Feedback thread
9 years ago
Estonia

Hey, this has probably been brought up at some point by someone, so I apologize beforehand.

I mainly enjoy playing/viewing IL leaderboards and one thing that always bugs me are the empty time boxes since I don't know if the category simply hasn't been performed yet or it can't be performed for some reason. I wish that moderators had a tool or something to mark the unplayable IL time boxes, so they wouldn't misrepresent as being unplayed due to lack of interest from the players.

I noticed that the Croc 2 community already made their own solution to this by creating a fake user and blocking those categories as a N/A 0.01s fake player. https://www.speedrun.com/croc_2/individual_levels

I do wish there was a more sophisticated solution to this though, like a tickable toolbox for modders which would make the rectangle darker and put a white cross over it or something like that.

diggity, Shadow_Dog, and Finalflame like this
Canada

@Randomno The purpose is... for a community website or wiki. As an example, Goldeneye links to The Elite, which is their pre-existing rankings site. Legend of Zelda links to ZeldaSpeedruns. Those are both speedrunning websites created by the community for those games.

It's not exactly rocket science. I don't really see what needs extra clarification there (also if you're bringing in examples of leaderboards misusing it, worth noting that IIRC it was actually mislabeled for a while, so that's likely why it's been used incorrectly).

[quote=Uniwersal]I wish that moderators had a tool or something to mark the unplayable IL time boxes[/quote]

Fully agree with this. I hate hate hate when there are "N/A" placeholder times. It looks awful and messes up tons of API stuff I try to do involving ILs. But leaving them blank also sucks. An alternative would be good.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman likes this
Netherlands

@Randomno Its.. a link to a community website or wiki from that respective leaderboard? Can't think of anything else on how to otherwise interpret this. You can hold everyone's hand on this website, but ultimately there will always be moderators who will insert the wrong kind of link there either way. Even if it would have a clarification, there would still be moderators not looking at it, even though this is really self explanatory.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
United Kingdom

Thanks for both including those ellipses. I wanted to be absolutely clear on what the staff intend it to be used for before suggesting any games use it "incorrectly".

[quote=ShikenNuggets]also if you're bringing in examples of leaderboards misusing it, worth noting that IIRC it was actually mislabeled for a while, so that's likely why it's been used incorrectly[/quote]

I remember when it was labeled as "Website / Wikipedia". That was a while ago though and Wikipedia links are not the only issue. Also, "wiki" still makes some people's minds jump to Wikipedia.

I won't list specific examples of misuse, but if you search 'site:speedrun.com "website / wiki"' you can see how common it is. The issue is of course how few games have a dedicated speedrunning site. It's probably one of the least used features on the site, but since it exists, I think it's a good idea to provide some information on it. Other fields have this, such as "eg, smb2. Optional, must be unique", "For matching streams on Twitch", and "Non-expiring invitation link". Community website / wiki only has the example of "zeldaspeedruns.com", which is not explicit at all.

And yes, even if you put in big capital letters not to link to the Wikipedia article, people would still do it, but it won't hurt to add some clarification to a feature that is so often misused.

Imaproshaman likes this
Canada

Okay but what needs to be clarified? "Don't put a Wikipedia link" is a valid suggestion, though as you said it people would definitely still do it, and for people who think wiki = Wikipedia it would probably cause even more confusion. But like, do you have any specific suggestions for what should actually be written? I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with a one-liner that isn't superfluous or entirely unhelpful.

I've skimmed a couple of games to get an idea of where things are going wrong. All the examples I've seen so far were either: -Related to the old labeling -Deliberately misused -Don't seem to understand what a website is -Either didn't intend to use it, or completely failed to copy and paste a URL

I guess we could add "Optional" to it so that people don't feel like they have to put something there (which is potentially the source of some of these) but beyond that, I got nothing. Most of this seems to just come down to "outdated" and "user error".

On a related note, since this actually is somewhat widespread (I see a few notable games that seem to have missed the memo on that not being a Wikipedia entry) perhaps this is something Content Mods should be watching out for and cleaning up (if they aren't already). The search suggested in the post above is very effective.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
United Kingdom

I don't think you can put all Wikipedia links down to the old labeling. I agree that a concise note is difficult to write. I would suggest something like "Not for wikis unrelated to speedrunning, or direct links to the game".

EDIT:

I'm not sure how prevalent Wikipedia links are now compared to in the past, but one suggestion I just heard is to block Wikipedia links in that field. There's no circumstance that would be the correct usage of it.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Canada

[quote=Randomno]I don't think you can put all Wikipedia links down to the old labeling[/quote]

I'm very confident that in the vast majority of those cases, the moderator(s) either: -(Understandably) haven't looked at the setting since, and therefore haven't even seen the new label -Saw the new label and (somewhat understandably) thought nothing of it -Saw other games using Wikipedia and thought that was correct, despite the labeling -Was confused due to the original labeling, and simply left it as is -Just didn't really care

The only thing other case I can think of is what you suggested, where people actually think "wiki" means "Wikipedia". If this is really a thing, I have to wonder if those people would even read an extra note, never mind understand it and act accordingly.

