View source for Forum:Project S.C.A.M.M.E.R.

{{Forumheader|Redwood Grove|name=Project S.C.A.M.M.E.R.|subject=|notes=|closure=|archive=|date=|user=|type=}}

Hello friends! After the rousing success of my [[Forum:Add "sock image" parameter to Template:Infobox Jagex|previous thread]] I thought I would try again on another topic that is near and dear to my heart.

One of the main things people complain about on the wiki is that the KPH rates and XP/hr rates on money making guides/skill training guides/etc are way too high (or, slightly less commonly, way too low). There was a recent [https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/1att8o1/money_making_guide/kqzpjw2/ comment chain on Reddit] complaining about this, which got a lot of attention:

{{Cquote2|all of the money making guides I click on start out at some # wayyyy higher than what I can usually achieve.}}

It's kind of a fool's errand to try to boil these guides down to a single number that everyone will be happy with – it's dependent on your prior experience, effort, whether you're doing all of the mechanics, your gear, whether you're on mobile, etc etc. There's a lot of activities where, due to these factors, your personal rates will vary by 50% or more, even if you hold the basic requirements (skill levels, required items) constant. For these activities (Blast Furnace, Vorkath, lots of slightly more mechanics-based PvM), even if we nail the median perfectly (which is not really feasible), we're going to get half the people complaining that the default rate is too high, and half of the people clowning us for them being too low. We're caught between Scylla and Charybdis.

I have a proposal for how to solve this: '''Project S.C.A.M.M.E.R. (Stop Complaints About Money-Making Expected Rates)'''. I want to create a space where people can contribute useful information about the variability in KPH, other than just complaining that the default rates are "wrong", which is generally not helpful.

Basically the idea is that on money making guides with a KPH input ([[Money_making_guide/Killing_Vorkath_(Dragon_hunter_lance)]] for example), we have some sort of button/link (wording TBD) to the talk page where we solicit submissions (probably through some simple form that does a new-section edit in the background) where people say the KPH they're getting, along with some free-form information about their skills/gear/prayers/etc, strategies they're doing/not doing, other places they're deviating from recommendations, optionally a link to the DPS calc with their setup, optionally some video evidence, etc. The hope is that readers who are unsure about what sort of KPH to use, could look at the talk page comments to get more information about what KPH they're likely to get.

I think this would be useful for a few reasons:
* We are never going to come up with a single number that satisfies everybody, so we might as well try to get some different data points by sampling from the people that are actually looking at the guide. This seems really useful for readers to look at directly, because they can take a look at the different descriptions on the talk page, see which one(s) fit them the most closely, and use that KPH. I can't think of anything we could do that would be more useful to the users of the MMGs.
* It gives people who are frustrated over the the default rates being "wrong", an outlet and an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is, where they essentially need to give detailed evidence/repro steps for why they think the default rate is infeasible. I think this is a much better outlet for those frustrations than the Reddit comment chain I linked above (which is pretty devoid of substance/actual numbers, and makes it hard for us to improve anything if it's actually wrong).
* It raises the curtain a little bit between editors and readers, and will probably result in a lot of people making their first contributions to the wiki, even if they're just on a talk page.
* If we get enough data, we could eventually use them to put together some bullet points on the articles, similar to [[Money_making_guide/Killing_brutal_black_dragons#Kills_per_hour_estimates,_estimated_drops_(not_profit),_and_methodology|this]] (although probably much harder since it's not purely a question of DPS).

Template examples to come – I wanted to first see how people feel about the high level idea (getting people to submit their KPH in a place that we push readers to also start looking at) before delving into specifics. {{Signatures/Cook Me Plox}} 04:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

==Discussion==
'''Support''' - I like the high level idea. I'd like to see an example of how something like this would be displayed on the talk page though since it feels like it might be hard to do in a way that's helpful for readers directly {{User:Crow/Signature}} 05:00, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

'''Support''' - I think it's worth a shot. I don't think it has to be insanely successful to be helpful to readers, though I'm pretty skeptical of how much good feedback we will get. I would love to be wrong about that though esp if it means people will be engaging more. Totally agree that the current system allows for very little useful feedback, which really stinks both for us and regular users. - [[User:Andmcadams|Andmcadams]] ([[User talk:Andmcadams|talk]]) 05:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

'''Support, but''' &mdash; One reason for the discrepancy between "wiki-rates" & "real-world rates" not mentioned here is that players are simply bad at sampling their own rates. I've often seen players take a 5 minute sample & extrapolate that to an average expected over the course of an hour. Samples should be generally of at least an hour long to provide a more stable number. Smaller-than-sufficient sample sizes are probably one of the leading causes of complaints, both on the side of those reporting them on the wiki, and among those who disagree with the stated rates. Therefore, the reporting-space should emphasize long sample sizes for meaningful data.

