# Reviews 'beta' site



## Morrus (Feb 27, 2002)

The new reviews/d20 guide is now at a stage where we can have a look at it.

Please note:

1) It is NOT finished yet.  Far from it.

2) The data in there is old - it's just test data.  The review don#'t match the products at present.  That doesn't matter right now.

3) The right hand column will be moving to the left.  All of the tabs in the right hand column will be merged with the tabs on the left (so it will read: Most Recent Reviews|Top 10 Wizards|Top 10 d20|Worst 10 d20 | Reviewers|Search|Admin).   

4) The search function will be expanded.  At present it searched for words in the title of each product only.  It'll cover the descriptons of the products too - so you can search for products dealing with the 'sea', for example.

5) The 'browse product' function will indicate whether a productis available, out of print, overdue, announced etc.

There's more to do too.  But feel free to take a look, offer suggestions.  Remember this is very much 'in development'.


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## Morrus (Feb 27, 2002)

Oh - it would probably help if I posted a link:

http://www.enworld.org:8888/


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## Psionicist (Feb 27, 2002)

Morrus, this absolutely ROCKS! I'm glad you found a techie to do the coding stuff, I mean, you cannot do everything yourself on a community this big! Things were much better when you just had to concentrate on D&D / d20 than annoying servers, coding and other spooky stuff.

Way to go!


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## EricNoah (Feb 28, 2002)

Using IE 5.5, it has some very weird problems.  The center panel has a scrollbar, but the overall page itself has no scroll bar. There's material farther down the page but I can't get to it.   I'm finding that I can resize the side panels (is that intentional?)

I'll see how IE 6 works when I get home.


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## Chacal (Feb 28, 2002)

It looks very nice, I really like the new layout.
It loads faster too, but I don't know if it comes more from the size of the test database than from the page size.

A strange thing happened with the review rating checkboxes: I can check lots of them, but not uncheck them. 
I get this error when I tried to add a comment:
_
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e09'

[MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver][mysqld-3.23.47-nt]You have an error in your SQL syntax near ')' at line 1

/includes/db.asp, line 37
_

I'm using Mozilla 0.9.5 under Linux with javascript  enabled.


I like the browse by publisher list.

Another strange thing is that the review of Necromancy: Beyond the grave by Psion is not linked from the Mongoose entry. I assume it's because of the test database but I say it just in case...

Hope this helps.


Chacal


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## Clint (Feb 28, 2002)

Really nice start! I really dig the streamlined interface. Fast loading, too.

Clicking on "Top Reviewers" to get to "Browse Reviewers" is a little confusing.

Is loading the list of publishers to start a search necessary? Why not have it broken out to a link? In fact, having all the Browse functionality spread out on the left could be fixed by making a small unit module (grey box) just for Browsing:

Browse: Products | Publishers | Reviewers

Finally, the red scroll bars are a little strong, compared to the color layout of the rest of the page.

Thanks, good luck!


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## Clint (Feb 28, 2002)

Oh, one more comment:

I think that the "most recent reviews" are simply the 10 most recent reviews. There have occasionally been spurts of activity that push a review from as recently as yesterday off the list.

Why not have that be a three or four-day window, instead of the last 10? Then you don't miss a beat, and the window gets smaller in times of inactivity. 

Thanks again,

-Clint


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## trancejeremy (Mar 1, 2002)

On the main page, I'd like to be able to pick a publisher from something like a combo-box (that's what they are called in VB, anyway, but the things like on the message board, where you pick the size, color, and font of the text), then go to that companies products.

Kinda like how it's done in the current review page, only instead of all the publishers spread out, they'd just be choices in a combo box.

Many times when I want to submit a review for an item, I need to check to see if it's been added to the database or not. So being able to quickly check the publisher is very useful. At least for me.

Another thing - on the most recent reviews, it might be nice to have spell out the month, ie, May 20 or Feb 10, as opposed to using numbers.  Since the US and the rest of the world use different formats, it can be confusing.


