[S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post about what you like and dislike on AAO and suggest new features and improvements.

Moderator: EN - Forum Moderators

User avatar
Meph
Posts: 13439
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:07 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English
Location: Probably Disneyland Paris... or the UK

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by Meph »

I haven't been able to visit AAO much in the past few months. What's the state of the QA system at the moment? Is there less interest getting trials inspected?
User avatar
kwando1313
Posts: 7684
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:33 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, Français (un peu), Ancient Belkan
Location: Uminari City

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by kwando1313 »

I haven't seen a trial been QA'd in ages.
Avatar made by Rimuu~

Image

"The Knight of the Iron Hammer, Vita, and the Steel Count, Graf Eisen. There's nothing in this world we can't destroy."
User avatar
Enthalpy
Community Manager
Posts: 5169
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:40 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, limited Spanish

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by Enthalpy »

Meph wrote:I haven't been able to visit AAO much in the past few months. What's the state of the QA system at the moment? Is there less interest getting trials inspected?
Substantially less, and in my opinion, largely due to a crash in the number of completed cases.

The last request for a QA was in September, and the case in question was rejected.

Turnabout Proxy was featured in late April of 2013.

A Turnabout Through Time needed some additional changes in order to become featured, back in March 2013, but the changes were never made.

In February 2013, another case was reviewed, and it was deemed that the first part was adequate to be featured in conjunction with the other parts, but the other parts were not high enough quality, so the case was never featured. The author later deleted the case.

Back in January 2013, one case was turned down for featured status.

Turnabout Tomorrow was also given featured status in January 2013, although its review was requested in 2012.

No other bids for featured status were put in between 2013 and 2014.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
User avatar
kwando1313
Posts: 7684
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:33 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, Français (un peu), Ancient Belkan
Location: Uminari City

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by kwando1313 »

Also, I can't remember if this was mentioned earlier on, but would it be possible to change the QA conditions to allow for non-AA style cases to be featured as well? In addition to less completed trials being made, there are also more people making non-AA style things.
Avatar made by Rimuu~

Image

"The Knight of the Iron Hammer, Vita, and the Steel Count, Graf Eisen. There's nothing in this world we can't destroy."
Tap
Posts: 4799
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:01 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by Tap »

Apologies for the delay in replying, everyone! I didn't see this thread earlier, so I haven't had a chance to address your questions and concerns. To start off with...

While ShadowEdgeworth is technically the 'leader' of the Quality Assurance Team, Meph is the original Group Leader and still is. Meph can still review and feature trials if he has the time. Because of his inactivity, I have largely taken over for him as the primary Your Trials, Case Competition and QA Moderator. I am also in the Trial Reviewers Group. I can review trials, and I handle most of the Your Trial (and relevant) moderation behind the scenes. ShadowEdgeworth is, for the most part, has been inactive in Your Trials for some months now, so I largely handle those decisions as well.

For kwando and others, while I might not post on the forums as much as I used to anymore, I'm still fairly active behind the scenes. :wink:

So to address the points raised, I agree that a new round of QA'ing needs to be done on some of the older trials. The Borginian Sugar Turnabout among others, no longer properly reflects the quality we expect of featured trials. I imagine that if Bad Player, Hodou Okappa and myself QA the existing featured trials, we'll probably cut a number of trials out of that list. I'm happy to do this along with the other Trial Reviewers if they're up to it.

EDIT: Remember, Trial Reviewers can prematurely end Check 1 for a number of reasons, such as presentation, accessibility and so forth. If a trial is missing links, and it is impossible to continue playing, then the review can be ended prematurely. :wink:

As for featuring miscellaneous and non-AA related trials, I've always been in favour of this. I argued with Meph that miscellaneous and comedy trials deserved to be featured a couple of years ago when the 'Miscellaneous' loophole was quickly closed up. I don't think we should feature incompleted trials, as the Spanish and French section have done in the past, though, if I remember right...
ImageImage
User avatar
Meph
Posts: 13439
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:07 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English
Location: Probably Disneyland Paris... or the UK

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by Meph »

If trials aren't being featured just because of the lack of completed trials, then that's OK. But are people being put off asking for an inspection because they find the rules to be too restricted or bureaucratic?
Tap wrote:As for featuring miscellaneous and non-AA related trials, I've always been in favour of this. I argued with Meph that miscellaneous and comedy trials deserved to be featured a couple of years ago when the 'Miscellaneous' loophole was quickly closed up. I don't think we should feature incompleted trials, as the Spanish and French section have done in the past, though, if I remember right...
I've started to change my mind on this. It would be nice to see miscellaneous and comedies featured. I think my original argument for why we shouldn't was that there was no indication in the Web site's UI on whether a trial was a comedy or an actual case.
User avatar
kwando1313
Posts: 7684
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:33 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, Français (un peu), Ancient Belkan
Location: Uminari City

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by kwando1313 »

Nah. It's just a lack of things being completed. Also, the fact that I think more and more people are moving away from the "pure-AA" style which is basically what QA testing is asking for. (Which is a major reason I've asked if we can add Misc. trials to be featured.)
Avatar made by Rimuu~

Image

"The Knight of the Iron Hammer, Vita, and the Steel Count, Graf Eisen. There's nothing in this world we can't destroy."
User avatar
Enthalpy
Community Manager
Posts: 5169
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:40 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, limited Spanish

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by Enthalpy »

The problem is lack of case completion. At present, cases not being AA-like is only a minor factor, as is the fact that new authors have a hard time getting their trial reviewed and played by experienced authors.

