I took a quick look at that list, and it seems that these bottom rated movies are all expensive projects with plenty of people involved. I don’t see the first movies filmed by people who got their first camera for Christmas two weeks ago.
Edit: It’s as I thought. Not everything ever made is added to imdb. See this list:
Because it allows a writer to have their game posted on IFDB automatically, with their express consent, and as a bonus trims out most of the crap with a minimum of fuss? Are you avoiding the subject, or did you just decide that right here, right now, right in this thread was a good time to do philosophy?
You know, Alex, if you’re so sure IFDB should handle this problem, the management can just decide to ban all bots going forward. I doubt it would change much, except for maybe IF Comp entries. I mean, what other bots are there, besides the TextAdventures.co.uk one? Serious question.
If we’re going to wax philosophical, I propose that bots are basically categorical-imperative arguments made flesh. (Proving that the categorical imperative is nonsense, I’d say, but then I would.)
I think it’s pretty straightforward that mass additions of unfinished and coding-exercise games to IFDB make the newsfeed significantly less useful. I don’t think it’s obvious that having lots more games in the IFDB is a bad thing. I do think that it is at least questionable to mass-add games without authors knowing about it.
Let’s be honest about it: this is partially my fault for proposing the XYZZY-noms-by-IFDB rule (Alex made the bot very shortly after I suggested that that rule might be coming.) The intent of that rule had a bunch of aspects:
Using a bot to mass-add things is kind of wobbly on 1) (though God may mourn the fall of a ha’penny sparrow, I suspect that Alex’s heart is not stirred by every single Quest game), runs counter to 2i) and 2iii), and isn’t awesome for 2ii). It’s decidedly mixed on 3). So, y’know, mea culpa for expecting people to abide by the spirit of the law. This definitely goes in the Could Be Better box as far as this experiment goes.
An ideal solution would be to allow users to customise how they see the newsfeed, with some friendly subset of those options enabled by default for users not logged in. I don’t think we’re likely to get any major changes to IFDB’s infrastructure, though.
Has anyone ever bothered asking the Quest users if they want their games adding to IFDB? I remember when I first started using ADRIFT and knew almost nothing about the rest of the IF world, I’d have been quite terrified if a game I uploaded to the ADRIFT site suddenly found itself on a totally different site altogether that I’d never even heard of, and then I discovered that people were bashing my game for things I wasn’t even aware were problems.
I think I’m not exactly an attention whore, and I don’t crave front page billing, but I do think that seeing a list of games dumped on IFDB with no apparent/easy way to filter them has discouraged me from making updates. I mean, there are other places to, but it’s a factor.
I specifically wanted to make technically improved releases of two games I wrote, just because I want to make things more like I intended them in the first place, and I didn’t want to be all “HEY GUYS IT’S ME I FIXED A TYPO” by throwing in multiple releases.
But I wouldn’t have bothered with an IFDB announcement if I hadn’t put in goals of doing something by the end of the year. So that was motivation to put out re-releases. But it’s upsetting to see them get snowed under by newer games where people didn’t put as much effort into them.
I don’t mind if it’s reviews of games I haven’t played, but when there’s a flimsy game and then a review saying “What’s up with the flimsy games recently?” it’s exasperating. And I bet I’m not the only person snowed under or who fears being snowed under.
I think part of this may be how IFDB is constructed–I’d like to see an easier way (if there is one) to divide or filter newest reviews, ratings, games and game announcements. I imagine different people have different preferences what they want to see. And I think I’ve been on both sides of wondering if it’s worth it to 1) write a review that’ll get snowed under and 2) search for reviews and hope they haven’t been snowed under by mass game announcements. And I can’t be the only one. And that’s an issue IFDB needs to address, even though it’s been nice to see what I think is increased reviewer activity overall recently.
It would be really nice to have a bar at the top of IFDB when I log it in that tells me how many games, announcements etc. are new and unseen since my last login, and allows me to click and view them separately. But I’m guessing that’s a lot of work.
I understand what you mean, Andreas, so let me change the metaphor. They’re not using a compass at all, or even a magnetic needle in a cork on a body of water - many people there seem to think a potato is a compass.
Having said that, and in order to try and relieve the Quest-bashing, “Dream Pieces” was one of the cutest things I’ve played in a long, long time. I talked about this on the Adrift forum, actually, on a brief visit - the Quest community is not the end-all of crap. But unfortunately, it sometimes looks that way, and that’s unfair also on Quest, and that’s part of the problem.
