Interesting system. It's pretty useful for getting rid of people intentionally voting down maps (some did that to mine lol).

The only thing is, one cannot easily see what a node's quality is at a quick glance of these numbers. 100 points may be high, especially if 10 people voted, but not much if 20 did. So it takes longer to glance at maps' votes that way. You could include a third number, that being the average vote, but then you may have thought of this and discounted it for the following reason:

The whole purpose of this point system is for people to leave comments on nodes. If they are able to easily see the user-generated vote for a particular node, they may not even put the effort forward to look at it, and this kills the possibility of a comment being left. If a user instead has to calculate it, they may just decide to look at the node rather than pulling out the calculator.

That said, the points system doesn't serve to indicate a node's quality as the calculation step is missing here. All it serves to do is bring high-profile maps, as you said, a high number, which makes them look a lot better than they probably are (and it makes newer or less popular maps look much worse).

With this new way of vote, there is now any interest to rate a map. The new classement mean nothing.
How can we compare a map/script/mode that have 100 point/30 vote and another with 100 point/10 vote. To be totaly absurde, with this type of voting, it's simple. I can do a map and ask to 200 person to vote 1/10 and my map. I will be sure to be top ranked...

So where is the problem? Some person vote bad rate on map and this is interpreted as intentionally and personnal attack... I have difficulty to believe that. Perhaps it could happen sometimes, but don't you think that often bad rate is just a honest vote form person who don't love the map? For my part, i see much often a lot of friendly vote (and also from person close to me). This is not correct and much problematic. How co-author of map, testor and friend can vote 100 on thier map?

Another point with this new system, it's simple now: you do a map (as bad as it could be) and if you are a bit famous you can be sure to be top ranked.

I also question myself : Where is the interest of rate if you find a map correct but not enough good to be in the next release (for exemple a vote between 5 and 7/10). Vote for this map mean given point and chance of been topranked to a map that you find not perfect.For my part, now i will only vote a 10/10 to good map and don't vote to the other now with this new system. When i found a map that can have a 7/10 i will only add a message of encouragment and don't vote for...

A better solution is a vote by admin and another by public. The starred content is a bit like that in a way. Public can't decide which map is starred. Or no vote at all.

I dont like the idea of this.

Very old maps are now on top.
like erzeähl said, i only need many low votings and im on top :P
i like the idea that every vote is a good vote.. but i still would like to know the average of the votes.. i know easy to calculate points/voters but annoying to calculate everytime

its hard to find a fair voting system, but i think that its unfair to let only the oldest map to be on top. because they have the most votings.

giving votings on a few aspects is a GREAT! idea.. so ppl never can vote 1 1 1 1 1 ...
and the average of this is the point amount.. i love the idea :D

People will sometimes explain their vote, saying +1 for layout or something. That can be left with the users. Majority of votes, however, are superficial and based on only one or two things, which the voter will not mention.

There could be an overall mark (out of 10) and a couple optional boxes for users to tick. These boxes are representative of certain qualities in a map (layout, lighting, textures, etc.) and a voter can either say good/bad for them.

That said, such a system is really cumbersome. But it begs the question: would you like to make the commenting system more complex because the only important voters are the ones who will contribute an in-depth opinion, or do you make it simple to attract many voters in the hope that they will someday contribute to a node by more than a simple vote? Do we want this site to be American Idol or a smaller pool of people voting in-depth?

Well I can understand it, I also had some downvoters on some of my maps, but I still don't think it's a good idea to change the rating system. The new scale from 1-10 is great, but I don't like how the total points instead of the average counts. This might remove the downrating aspect on one hand, but it makes it impossible to see which is considered a good map by the community. A new uploaded map would have as many points as a crappy map with dozens of low ratings.

Maybe you could still provide the average rating next to the points, because I don't wanna divide the points through the vote count each time I look at a map. Also, as a mapper you should take a look at the feedback in the comments to figure out how to improve your map, instead of beeing pissed off about a low rating.
Personally I think it could be an idea to bind the ratings to comments, so either you do both, or nothing at all - and If you don't write anything in the comment, it would just show your rating as a comment -> expose the downvoters! :P

I am glad to see that someone else noticed the sad matter of "downvoters", as you call them. Those guys really driven me on a bad mood lately, I admit that. The bad thing is that you can't say them anything because they also feel "offended", well ok doesn't matter anymore.
Btw redon there's no need to expose them, I have a complete list of those guys, if you wish ;)
If I can tell my opinion, I still think that the better solution is to have 2 rating system from 0 to 10, users and admins ratings. But there are alternatives also.
A solution could be the one that is applied on some olympic sports like diving, where the lower and the higher votes are discarded, the rest are summed to get a more "balanced" average.
Another solution (a bit drastic maybe) could be inhibit the exposed downvoters to vote again, for a limited period of time at least.
Seriously, apart from voting systems, all we really need is a bit of common sense, honesty and "fairplay", and a pinch of humility would helps also. To get upset because a map is not taken for release makes no much sense, since only eirhul and few others have the last word about that.
It's normal that we think our maps are good ("god" in misanthropx case ;) ), and it's normal that our friends thinks the same and make everything to give us help with rating. The more the friends the better the score, this makes things unfair as I already said elsewhere.
Someone talk about votes for aesthetics, geometry, texturing and so on, but there's a very important parameter that has to be considered in order to give a fair vote: the effort. If we begin to consider "efforts" that people produce when making maps as a valuable parameter, we can rate work of others in a more fair way. This not means that efforts always produce masterpieces of course, but that could avoid a lots of downvoting in my opinion.
We have just to keep in mind that, whatever the vote, only admins take the final decision. Of course admins, for the high position they have in this matter, have to judge/evaluate maps/contents responsibly, with rigid objectivity criteria.
Wishes.

agreeing misan...

I dont think "ratings" should apply to the forum, specially General Discussion since it says:
"Talk about anything in particular; share ideas or discuss new ones."

"Quality Assurance Issue" should be for other areas too.

Talk about.. anything. Hey, it was not me who said "anything". :p

actually, why would someone need to rate a forum topic? rather useless actually, when we could have other buttons in its place, such as "notify of spam" "track topic for replies" etc

come on give the admins of this website a bit time 2 get everything done.

after all, they got some kinda life to u know (at least i hope 4 them :P).

Please make it possible that you can still sort by different voting systems
like points total, average, and sorting by clicks and downloads > popularity level