Extensive Category is not a good solution though.
First of all, no users will know about that category or actively go to it as it's very hidden, even trying to fix that with publicity wouldn't have people going to the list to browse it. Secondly "Extensive" is way too vague. My packs, for example, are under the "Cosmetic" category, where they belong, as they're cosmetic packs. Are they extensive? Yes, but I'm still going to put them under the "Cosmetic Category"
I feel like the "Extensive" category is an entirely different issue
Status: Open
Opened by chuckchuk
Datapacks: "Content Pack" or "Big Pack" Tab for Large Packs so They Don't Get Lost in a Sea of Small Packs
To be clear, I don't think there should be a culling of small packs, there is absolutely a place for them. I know several people who use the "Rotten Flesh to Leather" datapack, which is a single furnace recipe datapack. I have nothing against those packs, but I do understand the frustrations of people who make enormous feature-packed datapacks and have that effort be completely overlooked. Even if it's a feature players would in fact enjoy and appreciate, the problem is these packs don't get enough exposure. Only recently did I fully understand the frustrations of other big-pack makers when I did a ground-up update of my Tables and Chairs. I started every model and piece of code from scratch and wrote it to be far cleaner and have double or triple the features, which took me three months of fairly dedicated work; only for my pack to get the same traffic it always does, and that traffic ONLY comes because I'm already in the top 20 most downloaded. So what's to be said for big packs that weren't early developers?
I'm sure there's an audience of players wanting "Big Packs" or "Content Packs", with detailed and well thought out content, but they have no way to consistently find them.
My proposition is to include a tab for "Big Packs" or "Content Packs" to distinguish themselves from the more "Tweaks" packs that you usually find flooding the datapacks tab today.
This tab could be placed after "New" or "Best" Or perhaps even at the end after "Tags"
Somewhere in this list.
My goal is to try to find a way that it can be as automated as possible, to require little moderation, and to find good criteria to detect what a "Big/Content Pack" is automatically.
These are Three proposed systems as of right now.
Proposed System 1:
If the datapack is approved, it will go into the "Big Packs" or "Content Packs" Tab that would contain all these packs.
Packs can also be manually added to the tab by moderators if for whatever reason the criteria did not detect a pack that would be considered a "Big Pack"
Having a Resourcepack could also impact consideration in some ways.
In Summary: Moderators approve or deny Datapacks from a smaller list of datapacks that pass through this minimum criteria to be considered a "Big Pack". And a Moderator could choose to promote a pack that didn't make the cut.
Pros to System 1:
- Allows for Big Datapacks and developers who spend a LOT of time making really quality, clean, and thorough datapacks a place to shine.
- Allows for players who are specifically looking for these types of datapacks to find them much more easily.
Cons to System 1:
- First Big Con is that it's hard to really determine with this automatic criteria whether a pack is in fact a "Big Pack," and the criteria might skip over some packs that should be considered large big feature packs.
- Also there'd probably have to be a way to deal with packs that are updated over time to be larger, or should be re-evaluated over time.
- Another is the fact that the system can be easily abused. It would be easy for other creators to pick up on the criteria and specifically put JUST enough, or add one useless function and advancement to their pack so that it auto detects them as a "big pack" This is why the moderators needing to approve the pack is important.
- It requires some moderation, which is perhaps a deterrent for PMC, but the amount of moderation needed seems to be rather minor, as it can be done casually with no real time constraints and the automatic detection should already skim out most smaller packs
Proposed System 2:
Developers would manually check off whether they consider their pack a "tweak pack" or "content pack", but need to still pass through some minimum requirements. For example a Content Pack needs to contain more than just recipes for example.
Then there would still need to be some moderation to cull through the "content packs" and determine if they make the cut or not.
Pros Vs System 1:
- Somewhat more self curated and have more defined "Content" vs "Tweaks" packs, But moderators still have the final say.
Cons to System 2:
- Similar cons to system 1
- Other Con I can see is that the term "Content Pack" label would be pretty vague, but it could have a short information bubble to explain what it is. Such as "Content packs are packs that include new content to Minecraft"
- Still easy to abuse
Proposed System 3:
The Judges would need to understand the distinction between "Big Pack" and not, and try to not bring their own bias into the judging as best as possible. Perhaps there wouldn't even be a need for criteria but simply to have these judges post a certain Datapack on a page for the judges to vote, and then if the vote passes have the pack promoted.
Semi-clear criteria would have to be established for the judging, but there should still be room for leaving things up to interpretation and some subjective nature.
There are several ways to go about this:
#1: A Judge chooses a pack to promote and then it's posted for the panel of judges to vote on, and if it's got 3/4 of the votes positive then it passes
#2: A Single Judge can promote a pack to the "Big Packs" tab, and if X other judges decide that it doesn't make the cut then they can have it removed from the "Big Packs" Tab, and it cannot be re-promoted for X Weeks
#3: Outsource it to a discord server to judge, and then have few datapackers with the permission on PMC to promote packs based on whether or not the vote passed on those discords (Highly tricky last system to verify)
Pros of System 3:
- PMC wouldn't have to intervene as much, as the judging would be outsource to other datapackers.
- It would be a lot more casual with less restrictions, and even if it ends up being a little messier, it still skims out the simplest of packs.
Cons To System 3:
- There could end up being a very biased criteria if datapackers themselves judged other datapacks
- Another LARGE con is the fact that a lot of the highest level datapackers on PMC often specifically received a high level from posting many very small trendy packs, and if those creators wish to further promote their content they could abuse the judging system to promote their content as "Big Packs" even if they're not. That's why it may be important for other judges to be able to vote alongside it.
- Could eventually lead to some corruption/abuse, but in the large scheme of things, even if messy it could at least help to still promote some really hard-worked on packs that are currently being completely skimmed over
Like I mentioned before, the biggest problem is that really detailed packs from developers who pour their heart out in this content are being completely skimmed over in a sea of low effort packs or developers who follow simple trends. AGAIN I STATE: There is absolutely a place for these simple low-effort packs, or trendy packs. But there should be place and way to distinguish between these packs and packs that have a LOT of effort and months of work put into them.
To Mods: I accidentally posted the first one as private and had a ton of formatting issues, so I'm going to delete the previous and post this one now, publicly.