Suggestions for improvements to the Vault

[oskarlh]

I have noted down some things I think could be changed to improve the vault, most ideas are about making it easier to find interesting works in the Vault.

1. If people could mark their own uploads as broken, and moderators could do it too, we could put a little text near the download button to indicate that the download needs fixing, and gray out the screenshot in the list at https://twhl.info/vault/ . It saves the disappointment of finding something you want to try and finding out you can't download it. And could this motivate people to fix their downloads and others to share if they have the content?
2. It would be helpful if the vault showed the category ("Completed", "Unfinished" etc.) in the list https://twhl.info/vault/ . Take a look at the screenshot below. You are browsing through the vault, but to see which maps are Completed, Unfinished, Examples, or Problem maps, you need to click. I suggest adding a category label near the upload time and the rating.
   
3. There are links to https://twhl.info/vault , https://twhl.info/vault?page=1 , https://twhl.info/vault/index , https://twhl.info/vault/index?page=1 , and https://twhl.info/vault/index?games=&cats=&types=&users=&incs=&rate=&sort=&search=&page=1 (and similar addresses) which may be a problem for web crawlers like Google or the Wayback Machine and could reduce their usefulness with TWHL content. I suggest changing the links and search form to avoid having multiple URLs for the same pages. Alternatively, <link rel="canonical" href="..." /> tags could be used. This link takes you to /vault/index:
   
   This link takes you to /vault:
   
4. When you upload a map and have to choose which game it's for and you type "Counter-Strike", Condition Zero doesn't show up because it's written as "CS: Condition Zero". Counter-Strike: Source doesn't show up when you type "Source". Perhaps different variations of the game names could be entered into the database and the search box could look there too?
5. CS: CZ: Deleted Scenes maps are currently categorised as "CS: Condition Zero". These are single-player maps while normal CZ maps are (usually) multi-player. It would be nice to have Deleted Scenes as a choice in the games list.
6. Some mods without their own category have plenty of maps: Flat-Life (13), The Specialists (10), Natural Selection (8), Ricochet (8)
7. I also think Half-Life Source and Half-Life Deathmatch Source deserve their own categories, even though we only have two maps: https://twhl.info/vault/view/6041 https://twhl.info/vault/view/4191
8. Some vault entries include versions for multiple mods. Should it be possible to select multiple games, or perhaps there should be a Multiple Games (GoldSrc) option in the games list?
9. Want your map to get noticed? Give it a tall screenshot :)
10. When sorting by rating, the number of ratings isn't factored in. So a map with 9 ratings of 5 stars is considered the same as a map with 1 rating of 5 stars. The simplest fix would be to add the number of ratings as a secondary sort order. That would still be unfair to maps with a dozen 5 star ratings and a single 4 star rating, which should probably come before a map with a single rating even if that rating is 5: to fix this, you could instead use a formula such as sort_order = ((2.5 + sum of all ratings) / (number of ratings + 1)). It's not uncommon for websites to use similar formulas to aggregate review scores.
11. People are still to this day putting Half-Life Deathmatch maps in "Half-Life", possibly because they see "Deathmatch" and think of Deathmatch Classic. It could be renamed to "Half-Life: multiplayer", or better yet, "Half-Life Deathmatch" could be removed as an option and there could be checkboxes to indicate if it's singleplayer or multiplayer content or either.
12. For vault items with lots of screenshots, such as https://twhl.info/vault/view/6675 , some the thumbs don't load right away and it looks strange
13. https://twhl.info/vault Min. Rating filter has the option 0.5 but the minimum possible rating is 1
14. Metro28 has been uploading a lot of skyboxes, and they are not the only ones in the vault. We could use a new content type: skybox.