Map Health: An Addition to Map Stats (Second Beta)

[TaCktiX]

MrBenn, I understand your sentiments that mapmaking is not top priority. In some ways, I'm shooting my own maps in the foot, as The Citadel started on January 24th ostensibly, when I only finished Version 1 in the middle of March. I find it very unlikely that I will ever reach the posts/day bar in any stage. One thing that my stats are unable to do presently is take account of "time off" that a mapmaker has to do on occasion. I am more than willing to add a "vacation offset" if mapmakers who think their map is getting worse stats than they think it should. Yours, in particular, had quite a break with a last revision in mid-February until mid-April or so. I might also note that according to May 16th's stats, your map is doing Mediocre (your post percentage in topic is low, C.A.'s have talked a lot, it's been a bit since the last revision, amount of people throwing "hey, new Europe map, yay!" support is fairly high, mostly). Your posts/day has not flagged from what it should have been, and consistent updates is a necessary part of Stage III, lest a map fall out of interest entirely. Assuming an update drops in the next couple days, your map will be doing Good, and more useful feedback will drop the support numbers over time.

In a lot of ways, Map Health is very uncomfortable. I have made the number ranges very generous as a result, but the idea of being told "well according to the numbers, your map isn't doing so hot on being next up on the list of Live Play maps" is disheartening. In a lot of cases I've seen, earlier "sins" come back to haunt a topic later (The Citadel got a massive amount of support while I didn't have a functional version up, the percentage as it stands right now is far in excess of ANY Stage's Support percentage). In this Third Beta, I will include a Prognosis "why" for a map's health. Also after I finish an auto-generate program (Java skills ftw!), I'll be able to post "if this were in the previous or next stage" stats alongside a map's current stage.

[MrBenn]

I'd also echo gimils comments about CA posts - how much of their commentary is a CA 'doing their job', and how much is them 'being part of the community'?

[TaCktiX]

In the adjusted percentages I've edited through my spreadsheet (which can be seen if you download the source file in the first post of Map Stats), I've taken account for both cases, as can be seen by the much lower occurrence of excessive C.A. posting. Also of note is that the standards I have for specific types of posts, now put at the bottom of the first post of the Map Stats topic. C.A-wise, any polls brought down are Feedback, and any Stamps (including Advanced Idea and Final Forge) handed out are Support (as they are supporting the ongoing movement of the map). I've had these in place to make the percentages on maps settle out nicer, especially in earlier stages.

I interpret the C.A. job as being "chief spokesman" in a council of equals. 99% of what they say in map topics is in the better interests in the Foundry, and they generally have the politeness to not post in a topic that does not interest them (a C.A. saying your idea has no legs in the map topic is a great way to sink overall interest fast). So in that regard, they should have a significant contribution in every map's development (where one C.A. doesn't like it, typically another C.A. does, or a C.A. "warms up" to the idea as development improves the map).

And in reference to your concerns about New Europe (or would you prefer me to change that to Europa now?), I was thinking about it and have decided to stand by the definition I provided as Disclaimer at the top of the starting post. There is no one who can tell me that a map with vacations is proceeding "in the most efficient manner" through the Foundry. At the same time, I created the Map Health metric to be hard to "break" on one point. If post rate sucks, so what? If everything else is golden with a map, it's still in Good health. It requires problems on several levels to have a map do worse than Good, and my disclaimer/definition states the scope of Map Health in detail. Its scope is no further, and is not intended to be at any point.

[Kaplowitz]

Make the titles bold, its hard to find a specific map