Reviewing Dragon Descriptions is Under Valued

[LadyMadonna]

I submitted my first dragon description last month and couldn't understand why it didn't appear on my dragon with the heading "Pending Approval".  After puzzling for a few weeks, I finally asked the community and learned that it will only appear after two peer reviewers have approved it.  Can this process please be explained in the Help section about Description Guidelines?

 

My experience led me to spend several hours reading and commenting on dragon descriptions this afternoon.  A time consuming and painstaking process to do it properly and a single shard reward for each one seems very poor recompense.  Especially since it is included within the very small allowance of 100 shards per week.  Many submitted descriptions are long and, whilst entertaining, have been poorly written from a grammatical stand point.  Often the writer probably doesn't have English as their first language.  For the reviewer to give a fair response to their efforts, more space is needed in the comment box.

 

If the recompense was more attractive, maybe the backlog of approving reviewer descriptions could be resolved faster.

 

EDIT:  A friend asked me today where they could find the link so as to review user descriptions.  Despite having been using it only 24 hours earlier, I couldn't immediately recall (senior moment - lol).  It took quite some time to hunt for it.  It is under the Account tab, but, despite being mentioned in the Help topics as a way to earn shards, there isn't link to it from there.  Suggest that a link should be included.

Edited February 6 by LadyMadonna

[Silmavra]

Ah, TIL about the peer review process for custom descriptions! I always figured it was a mod job lol.

I'm always in support of clear and easy-to-access rules as well as anything to make them clearer & easier to access. 

I'll have to interact with the process a bit myself before I weigh in more but the suggestions you outline make sense to me. 

Edited February 6 by Silmavra

[LadyMadonna]

Ultimately, I think it is a Mod job. They have to give final approval. Peer review just helps. That's my understanding anyway.

[Platykwak]

A very good suggestion. Will support. Good incentives can get the ball rolling for an underused feature.

[Moriaty]

While I agree that if you are working with that you deserve better rewards than 1 shard per, I would be very against any exclusive, or majorly beneficial things attached with reviewing user descriptions. Having that turn into a essential chore that people will seek to go through because of the profit I think would be worse than what we have now. I know it's not what the op mentioned, but just throwing it out here.

 

Maybe a badge of some sort that doesn't affect the game, to show that you're a "reviewer committee" of some sort, and when clicked into it displays how many descriptions you've reviewed. idk.

 

Other than that, things like bigger comment box and more diret links in the shard page and other things to make reviewer's life easier I definitely support

[04uni]

Is there any chance there could be a separate shard limit for shards from reviewing dragon descriptions? Low though, like 20 a week, just to reward those who already do it, and maybe encourage others a little bit more. Abstains wouldn't count (they already don't I don't think?). Basically, the current shard reward won't ever do anything for the majority of the players, as it's not that difficult to fill up 100 shards per week.

 

I do acknowledge that having too large of a benefit could bring more harm than good though, like moriaty has said.

 

[UnicornMaiden]

I agree it would be good to increase the shards earned for reviewing descriptions. It doesn't need to be a huge amount, but I think three or five shards per review would be good.

[LadyMadonna]

I think it would be good if the shards earned from reviewing were in addition to the 100 limit per week.  As 04uni has said, it is very easy to earn 100 per week simply by picking up AP eggs and abandoning them in order to pick up more.  The reward for reviews doesn't have to be huge, there just has to be a worthwhile reason to commit the effort to do it.  Simply having a badge to show that you are a reviewer is not an incentive.

Edited February 7 by LadyMadonna

[dracornithologist]

I worry that if there is additional benefit to reviewing descriptions, especially extra shards on top of the 100 allowed per week, there might be a negative effect on the quality of reviews.

 

Right now, reviews are completed by people doing it almost purely for the love of it, because it's so much easier to get the 100 shards per week from other activities, like catching and hatching dragons. Because it's only done by people who really care about writing and are passionate about it, there is a pretty high standard of review. If it becomes profitable to do, then that standard might drop as more people are incentivized to review. I like the idea of a badge, though - maybe even a trophy with tiers? 1000 dragons reviewed, 5000, 10000? Just as an example.

