Board Game Arena

no, it's not win.win.

when i give a red thumb .. it is a signal to myself and others that i find this person's play disagreeable and i will be very reluctant to join any table where they are at.

the fact that others don't know why someone is given a red thumb is NOT a good enough reason to de.implement a tool which provides useful information.

Fair point. It's not that red thumbs do not give useful information, it's more that the utility has been diluted by anonymity, reactiveness, and little recourse for correction similar to how green thumbs have been diluted by many players admitted awarding by default.

The same argument can be made for 'only a few bad apples are spoiling' the red thumb utility, but it's a bit wider than that. The residual negative impressions left with again little to no recourse for clarification to many of those here playing well by the reactive appears to be not so subltely outweighing the benefit of having a tool (red thumb) indended to truly mark a bad player (who if truly bad does not care - key point).

The second comment however is part of what seems to be the angst issue here: that reasons for reds ARE desired and useful to most here.

In any evaluation criteria, there are options for 'good v bad', 'something v nothing', and levels of each to be selected and applied. The application should be as objective and less subjective as possible and minimize the level of false negatives in particular to minimize negative impact on the majority of good players participating. That is the primary purpose of the GTO suggestion.

It is quite true to argue that a nothing vs. something good - only solution may not adequately let a player know they were rude or not fun to playwith; however, an IM does and over time the lack of accrued 'good marks' should have the exact same result of showing how many negative marks they get. Case in point: One can have 90 green thumbs and 10 red thumbs from 100 games, indicating a fairly good impression of good play. A similar ranking result of 90 green thumbs in 100 games (note the lack of red thumbs...) does the same. Conversely, a poorly received/rude player with 30 green thumbs and 70 red thumbs can be represented solely by the greens ("30 out of 100") with the same result (may indicate poor play). Again, IMs work even better than thumbs both to question and critique due to included feedback.

So a red thumb is received. Here's the cases of usefulness/uselessness:
1. Good player, no clue as to rationale for thumb - end result: useless.
2. Good player who played poorly - understands but as cannot challlenge the thumb, may IM about to discuss/clarify (apologize?), again with no result / useless.
3. New player, learning rules, not clear nor well played, receives thumb, considers site too cricital, limits interest, useless.
4. Poor player/trying, receives thumbs, see case 2, same result.
5. Rude/bad player/reactive type not interested in good play/courtesy, receives thumb, may or may not care, result 50% useless.

For many posters, it appears that people are only considering the use case #5 in their support for providing a rationale red thumb to a bad player.
In the above, 4.5 of 5 use cases actually negate good or working-at--it players morale and interest, with again a timely IM with feedback/advice far more useful.

The current approach teaches "avoid the negative" (which cannot be avoided given those truly not interested in clearing miscommunications or caring about your interests).
Why not foster a "strive for the positive" atmosphere and tools too?
Just a thought.

Ranif88 wrote:In any evaluation criteria, there are options for 'good v bad', 'something v nothing', and levels of each to be selected and applied. The application should be as objective and less subjective as possible and minimize the level of false negatives in particular to minimize negative impact on the majority of good players participating. That is the primary purpose of the GTO suggestion.

the bolded part is where you go wrong. a thumbs up or thumbs down is ALWAYS subjective. just ask any russian skating judge.

Ranif88 wrote:It is quite true to argue that a nothing vs. something good - only solution may not adequately let a player know they were rude or not fun to playwith; however, an IM does and over time the lack of accrued 'good marks' should have the exact same result of showing how many negative marks they get.

again, you are incorrect. the total number of red thumbs does indicate information that is NOT provided by the lack of a green thumb. my current BGA 'reputation' has 2978 green thumbs and 60 red thumbs. that means out of over 3000 players that i have played against on BGA, 2% have taken issue with my play.

of those, i can easily account for the vast majority of red thumbs:
- hanabi for not being on the same wavelength as other players
- saboteur for not playing the way someone expects another player to play
- various games where i have taken the time to explain how the game works to the newer players at the table, and offering strategy and advice, the latter which was not appreciated by another more experienced player at the table who was looking to exploit the newb (takenoko, battle sheep, seasons, tournay)
- retaliatory red thumbs
- server dropouts where i was unable to finish the game
- timeouts

so am i worried about those kinds of red thumbs ? nope. so out of those 60 .. maybe 10 or so were due to other factors which i might want to address .. but 10 players out of over 3000 ? i can live with a bit of random hatred, knowing that the vast majority of BGA players that i have played against have had positive interactions.

in your proposed system, i would have over 3000 green thumbs and an indication of how many players i have played (probably close to 3500 or so as i was around before the change where the green thumb was encouraged on the endgame screen). out of those 500 extra .. would all of those count as red thumbs in the absence of info ?? in the current system, those who are of lukewarm opinion don't have to thumb up or down but can await future interactions to decide. their lack of thumbing does NOT affect my reputation one iota. in your proposal, suddenly their non.opinion drops my rating from what i currently maintain (500 is much bigger than 60), taking me from 98% positive to 86% positive ... still a decent result, but obviously i prefer the current model.

