I went ahead and started a review spreadsheet for this year.
It should be editable by everyone, let me know if I messed that up.
Thanks!
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Thanks! And especially for getting it started for me with my first few reviews.
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There are links on the page that are in the authorās only forum. Should those be moved somewhere else or formatted or something? For the majority not in that forum, itā annoying opening links that may randomly not work. And also doesnāt give an instant visual overview of what doesnāt have a public review.
-Wade
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On last yearās spreadsheet those links were replaced with āAuthorās forumā.
That spreadsheet had some cool formula stuff, too, I wonder if we could get it to work this year.
Edit: Link to last yearās spreadsheet:
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Ah yes. Letās give it some time and the sheet wizard(s) may do their magic!
-Wade
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The links to reviews in the authorās forum should have a yellow background, is it not showing up on your side?
I can add a column with the number of public reviews and base the game coloring on that if people think thatās more helpful.
Ah, youāre right. I confused that with my own selecting of the cell. Thanks.
Iām already glad of the feature youāve got but I do also think that extra column was really helpful.
-Wade
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Can you add a file with total reviews as 2020 sheet?
Thanks.
I agree with the autoimplement feature.
I think I worked with Victor Gijsbers on the scripting. I donāt know if Iāll have time to formally move the code over (already found bugs in fourbyfouria to fix & want to make a big push to close the book on other projects) and the code may be a bit messy, but I suspect it should be portable.
The main problem may be adjusting some fixed values in the script. IIRC the spreadsheet listed the latest reviews cut-and-pasted. This was a handy feature to have so people could know if there was anything new to look at.
I suspect/hope this topic gets pinned. Itās really neat to see the crowd-based effort to get all the reviews in one place.
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Repairs have been done this afternoon. I saw Nils working in as I was reading the spreadsheet.
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Wow, progress is moving fast!
By the way, I think I see a way to get rid of the Ugly Hack spreadsheet
The cells on the left can be
=sumproduct(not(isblank(B3:H3)), IF(REGEXMATCH($B$1:$H$1, "[aA]uthor"), 1, 0))
for public, and for all reviews,
=sum(not(isblank(B3:H3)))
I tried this on a small sample spreadsheet of my own & it worked okay.
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Thanks!
It is sad to me that so many reviews are hidden in the author forum, given that authors are judges just like us this year. I completely understand that itās helpful for authors to have some spaces where they can discuss privately the experiences of being an entrant, but surely review threads arenāt improved by being hidden? I think the ongoing public discussion of IFComp would be greatly enriched by including author review threads in the dialogue. I like reading everyoneās opinions on entries, seeing how different people react to the same material widens the perspective.
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The author forum is private. Iām not clear on the rule change; the authors usually vote in a separate competition that donāt get weighed in the resultsā¦
- Judge Rule 4, which previously stated that authors may not judge the entries, will be changed for 2021 so that authors may additionally participate as judges, but cannot rate their own entries. This rule will be evaluated after the 2021 IFComp, with feedback from the community.
If the voting is different, I suppose they could post IFDB reviews? Weāve maintained a private author forum for years - mainly due to the fact that previously authors could not say anything about their own games or anyone elseās and that was where they could decompress and discuss without violating rules.
I can see IFComp is evaluating this as a change, but I can also see how it might be a difficult line to tread. They are not supposed to influence voters during the comp, but publishing a negative or positive review kinda seems like it could be considered as that? Weāll see how it goes this year.
I mean, theyāve always been hidden: itās just that now with the spreadsheet everyone can see that they existā¦
I know a lot of authors make their reviews public after IFComp, which is good enough for me. YMMV. In fact, seeing a drip of reviews (1 per day) from fellow authors reminds me to take a look at submissions I missed. The last few years I havenāt really looked at entries I wanted to, and even if it is a post-comp nudge, that will help. Also I think non-entrants will enjoy seeing reviews roll in after IFComp is over. There are a lot of entries, and some will get missed.
Given that authors reviewing other works could be seen as influencing, Iām okay with having to embargo reviews on IFDB until post-comp.
Iām happy enough with being able to open my source control repos and discuss general stuff about developing my entries, and I can wait til compās end to give a full postmortem. Other entrants may feel differently and Iād be ok with authors reviewing others publicly. Itāll probably be obvious if someone abuses the rule, and I think the vast majority of authors wouldnāt even consider it.
I think having the spreadsheet will show us how many authors are taking advantage of the new rule that their ratings count. Again, thatās good enough for me, so YMMV.
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I see just ONE review of authors? 82 - 81 it isā¦ nothing.
I use number of reviews as games played indicator, extrapolating afterwards voted games.
Iāve added in some brief design reviews I did last week. They are very short but hopefully still worth including.
Unfortunately they are in the Authorās Forum for now; Iāll probably republish these after the competition ends.
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Would anyone find keeping track of running daily totals useful? For instance, on a new sheet, every day weād track the total reviews and total public reviews, and weād have data to graph at the end to see when reviews come in, etc. It might be neat to know just how many reviews are clumped near the start and end of IFComp.
(As for how to keep ourselves motivated reviewing during the seeming dead period, thatās outside the scope of this discussion. Maybe in the āI feel like a snailā topic.)
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