[KageSora]

I am dead against anything that gives additional shards outside the current limit.  Either the limit of shards should be increased for all players across the board or any shards earned from all methods should go into the regular weekly cap.  If you get 5 weeks' shards every 4 weeks (using a 20 shard bonus allowance as an example) assuming you get max shards and max bonus, that adds up over time.  Unless the cap is pitifully small, but then if you make the bonus too small it isn't enticing on its own.

 

Currently no one action or playstyle gives players any such bonus--while it might be faster to do some actions than others, all players can max their shards weekly using all shard-giving actions.  It should stay that way.

 

Also while I agree 1 shard is pretty poor reward and could stand to be boosted, you don't want to make it so enticing people will spam through just to farm the shards, approving/denying/abstaining without actually reading the description.  That won't help anyone.

[04uni]

That's pretty understandable - mayhaps 20 is too much and I guess I had more faith in players to actually read the descriptions than is probably warranted. 

I'd be in support of something like a trophy, although I can now also see that that could easily go south in a similar manner.

Perhaps having people who have contributed commented a lot of  feedback on descriptions could manually be given a badge (so it could be checked that it was genuine)? That may just create more work though instead of encouraging player feedback.

 

Alternatively, player-organized commenting sessions, which has been attempted in the past. (No motivator for it but it's a fun thing to do)

Edited February 7 by 04uni

[Skadi]

Boosting the shards to a higher amount, without raising the cap, and making a badge, both of these seem like good ideas. I had no idea description review awarded shards, but I wouldn't mind them being worth even 7 shards on their own so long as the weekly cap remained 100. It would be a way for people who are more finicky collectors to get shards, too. From where I'm standing, raising dragons is still the best way to get shards because you also get a dragon out of it, so description reviews being worth more shards seems fair. As a high volume dragon collector, I tend to get my shards filled within a day or two of the Shard Reset, so I personally don't mind descriptions being worth more.

Edited February 7 by Skadi

[Fuzzbucket]

8 hours ago, dracornithologist said:

I worry that if there is additional benefit to reviewing descriptions, especially extra shards on top of the 100 allowed per week, there might be a negative effect on the quality of reviews.

 

Right now, reviews are completed by people doing it almost purely for the love of it, because it's so much easier to get the 100 shards per week from other activities, like catching and hatching dragons. Because it's only done by people who really care about writing and are passionate about it, there is a pretty high standard of review. If it becomes profitable to do, then that standard might drop as more people are incentivized to review. I like the idea of a badge, though - maybe even a trophy with tiers? 1000 dragons reviewed, 5000, 10000? Just as an example.

 

Yes - I can see people just clicking accept over and over, just for the shards.

 

8 hours ago, KageSora said:

I am dead against anything that gives additional shards outside the current limit.  Either the limit of shards should be increased for all players across the board or any shards earned from all methods should go into the regular weekly cap.  If you get 5 weeks' shards every 4 weeks (using a 20 shard bonus allowance as an example) assuming you get max shards and max bonus, that adds up over time.  Unless the cap is pitifully small, but then if you make the bonus too small it isn't enticing on its own.

 

Currently no one action or playstyle gives players any such bonus--while it might be faster to do some actions than others, all players can max their shards weekly using all shard-giving actions.  It should stay that way.

 

Also while I agree 1 shard is pretty poor reward and could stand to be boosted, you don't want to make it so enticing people will spam through just to farm the shards, approving/denying/abstaining without actually reading the description.  That won't help anyone.

 

Exactly this. Keep the cap, A badge is a better idea (I'd get around to doing it more often if it would get me a badge...)  - and at most 5 shards per description reviewed, with a max of 20 for reviewing, to be within the current weekly limit.

 

3 hours ago, Skadi said:

Boosting the shards to a higher amount, without raising the cap, and making a badge, both of these seem like good ideas. I had no idea description review awarded shards, but I wouldn't mind them being worth even 7 shards on their own so long as the weekly cap remained 100. It would be a way for people who are more finicky collectors to get shards, too. From where I'm standing, raising dragons is still the best way to get shards because you also get a dragon out of it, so description reviews being worth more shards seems fair. As a high volume dragon collector, I tend to get my shards filled within a day or two of the Shard Reset, so I personally don't mind descriptions being worth more.

 

This bolded bit is very true.

[LadyMadonna]

On 2/7/2024 at 1:02 AM, KageSora said:

Also while I agree 1 shard is pretty poor reward and could stand to be boosted, you don't want to make it so enticing people will spam through just to farm the shards, approving/denying/abstaining without actually reading the description.  That won't help anyone.

