pouët.net

If anyone's willing to try and tell their experience with this custom CSS that hides away votes, but leaves the popularity data:


You give that a 👍🏻 🐷 👎🏻 ?

Huh, I thought that was already very prevalent here: in that some groups already judge the ONLY means for a demo exist is to win a compo or compete, and its never about trying something new/artistic, and just catering to tropes to score Internet dickwaving points. And judging by some very clear examples, its not hard to see why they view that.

I'd love the idea of removing thumbs or "votes" entirely and just relying on deep constructive criticism via comments as to the prod. To me, art cannot be objectively measured by thumbs. Maybe thats why I stopped pretty much making any, to me, I discovered art (especially since taking up physical art) is worth way more than merely votes, but actual criticism by people you know.

To those who are against the rating system:

guys, theres already a site like that: Demozoo.org. There are no ratings, no damn rankings, just comments. And its great database of demoscene productions, including all kinds of releases.

The only downside: nobody actually comments there. But some people see that as a plus.

I'm here for the thumbs and votes. Competition, even with the rather bad metric "popularity", always motivates me. Also, art is nice and all, but I'm rather releasing here for showing off what I can do with math, assembly and GLSL. "Dickwaving" is a bit harshly worded, but I see the kernel of truth.


Proper feedback is nice, but to be fair: If you're not a total beginner, most feedback you'll get on prod threads is not that useful for improving. I've had people, with the perfect 10/10 "subjective" scene math Dunning-Kruger, comment on a prod where I showed a technical achievement, that this isn't an achievement and anyone could do this. I've seen never-been-done SDFs or estimators being dismissed with 3 comments and a piggie, just because its easier to know whether or not you enjoy art than whether or not a mathematical party trick has been shown in the internet before.

The scene can be very negative a lot of the time I don't really see why this is problem.

how did you come up with >1000 votes per prod per month?
I don't think I ever saw one prod with more than 1000 votes, let alone multiple - or did I miss something in the way the data was taken?

I sometimes visit old prod pages and laugh at how savage people were before, it was absolutely wild out there, and I got my fair share of stupid takes (I still do, fuck ai :D) and honestly, it was the charm of it.

I totes agree with growing older, maturing but… there's definitely a problem of thumb up going on and it's been discussed privately by many of us I'm sure.



I truly think it's been much better in the last decade.

Music-wise, I got often called up for being an afx rip-off (I was not), for not using my own samples (always documented), for being a hunz rip-off too (I was young and very fragile too) or I don't know just for not being good at music making in general. Nowadays, people will even thumb up a mediocre 4k bum tchak (that does not even sound tchak-y enough) or the same old scene chiptune. And don't get me started on cubes… 

What does not kill you… makes you an old and angry ginger man :)

At least on CSDb they should remove the whole voting thing as it's completely pointless nowadays. I personally like things being rated but when in 1-10 scale 9 can be "somewhat downvoting" and 8 downright "hating", then it's time to get rid of the whole thing.

At Pouet, i don't really watch things that i already know will be crap to me, so not that much thumbing down. With scene radios, you will hear tunes that you don't like, and i at least personally will vote accordingly, no matter who is the artist (99.9% of time :)).

If the goal is ranking, then personal tiers or even direct ranking might work better - no public "this rules" / "this sucks", just "I prefer A over B". But would this really work in practice or would it just be too complicated and leave many prods without enough votes?

Maybe some sort of polygraph system is required. If your pulse races while you thumb up, it turns into thumb down.

It would revolutionize smart watches or smart rings if they had a lie detector feature.

But if my pulse races during the watching and I rush to vote?

But also if I actually thumb up because it was great on the first half but then it goes downhill.

Should we wait two days after watching a demo before voting?

And only after a breathalyzer check. Don't drink and vote!

and camera surveillance to make sure you watched every second of the demo before you put in your vote

Would make for boring prizegiving ceremonies at demoparties… ”and the shared 1st place with 0 points… all entries!”

Welp, no fun then

Before voting, make sure no one is actually using illegal telepathy against your own will.
And do not, ever, vote for jazz musicians

What else? That makes people to strive for even better things. That makes humans overcome difficult periods.

If you need safe space for getting called bad in something within demoscene, i don't know how you can go on in the world.

Self expression? Art? I thought the demoscene was a safe space where people can go "heres a neat thing I did with gfx/code/musix, njoy", and not where people treat it as a complete competition all about clout.

After all these years I must have been completely wrong??

Unless you are saying the demoscene isn't a fit for those things, and those things go elsewhere?

I don't think I've ever heard about the demoscene as a "safe space", it's a space where you can eventually find friends to play with, it's a big dysfunctional family, it's a social network as well… but it ain't a space guaranteed to be safe: you're going to present some works of yours and eventually some people may appreciate the effort but it's not guaranteed and some people will find your effort absolutely crap and will say it out loud and you know what, maybe your work is crap for them, maybe it's good for others.

Or maybe someone will tell you it's good because he wants to make friends with other newbies, maybe someone want to exploit your contacts I don't know guys where you all live but you have to step outside and see for yourself the rest of the world XD

Thanks tho for the honesty, seems then I was 100% wrong. Maybe indeed my works are not a fit for the demoscene then, and maybe some place like Youtube alone, or something, even if I enjoy the code aspects. Maybe post on bluesky as "creative coding" or some shit?

Since you currently pretend to appreciate truth, here's some more for you: Your incessant whining about desiring to leave the scene while at the same time creating multiple duplicate accounts just so you can keep posting said incessant whining is hypocritical, ridiculous and getting really tedious by now. After Gargaj left, we figured we'd let you try one more time, but it is clearly leading nowhere sensible. So why don't you just go away, as you indicated to be your wish at least a dozen times, and as you have been suggested to do by the site's staff a handful of times in the form of your previous accounts being restricted and/or banned? The reality is, nobody on this site cares to hear that same tired old bullshit from you again and again, and if that's really all you have to contribute, you're clearly wasting your breath here.