Anyway, back onto the real topic... [quote=Randomno]"Not for wikis unrelated to speedrunning, or direct links to the game"[/quote] This is pretty good. I do actually see this being slightly helpful going forward.

[quote=Randomno]block Wikipedia links in that field[/quote]

This is also a good idea. I wonder if we could even just mass-erase all the current Wikipedia ones by the same method.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
United States

Oh...

I...definitely misinterpreted it.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Iowa, USA

I don't see why it actually matters, even if your game doesn't have anything for it I would gladly and happily take a simple game resource page that just talks about what the game is, what it features, etc. People take so much crap so literal on here that its sometimes laughable, could I get these results from a three second google search? Yes, but that's not really the point because the majority of games outweigh the few that can properly use it either way. Seriously, do you guys not actually realize how few games have dedicated sites/pages to begin with?

Who knows, maybe that simple wiki game page might help a few people make some effort to run your game if they knew what the exactly the game even was?

In short; I personally only want to see game leaderboards link off to sites/pages related to the game or community itself. If its being used to place illegal content, pornography, etc then it needs to be reported so we can do something about it. The reality is to straight out to remove it instead because it has very little practical use if you focus solely on a dedicated website or/and page.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Iowa, USA

@16bitPanda Yeah, that has nothing to do with what I said and completely misses the point. Congrats.

Canada

I don't really see the value in linking something like the Wikipedia page that isn't speedrunning/community specific (and I could be mistaken, but I remember someone on staff specifically saying it was not for Wikipedia links at some point), but if site staff doesn't have a problem with that now then I guess there's no issue.

Though, there are a bunch of them that are outright busted should probably be fixed/removed.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Iowa, USA

That's on the moderators of those games to fix those links.

At one point I can understand the mindset behind it, but this would've had to been a long, long time ago, most communities just don't have that kind of thing at all and the few that do tend to make use of it in that regard but I think its kinda shitty that the many games that can't do this aren't allowed to provide anything at all for the game. Plus the way I see it, if no one wanted a feature like that removed it would have to be something only staff could manually approve and add which I'm going to be honest I really do not want more nonsense on my plate for something trivial.

I mean christ, in the game queue we generally get resource links of various media all the time and if you can't fill it with anything I don't see anything wrong with providing information about a games background.

I simply encourage users to provide extra content to their leaderboards regardless of how minor it is. I think everyone can understand this mindset and would be behind it, can it be a little annoying? Sure, but in the end they likely just don't have anything else to provide and I personally do not mind reading more about a games background history.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Quivico, Imaproshaman and 4 others like this
United Kingdom

I can't make much sense of the response, but if you are fine with Website / wiki being used in more ways then so am I. It should be clear though

Canada

Seems like it's already pretty clear. Barring cases of user error (and apparently the occasional rule-breaker), the feature is being used correctly. And, for what it's worth, I don't recall seeing anyone else express confusion about this since the labels were changed. Seems to be "working as intended" to me.

Edited by the author 4 years ago

Feature Request: Have the option to turn off "separate load times" on level boards but still have the option on for full game runs. Ex. CoD4 full game is timed real time and times wout loads but for ILs it's completely unnecessary [to have both] and just creates more hassle trying to submit + verify times - making them appear all in 1 column ty.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Estonia

Lovely to see the wr charts back (everyone loves charts!). I suppose some bugs are inevitable though. In the game "Race Driver: Grid" https://www.speedrun.com/grid/gamestats when I click on a dot on the chart, an incorrect video pops ups. Aside from that, the game has 3 full game leaderboards (Any%, 100%, all tracks), but only the first category has a chart available, which on the chart drop down menu shows up under the name of "Full Game".

The "Race Driver: Grid" speedrun site had a fairly noticeable overhaul where many categories changed and runs were moved to different categories and I'm fairly certain that's the main reason for the charts not showing correct runs.

Texas, USA

As WR graph is back and is looking great, I'd like to push again for these ideas from 2 years ago: WR Graph Multiple WRs in One Day: https://www.speedrun.com/post/didpg WR Graph All Categories Toggle: https://www.speedrun.com/post/7xwjd

Edit 07/27/2023: WR Graph All Categories Toggle is more or less fixed with the update allowing us to select a single category. Thanks!

Edited by the author 8 months ago
XeroGoFast, Quivico and 2 others like this
Canada

@Oxknifer Regarding the first suggestion, an issue with that is there's currently no way to specify what order runs were achieved in. So, simply showing all runs that beat the previous day's WR would solve the issue you've described, but it would also erroneously list runs that were not WRs.

Having some way to specify the ordering of runs achieved on the same day when the order is known would allow that to be fixed (as well as help with a few rare edge cases, such as ties achieved on the same day). But, based on previous discussions and comments about this from site staff, this wouldn't be trivial to implement and is considered low-priority.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman and Quivico like this
Texas, USA

Every run has a submission date/time attached to it. Some part of the API has access to that data, and ordering it for the graphs would simply mean using the correct API call or enhancing a current API to provide time-based ordering instead of date-based. (Not that that wouldn't take some time)

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Canada

Submission date/time does not help at all, as it depends on runs being submitted in the same order they were performed, which is frequently not the case. Some users submit their runs immediately, other users wait days, weeks, sometimes even months.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman likes this