 

If my understanding is correct, peer reviews only flag up to the mods if something looks good or bad and shards are not earned from abstaining.  If the shards were only awarded at the point that a mod has the final say-so in approving any description, then any player who has simply hit approve or decline in order to earn shards without actively reading the entry will be very obvious and they wouldn't receive any reward.

 

From my own two submitted descriptions, I can see what approvals they have received (although I don't know who from).  Just these two raise another weird anomally.  The one submitted on 14 January still doesn't appear at all, despite the fact that it has 3 approvals already.  The one done last week shows only one approval and yet it is visible.  Go figure!

Edited February 8 by LadyMadonna

[KageSora]

2 hours ago, LadyMadonna said:

If my understanding is correct, peer reviews only flag up to the mods if something looks good or bad and shards are not earned from abstaining.  If the shards were only awarded at the point that a mod has the final say-so in approving any description, then any player who has simply hit approve or decline in order to earn shards without actively reading the entry will be very obvious and they wouldn't receive any reward.

 

I mean, isn't one of the issues with descriptions right now that the backlog outweighs what the mods can handle, hence the implementation of a user-review system?  If users only get their shards when a mod finally gets around to approving/denying the description that makes it a completely unstable way to earn shards which kind of defeats the purpose of trying to make the rewards a little more enticing than they currently are.

 

And then if users get blocked from reviewing because they were just trying to farm shards I feel like at that point its the fault of the game for making it too lucrative for a peer review system.

[Skadi]

Would it truly be overvalued when shards are already easy to cap out on with things that actually bring benefit to your scroll? I can't see someone abusing the system over just keeping their egg slots rotating. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think description reviewing is as lucrative as dragon hunting, even with a higher shard limit, because description reviewing doesn't put a dragon on your scroll. The only way I can see that happening is if review shards went over the cap.

Edited February 9 by Skadi

[KageSora]

3 hours ago, Skadi said:

Would it truly be overvalued when shards are already easy to cap out on with things that actually bring benefit to your scroll? I can't see someone abusing the system over just keeping their egg slots rotating. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think description reviewing is as lucrative as dragon hunting, even with a higher shard limit, because description reviewing doesn't put a dragon on your scroll. The only way I can see that happening is if review shards went over the cap.

 

Depends entirely on the shard reward and how it's implanted.  If you got 10 shards per review you could probably knock out 100 shards faster than grabbing and dumping from the AP over and over or breeding until you hit cap and dumping stuff to the AP, especially if there weren't safeguards to avoid abuse (but, again, make it too frustrating to get shards and you run into the same issue we have now--it isn't rewarding enough to entice players to engage with it).

 

Not everybody considers "adding a random dragon to their scroll" to be a benefit, you know?  "Collect as many dragons as possible without regard for breed/gender/lineage/etc." is but one playstyle among many and there are a variety of playstyles where getting lots of adult and/or frozen dragons on the scroll is not the primary goal.

 

Currently I only keep dragons that are either very rare, are one of a tiny handful of breeds I adore, or are specific CB dragons I need for lineage reasons.  This means that at best I can get 8 eggs on my scroll every 5 hours before I have to wait and dump a bunch or often all of them and try again because I was cycling the cave.  If I don't cycle then that means potentially waiting around for hours each day for a chance to grab one of the handful of dragons I want to catch.  Unless I am actually somehow on 24/7 then I can't always max my shards every week just hunting for dragons because I literally do not encounter enough of them to grow for shards.  At those times I resort to just rapid-fire grab and dump from the AP or massbreeding and dumping everything to the AP to get the rest of the shards I need for the week.

 

If I could just spam through a handful of descriptions to knock all my shards out each week, that would be far more efficient.  The only thing that would stop me personally is my ethics on the matter but I can guarantee you that there are other players who would have no such restraints about just spamming through reviews to get their shards ASAP if it was easier than their current scroll goals allow for shard farming.

 

Which again leads to trying to figure out the balance between "too enticing so it makes more work for the mods to have the results of players spamming through" and "not enticing enough to convince players to spend time going through them".

[Fuzzbucket]

You can spam through the AP and dump at once....

