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EA's Dungeon Keeper Ratings Below a 5 Go To Email Black Hole
fplatten writes "I would definitely call this unethical manipulation of the ratings system: the Worst Company in America, EA is routing all ratings made in game of 1 to 4 stars as an email that is sent to EA, but all 5 star ratings are routed to the Google Play store, where its rating is currently 4.3 out of 5."
I hear it's going to be called "Dungeon Keeper Beta".
Instead of a black hole you get routed to 'WE HEAR YOU We did tell you we wanted feedback. Here's our response.' http://meta.slashdot.org/story...
Is this not criminal misrepresentation of their product?
How do you know it's the admins doing that? I can't remember having the ability to see which users mod a given post.
Why on earth is google allowing anyone to submit ratings via any API
It's not. From the article:
In other words, the 5 Stars button goes to the app's page in Google Play Store, and the 1-4 Stars button goes to the "leave feedback" screen. A player can leave a lower rating by tapping 5 Stars, waiting for the Play page to open, and tapping a lower star rating.
Never rate an app from within the app itself. We all know it's super convienent, but at the same time it's subject to this kind of trickery.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
guys seriously I think beta is stupid... but all the anti Beta posts are ruining this site more then that is. I come here more for the comments then the stories since they tend to have a better concept of the story then the poster does.
No idea if Goodreads ratings are reliable or not, but if you don't trust Amazon...
And if you bother to look at the mod points awarded you will see many many -1 levels (much more than normal) and even the GP modded to 0 as off topic
The point is that the topic of this article is corporate overlords HIDING negative comments about their products
Oh the fricking ever-loving irony of it all, a story about some despotic game maker shuttering off negative comments about their products being displayed on a nerd=site where all negative comments about the quality of the site are hidden away as -1 or off topic
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the dice-lords of slashbetahell are making certain that their advertising customers never make low mods visible, because it is all noise...
bahahaha HOSTS to the rescue! dude, instead of spamming the lists for the past years, it works much better if you actually provide advice such as this. I will try this. thank you.
Not really about the UI redesign, but rather a number of issues relating to it, such as the fact that they've been attempting to fast track the roll-out of the beta. Fast tracking the roll out of an incomplete UI redesign that lacks core functionality, blindly claiming it's an improvement to the degree of actively replacing the production system. This is not how you create a product, this is how you DESTROY a product.
Aha, you must be that "audience" I've been hearing about.
I'm hardly surprised that EA is doing something mendacious and evil; but it's a trifle gutsy to overtly game Google's rating system.
Meh, one good coercive scam deserves another. I just checked my Google Play app and attempted to rate an app (never had tried before). Lo and behold, rating apps requires Google Plus and all ratings will be linked to one's public profile.
No thanks. EA and Google deserve each other.
Oh, and Dice belongs with them for their plans to destroy this community^Waudience.
If you rate this game within the game, EA gets it and has to forward it on to Google play store. If the rating is 1-4 EA doesn't forward it on to the Play store, but if it is a 5 they do forward on the rating. Its apparantly a bad game, but because of this trick it is still rated a 4.5, which is possible by people rating it lower directly on Google Play where EA can't prevent it from going on.
At least that is what I am getting from reading it.
The beta design simply doesn't have the information density of the production version. Instead of scanning for interesting comments, I scroll until I get sick of scrolling and then back out to the next thread. This isn't a situation in which users are grumbling because they don't like change; it's an instance where the redesign has a dramatic negative effect on the UX. That's a potential site killer.
Sounds like victim blaming. "Beta didn't do it. You did it by not accepting Beta." There is always resistance to change. But the change has to at least bring something better to the table. Not a reduction in functionality. If the villagers didn't riot and just left quietly instead then you would still be left wanting better comments.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Except that it is not well intentioned. What they are doing is per-filtering people and anyone that says they would rate 5, they direct them to the rating site. Anyone that does not want to rate 5 they direct away from the rating site. Regardless what they may or may not do with user feed back, they are still artificially inflating their games score by hiding the rating site from anyone that doesn't want to give full ratings.