The no-green-thumb method is not equivalent to the red thumbs method. It may become more equivalent if everyone is forced to rate people after every game (which has its own problems). Since rating is optional, a no green thumb could easily just mean that someone bypassed the ratings page.

In my opinion, it's much easier to not give someone a green thumb than to give them a red thumb. Therefore red thumbs are strong indicators of dislike, and no green are weak.

I may give someone no green thumb if:
- they play badly (perhaps they're a beginner), allowing someone who shouldn't have won to win
- they time out, but I think they had reason to
- they are somewhat annoying, but not really annoying

This means that I will give them another chance if they play with me later; their behavior wasn't so bad that I want to exclude them from future games.

I think the better solution here is allowing people who give red thumbs to also provide anonymous feedback as to why they did it.

To senatorhung : Appreciate the thoughts and time spent. Some continued clarifications:

Note my comment was general ('any..criteria') and noted 'less subjective as possible' not 'never subjective' and as a goal for any evaluation.
The offering of a selective 'award' (be it colored thumbs, numbers, etc) will likely remain so in any simplified evaluation where checklist criteria is not applied.
Point here is that the current weighting appears favoring (to most) for higher subjective/reactive awarding/use of negative responses and looking for a way to nullify this.

See prior notes where I make the same point/agreed with you; again, yes, red thumbs provide information and can have more weight in impact.
Point is the false negative impacts they have to the broader community vs those of us able to 'shake it off' (self included).

It is good you can account for the red thumb occurrance - I can infer from maybe half of mine but with no even anonymous IM or other feedback as to the 'why', they remain spurious and of no use except as flamed outbursts with no retribution or ability to correct. As some responders to the topic insist they ' dont care/get over it', can agree; however it again highlights the limited utility of the award and from numerous other postings remains a problem to the many.

You note the value in your awarding of a red thumb to a player based on your impressioning of their play and truly wanting to mark them as bad or for future noting.
Granted and positive. The assumption, however, is that the receiver cares for your marking (may not) or that there is no alternative to provide you future feedback (the non-presence of a green thumb would be similar - am watching words such as 'equivalent' or 'exactly the same as...' lol...).

There is a slight apples-apples problem in comparing the reputation % results as the current methods only (only) focus on responses from the players taking time to consider an award to you. As mentioned earlier, while good (higher green good vs reds), there is an artificial green-award default situation at play here too where many people simply award green afterwards, diluting their impact. This also has no accounting for all of the players you've/we've played - in your analysis, probably another few hundred hadnt bothered to provide a rank. Any system that casual is prone to misinterpretation (e.g. I play 100 games, 10 people rank me positive, 1 negative, 89 do not bother, I have a 'positive' reputation...). The savvy of us here also look at # of games played but this in some degree underscores my points of the utility of the current greens. The second issue is that the awarding of a green only becomes more positive focused and thus of more weight. I would like better to know what I could do to improve/impress the 89 who thought not enough of my play to even give me a small atta-boy/green thumb than focus my time on the 1 reactive red thumb with no feedback comments received going forward. Your % note with the non-rankers included shows the difference but again this is relatively changed from a rank system not including them (be proud of your 86, less so of your 98...). P.S. Per your analysis, I do not know that you would have 'over 3000' green thumbs - what extra incentive do you accrue from the existing system to get 'more' - apologies if point missed.

Lastly, in your general point the desire for some form of more useful feedback (a) exists today (IMs) and (b) isnt offered or used (the anonymous flamer/red thumber typically isnt interested in providing correctives / impressions to aid you or receiving yours - that's the primary point of the discussion, not our ability to dismiss or to address those wanting to give impactful red thumbs AND corrective or specific comments as well (again, do so via existing IM...).

To cosmosis, again appreciate the thoughts.
As stated earlier by me, you (we) are correct - the no green thumb is NOT equivalent (yes, again, more negative impact from the red thumb).
The point again is to dial down the negative impact/favoring the non-comment giving,red thumb drive-bys taking advantage of this fact.

