how will the results of the voting be announced? Will it be listed by language, overall, or no winner announced period?
I just realized there's nothing stating a winner will be announced for the jam anywhere on the main page so if this is about creativity, discovery and collaboration then I question why have the rating system in place at all?
I think Dominik raises a good point where rating anything other than 5 stars is already seen as anti-collaborative and bad. For example even if I feel the entry is not perfect/flawed in some way I absolutely do not want to rate it anything less than 5 stars cuz I risk just looking like a dick for it, even if my goal is to criticize the entry and point out flaws while also listing what I liked about it. Therefore I just end up leaving a comment anyway.
Perhaps for the next jam, just don't have rating at all! Encourage people to comment and leave their constructive feedback without any need to introduce any competitive element, cuz in this jam it was confusing how winners would be chosen - and if there would be winners at all :)
I never mention winners because there are none.
When you see the entries now, they are ordered randomly. In two weeks time, the list will be ordered by score.
The voting phase is just a way to surface the most interesting entries and have people discuss about them.
I could easily skip voting altogether (the option is there) and leave the jam unranked, but I feel it would be a net loss.
Sorting really helps! Most visitors don't want to trudge through random broken entries. And I think it's fun for participants to check around and compare them.
So just enjoy it if you want, and vote how you see fit. Keep in mind that most entries get no score at all, so even a low score will still increase visibility.
I will think how I can convey the message that voting is about curation but it seems a shame to remove it.
After all, I guess you wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for this extra bit of fun?
Well it isn't fun for the possibility of not receiving any votes in spite of rating other entries because a thought in my mind is we'll be buried if other teams don't figure out how to vote on other entries 🙃
the karma system on itch is also designed for the purpose of allowing every entry to get its fair share of attention while also letting other teams know that voting on other teams is a good thing and will increase their karma.
Sorting by score at the end already declares winners - having the highest score in your respective language bracket is already a "win", because it is a way to rate the entries. Such a rating system is already a quantifiable way to measure "quality" - even if it necessarily doesn't actually dictate as such.
I agree that voting on other entries is fun. But I fully disagree the voting system as a whole is fun because I have to deal with anxiety if my entry will be voted on at all (which ISN'T FUN!!!), and I only have to rely on my language bracket to be able to do so, and they must play the same game they already know start to finish to be able to even rate, and it ends up in a large mess where I wish it was about the substance of the comments and reviews instead and not about voting so I could at least send it to my friends and family to leave a good word and not bother with the fact that their opinion is "lesser" because they're forbidden from voting.
The karma system is specifically designed for this issue and I'm curious on your reasons why you're not using it.
I also want to be blunt that these are all choices you made for this contest. These are systems that encourage specific behaviors and our entire team is actually depressed because of the way the winner situation was handled, the lack of communication on the scoring system, no tutorial on how to do it, and the fact that contributors CANNOT VOTE (despite being stated elsewhere that they should, I'm the only one in our 8 person team who can even rate entries).
I think the 2 week period to judge other entries is a good idea. But the voting system itself is inherently competitive and runs against the core of the contest you stated. It really sours the mood and if the score system was removed, replaced with "judge other entries, leave a comment, entries will be sorted by karma during the judging period" means that the process of judging and reviewing entries would've been the encouraged behaviour instead, rather than scoring a randomized list of entries.
Despite this I'm still thankful for this jam, it was extremely fun to participate in when I didn't have to think about the score system or anything related and I had more fun commenting and reviewing other entries that I could understand in my own language :)
Again, I actually like how things are set up now. Nothing blunt about that 😄
My concern with the karma system and other itch solutions is that most visitors just can't read most entries.
No much point in showing me a random selection of Chinese translations if I can't judge them.
But I promise to look into the matter, since it seems to matter much to you.
As for voting, did you add the team members as admins?
My understanding is that you just need to do that to allow everyone to vote.
Anyone else has the same issue? It may be worth checking and telling itch if it is a bug.
Heads up for others reading this: that same message ("You can't vote because you didn't submit an entry") will display if you try to vote your own entry, but that's misleading. You can actually vote the other entries, just not yours. (I guess itch didn't bother writing a separate message)
I was able to rate other peoples' submission, but got a similar warning when on the page of my own project ("You are unable to rate this project because you have not submitted your own entry. You can leave a comment below though.")