Neither. It's the super-paywall version where every tile you want to build takes 24 hours unless you pay them $2 PER TILE.
You are kidding right? "Solving" this by abusing the hosts file is the most crude solution one could possibly come up with, and, btw, renders /. entirely inoperable (what a loss...).
Guess either you aren't the real apk, or you indeed have the poor technical understanding you seem infamous for.
for the record, slashdot sets a cookie. it's called betagroup. It appears to contain an integer value between 0 and 99. The poor souls where this number is sufficiently small (ATM <20) get redirected to beta. The others do not.
In case the solution has not become obvious yet modify that cookie.
-- "But I use chrome, you insensitive clod!"
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
... the anti Beta posts are ruining this site more then that is.
That is the point. The majority of slashdot regulars DO NOT LIKE, NOR WANT BETA. The hope is that if by raising a stink, the powers that be will nix beta. You say you are here for the comments, but beta's comment system is seriously broken. What you come here for, what we all come here for, may no longer exist if beta gets implemented. Check your comments page and tell me how your comment was moderated, or how many people replied to it. Quote this text in a reply. Post anonymously. Can't be done in beta. Can't be Slashdot without it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This is probably the most insightful perspective I have seen on Slashdot about this mess we find ourselves in. Below is a direct cut and paste. It is not my post, but he states my perspective far more eloquently than I usually say things...
Fuck beta (Score:3, Insightful)
by Indigo (2453) Alter Relationship on Saturday February 08, 2014 @03:08PM (#46198875)
The new Slashdot design is based on Windows 8. That fact alone, even aside from the numerous usability issues, indicates that the new owners have no fucking idea in the world what they've acquired.
Slashdot is a technology site, a geek site, an open source site, a programming site, an Internet / Web advocacy site. But more than that, it is a Linux community site. It lives and dies by its community. That community, by and large, is made up of passionate Linux advocates who can be whipped into a frenzy at the mention of Microsoft, who think Bill Gates is the Great Satan, who sincerely believe in free and open source software, and who implement that passion in their lives, hobbies, and jobs. Sure, not everyone here fits the mold. But that's the core of the community.
As one single data point, I work on simulators in the aerospace segment. We develop and integrate specialized, whole-system, software-only simulators, supporting software development when the hardware has limited availability or hasn't been built yet. Our user community is not large, but includes key technical people at well known organizations. Like others we interface with, our work has gone from Windows and Linux in the beginning, to mostly Linux, plus Windows if we have to. That's how we like it. Linux works for us - it's developer friendly, it's rock solid, it's quite deployable, and it lets us do what we need to do. And a bunch of us come to Slashdot to catch the news on Linux and other geek-worthy subjects, and discuss it with others.
And now the owners, having acquired this rather unique and valuable site, want to make it into Windows fucking 8 - the friendly, cuddly, but unusable Fisher-Price operating system that represents everything we despise? The mind reels. You might as well just make it a SEO parking page for Microsoft.
Seriously, DICE, do not do this thing. I know you don't care about the history, community, or shared values of this site, but this move will destroy them, and take the site with it. It will become a ghost town, abandoned by its residents, only visited by tourists and people that got lost on their way somewhere else.
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guys seriously I think beta is stupid... but all the anti Beta posts are ruining this site more then that is.
Um, you are aware that disruption is the point of picketing, right? The idea is to get not just the slashdot editors to notice, but the upper management who may be unaware of what's going on.
Disrupting the forums enough that it awakens those with power to actually make decisions is necessary to save slashdot.
If slashdot feeds us non-committed platitudes and corpspeak svada, chances are they do the same upwards too.
Hopefully some paying advertisers will notice soon, and make a phone call. It's not in their interest to sponsor a forum full of unhappy people, whether they're unhappy with DICE or unhappy with the protests.
I hope it won't take too long before someone is forced to swallow a camel and finally admit that they messed up. Then we can move on, get a new usable design made from scratch, and have a thriving community of posters.