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## omedon (Mar 2, 2002)

I really like being able to cycle through the top 10's, the cyling in the reviewers secition is good too, so is searching by company.

My biggest complaint is having the actual reviews sandwiched between two frames but it sounds like you are going to fix this by moving everything to the left menubar, a good move IMHO.

I am not a frames fan, but when everthing is moved to the one side I think it will be much better, and the frames are a small price to pay for the new functions.

I can't wait to see the new changes. Keep up the good work.


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## Blacksad (Mar 4, 2002)

EricNoah said:
			
		

> *Using IE 5.5, it has some very weird problems.  The center panel has a scrollbar, but the overall page itself has no scroll bar. There's material farther down the page but I can't get to it.   I'm finding that I can resize the side panels (is that intentional?)
> 
> I'll see how IE 6 works when I get home. *




Same problem here, but with IE 6


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## Staffan (Mar 4, 2002)

The font sizes on the review site are still broken. Broken in this case means that they're given as absolute point sizes, rather than using relative scales.

I use a pretty high resolution (1280x1024) on my computer, and 8-point text comes out pretty small. In order to read things properly, I have set IE to display "Larger" text. However, abolute point sizes on fonts bypass that, making the reviews horribly hard to read.


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## Erithtotl (Mar 7, 2002)

*Updates to Reviews beta site*

I have updated the beta site with the new Left-hand only navigation frame.  It's not perfect but it does give us a lot more real estate to work with.

I have also increased the font-size on review text and product text to 10pt.  I could even increase it to 11 or 12 if people think its necessary, but it looks ok on my 1280x1024.  Unfortunately I just can't really stop fixing the point sizes, otherwise all the menus and other navigational tools will get thrown out of whack.  You can't design a good looking interface without fixing the point size.  

Added to that is I'm not a web designer, I'm a software engineer, so its not really my specialty.  If there is a web designer / HTML monkey who wants to help out, I'd be thrilled.  I'm just trying to do the best I can.

As for data incrongruities, that should be cleaned up when we use a real data set.  I had to experiment with the data during both development and the conversion process from MSAccess to MySQL, so some things may have gotten misdirected. 

As for the performance improvement, it is not a result of using a smaller database.  The database I'm using is just the site about a month ago, and it was slow as crap then too.  I'm hoping that once this goes live the reviews section will be 10x more usable if only because it will be so much faster.  Obviously, one of the big constraints is server CPU and memory utilization, which can't really be improved without upgrading.  Also unfortunately we are running PHP for the boards and ASP for the rest of the site, which eats up extra resources.  Especially since PHP installations on Windows 2000 boxes are rare and all the performance enhancing tools for PHP only work on Linux systems.

Ian


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## omedon (Mar 8, 2002)

I would like to see the most recent reviews centered like they are on the current review site. Also I am not a big fan of the red scroll bars. I would like to see the scroll bars match the rest of the EN World site.

I am still trying to get used to the frames, and the colourfull scrollbars just make things worse.


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## Blacksad (Mar 19, 2002)

*just a small suggestion*

Could it be possible to allow  playtesters and authors to choose a N/A score  if they want to give a good/complete description of their product, without interferring with the ranking system?

edit: second suggestion, a profile section for reviewers. It is often said that people need to find reviewers with their tastes, such a section could help if reviewers explain in it (if they want) what their current campaigns are, how they rate product, if they test the product in their games, by how much they tend to alter adventures, and so on.


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## ShadowX (Mar 25, 2002)

*Its awesome*

Though I do ask if maybe you could epand the top products list a little.


