Suggestion Voting Dos and Do Nots

This page is a companion piece to Suggestions Dos and Do Nots, and it explains good voting practices on Suggestions.

Do justify your vote

At the very least, the author of a suggestion thinks it's a good idea. If it isn't, then your vote should explain to him what the flaws of the idea are, instead of just shooting the suggestion down. In this way, the author, and perhaps other people reading your vote, learn what makes a good suggestion, and so we get better suggestions overall. It's also polite, and helps defend against people voting for unworthy reasons, such as a dislike of the author. It isn't so important for keep votes to show their reasoning.

Do be Polite

You can criticise ideas as much as you want, but be careful that while doing so you aren't being rude to the suggester. It is possible to give criticism, even strong criticism, politely and tactfully, which means that even on a really bad idea being rude isn't justified. We don't want to drive away good editors by insulting them.

Don't try to help the "underdog"

Sometimes people hear that the zombie to survivor ratio is leaning one way or the other and think that this means that they should vote yes on suggestions that help the losing side and vote no on suggestions which help the winning side, in order to keep the game fair. This behaviour would make sense if we wanted to keep both sides to be equally strong and the survivor/zombie ratio was a pure indication of the inherent strength of both sides. However survivor/zombie ratio is affected not only by the inherent strengths, but also by how well each side is playing, and forcing a 50:50 split between humans and zombies would make an irrelevance of tactics and good play.

Short points

• Vote on content, not presentation. If a suggestion is ever implemented into the game, it will not matter whether the original proposal was full of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. What will matter is the core idea. Vote based on whether you think the idea is good or bad.
• Don't break a Voting Dos & Don't s just because someone breaks a Suggestion Dos & Don't s - two wrongs won't make a right.
• If you don't like bad ideas, don't go to the suggestions page. And if you do go, don't complain when you see a bad idea. That's like visiting a volcano and complaining about the heat; bad ideas come with the territory.
• Be sure to read the suggestion properly. You can sometimes miss subtle but important points on the first read-through.

Words to avoid

There are a number of words that crop up in votes that have better alternatives.

Unrealistic

Urban dead is a game about ZOMBIES, so suggestions aren't required to be realistic. They should, however, be consistent with the rest of the UD universe, and not jarringly out of place.

Insults

Lame, gay, stupid, rubbish, moronic, idiotic, crap etc. These words are insulting and not helpful. Good criticism should be specific and constructive, that way the recipient can build upon what was said and improve future attempts.

Unneeded

Every suggestion is "unneeded", so this goes without saying. But if you feel a suggestion has no benefit to the game, or wouldn't make the game more entertaining, then that's a good enough reason to vote kill.