Hello Cemetech,
*** Previous Title: Stop the archive dictators ***

I notice there are some archive dictators, by dictators i mean files that houge up all the user download. for example flappy birds and etc.

I was wondering if you can display random programs on top of the archive to increase the amount on "programs/projects", sort of like ads but with random programs in the archive.
I'm not sure "dictator" is the right word...
You can select the order of the files in the archives with the dropdown on the right. You can sort by fewest downloads first if you want to.
Flappy bird, Pacman 2048, etc. are obviously very popular games and they are well implemented, hence the large amount of downloads. I don't hate the idea of having a featured program show up like an ad though.
Also, try not to get too caught up in the numbers, it really doesn't matter Smile
I hardly think that these programs should be called "dictators," but I will agree that there's an issue with how the archives are currently sorted.

If you look at the "CE Assembly Games" category, 2048, Stop the Virus 2020, and Tic Tac Toe 2P are the only games in the top 50 that were made since the beginning of 2018. It definitely seems like a lot of the games in the top 25 only got there because of how old they are, as there's a feedback loop where games with a lot of downloads are the most visible, leading to more downloads. Specifically, there are some low-rated games like Color Switch and Zombie Chase in the top 25, while some amazing games like Columns CE only get a few hundred downloads because they're stuck on the second page.

I feel like games should by default be sorted by the ratio of views to downloads, multiplied by the average score for the game, with a few extra scores equal to the overall average score of programs in the current category thrown in so that one terrible review can't tank the position in the archives. The issue is that "views" is hard to measure - you can't just count how many people have clicked more details, since many people only click that when they actually want to download something. However, you also can't tell if anyone's seen a particular program in the list view, unless it's at the very top of the page.

It might instead be better to divide the number of downloads by the amount of time the program has existed, so that newer programs also have a chance of being seen. However, I feel like this wouldn't work well to apply retroactively, as it assumes that good programs will get more downloads during their period of increased visibility, which wouldn't be the case for existing programs that are old enough to not have increased visibility but not so old as to have made it to the first page.

The "featured program" is an interesting idea - putting it at the very top of the downloads page would pretty much guarantee that people would see it, and could be used to get an accurate view-to-download ratio for that program.
I've got notes in a bug for improving ranking, which amount to using a Bayesian estimate to compute an adjusted rating for each file:

Let 𝐂 and 𝐦 be priors chosen for the data set, ℝ is the set of reviews for a file and |ℝ| is the number of reviews. The estimated true rating of a file is (𝐂*𝐦 + 𝞢(ℝ)) / (𝐂+|ℝ|). In looking at the data myself, I estimate 𝐂=5 and 𝐦=7 to be reasonable priors (being the assumed true average rating and confidence rate, respectively).

Other ideas have included adding a random factor for the default sort, giving files a chance to appear at random in the list among the default "best" sort (whatever that ends up being).

Including both file age and download count in ranking seems reasonable, but that would definitely need some experimentation with data.

And because saying things without any data is nearly meaningless, I've uploaded a summary of the statistics to the archives so y'all can generate concrete suggestions: https://www.cemetech.net/downloads/files/2153
mr womp womp wrote:
I'm not sure "dictator" is the right word...

Dictator is a metaphor. Also by "Dictator" I mean the "projects/programs" that get most of the user traffic on this site Just because there project is on top of the archive.

I like the idea of not worrying about the archives. I don't want to remove or change the amount of user traffic on there "projects/programs" (don't change the rating system). But give a randomly chosen program (changes each reload) to be on top, So that random project can get some user traffic.
Alvajoy123 wrote:

I like the idea of not worrying about the archives. I don't want to remove or change the amount of user traffic on there "projects/programs" (don't change the rating system). But give a randomly chosen program (changes each reload) to be on top, So that random project can get some user traffic.

I agree, this would be a very good idea, since there are many many cool projects I never knew about because they aren't at the top, where the same projects (not bad ones, but always the same) were always on top.
  
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