Because of all the things that have been said, really. I understand you’re a bit defensive, I did not start this discussion to prohibit Quest games from being in the IFDB, I was concerned and I wanted to see how other people felt. Apparently I’m not the only one, and we’re trying to find a solution to this.
Because, theoretically, you’re right in that IFDB is a database, and filtering what goes into a database of that sort is wrong. I feel the same. But in practical terms… well, IFDB is a very, very, very visible place, one of the current hubs of IF, and “A New Listing” in IFDB is a lot more visible and attracts a lot more attention than a new entry in IMDB.
Personally, I download every single Quest game, because I’m like that. I add them to my collection. And I’ll play them all, in fact I have been. But that’s because I’m a collector and because I don’t want to miss out on the odd gem I might find, and most people aren’t like that.
EDIT - Mostly_useless, you can check the IFDB Feed, and basically every new addition is a new link in the main page, and every clicked-on link is a different colour than a brand-new link. It’s how I stay on top of new stuff. 
Definitely not. Our announcements appeared next to each other, got buried by the same flood of stuff, and I felt exactly the same way – why bother announcing my update if it gets moved right off the page?
Yes, this is nice. It might be especially nice to have two choices of feed, because I’d like to see announcements stick around longer but I’d still like to see the feed with everything. But that might require too much architecture.
I’m aiming to release my apple eating simulator in a few years (but don’t hold me to that). I find bliss through eating apples, and I want people to experience that bliss as well. Sometimes a potato is a compass too.
I mean how many “Rescue the princess from the baddie.” games can you play, before the concept gets stale? …and how many apple eating simulators have you played? Sometimes following the potato can be a fresh thrill ride. Portal 2 had you follow a potato, for instance, and it was pretty fun.
Oh, please do announce them. Some of us do check new listings and “news” listings in the Feed, which shows a lot more items that fit in the first page.
Andreas, again, I get what you mean, but I think you don’t get what I mean. To put it bluntly, a lot of IF coming from Quest looks like IF done by people who have little idea of what IF is and who don’t seem to have actually played any IF. If you still come up with a way to say that’s fine, then what can I say except that you’ve found the niche you’ve been looking for in the Quest community and its games.
It’s in no one’s interests, especially yours, if people end up with a negative impression of Quest based on lots of bad Quest games being added to IFDB. There are probably some decent Quest games out there, but if they’re buried under the deluge of bad games no one will ever know.
Sigh, maybe I have to spell this out more clearly.
I spoke about three groups:
#1: Me
#2: Quest users
#3: IFDB obsessives
The “nice idea” (a checkbox on TA to ask if user wants to submit to IFDB) advocated by zarf, davidw etc. is for group #1 to ask a question to group #2 to solve the problem of group #3.
And it won’t even solve group #3’s problem, but simply remove a random fraction of submissions.
So I have zero incentive to implement it, and it’s a stupid idea. Try again.
Ok, if you want to tackle it from that point of view, here’s a thought.
Introduce IFDB to the people on the Quest forums. Show them the reviews and publicity they’re getting. Because right now, you’re right - group 2 doesn’t seem concerned about it. But do they even know? They have a right to know, haven’t they?
#3 seems like you’re just bitter.
And you’ve left out #4 - the people who actually play IF games and are not Quest users and turn to IFDB for news and recomendations.
I’ve counted 4 games so far that I particularly enjoyed, and a hanfdul that impressed me by their care and ambition, even if I may not have loved the final result. So yeah, you’ve put the situation brilliantly: there are decent games, there are even good games, there are two games I vividly remember and enjoyed playing, but they are rather buried.
If this is the solution, please go ahead and post on forum.textadventures.co.uk/ - it’s probably better coming from somebody who is passionate about the subject.
I’m not particularly passionate, not more than anyone else in this thread who’s chimed in. And I disagree - it’s probably better coming from the creator and maintainer of Quest, who is also pretty much the platform’s sole representative in this forum and who is, therefore, the link. And who is also the person who created the bot.
Boy, you’re really defensive about this, aren’t you? 
We’re trying to keep it objective. You appear to be most passionate person in this thread. It’s understandable, but still.
Alex, I’m not trying to attack you here, not at all, but don’t you feel bad for the newbie authors having their games slated because they don’t realise its going into IFDB? Even if they don’t know IFDB exists they might google their game and find the reviews. It must have stopped at least a few people from continuing to write. Even if you don’t care about anything else, surely you do care about that?
They’re posting their games on TA where they get reviewed anyway