Mad Russian

WWB, As PM stated, it has been the standing policy of CSDT and also HSG, to not review our own group's scenarios. From your earlier comments to PM it is obvious that you didn't intend to make a slight to CSDT. Please do not take what I said personally, but I put a lot of effort into my work, and I don't care for anyone who hasn't even reviewed it, to pass it off as tainted. You probably feel the same way about your own scenarios. I see you have 12 battles and 3 operations posted to the SD. I don't believe that I have played any of them yet. I like the smaller historical ones and I may give one a run through. Now, as PM suggested, let's get on with the job of seeing what needs to be done to make SD even better than it is now. Panther Commander

WWB I'm not getting uppity about a minor typo. I was upset at your slam that the CSDT group doctored their reviews. If that wasn't your intent then no problem. But to name a group, and then get it wrong, is a bit malicious don't you think? Tell you what after you play my scenarios and leave a review then you can tell me anything you want about them. Deal? Panther Commander

Panzerman, I knew it would never die. Old wagamers and thier organizations never do. Best of luck with CSDT... and I will review any scenario you put up. Objectively, I might add. I would only say to WWB, that, I have no reviews done by him on any of my scenarios. So how would he know if the reviews were tainted? And if you played them why didn't you leave a review behind? Panther Commander

However, I wholehearted agree, that there should be no reviews done by playtester or the designer himself if there is anything other than comments put on the review. Panther Commander

Since it is CSDT and not CDST, maybe you don't know who it consists of. At the moment it is in retirement. Does that mean that the former designers or playtesters should not review any scenarios done by other former members? And how would you know if they did? Just asking... Panther Commander

Gentlemen, CM has it right. Who you need to be shouting at is the designer. I have made and posted more than 30 scenrios on the SD and I can tell you that the Friendly Fire quotient belongs to the designer. If you want a reasonable incidence of Friendly Fire, ie. not more than about 10% of the time you use crack pilots. If you want your pilots to perform at a high level of unit identification you use elite pilots. It's that simple. I would venture to say that playtesting of scenarios would prove my point. You also have to consider if the scenario is a historical one what the actual results of the aircraft intervention was. In one of my scenarios the Luftwaffe actually HELPS the Panzers win the scenario. If they don't show up your ground forces will lose. So it all belongs to the designer. Steve

This discussion is great. I'm not sure, that the review by committee, is feasible without designers though. The gaming community seems, as a whole, quite lazy and designers are the more active of the participants. I have more than 30 scenarios posted to the SD so I have a fairly large commitment to the site. I also was disgruntled enough to plan an alternate web site. The main reason was the review system. AK and I talked(email) almost an entire day, I must have set him back hours on his paying job.... there are some issues with the site, but I think they can be resolved. My recommendations are: Site registratiion. That way you control the site, you have accountability for both uploads and reviews. The registration may keep virus' from being sent to the SD as well. If they know you can trace it back to them and they could be liable for damages maybe they won't do it. We do live in a legalistic world. A rating committee has it's plus' and minus'. The problem is that all reviews are subjective. You have a group of people now that are rating the scenarios. You are getting widely varying results because there are no control parameters. What is a 10? What is a 6? It is open to the interpretation of the reviewer. ANY review system will be open to that same interpretation. Some systems are better than others. The numbers without some standardization are poor. They are better than nothing but not much. A number system with a meaningful set of criteria such as MD proposes is better but still easily padded. Scrapping the numbers and going to a thumbs up or a thumbs down seems swinging the pendulem all the way in the other direction. The system that has Very Good, Good, Average, Below Average, Don't Bother is the best. That system too can be padded. Now you are proposing to add controled reviews on top of posted reviews. To give them the golden star!! But that system isn't infallible either. "Well you know I NEVER get reviewed by the committee....they just don't like me." Whatever you do, there should be "NO" reviews posted without a comment. I hate getting numbers and them not telling me about my scenario. I want to know if they liked it or not. But mostly WHY!! The numbers mean little to me, EXCEPT that they put you on the lists, and if you make the lists you get more DL's, which means that more people see your work. It's an ego thing...<G> Where this is all going is to say that I'm not sure a committee is needed to review the work reviewers are already doing. UNLESS you use just the committee to do the reviews. Let people choose to be included on the committe. What if we have people sign up to be reviewers? They agree to do at least one review a week, or some other such number, they are on record, you know who they are, if they join a group they drop out of the reviewing pool. Just my $.04 worth. Panther Commander