"Top contributors" list is unfair to people who make detailed changes to airports

[N316TS]

The “Top contributors” list ranks people by number of submissions. If you’re someone who spends a lot of time on one airport at a time, your name is not going to show up on that list. The airport I’m working on is a large international airport, and the changes have taken me a month of daily work because the airport is so outdated. That submission will count as much as the person who moved a windsock and uploaded the change.

Note: There is a separate topic on here about being ranked by number of approved submissions. I agree with that, as well.

[CurrentFoil3744]

You are correct, but what would you suggest in its place? There is little difference between submissions and approved submissions and to date there have been no other ideas put out for consideration, as far as I know…
I agree that “submissions” does not promote getting the more difficult and time-consuming work done. Maybe a weighted average taking size of airport into consideration but how do you arrive at the weights? Number of runways, number of gates, number of parking positions or taxiway signs?
What would be better and manageable?

Maybe there should not be a “Top Contributors” ranking at all. Simply list airports done, by whom, and what changes were made.

[N316TS]

This may not be a popular opinion, but naybe not having the list at all would be the best way forward. I understand the concept of gamification, but what should be one’s motivation in the World Hub, anyway: fixing airports or being in competition with your fellow devs to get on a leaderboard with dubious meaning? I’m also not a fan of the idea that people may be encouraged to cut corners in order to submit items faster.

If they’re going to have the list, I would propose they call it something else, like “Top number of submissions” and change it to approved submissions only, per the other suggestion.

[CurrentFoil3744]

Exactly, this should not be a competition to cut corners or see what is the least one can do to rank higher as a “Top Contributor”. The objective should be, as you’ve stated, to get airports fixed for good flying.

[aurel42de]

I’m the current “top contributor” and I didn’t earn that dubious honor.

I did at no point aim to become the top contributor. I just fixed problems as I saw them. It’s been a learning process and I made a lot of mistakes, and I was hit multiple times by the “wrong aerial” issue, resulting in a lot of resubmissions, clearly visible if you compare the number of submissions and the number of airports for the top two contributors – Blinxis is only ranked #2 because they needed fewer “submissions per airport”, even though they fixed more airports than me.

I don’t think there is a “fair” way to generate that ranking. There is no way to measure the effort someone put into their edits, there is no way to predict how many people will benefit from the changes. There might be ways to make it less “unfair”, by letting the user sort the ranking by number of submissions, submission state (as in: only count accepted submissions), number of airports, or crazy compound metrics like size/complexity of airports multiplied by people visiting the airport in the sim in the past N days. It still will be unfair to some contributors, there still will be ways to “game the system” to achieve a higher ranking than someone else who put the same amount of effort in.

I wanted to stay out of this discussion, because I find the top contributor ranking inherently silly. And it’s obviously (IMHO) work in progress, just like much of the rest of the World Hub site, just like the “Top Airports” or “Wanted Airports” tabs.

But I just submitted a follow-up to an airfield I worked on before, literally removing a single group of trees. And I didn’t just submit the change with a single line comment (“removed a group of trees”), I felt compelled to explain why I hadn’t removed the trees before. I only realized after completing the submission that this thread is what compelled me.

So, yeah, while people who want to be on the list are frustrated because they’re not getting the appreciation they were hoping for, I’m frustrated because I now feel obliged to defend small changes, so people won’t think I’m trying to stay at the top of the list by artificially inflating my submission count.

TL;DR: The list is silly.

@CurrentFoil3744

Maybe there should not be a “Top Contributors” ranking at all. Simply list airports done, by whom, and what changes were made.

Yes. Get rid of the list, instead give us (both artists and interested users) better, more comfortable ways to browse the changed airports.

Maybe add a zoomable World Map (like the Scenery Map on flightsim.to) with the artist’s user avatars, so an interested user could zoom in on PNG, see that “this aurel guy” has worked on a bunch of airfields there, and contact me to ask me to fix AYxx for them.

[N316TS]

I do want to say, thank you for all your contributions! And I also don’t want to take anything away from anyone who is on the list. I have not read anybody else’s submissions and I have not flown at anybody else’s airports. (I actually don’t think I’ve flown for fun in the sim in 2024 yet.)

I’ve actually been on the list twice, all the way at the bottom. The first time, I got booted off. What got me back on was a minor submission, as well: I decided to be extra anal-retentive and I went back to an old airport I submitted earlier and changed the angles on the PaintedHatchedAreas so that they matched the aerial in Bing Maps. And I felt silly for getting on the list with that submission. And after I’m done with my current class B airport, I’m going to download another class B airport and fix the runway and nothing else. So that’ll be two low-effort submission. So I’m really sorry that my post made you feel frustrated. I’m in the same boat, and this is my own thread!

I think I want to capture some points that have been made so far by all three of us, so that if the SDK team happens to read this thread (I hope they’re reading), they’ll see all points summarized succinctly:

• The current name “Top contributors” implies that having a lot of submissions is what makes you a top contributor. Since Asobo made the website, it makes it look like that’s their #1 priority for users to aspire to. It shouldn’t be.
• There is no way to make a ranking system that genuinely captures how much work goes into someone’s submissions
• I think the three of us in this thread are in favor of nixing this tab altogether. But if the team insisted on keeping it:
  • Currently, the system accepts rejected submissions as well as accepted ones. It should only capture accepted submissions.
  • Perhaps other things could be considered, such as the complexity of the airports (although you could still move a single windsock at a class B airport and call it a day) or number of airports contributed to or impact on the community. There are all kinds of considerations here, and no mater what, it’s going to make the system more complicated.
• Someone will always find a way to game the system
• The list causes anxiety (although some of that may have been caused by me and this thread…sorry)
• Maybe a better alternative would be to map people’s submissions, instead of ranking them

If I didn’t capture anything correctly, please let me know!

[CurrentFoil3744]

Your summaries are very good IMO! I do hope the “Top Contributors” section will go away. I agree “it’s silly” and meaningless and puts emphasis on the wrong target.

Maybe you haven’t seen this, it is easy to miss, but I think the Maps suggestion is already far along in development:

[N316TS]

Oh, that’s really nice! Thank you for pointing that out!

[BlitzMeerkat]

Nice, but seems only to work when you search for a specific author, doesn’t it?
@ASBNicolas: A map with tags on all edited and published airports would be really nice. Tags should include author and summary of changes. This map could be public in a later state of the WorldHub.

[CurrentFoil3744]

@BlitzMeerkat

Nice, but seems only to work when you search for a specific author, doesn’t it?

No. Search criteria now include Coordinates or City and/or Airport Name or ICAO as you can see in the screenshot above.

A search on ICAO “KOSH” shows the following:

You can move the map around or zoom in/out to see the location of all listed airports.

You can find KOSH (or Wittman Field) in the listing, then click on the ICAO or Airport Name and get the following details:

So the status of “Published” is in the data set from which this map and information is derived. To get what I think you want would seem to mean adding drop-downs/filters for the information/mapping you have described.

This is an alpha, so I’m sure Asobo is looking for the kind of feedback you (and others) have outlined. The basic idea is already created and working. This is part of thr World Hub, so it should be made public once testing is over and it is fully released.

[BlitzMeerkat]

Sorry, I was a bit unclear: I mean, the map doesn’t show all edited airports, but only what you enter into the search boxes. The “status” box at least should contain “edited” or “published” as an option.