But I'd rather see a few days of picketed topics now than to see Slashdot die within a few months. All your guys postings are worth a lot more to me than rational discussions right now and a dead site down the road.
So forgive us for disrupting your comment reading right now. If you can think of any other way to get the top brass to see that the site is broken, and that an overwhelming majority of those who make people come to visit the site won't accept the beta, even with band-aids on it, please let us know. Using the "appropriate" channels have gotten us exactly nowhere, they've ignored feedback for four months.
Also it solves nothing when they put beta in as the live site and remove the "classic" site.
Presumably that will not last long when they see readers flocking away. But who knows, the corporate masters at Dice are probably demanding new readers; and somehow the staff thinks they will acheive this by turning it into a combination of the lack of a user interface for comments that ars has, with the shitty front page that Digg had.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I have seen the Beta a few days ago just to see what the protect was about, if that goes live, Slashdot is dead.
I have been on here since the 1990's, the comments is the main thing that makes this place worth coming to. Even the political stuff. They give great information on the topic even finding things the original articles had wrong or just left out and gives virtually every side of a story. One of the few sites where you can so a political story and get both the left and right views of it with both extremist sides getting called out for that crap and the misconceptions on both sides corrected and the trolls flat out just modded out. Had times where I would read a 10 minute article and then over 2 hours of comments giving more information on it and flat out picking it apart in every possible way.
With beta, the comments section is marginalized and hard to really keep organized and all the added stuff eat up way too much space. The people who made it have no clue what the appeal of this site is and their setup will destroy that. If I wanted what they are pushing, I would got to CNET news. If it goes live, slashdot is dead and we will have to find a new place and it will be hard to find one as good as this one was.
displayed on a nerd=site where all negative comments about the quality of the site are hidden away as -1 or off topic
Don't look now, but your negative comment about the quality of this site is currently modded as +4 Interesting.
Ah-Ha! But that only proves the point! You see, they intentionally allowed your comment to be modded up so they can point to it and say, "See, we didn't mod that one into oblivion!" Tricksy Hobbitses!
Oh yeah, and, Fuck Beta.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2451671,00.asp
such BS...
No joke. Total biscuit gives you a quick look in this video.
http://youtu.be/6DJmS7prcmE?t=...
If this is the future of gaming according to EA they can shove it up their arse.
Short term, yes. But if EA gets away with this, other developers are sure to follow, and the loss of an effective ratings would seriously hurt the play store's reputation - pontentially easily doing enough financial damage in lost business to offset whatever they make from this one game.
Maybe all the downmods are coming from people like me, who come to /. for the articles and comments, not caring about site design, who owns what and political bullshit implications.
I come here to see informative comments on the subject at hand and read relevant news. What you guys are doing is noise I loathe.
It's like going to a cafe to have a good coffee and overhear interesting conversation about the soft volume music playing, and when owner decides to redesign the cafe's interior, some tards start screaming in my ear whenever a new song is played, just because they don't like the new paintwork.
And when other patrons flag them as vandals, they come up with a "conspiracy theory".
You and your kind are vandals in my opinion. You don't like the new cafe paintwork? Feel free to go to another or create your own. but please, leave me be. Allow me to read the articles and relevant comments.
You're the kid in this video, and I'm the other customer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The implication of site design on a site where content is user-generated is whether said content - comments, in Slashdot's case - keeps being generated. The consensus seems to be that Beta is sufficiently bad in this regard to give the deathblow to Slashdot.
Beta is not paintwork. Beta is a set of sound-absorbing elements that stop those conversations from being overheard but look trendy. And, this being Slashdot, the coffee is two weeks old and has already been drunk in at least two other cafes.
The main complaint about Beta is that it makes it difficult to read comments, and almost impossible to read them in their context.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm sorry but that is EXACTLY what those of us who were beta testers for Windows 8 were told, what did we get? "Sure we hear you" (we just don't give a fuck what you have to say).
