Feedback or requests for help with the site.
Apr 19th, 2009, 4:24 pm
The topic says it all. A more detailed view:

This site is somewhere at Web 1.1, not Web 2.0. We don't need twitter for new releases (like, for example http://twitter.com/mp33portal ). We can vote for a program that we use, in 11 different steps.
And usually the text "nice release, $xx reward"
That's it. Is this all you have to offer?
Take a look at slashdot.org, users can vote for (news) releases, if they like it or not.
Take a look at other pages, users have to press a "thank you" button before the download links are published.

You have plenty of releases here, way too much to search through - and you, the site owner has more or less no idea how valuable a release is.

I'd like to see the following:
-A voting button for all releases: I think it's [ ]crap [ ]average [ ]valuable
-A thank-you-button per release, that counts the number of interested people
-A per-user customizable filter that filters out everything with x% crap, y%average, z% valuable votes.
-A per-user customizable filter that filters out everything the user voted as crap and/or average and/or valuable.
-The current voting button should be kept, or changed to: [ ]I use it regularly, [ ]I use it often, [ ]I use it from time-to-time, and [ ]I tried and deleted it
-Different versions of the same program should be linked
-A release should display the crap/avg/val, usage votes, thank-you clicks, and if previous releases are available also the aggregated values of all the previous releases.
-And a mobile.ppcwarez.org site for ppcs

The point in having two different voting options is: Even if you didn't install it you can consider something crap, that you and maybe others don't wanna see. E.g. ST Phaser v1.0, Pocket Pendu v1.0, BHD HangMan v1.1, HangHim v2.1, Igrecway Hangman v1.0, Break My Bricks v1.0, VoipSMS 2.4.0, StatusTicker v1.4, UltraG v2.65, Inlux Messenger Lite v2.121 just to mention the releases I consider crap from the latest three release pages. I don't want to see them never again. I wan't to vote "crap", and have them filtered out for my personal view forever. Saves my time and screen space, and it saves your and my network bandwidth.
The second voting option is just a variation of your 0-10. Maybe easier to understand, maybe to complicated. As written above, it might be kept as is.
Linking of different program versions is always good for minor version, for major releases it

It's not that easy to implement, I'm afraid, however it would be cool.
Think about it.
And anyone who would like to see a ppcw twitter please respond ;-)

maze
Apr 19th, 2009, 4:24 pm
Apr 19th, 2009, 4:43 pm
List of releases you're asking for is here: articles.php . We have that.

Take a look at other pages, users have to press a "thank you" button before the download links are published.

What use is that? So everybody will press thank you before they download. And? We have a rating system and WRZ$ if you wish to thank the poster.

-A voting button for all releases: I think it's [ ]crap [ ]average [ ]valuable

We have a 1-10 voting system, look at the top of every release. It is underused however and we're discussing ways to increase its usage.

-Different versions of the same program should be linked

They are most of the time, its difficult to it always with this amount of releases.

-And a mobile.ppcwarez.org site for ppcs

That I agree with.
Apr 19th, 2009, 4:43 pm

Support developers.
Apr 20th, 2009, 1:21 pm
-And a mobile.ppcwarez.org site for ppcs

I agreed with this too...
Apr 20th, 2009, 1:21 pm
Apr 20th, 2009, 8:07 pm
I - more or less - expected the answer by the admin as is. :-/
Still, I feel I could explain once more:

Thank you - give's a count of people that are interested in the release. It's simple, and gives the releaser (and you) an easy indicator how popular a release is. And you could publish that number, giving that indicator to everyone.

Voting: Your 0-10 voting is for actual uses of the software, as far as I understood. Therefor users first download, then try and then forget to vote, at least that's the case for me.
The idea of the "I think it's ..."-voting buttons is to vote for/against a release without having downloaded an installed it, just let the users vote based on the the description.

Different versions of the same program should be linked
My idea is: Linking in a way that allows to display the aggregated votes of the previous releases.
Currently you have a standard html link to the previous release, there's no way to identify that link for a machine and therefore you cannot display the previous votes.

maze
Apr 20th, 2009, 8:07 pm
Apr 21st, 2009, 1:36 am
voting buttons is to vote for/against a release without having downloaded an installed it, just let the users vote based on the the description.