To prove the point, here's a list of all trials of significant length completed in 2013 and 2014, with release dates, author dates, and an explanation on why it hasn't been featured. (Yes, none of these cases have been featured.)

* Turnabout Rivals by _Lenya, released on January 13. The case received little attention.
* Turnabout Dinner Date by RudyRamirez, released on February 5. The author abandoned the case after receiving a negative review.
* Maya Fey: Spiritual Successor series by 256 Pi, released on April 28, June 11, September 4. Not a positively received trial.
* Begin the Hangings by Rtaos Grimm, released on June 13. Taken down for edits that were never finished.
* Cascade Theater by DWaM, released December 24. Easily the most dark and depressing story on AAO (it has no gameplay), the community is divided on the case.
* Turnabout Reversal by TheDoctor, released January 18. The case (sadly) hasn't gotten that much attention.
* Phantasmagoria of Betrayal by Enthalpy and Ferdielance, released March 24. It's still too soon for a QA.
* Summon Simulacrum by Sami-Fire, released March 25. The author was unsatisfied with the way the case ended.
* The Blinded Turnabout by zoo977, released March 28. It's still too soon for a QA.
* Two Sides of the Same Turnabout by Bad Player and Blackrune, released April 2. It's still too soon for a QA.

Of these ten completed recent cases, seven are AA or AA-like, two are stories without any gameplay, and one is a comedy, and of thosethree, two are very recent released. The only non-AA-like case that could even be considered for a QA at this stage is Cascade Theater, which the community is divided over.

Also, most of these cases aren't from experienced authors, and those inexperienced authors also have an incredibly hard time getting their trial reviewed. Even then, most of the reviews they do get aren't very informative. I think that some of the newer authors might be more motivated to improve their cases if they got more reviews, but that's pure speculation on my part. The point remains that the community has produced only five complete and significantly long cases last year, and so far five this year - a lot of which are way too recent for QAs. That explains the low number of QAs.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
User avatar
kwando1313
Posts: 7684
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:33 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, Français (un peu), Ancient Belkan
Location: Uminari City

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by kwando1313 »

So... It's been a couple of months... Has there been any update on re-QA-ing?
Avatar made by Rimuu~

Image

"The Knight of the Iron Hammer, Vita, and the Steel Count, Graf Eisen. There's nothing in this world we can't destroy."
Phantom

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by Phantom »

Unas wrote:
Enthalpy wrote:The most basic problem is that some authors want their featured trials taken off the lists. Mimika falls into this category with her Timely Chronograph, as does Hodou Okappa with his The Bitter Turnabout. If not even the authors agree that a trial should be featured, why is it on the list?
Because the decision of being in the list or not is not up to the author.
The author decides whether his case is public or not.
The QA team decides whether it's featured or not, depending on whether they think the trial is of high enough quality to catch the interest of visitors and demonstrate the possibilities of the engine.

Being on the list requires the author to a) want to shoot for a QA, and b) pass the QA to obtain featured status.

An author deciding to "unrelease" his/her the featured trial should indicate to you that at least temporarily, it is no longer of high enough quality to even be in a playable state (at least according to the author, whose content they are most responsible for). Ignoring why an author would even feel this way in terms of how the featured trial list works doesn't make sense to me.

Instead of complicating all of this, you should indicate in the featured trial list (especially on the front page) that there is some maintenance of some sort that makes the trial unplayable (for example a red color code with a hovering tip of the featured trial link that tells the visitor that the trial has been taken down for whatever reason).
User avatar
Enthalpy
Community Manager
Posts: 5169
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:40 am
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, limited Spanish

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by Enthalpy »

kwando1313 wrote:So... It's been a couple of months... Has there been any update on re-QA-ing?
Any updates on this project?
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
User avatar
kwando1313
Posts: 7684
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:33 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, Français (un peu), Ancient Belkan
Location: Uminari City

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by kwando1313 »

... It's now 2015... Any updates on this?
Avatar made by Rimuu~

Image

"The Knight of the Iron Hammer, Vita, and the Steel Count, Graf Eisen. There's nothing in this world we can't destroy."
User avatar
kwando1313
Posts: 7684
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:33 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, Français (un peu), Ancient Belkan
Location: Uminari City

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by kwando1313 »

... Still wondering if there's been any update on this.
Avatar made by Rimuu~

Image

"The Knight of the Iron Hammer, Vita, and the Steel Count, Graf Eisen. There's nothing in this world we can't destroy."
AceAttorneyMaster111
Posts: 468
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2014 6:46 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, français, un poco de español, עברית
Location: USA

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by AceAttorneyMaster111 »

It's been over a year now. Will anything ever come of the re-QA or is it being abandoned?
User avatar
GanonZD
Posts: 526
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:59 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English, Danish, German, a tiny bit French

Re: [S] Featured Trial Re-QA

Post by GanonZD »

I vote for a re-QA.
Ganon er kommt zum Dorf.
Post Reply