Making guides better

--- tags: tulpamancy, Regina --- # Making guides better ## Polemic with Ranger's ideas - The top level is almost as broad as current submission limbo. In my point of view, it isn't going to change things much about better guides being promoted more and outdated guides still are going to keep their position. - While I state below that literal books should have their own category, I think that JDI guides just don't make sense and tip&tricks/resources don't make sense to have their own category. About articles that aren't guides, I need to think about it. - About RR system, imo it's another GAT-like bottleneck. It's continuation of giving staff both too much power and too much bother. I think a good system should require minimal intervention from staff as staff. ## How should guides be rated? - Guides are often left alone. I'd like to find a way to **reward guides that are kept up to date** with critique (either by introducing changes or author defending their point of view) and **drown guides that are abandoned** and won't be changed or defended by their author anymore. - **Guides that receive positive feedback obviously should be rewarded**. I think **negative feedback shouldn't be directly punished** though. Feedback consisting of reviews that refer to its content should be valued more. **Responding to negative reviews with merit should be rewarded.** **Letting the guide be drowned by negative reviews without response should be punished**. - I think opinion of the **community should have much more power in rating guides than authority of staff members**, who also can give feedback as community members and their task is to make sure that guides breaking the rules of community aren't endorsed if anything. - Creation guides are often literal books. I think that **books should have their own category and don't compete with other guides**. - The arguable point is: should controversial statements in the guide be punished? I think **guides shouldn't be censored** unless they break community rules and guides that are better should have a possibility of winning their position due to helping people better and receiving better feedback. - **The rating should be applied to guides from the past.** ~~Easy and fair way of putting the old crap behind fresher stuff that's being kept up to date.~~ ## Rules all guides should comply to TODO ## How should guides be rewarded/punished? A proposal of a system. - Anyone should be able to publish a guide to the `Submitted Guides` section. - Guides of authors absent from community for a long time should be relegated to `Abandoned Guides` subsection. If author comes back, they can request it to come back to `Submitted Guides` section. - Guides breaking the rules should be removed. - There should be a special category for `Featured Guides`. Featured Guide should: 1. Be kept up to date. Author should be responding to critique consistently, either by changing the guide or defending it with merit. If no one is complaining and reviews are only positive it's fine to leave it alone. 2. Consistently receive some positive feedback. It doesn't matter if it receives negative feedback if it keeps previous point. **(UpVote system proposed by Ranger could be used here)** 3. Regardless of point 1, the guide shouldn't be abandoned. If the author is completely absent for months, the guide shouldn't be featured and move to `Abandoned Guides` section instead. - Author of the guide should ask for it being feautred. If they are places available, it could be accepted by staff after checking criteria in any moment. Otherwise, it should be placed in a queue in waiting for demotion of another featured guide. - All `Featured Guides` should be checked once a month if they still fulfill the criteria to be featured. If not, the guide should be marked for demotion, the author should be notified about it and if they are still not fulfilling the criteria by the next check, the guide will be demoted back to the ~~limbo~~ `Submitted Guides` section. - After being demoted, the guide still can return to featured section if it fulfills the criteria again. But guides that have never been demoted have preference if the featured section has a limit of places. - Guides in both section naturally fight for attention as the top of the section is the best place. Therefore there should be rule enforced about not derailing their topics and author being able to bump them only if guide is updated or responding to other users. - I think the limit of places for featured guides should be default number of threads in a section (20 atm) or lower. - Literal books should be rewarded for effort of an author alone and placed in `Books` subcategory in `Featured Guides` if they don't break the rules and stay there. Points above should ensure that it's feasible for a new guide to become featured, being featured or not is going to matter regardless of how much people are competing, continuous effort put into a guide and its advertisement is rewarded if people find it helping them. Structure should probably look like - Featured Guides (category, no new topics by users) - Books (subcategory, no new posts by users) - Submitted Guides (category, no threads here, except pins with the rules etc.) - _Topic-specific subcategories_ (users can post new guides here) - Abandoned Guides (subcategory, no new topics by users) ## How should guides be tagged/categorized? ### Categories - Length. As I said in previous section, literal books should have their own category. - Topics. Submitted guides should be grouped into categories. Featured guides shouldn't be split into categories, should be just tagged by topics. - Splitting into topic categories (creation, switching, imposition etc.) should make niche guides have it easier to compete with guides on topics that are more popular. ### Tags - Topics are going to have both categories and tags.