Here goes. Note that [item] may be anything available here on PureZC. Quests, tiles, music, you name it.
You can refer to THIS TOPIC if you need to, but I do NOT want to see any actual complaining about it or any of the posts in it. We don't need that little war continued in here.
1) Provide constructive positive feedback when possible.
If you like [item], try to tell [item]'s creator what you liked so much about it. It'll tell them to consider using it again in a later submission.
Example: If you like Mr. Z's block puzzles and you're reviewing a quest of his that uses them, tell him which ones in particular you enjoyed. Next thing you know, he'll do more block puzzles.
2) Provide constructive negative feedback when possible.
If you don't like [item], find what it is about [item] that turns you away from it and let the creator know. This way, they'll know to be careful when trying to do it again.
Example: I noticed some negative comments regarding the collaboration "I'm Busy!", where people did not like the fact that it was simply a percussion loop, even though I had stated in the description that it was such. Oulisa and I will probably avoid doing that sort of thing again.
3) Have nothing helpful to say about something you don't like?
As Thibeinn learned recently, not backing up one's own comments when responding negatively to submitted content can be interpreted as an attack on the entire community, and as many people have noticed, the community (some of it, at least) responded as if it were a meaningless attack. Avoid doing this. Please. It's for your own good.
Example: CLICK HERE
4) What to consider...
As pointed out in a recent announcement on the site index, there are people who rate things based on screenshots or other forms of 'previewing' the content. This isn't what the creators want you to do if you rate them at all. See below:
4a) For quests, creators generally expect people to play at least halfway through before issuing some kind of rating, wanting their players to see how things in the quest work, not to have the players base their judgement on a handful of screenshots (or in some cases the music selected for the quest).
However, questmakers, due to the rather high standards of the community itself (not the staff), don't ignore preview screenshots entirely; they often determine if your quest will see many players.
4b) For tiles and tilesets, ratings should probably be based on how well the tiles look and work. This doesn't mean you can get away with seeing a few screenshots using these tiles and basing your rating on that, though. What you should do first is try to use them yourself:
Are they really usable, as long as they're not too hard?
Do the ones that animate animate well?
Does that outfit make Link look fat? Some people don't like playing a quest where Link looks weird.
Are they recolors or straight rips from a ROM or other source? These seem to be frowned upon due to how easy they seem to be. Be careful when submitting them.
4c) For music submissions, I can't really repeat the 'preview' bit here, because most of us in PureZC's music industry (
) usually don't include preview clips. However, I can offer some things to consider if you're going to go rate something:Does everything sound right to you?
Is it too loud? Is it too quiet?
If it is a Tracker submission and it loops, does the loop happen at the right time?
If it is a MIDI submission, is the extention 'MID'? Zelda Classic can't use the 'RMI' format. (I made that mistake once or twice.)
4d) For all three of the above, read the description and any included readmes in the package zip. Sometimes, [item]'s creator will want to warn you ahead of time for something you may not like about their submission. It doesn't help them when you ignore this and harp on them for something they did address by notifying you of it.
Edited by Espilan, 06 May 2006 - 09:56 AM.
