So my exam week and obligatory celebration weekend is over and I am just about over a flu-like virus that has been lingering for the past fortnight, so I guess that means it's back to work time.

My focus in the coming days is to launch (or relaunch) the mods of the month feature on the site. As it was on TESSource the idea is that every member of the site can vote for a single file in the database that they believe should be recognised by the community. However I would like to make a few changes to the system:

I would like the top 2 voted files to be recorded each month, rather than just the top voted file. A very regular question in the community comes from newcomers who ask "what mods should I be downloading?" or "what mods do you recommend?". The idea is to fill out the "hall of fame" style system as much as possible and offer a good alternative to the rather stationary Top 100.

On that note I'm also considering automatically entering the top 5 files from the Top 100 as to prevent the first few months simply being a vote off of the highest ranked files in the top 100.

These ideas are the precursor to a greater "honours" system I have planned for the site that will see files receive visible honoury awards on their information pages for achieving certain milestones, such as high download counts, sustained high ratings and so on. If you have ideas on how you think files can be honoured in the community then let me know.

sounds like a great idea, i have noticed that for a while when ive been cruising the site i am probably missing a lot of decent mods out there, although i have stumbled across some decent ones myself i would like to find more, this idea seems to solve that if people can be bothered to actually note what they have downloaded, great idea

I like the top 100, but it would be nice if the variables used to calculate the top 100 could be changed.

v = number of votes for the file = (votes)
m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 100 (currently 50)

I would like to be able to change the v & m variables.

BTW, sorting by "Rating + Desc" still throws out all mods with a 100% rating. Mods with a 100% rating should appear first when searching by "Rating + Desc". That is a nuisance while I'm trying to find the best rated mods.

I think 'Mod of the month' should be a showcase of the best new mods that might be the next member of the top 100, perhaps by have a time frame for 'Mod of the Month', like only mods uploaded in the last 2-3 months qualify, to get the newer ones only (and keep the top 100 list for the classics) with at set minimum downloads,to show probable wide appeal in the future.

Plus maybe you could create a link from each Month that would take you to the all of the voting results for that month so everyone could see all the mods that were nominated and how they fared, very useful if you are looking for something new to try.

Very nice idea JuanitaMaria
if that is possible you may be on to somthing here

Another thing I would do is automatically take any mod that wins "Mod of the Month" out of the voting and into a Hall of Fame. This isn't to punish them (far from it) but to make sure that you don't end up with the same mods showing up as Mod of the Month all the time. Since the winners end up in the HOF, they will still get recognition for their high quality.

Also, for Mod of the Month, each member should only get one vote. This would help to avoid the "ratings inflation we see" (so many people give out 10 ratings, it almost seems like you're slagging a mod if you rate it "only" a 9 or an 8....) If you only get one vote per month, you're more likely to give it to your favourite mod rather than one you just like.

Perhaps you could introduce a Top 10 by category. I would also suggest reducing the number of votes needed to enter this to a lower value that 50. Perhaps 25 votes. This would lead to a more dynamic list.

you should have a top 100 downloaded mods as well...

Kevin's Hall of Fame suggestion is really worth considering, although I would submit the idea that the winning mods would be chosen by the number of downloads they have generated. Add to that Juanita's proposal of a time limit, thus keeping any and all the lists truly dynamic, and I believe you'd see a real, "frothy" mix of the better, older mods with the newer ones.

Something else that might be considered would be the uploader's\author's support for the file. Can they provide solutions to downloaders' problems? Are they even willing to do that? Just an Idea...

Most downloaded is certainly a useful stat, but it can also be misleading. It tells you that people thought the mod was cool enough to download, but it doesn't tell you if they're still using it, or if they downloaded it and hated it how it actually worked, or if it caused stability issues, etc. Going by rating at least gets things to the mods people liked enough to write a review. (Although admittedly that's not 100% reliable either: I've seen a lot of comments that tell me the person rated the mod solely based on the screen shots or the description rather than after having run with it.)

Kendo2 brings up an excellent point about support, but I'm not sure I'd restrict it to author support. There are mods out there where the author is no longer even following it but the community is providing excellent support to new users. Also, it's a trickier one to track--I'm not sure how workable it would be if the site moderators had to vet each mod based on how many issues were resolved for people (sounds labour intensive...) Ratings and DLs OTOH can be calculated by a server.