As rating is indeed participatory, the giving of any thumbs in any system is again, yes, presumptive of the player's interest in providing any form of feedback.
In ANY system, this is true. The intent was to examine and address alternatives that make the awarding of casual non-useful negatives lessened.
My personal take is that a system more oriented towards improving the weights of the positives may actually improve player feedback participation (again, please A-B test away to see if true...).

Your cases for giving no green thumbs are valid - my point is currently they can be supported by either no thumb awarding or a red thumb which appears (see blogs/forum posts) to be more prevalent and thus the point of this discussion of examining a change.
Your points remain valid (I like the 'giving another chance' in particular where the current awarding of a red thumb is more a kiss of death..) in the yes/no green thumb system. A full benefit/no benefit table of use cases for each approach (current thumbs/proposed single green) can be done too with percentages showing the likelihood of utility for each implied 'why' - this is really the end game here (doing the work for that and supporting with feedback response-driven statistics from all actual players...) but unlikely for time and scope.

Lastly, again as mentioned, yes, use of IMs to simply communicate 'what the heck someone thought of a play/player/why the thumb' is great and exists today (IMs).
As mentioned before, the anonymity aspect is not useful if the end goal is true improvement rather than outgassing or flaming yet still keeps being offered as a solution when (again) one can simply send a poor player an IM with comments. Is the issue worry about retribution from the receiver? If so, we have come full circle to the anonymous red thumb awarding (less so with some diligent IM ing) issue with the only difference being now the exchange of words vs emojis and likely higher tensions,etc (note: still the same in the single green thumb system using IMs too..).

My comments above again in hope of clarification. Very much appreciate the thoughts and dialog on the points to your credit (all/senatorhung/cosmosis).

The offer is to the broader BGA community to tally a vote on whether the red thumb approach is truly useful for benefit/feedback/improvement/etc or not.
If 'not', the ongoing proposals for change (single green thumb award option/any other method proposed) may be tempests in a teapot with time better served to other areas (P.S. The ELO system is fairly applied btw to those seeking to look at other areas to improve or not...).
Love the site, appreciate the thoughtful players and interactions.

I think red/green provides way more information about a player than green only.

I think that not-rating outnumbers rating by far. Putting together a small number that provides information with a big number that doesn't provide information, you will lose the information.

rough estimation (warning: I made this up to clarify what i mean):
friendly player: 95 green - 5 red - (200 unrated) turns into 200 green - 100 unrated (95% --> 66%)
insultive player: 90 green - 30 red - (180 unrated) turns into 180 green - 120 unrated (75% --> 60%)

(I think you expect more people to vote on green-only-system so i assumed 2/3 voters instead of 1/3 for red+green-system. By insultive player i mean someone who is insultive in about 10% of his games.)

With green only rating you can hardly tell them apart.

The false negatives will never be significant on a "good person" (in a way that other people have a bad feeling before starting a game with this person) but the correct negatives would become unsignificant on a "bad person" if you turn off red votes.

I prefer to have a warning before a possibly bad encounter because it makes me feel not so bad when getting insulted. Also I think sometimes people are not insultive when they have the urge to be because of the chance of getting a red thump.

I'm echoing some of the players here who suggested that the best solution to this problem is to make people who give red thumbs provide a reason for their rating. Requiring a reason may cut down on the people who give red thumbs for petty reasons. The player who gets the red thumb can receive the reasons for why they got it but not the player's name who gave it to him or her if you still want to keep the system anonymous. Right now, a red thumb tells a player that someone didn't like his or her behavior, but it doesn't tell them WHY. For people who are interested in keeping a good rating, giving them feedback about their behavior will help them not make the same mistakes again.

I know that there's apparently a set number of red thumbs each player is allowed to give out (though I don't think anyone has said what the number is), but moderators should also keep track of the ratio of green to red thumbs that players are giving out. Players who give out an excessive amount of red thumbs unfairly should first receive a warning to stop it. If they continue, they should be banned from the site.

A green thumb only system isn't helpful, nor is a system that penalizes you if someone doesn't decide to red or green thumb you after the game. Sometimes, players forget to rate someone after the game. It doesn't mean they disliked the player, just that they probably forgot to or didn't have time to.

I also think it's unfair that some games seem to attract excessive red thumb givers (like Saboteur, Hanabi, and Colt Express). I know people who I enjoy playing with who unfairly have a high amount of red thumbs because they frequently play those games.

Much as I hated getting my first red thumb as clueless (pun intended) Hanabi noob, and even though I thought that red thumb was unjustified (don't I deserve time to learn?), I'd hate to see red thumbs go away entirely.