Also, I think a template like ''<nowiki>{{Rate Evidence|video=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvLlTr7A8ek|rate=33923/hr|sampletime=50m|date=2024-06-20}}</nowiki>'' is probably pretty intimidating to format for the type of person who is not willing to edit the page in the first place. It would ideally be presented as a standard web form if done. {{Signatures/Logg}} 06:18, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

'''Support''' - I think this is a good idea. The problem with all the "guides" is that there are many assumptions about factors that come in to play, that when wrong for a particular user, can lead to large differences. I believe it would be really good to ask for a few default questions at a submission, asking for gear, items, skills, hours of previous engagement with the content, as well as a free form to allow users to describe actions / decisions / how they deal with mechanics. As a user of such data, I would love to be able to filter-search through the free form text to quickly see which of 50 submissions for a particular piece of content would be most relevant to me. 

Personally, I think that it would be good to make it into a project, and ask for submissions to say, 5 pieces of content month-by-month to make sure that there's enough attention to get submissions in. Otherwise, I feel that later down the line the people who will be most likely to report their data are people who deviate a lot from the median. ("It's already correct on the wiki, so I won't spend 5 minutes submitting what I did" - median person). {{Signatures/Zorak plorak}} 13:01, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

'''Support''' - Something that ties into this topic is the recommended gear tabs on a lot of wiki entries. They should be expanded to include mid-game/pre-bossing gear (mainly largely useful information for ironmen)  Example: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Metal_dragons/Strategies For weapons, the lowest entry is an abyssal dagger which most mid level characters do not have. These charts should be expanded according to level and gear requirement. Ironmen that are doing bronze dragons the first time do not have any of the listed items and would benefit from a larger chart telling them what to upgrade. [[Special:Contributions/2003:E5:8F10:B61D:910B:ECCF:238:2AC3|2003:E5:8F10:B61D:910B:ECCF:238:2AC3]] 19:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)bigboss

'''Support''' - I support the high level idea, but perhaps having very detailed use input would be more than required. I think it would be difficult to implement, and providing user data is something people are much more likely to do if it takes virtually no time. Perhaps a simpler rating system and/or small feedback prompt would be more effective. If a player can give a rating from 1-5 or a yes or no to questions like 'How much attention does this method require?', 'How easy is it to learn this method?', 'Did you earn more or less gp than indicated in this guide?', we could crowdsource the popularity of methods and tweak or remove those that seem less accurate or popular after a while. Even if it's just a general rating system like 'on a scale of 1 to 5, how effective would you rate this method?', you could already weed out a ton of bad guides that make little sense. Another consideration might be to also ask the person replying which game-mode they are playing, to generate popularity ratings for ironman-specific methods for example. --[[File:Ironman chat badge.png]] Hjaldr // [[User:Germaan|Germaan]] 19:43, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

'''Neutral''' - I am okay with the proposed initiative, but I question the efficacy of the solution at achieving its primary goal: to reduce complains about money making expected rates.

I am concerned that only displaying the collected data on the talk page in its raw form will be insufficient at stopping complaints. The banner comment in the proposal highlights my key concern: there is a sentiment that the default value for "things" per time (kills, laps, etc.) is unsatisfactory. Collecting data on actual rates for each strata of the player population is, to me, an obvious win and has my full support. But, this does not change the estimate on the main MMG page. We can link to the talk or data collection page, but I believe that this data must be actioned upon in a bolder way if we are to actually solve the key problem this proposal aims to solve. There are hints at doing just that in the proposal: "If we get enough data, we could eventually use them to put together some bullet points on the articles, similar to this (although probably much harder since it's not purely a question of DPS)." I want to see this in the primary yes-definitely plan and not in the maybe plan. Obviously, it requires sufficient data for each MMG, but work can be done to support this without needing to wait on data for every or most MMGs.

To avoid being a complainer without a solution in hand, I have a suggestion that I believe increases the likelihood that we will meaningfully solve the problem at hand. I suggest that we upgrade our money-making guide module to support offering a range of selectable strata that each player can choose, which each come with their own value for the MMG efficiency input (''kph'' in the template). These would be at the top, immediately below the efficiency input. One of them must be the default unless we want to start with no value and require a choice, but I think the visibility of these options and the hopeful brevity will guide readers to interacting with the section and thus make the guide work better for them. Something similar is already linked in the proposal - the [[Money_making_guide/Killing_brutal_black_dragons#Kills_per_hour_estimates,_estimated_drops_(not_profit),_and_methodology|kills per hour estimates section on the brutal black dragons MMG]]. I think putting these statistics at the top is the solution, and the data collection is a means to this end. [[User:Wolfizen|🐺 Wolfizen]] ([[User talk:Wolfizen|talk]]) 05:34, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

'''Support''' - I agree that something definitely needs to be changed. Simply, take the average of the hourly rate using all of the buffs/perks versing without anything special aside from performing the activity as you normally would. <span style="background-color:black; border:4px ridge darkred;">[[File:Bunny_ears.png|20px]] <b>[[User:Vead|{{Colour|white|'''Vead'''}}]]</b> <sup>[[User talk:Vead|{{Colour|darkgray|'''(talk)'''}}]]</sup> [[File:Scythe.png|20px]]</span> 15:14, 20 June 2024 (UTC)