them before...

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), September 08, 1999.

I didn't comment on this earlier because I didn't see a really good move to solve this. I still don't see a complete solution.

As limited as it might be, the only suggestion on the list that doesn't cause any new problems is the "10 scores per day" idea. Yes, people can just sit on the scores until they're all posted, but I think it's more likely the forced wait will encourage working on them a little longer. It would also help balance the MARP server workload, regardless of the impact on submissions.

Aqua

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), September 08, 1999.


I have changed my opinion.

Wipe out everything I've said - this is now what I say:

I think a 10 game upload limit is reasonable... but I have to go with Chris Parsley here - if somebody else think a score is lame - so be it - if that player thinks it isn't lame - then darn it let him/her upload it. Chris's galagads example was a very good one. It may not earn any points - but heck it could be quite impressive to the player. This was my original opinion on the issue - and I'm going to stand by it.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), September 08, 1999.


I thought this board is here to discuss, to make proposals, and to take decision to slightly, or deeply, modify MARP to make it a better place. I'm afraid I was wrong...... My suggestion of a rule for submissions was not to make MARP a temple of gods in MAME (I'm below #40 !!!, and any rule, even if proposed by me, will be valid for me too!!!), I instead wish more and more ppl to come, and play, and rise the leaderboard. But I felt a mood of disappointing in the way of getting points from someone here, and I tried to collect opinion if a rule could be set up (my 50 points limit was really a provocation!). Out of 7 messages, 6 were for limiting submissions. Now....the only solution seems to be limiting the number of daily submissions....... ok..... carry on...... but do it!!!

Anyone can feel free to submit their recordings, and get points, to their own discrection....

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), September 09, 1999.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