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## praetorian (Mar 26, 2002)

To be honest, I really don't like the new look at all, even less than the old one.  Why?  Because the side bar, which contains all the options, is horribly small and annoying.  It takes WAY too many clicks to get what you want.  If I want to see the best and worse products, I have to click reviews (assuming I know this will give me what I want) then click on EACH of the lists.  Personally I would prefer them all on one side bar, together, and have an option at the top of the page to get to them all, instead of all this extra work.  I especially don't like it, since the full list cannot be seen except on resolutions 1152x864 (at least on my 17 in moniter).  My suggestion:  everything is on the right track, but make the side bar bigger and wider as well as the text (7 point verdana is way too small, make it 10 point).  Put all the searching options and what not at the top (and again in bigger font size) where the three are currently.  Basically make it big and clear, and it will be much nicer and easier to use.


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## Darke (Mar 31, 2002)

*???*

Is the Review Site totally broken or..?

(want back)

das Darke


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## Psion (Apr 1, 2002)

What's up? Are you all doing a dry run on the look of the reviews page? Whatver the case, there seems to be an error in the list display that causes some HTML formatting code to be displayed.


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## Morrus (Apr 1, 2002)

Playing around with things at the moment - there might be changes/problems over the next couple of days.


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## Blacksad (Apr 2, 2002)

> A new way of calculating the average score of a product so as to eliminate the effect of "aberrant" reviews. Also a weighting in favour of staff reviews.




The new way is the square root of (mean*median) ?

I'm not sure on the weighting of staff reviews, If I want the staff opinion, I can clic on simon collins or psion (as they have a link on the main review page). If I want an average of some gamer opinion, I prefer that the staff review aren't weighted, especially when there is only two review on a product.

Otherwise, the new look is very nice!


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## CRGreathouse (Apr 3, 2002)

Actually, I wouldn't mind weighting at all.  I'd use a simple rule: staff reviews count as 2 normal reviews.  I'm not sure if it'll actually be used, though.

As for the formula, I'm all for sqr(mean * median); it was discussed on this forum for quite some time and picked as the "best" method.  Still, whatever Morrus decides to go with is fine with me.


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## Ron (Apr 3, 2002)

Blacksad said:
			
		

> *
> 
> I'm not sure on the weighting of staff reviews, If I want the staff opinion, I can clic on simon collins or psion (as they have a link on the main review page). If I want an average of some gamer opinion, I prefer that the staff review aren't weighted, especially when there is only two review on a product.
> Otherwise, the new look is very nice! *




Unlike Blacksad I am very sure about being against any weighting in the reviews. I would go with something like not taking highest and lowest scores in account, at least before a reasonable number of reviews. However, by assigning a higher weight to the staff you are implying that, a priori, their reviews are better than anybody else. Don't get me wrong, both Psion and Simon are good reviewers, but I don't think that there is reason to believe that any piece by them is, a priori, superior than a review submitted by any other member. As I have deffended before, bad reviews can be taken care by carefull management by the moderators and use of commentaries. Additionally, as someone who actually do statistics for a living, I am a great fan of the theory of large numbers. There is no way you can refute the opinion of many. Quite frankly, this particulary part of the annoucement  left me very cold about the future of the reviews section. Psion and Simon Collins do a great job, but I cannot expect that their views are superior to anyone who collaborate with this site.

Regarding the new design. It appears to be good, but it did not worked properly in IE 5.1 to Mac OS X. I hope it was only a temporary problem.


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## Morrus (Apr 3, 2002)

Nobody said they were superior.  That came from you alone.  I'm sure you can figure out the reasoning behind it.

Incidentally, the forumula I went with was sq rt (mode * median).


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## Morrus (Apr 3, 2002)

Blacksad said:
			
		

> *If I want an average of some gamer opinion, I prefer that the staff review aren't weighted, especially when there is only two review on a product.
> *




You won't get the average gamer's opinion from just taking the average of all the ratings.  Trust me.  This will give a slightly more level-headed reflection of a product's quality.


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## Ron (Apr 3, 2002)

Morrus said:
			
		

> *Nobody said they were superior.  That came from you alone.  I'm sure you can figure out the reasoning behind it.
> 
> Incidentally, the forumula I went with was sq rt (mode * median). *




Morrus,

Quoting you from the EN World home page:

"Also a weighting in favour of staff reviews."