The big difference here is until Alt is up and running we can't just "stick with the old one" or "use a different one" like we did with windows 8, because frankly there ISN'T ONE, there isn't any comment heavy site like /. catering to nerds, least not that I've found. instead you get "comments by Disqus" style pages where if an article is REALLY lucky you get...drumroll...10 comments! because at the end of the day its nothing more than a press release that nobody even gives enough fucks about to say anything, just glance and move on.
You say awareness has been brought...citation please? A single article by Soulskill or Timothy don't mean jack shit, they are tier 3 at best. show me a single thing, just one, from somebody in a high position at DH and I'll take your word for it and helpfully post right beside you that the #Fuckbeta needs to stop.
But you'd better provide it quick, because I won't be here from the 10th-17th.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Several years back I tried contacting Slashdot about a variety of issues, with my point being that some of these can/should be fixed for those who subscribe (as I was willing to do).
They, of course, did not change, and so I, of course, did not subscribe.
FWIW, my main point/suggestion was:
There is, at present, zero value in subscribing. Slashdot should take a lesson from Ars Technica -- they let you download the entire article, in PDF format, if you are a subscriber. I suggested Slashdot allow subscribers to load an entire comment thread on a single page (to get rid of the annoying duplicate post bug that has been around for more years than I have fingers). They didn't go for it.
So here we are today, with Slashdot providing nothing of value to subscribers, and losing money. Color me shocked.
Boycott begins tomorrow, for at least a week.
I come here for the love
Ironically, you're destroying /. when you're trying to save it this way.
The point of the distruption is to bring awarness and that has clearly been accomplished. You're continuing distruption however is fueled by a different motive which is to control /. and make /. do what you want them to do. That's a violation of property rights and I'm not going to support it. Let me let you in on a little secret. It's not you're fucking Slashdot! Trying to control them won't work and will cause more harm than good.
Don't ascribe me motifs. You're dead wrong in several respects.
1: Awareness has not been accomplished. There is no indication that the awareness has reached farther than the slashdot editors and the design team. If you have other information, please point to it. The point was not to make visitors aware, but tot make the stink big enough that it would reach those with the ability to cut the crap and make decisions.
2: I have no wish to control slashdot. I have a wish for slashdot to stop the headlong rush towards a cliff that the users won't follow them over. I don't want them to do a Digg.
Slashdot is not too big to fail.
I would welcome changes, but not changes that will drive away a majority of the posters. I do not believe that slashdot could survive that.
When a toddler walks towards a busy road you yell to stop it. If it continues walking because it's obstinate and you're not its mommy, you continue yelling to get the attention of someone in the position to intervene.
Those that advocate doing nothing and please stop shouting that will are the ones thinking only of themselves. I will not stand idle and watch with you.
It is not too late to save the site, but it won't happen through hope.
Because I want to see lots and lots of posts and discussions here over the next fifteen years. Including yours, and others on my foe and freak lists. Slashdot is too important to be allowed Death By Redesign.
The number of sites that died, or are just a shadow of what they were, are plenty. Yahoo Video is another one. It was lead by the same man who now leads technology for Dice Holdings. The vision is strong in that one.
UI changes are not something to act disruptive in every fricking thread over, even if they reduce features.
Slashdot has two things, comments and a UI. If you fuck up the UI so that you can't easily comment, it will have zero things. Many of us have dare I say invested a lot of time here, and it's reasonable to attempt to protect that investment by spending more time bitching about the proposed changes. The fact that you're seeing so many messages of complaint is that it's a big deal to many people. If you're not one of them, consider yourself counted, but realize that you're protesting protest which is both bitchy and hypocritical.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Meanwhile in RealityWorld:
Exec: Wow, those neckbeards really hate change. It's a shame. That site is losing money already, and they're trying to destroy any chance to revitalize it. Guess we should just shut it down instead. Alright boys, let's auction the servers.
That might not be a bad alternative to running the site over a cliff. It could be sold to the users, like WELL.
I still hope for reason to prevail, but if not, I would welcome a user-owned slashdot, and contribute my share.