What's with the 'love-in'?

[Woe Kitten]

I'm interested in sparking off a debate about the kind of feedback we should be offering to people when they come here to show-off maps. Recently I've noticed a whole load of 'Wow man, that level is awesome!' comments made on maps that just clearly aren't awesome. It's confusing me because some of the people doing that are good designers themselves.

I'm not saying that patting someone on the back for a job well done is a bad thing, but I am saying that we need to try and offer useful feedback to people. Telling someone they are great will encourage them to stagnate as a designer and should, in my opinion at least, be avoided wherever possible. This is especially true when their work is clearly not great, where great is defined by the relative quality of work being produced by the community.

I think it's equally important not to just tell people 'zomg your map sux!' as this is just attacking someone's morale. But I still think that too harsh is better than too soft.

What do you think? Are we treating people with kid gloves to the detriment of their mapping skills or am I just a harsh git?

[ShaDoW]

Just like your signature states "Shut up and respect others opinion." I suppose. :)

If people want to give a pat on the back for simple things, so be it. Eventually there will always be a user that offers some form of constructive criticism. I think giving even the simplest of encouragement doesn't work in a negative way, as the level designer will stay motivated to make new things. Practice makes perfect, criticism in that case helps but is by no means required as long as you keep at it.

[Woe Kitten]

Just like your signature states "Shut up and respect others opinion." I suppose.

If people want to give a pat on the back for simple things, so be it. Eventually there will always be a user that offers some form of constructive criticism. I think giving even the simplest of encouragement doesn't work in a negative way, as the level designer will stay motivated to make new things. Practice makes perfect, criticism in that case helps but is by no means required as long as you keep at it.

Sig was ironic btw. I was laughing at him for telling people to shut up and thus disrespecting their opinion in the same sentence as he told them to respect people's opinions. I should probably make that more obvious. You're probably right that a certain amount of encouragement is helpfull and healthy but I guess my problem is more with us becomming a forum like fpsbanana where they just tell everyone they are amazing all the time and nobody makes anything good as a result.

[The Wanderer]

Just like your signature states "Shut up and respect others opinion." I suppose.

If people want to give a pat on the back for simple things, so be it. Eventually there will always be a user that offers some form of constructive criticism. I think giving even the simplest of encouragement doesn't work in a negative way, as the level designer will stay motivated to make new things. Practice makes perfect, criticism in that case helps but is by no means required as long as you keep at it.

Yea i can agree there, but the problem is when someone does actually march in and gives them criticism, how well they may try to bring it across in a nice manner, sometimes (once in a blue moon sometimes) the author will go "but you're only alone, all the rest thinks it's great" (which is what i'm kinda experiencing now, perhaps that is why Woe made this ).

They aren't going to learn anything by that, even worse, they'll continue bad trends.

Now i'm not saying we should start to find faults in every little aspect of the map, but the serious and blatant errors should be acknowledged and incorporated with a good pat on the back. You say something that is bad and you say something that is good. Atleast that's what i try when posting criticism (except if the author in question just thinks his map is foolproof )

[Blink]

The best thing to do is give your comments how you'd like to see everyone do it and gently encourage people to expand their opinions. Sometimes there might not be any bad points, but encouraging users to explain why they think it's great is a good idea.

They might not realise that just saying "Oh, awesome map" is a problem.

[Woe Kitten]

Wise words as always Blink. You too Wanderer... and yes this post was partially in response to your situation in the other thread but it's also in response to a bunch of other things.

[904]

This thread is awesome man!


I know how you feel. I used to hang out on hl2world alot, where I think the opposite was happening, it became only about bitchin' and wining about other people's efforts. I think it hurt the community it had alot. In the end I stopped posting and eventually visiting that site. Interlopers is VERY friendly in that sense. Maybe too friendly, I agree with you, but we should be very careful not to slip to the other end.

It's difficult to express why you like something, because something you like tickles your senses, but too often you can't exactly define it, you just like it. I guess that's when people resort to 'awesome ...' . On the other hand, it might also stem from:
- a lack of skill to express oneself. But that should never be a problem, since we're all from different countries, different backgrounds and ages, so one should never be judged on that.
- a lack of experience in mapping (or whatever skill is the subject of discussion) basically resulting in 'low standards' with the side-effect that anything is 'awesome'.

The other end is certainly as diffcult, it might be clear what you find wrong, but it can be really hard to turn that into a constructive comment. Also: a forum is place where you're never face to face with the poster you're replying to, so it's by far easier to just bitch around and get away with it (as opposed to real life, which most of us have... I think).

I'll mostly try to be friendly and constructive, especially when I feel something's lacking. On very poor projects I almost never comment, or comment something like 'it's a good start, keep working on it', but that's only to counterbalance truly negative comments or if encouragements are lacking. I'm not always positive in my comments, but I usually do try to give it a friendly/motivating/constructive spin. I mostly take the approach that if my post wouldn't add anything (either technical or motivational), I don't post.. And as you can see from my stats, I do not have a particularly high post rate.

