Well, the two of you have really made some interesting points here. SeraphOx, I certainly see everything you're saying, it really does get a bit tricky when you think about it, doesn't it? Still, let me see what I come up with, and I'm just spitballing here so bear with me, I'm not trying to spark up a debate.
First, I think what seraphOx said is absolutely right, that "Flash Tease ratings aren't really comparable to regular tease ratings". It would be like comparing apples and oranges I think.
So the first question is do you have flash and reg. teases competing against each other for totm
, or have a separate flash totm category? Or, I guess we could just have the ratings on the flash teases so that, once the board found it's flash ratings grove, regular users could find where they stand in that grove and know, to some extent, whether they will be likely to enjoy a flash tease before they start it. But I think rigging up ratings on the flash just for that seems like a lot of work with little reward.
Getting back to if there was a flash totm category, I know some months run a little light on flash teases, so you could say something like in order for any given month to have a flash totm, there must be at least X number of flash teases written in that month. So like if August saw <X flash teases, then August would not have a flash totm and those teases written in August would be eligible for the September flash totm. Obviously, this doubles the work that Dark does in determining which 5 teases go to the voting and setting up the polls. Now, the mods and admins already do a hell of a lot of good work around here, so this type of thing would be totally up to them.
Of course, all that only comes in if we figure a way to get ratings for flash teases anyways. I been round and round in my head several times on this and it's like every idea I have I find huge flaws in it or it excludes what should be eligible voters or includes what should be ineligible voters, etc. It's like laying a piece of carpet that's 3 inches smaller than the room. Or maybe it's more like
Jack, I see what you are saying about an "end" page with the ratings options, and it seems so simple, but seraphOx is right, "A Flash Tease could theoretically go on forever". Many of them do have a natural ending, but some can theoretically go round and round forever. Realistically, they go round and round until you quit, but should that mean you don't get to vote? I think it would be counterproductive to require authors to provide a final "end" page in flash teases. I really do see what you are saying Jack, but there's problems. I.E.: House of Cards 3 "ends" when ONE of four girls tells you that you do or do not get to cum, and then, whether you got to or not, tells you to leave the property. So yes, on that last page where she tells you to get out, the ratings could be placed. But now the author is responsible for making sure that gets put on all four of those "natural end" pages. Some teases have far more than four "natural endings". Another point is House of Cards 2 ends, it could be argued, when you get the password for part 3. But some people spent a couple hours on that tease and never found the joker, so those voters would get left out in the cold. :'-(
I have thought about other things, like every flash tease has a feedback thread with a poll, but that has at least four HUGE flaws, not the least of which is that, normally, nonmembers do not vote in polls and I don't think excluding that demographic is something anybody wants to do. Then there's just click on a rating right there on the webtease list, but that has so many problems it's actually funny.
Now, in a flash tease, even out of full screen mode, I don't have any of the site controls. So to leave one, whether I have come to the end or am just personally done, I hit the back button and land at the webtease list. I guess you could work something up so that when you do that, a pop up window asks you to rate the tease you just did. But then you get into stuff like the author should be able to say you only get to rate it if you were on this page and this page and this page or those three pages; whatever they feel is enough for you to get the gist of the tease to be rating eligible. I'm not a programmer, but thinking about the code for that makes my head spin around. And not in the good way.
So I come back to the brilliant thing
seraphOx said in the first place, about a ratings toolbar within the tease. A lot of authors and users might say this will disrupt continuity and destroy the focus. Plus there are questions like do you allow multiple votes by a single user? Does the toolbar disappear after one use? Etc. But, what if there was just a button? You know when a flash tease is being interactive; you have the pink buttons over to the right side with stuff like "continue", "please let me cum", etc. What if there was a button just like those (maybe a different color for clarity) at either the very top or bottom of the page that just said "rate this" or whatever? Clicking it could open a small dialog box rather than a whole other page, so that the user could still see whatever pic was up so that the tease is not totally interrupted visually. Inside the little box are the choices for ratings (1-5, whatever), underneath the classic sentence "Rate this tease:". When a rating is clicked on, it gets recorded and the box closes itself. And, just in case the user hit the "rate this" button by mistake, or not knowing what it was and wants to get right back to the tease, you can close it with the customary red X in the top right corner without selecting a rating. And the author could put that button on whichever page(s) she/he desires. If the author wants it there as a possible distraction on every page, fine. If they have written a tease with one or two or six "here are your consequences, now get out" type endings, fine; only put it on those.
The only questions that leaves, that I see are: 1] Do you allow multiple ratings per user? 2] Do you require the author to have at least one page with a rate this button, or do you let them remove themselves from ratings if they wish to? 3] The now age old question of whether flash teases get their own totm category.
Now, as I said, I really am not a programmer, but I am guessing that if someone could get the code written for the dialog box and the button, then an author could, as they built the tease page by page, determine (perhaps even by way of a simple checkbox?) which pages display the rate this button. I can't say I can imagine exactly how that all works, code-wise, but maybe that would be fewer complications for author and less disruption for user than some of the other ideas I have spit up?
You could take what I know about programming and write it all down on a post-it note.....then erase it because I bet the languages I know a tiny bit about are not used for any of this. I really wish I knew more so I could offer to help. So, anybody, feel free to tell me; does this sound like an "Oh, piece of cake" type deal or a "Well, that'll be an interesting project for the next month" or a "Holy shit, that's impossible!!
" type of thing? Don't be afraid to call me an idiot; just try to do it in a nice way.
SeraphOx, you do a great deal of free work here and we all appreciate that, so know that I'm not being pushy or impatient, I just kind of got on a roll here. I am interested to hear your thoughts though, if you ever have time to read this book I wrote.
And anybody else's thoughts too.
) The thing is, I can talk about it, I can think about it, but I can't do anything about it, which is why I try to avoid sounding like I'm complaining about it.