Nothing against you,
but I think this would be a bad Idea.
Even I can write one h*ll of a good description for a program,
and if that's all you're going off of to vote for it,
you may later find out it's the biggest piece of sh*t program you have ever used.
That my friend,
would lead other users to download this program thanks to the "I think it's amazing" votes,
but then find out the votes were meaningless due to the program's description wrongfully representing what the program can do.
Apr 21st, 2009, 1:36 am
Apr 21st, 2009, 2:08 am
I don't like thank you buttons as they serve no real purpose. Anyone can click thank you but it doesn't tell you anything about why they're saying thank you. If you like a program, reply to the thread, say thank you and explain why. Topics with 50+ replies indicate popularity, not one where it's been downloaded 50+ times. The rating system takes care of the other ideas 0 = crap, 5 = average, 10 = valuable.

If you set a filter, you would never see unrated new programs, which would lead to them not being scored, which would mean the content of the site would never change for you, then there would be complaints about why there haven't been any releases for the last x months. Simplicity is the key, and that's what we're aiming for here.

I am working on a mobile website for ppc, it's in the pipeline but is unfortunately not the most important.
Apr 21st, 2009, 2:08 am
Apr 21st, 2009, 6:33 pm
sdawson wrote:I don't like thank you buttons as they serve no real purpose. Anyone can click thank you but it doesn't tell you anything about why they're saying thank you.

Maybe read the sticky posts about "Thank you" postings again. A Thank You-Button is just a counter. Everybody might click, but not everybody will click. It counts the popularity, not the quality of a release.

sdawson wrote:If you set a filter, you would never see unrated new programs, which would lead to them not being scored, which would mean the content of the site would never change for you, then there would be complaints about why there haven't been any releases for the last x months. Simplicity is the key, and that's what we're aiming for here.

If you are right, the user interface is to be considered broken:
Let's assume there would be an option to set such a filter as described. The user would log in and wouldn't see any new releases. How to fix it:
Display a status line "x new releases since your last login, filter active: 0/x releases displayed (click to modify filter)"

sdawson wrote:I am working on a mobile website for ppc, it's in the pipeline but is unfortunately not the most important.

May I ask what's more important, just curious...?

maze
Apr 21st, 2009, 6:33 pm
Apr 21st, 2009, 11:42 pm
maze1980 wrote:Maybe read the sticky posts about "Thank you" postings again. A Thank You-Button is just a counter. Everybody might click, but not everybody will click. It counts the popularity, not the quality of a release.

The thank you post is to avoid the exact action you're asking for. We don't want people saying thank you, we want people who say thank you and give a reason why they found the post helpful. I would rather see a post with replies such as 'Thanks, this works great on my Kaiser' and 'Does not work on my Apache' which are informative rather than seeing 50 people thanked such and such for the file which provides no information about why. PPC Geeks use a thank you system, but it's more of a popularity contest than informative information to base a download on.

maze1980 wrote:If you are right, the user interface is to be considered broken:
Let's assume there would be an option to set such a filter as described. The user would log in and wouldn't see any new releases. How to fix it:
Display a status line "x new releases since your last login, filter active: 0/x releases displayed (click to modify filter)"

This is not something you asked for in your original post, you said you want a permanent adjustable filter showing only useful posts which is what my response was targeted to. We could put the status line, but we could do this with our current rating mod. The problem is it's not used enough. In reality you're asking for a second rating system which has an extension on it that our current rating system does not. If we add this extension, it's still not going to make people vote. We need to find a way to make the ratings mod used more, then we can use this information for users to filter posts. But ratings are useless without information, and I could rate something a 10 which works well on my Vogue, but another user could rate something 0 because it doesn't work on their TyTn. In the end what does a rating of 5 actually tell you unless the users reply and give you information?

maze1980 wrote:May I ask what's more important, just curious...?

The tech team have a system of rating modifications. This is near the top, and is being completed, but due to the size of the modification it's not something we can spit out quickly. Security and bug fixes are always more important than display modifications.

Remember that the tech team are volunteers who put in work when they can so mods will take time.
Apr 21st, 2009, 11:42 pm
Apr 22nd, 2009, 8:17 pm
sdawson wrote:Remember that the tech team are volunteers who put in work when they can so mods will take time.


I know, and I didn't expect a quick change.
Still, improvement is necessary, somehow. Otherwise you'll end up with a lot of crappy freeware releases, and must always use search. A suggestion system like Amazon.com is maybe out of scope...

maze
Apr 22nd, 2009, 8:17 pm
Apr 22nd, 2009, 11:41 pm
A suggestion system is a great idea, but there is no way to track what users download (like the amazon shopping cart) so we would be unable to make good suggestions about what other users downloaded. If the rating system was used well we could adapt that to what users who rated this release also rated other releases with roughly the same score, but that takes us back to the original issue of how do we get more people to rate releases.
Apr 22nd, 2009, 11:41 pm