I think the bottom line is that everybody is entitled to an opinion. And if you post a WIP (or whatever), you basically permit others to express their opinions about it. If it turns out you can't deal with it, you shouldn't post. So yes, in a way, we (all interlopers) can/should be more critical towards eachothers work, but with a positive approach and without whining.

[snotball]

When criticizing I usually start out saying 'Good job!', whether it's true or not. The acknowledgement of one's work raises energy and morale. Then hit 'em with the constructive critique. Hopefully the acknowledgement will have supplied them with sufficient libido to poke with the stick once more.

[Khaeotixs]

i prefer 'lopers over FP, because over there it's flamewars unite... one light out of place and it's flame flame flame.

However, over on 'lopers it's more:

Nice work, but you could do this this this to improve. I tend to ignore posts that say "awesome work" without any explanation.. but i'm guilty of doing that myself and this thread enlightened me ^^

[YokaI]

The best thing to do with art, as long as it looks like it was worked on with effort, is to discuss what was done right and what needs to be improved. Never is it a good idea to say a completely negative post for it won't be taken seriously because it will either look like trolling or just rude. Keep in mind that people DO work hard on maps sometimes even if they aren't the best looking, so they have a lot of pride in said piece. Therefore, a wall of negative text won't be constructive for someone who has pride in their work. It's good to space negative and positive feedback around so you seem to be giving it a fair run.

edit: Why is this stickied? =O

[Phott]

As long as people tell something good about the map together with "But..." I think the mapper himself will feel like he has done a pretty good job, but the way he did it might have been made easier or maybe there's just too little detail.

In any way, constructive critics shouldn't be taken like a bad thing, more like a good thing, since you're here and post your maps you probably want to learn new stuff which you do through criticism.
Though I have seen people trying to "defend" themselves against critics, which is bad, you should read, understand and move on trying to add that little extra touch everyone mentioned.

In short, try to find the positive parts together with the negative parts.

[SoMeOnE_the_oDD]

It's called "positive reinforcement". Most compliments are relative to the person's skill level.

I would say that I am an excellent example of having too many compliments and not enough critiques. As you may remember, I made the brush-based cows (including one that was pooping). That map received way, way, WAY too many compliments. Yes, a pooping cow is certainly something to behold but on a serious level I didn't get far with anything. I usually knew the things that I wanted to get critique and suggestions on (there were things that I knew were useless, such as optimizing the map, to learn at the time) but I still repeated them a few times. In the end, I continued until Hammer died in too many ways to count.

I would also say that, amidst all the compliments/insults, there is always people who leave constructive criticism (you know who you are) and so we shouldn't worry too much. There are the fans and there are the players. One has a preference and the other knows what is going on. So, to all you "players" out there, don't let down the rookies!

For the fans, keep the compliments/insults relative to the person's skill. No sense insulting a new mapper for not doing it perfect on the first try or for peeing yourself because an expert made a decent looking map.

[Penney]

If (much!) more experienced mappers are seeing that people are feeling that other peoples maps are spectacular, maybe those people A) Don't know what the hell to look for, and/or B) Don't know how to give the right constructive criticism while being both helpful and positive and making the mapper still feel optimistic and positive, progressive.

I guess where I'm going with this is if you feel somethings great or not, you need to elaborate and give some tips or suggestions on why it's not, or why it is, but if you want to see something actually eventually come, being positive in what you're saying helps a lot too.

?ramble

[coder0xff]

I'm one of those people who's to much of a n00b himself to provide constructive critisism. I'd think that most of us newbies acknowledge that fact. I don't post compliments or critiques cause I don't know wtf I'm talking about. I look at maps like that power plant one, and I'm all "ooooooh, shiny", but I don't say so because I know I can't provide critique.

Most of the times I remember a post just going "awesome" it was from people who seem to know what they're doing. Of course, it may just be those are the only ones I take notice of. Who takes anyone lower than "may contain skills" seriously, anyway? ;-p

[Sentura]

i agree with OP. i really dislike it when people use forums as personal blog spaces, posting news just to expect positive feedback. it just seems like everyone is eager to suck each other's cocks, or at least the cocks of those who make awesome maps/models/art (for lack of better wording).

i personally do not comment unless i have something actual useful, because i just don't like spam. there's a guy over at another forum i visit that creates his own threads and uses them as microblogs to garner attention and positive "feedback". his work is good, no doubt, but his methods to show off are crude. frankly, i'd rather have a thread updated every once in a while with a larger update than having someone post in it every day just to have it filled up with comments like "AWSUM/GOOD JOB/etc". i know i don't appreciate it for my own creations.