The "Good Sport feature" has been removed

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Hello OGS!

Given the negative reception of the “Good Sport feature” I figured I owed the community either a really good reason to keep it in (backed up with some sort of numbers), or to remove it. I ran some numbers today, and while I think realistically I can’t draw any real conclusions for long term use one way or the other given the feature only lived for 2-3 days, I can say that in the short term nothing stood out to me as being particularly positive, a few things probably kinda negative, and given the negative reaction on the forums, it seems likely that it would be a long term net negative. So it’s gone.

For anyone curious, over the period it was active we had 2121 unique players give 5556 thumbs ups or thumbs downs. 86.3% of thumbs given were thumbs ups.

78.08% of those players gave strictly positive feedback with an average number of thumbs up given of 2.18. 12.16% of the players gave mixed reviews with an average of 4.48 thumbs ups and 1.88 thumbs downs. 9.76% gave only thumbs downs, but the average was only 1.28 thumbs downs given, so I would like to believe many of those would normalize out into the mixed bucket if given more time with the feature, but who knows.

I spot checked the thumbs downs that were being given and in the vast majority of cases it was pretty much the sender of the thumbs downs that were being the bad sports. In my spot checking I also skimmed over the past interactions with those that give thumbs downs and didn’t notice any particular pattern of other negative interactions, so while it maybe made them feel better to hit that thumbs down it wasn’t protecting anyone either as overall people seem to contain their emotions reasonably well and are at least outwardly good (or at least neutral) sports. Regardless, I think if it’s not actually reducing other outwardly negative interactions, having a thumbs down to hit probably fosters that negativity and that seems like a bad thing.

Anyways, in hind sight I probably should have known better, it was a quick experiment that I didn’t think much of at the time and obviously I should have given it some more thought.

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While I cannot speak for everyone… I am, and I think most people, should be grateful to have a Developer who is keen to take on board any feedback they receive. I am pleased that the feature has been removed, yet I also understand the need to experiment with novel ideas to gain further insights into the community as a whole, and indeed, to do a better job of maintaining a space that everyone here loves.

I also think it is important to state that while this may not have been a popular idea, we appreciate the work, time, and consideration that went into making this feature, and indeed your continued efforts to make OGS better.

One unpopular feature quickly removed, doesn’t undo all the good work that came before it, and doesn’t leave a mark against any good work yet to come!

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Interesting.

Thanks for having removed that feature.

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Experimenting is always worth consideration. And the idea of polling a user’s OGS experience isn’t a bad idea in itself - perhaps explore other (less “user-on-user” oriented) questions?

In any event, your efforts to improve and enhance the site are deeply appreciated, as is your willingness to change course…

… You are an extremely good sport. :vulcan_salute:

14 Likes