As you plan to weight them heavily than others it was natural to me to reason that you believe that, a priori, their reviews are superior than ordinary ones. If they should be considered as good as any other there is no justificative for a differential weighting scheme.


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## CRGreathouse (Apr 3, 2002)

Morrus said:
			
		

> *Incidentally, the forumula I went with was sq rt (mode * median). *




This is an interesting choice.  With only 5 ratings to choose from (1-5), and most ratings in the upper portion, many products will have the exact same ranking.

I'd love to just use the median, but it would give too many products the same score, so I suggested adding the mean (normal average) to the formula.

Has the formula been implemented?  If so, I'll check on it and see if it's the way I think it is.


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## Morrus (Apr 3, 2002)

Ron said:
			
		

> *
> 
> As you plan to weight them heavily than others it was natural to me to reason that you believe that, a priori, their reviews are superior than ordinary ones.  *




Interesting.  It's not natural to me to assume that.  I guess we look at things differently.


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## Morrus (Apr 3, 2002)

CRGreathouse said:
			
		

> *
> 
> 
> Has the formula been implemented?  If so, I'll check on it and see if it's the way I think it is. *




Not yet, no.  It's probably the last thing that'll get done.

BTW, everyone - check out the page for the PHB for a demo of how a product should look once everything is up and running.  It has links to errata, articles, extra reviews etc.


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## Blacksad (Apr 3, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Morrus_
> *You won't get the average gamer's opinion from just taking the average of all the ratings. Trust me. This will give a slightly more level-headed reflection of a product's quality.*




I do not think that ENworld average is the average gamer opinion, but the ENworld average is still usefull, just look at dragonstar ( 7 reviews, Psion 4, Simon Collins 4, average 4.57 )and rokugan ( 2 review, Psion 5, average 5).

If you weigh the staff review, the dragonstar book will drop, while if someone post a score of 4 for Rokugan, it will drop but the staff review will help keep a good score.

That way it would seem that Rokugan is better appreciated than Dragonstar on ENworld, while in fact Dragonstar get more support on ENboards.

(Currently, products within the 4.5, 5 margin seems to me as being of similar value)

This is usefull if I want to discuss on the setting with others, while their is many people who like dragonstar, their isn't as many who like rokugan. Popularity play a role, sure, and your system might help or hinder some products to get popular on ENboard, I am not sure if it is good or not (it will only affect ENboard).

So I would like to know a bit more on your reasoning to weight staff review, so I can be sure you get the right decision with your website



> *BTW, everyone - check out the page for the PHB for a demo of how a product should look once everything is up and running. It has links to errata, articles, extra reviews etc.*




It is very nice! but one thing is lacking, the author name.

[edit]
Is it possible to have the score that was given in other reviews website next to the link?

Also, if you want every D&D/d20 reviews linked from here:

the major french review website has a D&D section:
http://www.roliste.com/jeu.jsp?id=1322

and a d20 system section:
http://www.roliste.com/jeu.jsp?id=2021
[/edit]


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## Heretic Apostate (Apr 4, 2002)

Just out of curiosity, why do I get reviews for Slayer's Guide to Amazons when I clicked on Dragonstar: Starfarer's Handbook?


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## Heretic Apostate (Apr 4, 2002)

1)  Could we expect an "Ebert and Roeper" sort of thing, so that the reviews have some baseline?  That is, each product have multiple reviews by staff reviewers?  That way, if we have reviewers with different tastes, we can see if the product matches multiple tastes and what-not.  Or something like that.

2)  Morrus, I've tried and tried, and I can't find the page you guys have set up for the Player's Handbook.  Could you post a direct link?


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## Morrus (Apr 4, 2002)

I think you're loking in the wrong place.  The link at the beginning of this thread is defunct - check the d20reviews lnk from the front page.


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## vkhayman (Apr 5, 2002)

The new review section looks great, and its still under construction!  

Looking forward to seeing it finished


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