Take a player with 50% red thumbs out of hundreds of ratings. He's a troll, he's obnoxious. If all I see are his hundreds of green thumbs, I'd have no clue about that.

Maybe it would be best if the red thumbs and green thumbs both went away after a while. A bad citizen could rehabilitate by behaving nicely.

Maybe people should stop giving red thinbs in Hanabi.. The game is not even ranked. At least 50% of my red thumbs are from Hanabi games where players give it to you after only 1 mistake. Then they say you are toxic, and they should play only with masters that are on their level of greatness.

Great notes from all / appreciate the comments.
The general response continues to be in favor of more reflective/useful commenting should a negative reaction occur between players.

Two additions:
(1) 'include comments' - Believe most on the site are in agreement that any form of a comment associated with a red thumb would be of more use.
The actions therefore are supporting either (a) current method (no force to provide a comment, or if desired can forward an IM) or (b) force a comment with red thumb.
Those responding in this dialog also seem to desire to retain the anonymity of the red thumb giver, and perhaps an impression that any comment will be for benefit.

To restate: The general posting was for two ideas - one, to examine the usefulness of the current green/red thumb system, and two, to reduce the misuse (or improve).
Much of the focus of many of the responders is in reaction to red thumbs offered often in heat of battle, reactively, and with no useful content for correction, etc.
The idea of promoting a comment action along with a red thumb is positive; however, for those not interested in changing their reactive thumb behaviors the likelihood of useful comment from this is probably the same as being forwarded an IM after a red thumb currently (in other words, very low to zero).
The forcing of a comment prior to issuing a red thumb would in most of the reactive situations (again, the primary focus of why looking at the system) lead to flame IMs just to get the thumb issued.
Currently, IMs are not anonymous and thus not used for this effort. While recognizing some folks are sensitive to this point, am not a fan of the anonymous thumb or comment regardless, so have no issue with current state IM exchanges to clarify any play issues. Given this, I would send a IM instead of a red thumb first (key) to clarify, etc. and then decide on either a red thumb or no issuance of a green. Note this does not change in any system suggested.

(2) 'percentages' - Appreciate the ongoing looks at what the math might be with the current or any alternative solution. Yet another quick try here:
The usefulness of a player's general ranking noting both green and red thumb quantities again assumes everyone playing invokes a ranking (gives a thumb).
The reality is that a sufficient number of players do not even apply a green thumb (even though as discussed many default greens occur), lending dilution to the rank idea.
As of this writing, I have played 1644 games with a reputation based solely on only those willing to have ranked my play (634 green/13 red).
While positive (thanks everyone - 634/647 is a 97.9% positive...), when viewed against all games I've played, it is 38.6% (634/1644).
The difference is that many of the games played are with players that have already ranked me, therefore this is a less than useful metric if it is not evaluated every game.
However, if one was able to identify exactly how many 'non thumb' games I played, then a better total (# games with all players who chose to rank or not) could be used.

As a second point, the worry of what such a ranking may mean as a lower number relative to the current reputation ranking should be clarified.
In a generic example, if a player plays 200 games and is ranked for, say 150 games (good or bad), the 50 players not providing a rank are likely to not provide a rank regardless of the system and can be held constant (yes, a changed system may or may not encourage more/less participation, but for now we'll let them be).
Using the current system, if in the 150 games a 'good' player received 120 green thumbs and 30 red thumbs, a 120/150 or 80% 'good/bad' rating results, as well as a 120/200 or 60% 'ranked positive for all games played'.
Note that the metrics mean different things (you did not suddenly lose 20% 'goodness' as a player, but maintained a 60% 'all games played' rating).
Using a green-only system, the 'good' player would be ranked 'good' in 120 games, rendering the same quantity number (120) and the same 120/200 (60%) all game rating.
While the second metric is lower than a comparison to good vs bad, the overall impression should be taken as more impactful given the player encouraged 120 fellow players to consider them 'good'. This helps underscore the points made earlier on 'promoting the positive' vs. 'avoiding the negatives'....

(2.5) In reading the above - yes, to make a better ('best'?) metric useful for the green/games, a thumb vote would be suggested for all players after every game.
This is likely challenging and perhaps tiring (how did every player perform every time vs the current general long term feel of a player) but does work.
The bigger point was to try and show that one's collective 'goodness' does not get diluted if the system gets a change, just how one interprets it.

Short takeaways: If the reactive red thumb comment-givers can be considered to provide useful comments via even anonymous IMs, would be useful.