[Moriaty]

AP isn't a good example really. If one review is 10 scratch that, even 5 is enough - shard you bet I will prefer clicking approve twenty times than picking up AP egg and dumping them 100 times - also mind that AP pickup + dump is at least 5 clicks (pick up, you can only access dragon page from there, then action page, then abandon, then after password you click abandon button) with password input in between, while reviewing is 2 clicks.

 

However, I also believe that this is only a small margin of users - the vast majority of everyone is not going to need this at all if the limit isn't raised/exclusively higher for people who review descriptions, then just by regularly breeding and getting eggs they'd be able to reach the cap easily and there's no reason for them to abuse the system more than they do now, even if we adjust the # of shards per review. tbh without data on how many users play with that play style we can't really just wave our hands in the air and assume "how big of an impact it might be"...

[LadyMadonna]

I assume that the process of user reviewing was put in place in order to streamline the level of attention needed by the mods when they give the final approval, but it would be interesting to hear their view on just how helpful. it really is.  Do they see which players have reviewed?  If so, they probably learn to know who they can rely upon and whose work they need to check more closely.    Has everyone commenting in this thread spent some time reviewing?  if so, you will surely have seen that careful reading of a 1000 character dragon description isn't something that you can complete faster than abandoning an egg that you just snatched from the AP, despite the number of clicks required in order to do so  

Edited February 10 by LadyMadonna

[KageSora]

39 minutes ago, LadyMadonna said:

if so, you will surely have seen that careful reading of a 1000 word dragon description isn't something that you can complete faster than abandoning an egg that you just snatched from the AP, despite the number of clicks required in order to do so  

 

The problem is you're assuming people will carefully read the description rather than just skim through or ignore it entirely and hit accept/deny to get their shards.

 

What some of us are concerned about is making it overly enticing thus encouraging players who barely or don't read just spamming through accept/deny as fast as they can without regard for if it's actually the correct response to the review.  Which completely defeats the purpose of having users review them in the first place if enough users are just hitting a button without a care that it makes it kind of useless to judge if a review is or isn't in accordance with the guidelines.

 

Sure, I assume the mods can ban users who are abusing the system but if you make it too lucrative (such as, say, a separate cap of shards outside the weekly limit or a high number of shards per action) you'll be making additional work for the mods by enticing users to abuse the system.

 

Also, you can't have a 1000 word description?  Most descriptions I've seen are closer to 100-200 words or so, because the description field maxes out at 1k characters not words.  1k words would be several thousand characters in English.  While there are many reasons somebody may struggle to read or read English specifically, anybody who doesn't have something that interferes with their ability to read will be able to read that in next to no time at all, even less if they skim through.

 

This entire reply, for example, is only 267 words long.  (According to GoogleDocs)

 

Edited February 10 by KageSora

[04uni]

1 hour ago, LadyMadonna said:

I assume that the process of user reviewing was put in place in order to streamline the level of attention needed by the mods when they give the final approval, but it would be interesting to hear their view on just how helpful. it really is.  

I believe there is one mod in charge of reviewing user descriptions (Kaini), and they have said that they review descriptions in the order of most reviews, and they tend to mostly take into account ones with commented reviews. Those reviews both help point out errors for them or alert users to an error they should fix. Leaving commented reviews specifically is what's most helpful to them in speeding up the process. (Also whenever I see positive commented reviews on my descriptions it brings a lot of joy- and they often catch stuff I missed that there's no point in reaching Kaini).

 

-I also found the messages in the DC discord where Kaini said that so if you'd like to see feel free to dm me

Edited February 10 by 04uni

[LadyMadonna]

That's great to know.  Thanks, 04uni.

 

Could just do with extra space in that comment box.  For some of them I would happily re-word any poorly written sentences, etc, but there simply isn't room.

[04uni]

No problem!

 

You definitely can do that? Do you mean just being able to see what you're writing? I've written pretty decently long things in there iirc

[LadyMadonna]

You're right, @KageSora, my mistake - it's 1,000 characters, not words - still a hefty paragraph of text.  And, yes, I am assuming that those who read the reviews, aren''t trying to spam the system.  I guess I have more faith than you.

2 minutes ago, 04uni said:

You definitely can do that? Do you mean just being able to see what you're writing? I've written pretty decently long things in there iirc

 

No, I mean enough space to virtually re-write sections.  Some of those that I reviewed the other day had at least 3 or 4 misspellings or clearly missing words in sentences.