Action button labels: poll 2

[_wb_]

Only 19 voters so far, so this is not yet statistically relevant at all, but here's a way to aggregate the results of this poll:

The best gets 3 points, second best 2 points, third best 1 points, and for the dislikes it's the same but negative. So a total score can be obtained in different ways: e.g. proposal 1 gets a score of 0 because it is equally loved and hated, while proposal 9 also gets a near-zero score but mostly because most people say "meh".

I also made some groupings because some proposals are variants of one another; I distinguished four categories (although actually proposal 10 could also be a category of itself).

So far, there seems to be a relatively pronounced but controversial overall preference for Playstation Greek letters; Pandora-like proposals are OK, and Latin proposals with a non-Pandora layout are a clear no-no.

 

[_wb_]

Here's a graphical version of proposal #7. The gamma is slightly non-standard, most fonts make it look more like a y, but I think I prefer this one because it's exactly a rotated lambda and cannot be confused with the letter Y. The font I used is Open Sans Extrabold (except for the gamma which was obtained by rotating the lambda).

For some reason I'm assuming the extra buttons are smaller, but I actually don't know if the intention is to make them all the same size or not. Has ED said anything about that yet?

 

[slaeshjag]

Didn't he say on IRC that they'll be smaller?

 

[TrashyMG]

Didn't he say on IRC that they'll be smaller?

I assumed from ED IRC comment that they would be. I never got a response back on how much smaller would they be.

 

[Ziz]

Hm, hard to decide which greek layout not to give a NOT-vote...

 

[_wb_]

Hm, hard to decide which greek layout not to give a NOT-vote...

Well at least there are only 4 Greek layouts. There are 5 Latin layouts, so I had to pick two to not give a NOT-vote

 

[Ziz]

Hm, hard to decide which greek layout not to give a NOT-vote...

Well at least there are only 4 Greek layouts. There are 5 Latin layouts, so I had to pick two to not give a NOT-vote

It's a hard unfair world in which we live...

 

[bzar]

Remember to downvote the layouts you actually think are the worst, not your favorite's biggest competitors

 

[_wb_]

Remember to downvote the layouts you actually think are the worst, not your favorite's biggest competitors

It is somewhat suspicious that the layouts that are not popular (don't attract many positive votes) attract so few negative votes. E.g. lowercase Greek plus zeta/omega gets the least amount of positive votes (nobody chose it as #1 or #2), yet for some reason it does not get many negative votes either. Maybe that just means it's a good compromise proposal: sufficiently Pandora-like, sufficiently Latin-like, sufficiently Greek-like.

I suppose that Pandora-based Latin and Playstation-style Greek are the two big opposing camps here in terms of positive votes. The Playstation-Greek camp is spreading its negative votes quite evenly among the other proposals, while the Pandora-based Latin camp is concentrating its negative votes on the Playstation-Greek proposals. There is no way to tell if that is strategic voting or actual opinion though.

At the moment (26 voters), Pandora-like Latin is taking the lead, while the Greek layouts are reduced to "meh":

 

[bzar]

The Playstation-Greek camp is spreading its negative votes quite evenly among the other proposals, while the Pandora-based Latin camp is concentrating its negative votes on the Playstation-Greek proposals.

Out of curiosity, how did you infer this?

 

[SNESFAN]

there are plenty of options I'm ok with, but it appears as I'm at a lack of vote options to try and downvote the ones I particularity wouldn't care for

EDIT: I think _wb_ is correct, I didn't even read what he said before voting and posting, but that's what I'm doing

 

[levi]

I'd like to vote for Kiga's suggestion as my preferred layout.


In the last round I did favour the sega layout, as it is logical, but with the buttons in this arrangement any labels with an obvious sequence seem illogical to me.

 

[_wb_]

The Playstation-Greek camp is spreading its negative votes quite evenly among the other proposals, while the Pandora-based Latin camp is concentrating its negative votes on the Playstation-Greek proposals.

Out of curiosity, how did you infer this?

I didn't check that claim in detail, but that was the impression I got by quickly looking at who voted what. Let me check my first impression...

There are 11 voters who like Pandora-based Latin (proposal #1 or #2) the most, and 6 of them dislike Playstation-Greek (proposal #6 or #7) the most (in particular, 5 of them dislike the currently most popular Playstation-Greek proposal the most, #6).

There 10 voters who like Playstation-Greek the most, and 3 of them dislike Pandora-based Latin the most (in particular, 0 of them dislike the currently most popular Pandora-based Latin proposal the most, #2).

 

[_wb_]

Plus, with this, all the 4 main button are downwardly, the 2 extra are upwardly and psi and gamma look alike, so it would be easy to mentally separate psi/gamma from others. Also all the letters are symmetric

ψ       Δ

 Π          Ω

γ        χ

I don't feel like modifying the poll after it has started, but it's clear that in this layout, there are several options for the labels of the extra keys. Just like in proposal #2, you could have Z1/Z2 or G1/G2 or whatever instead of C1/C2 as extra keys. There are also variants of the colored letters (different colors and/or different positions), I can imagine variants along the lines of #8 / #9 with different extra keys, and variants for proposal #10.

I'm willing to add a poll option for a completely new proposal in case someone has one, but I'm not going to add poll options for all variants of the current proposals -- you'll have to pick the closest match, and we'll take the variants to the next round if its corresponding base proposal survives.

I hope that's OK.

 

[Tenka]

I'm afraid that the name poll kind of thing did happen again.  We gathered up the best ideas we could find for a typical six button layout, then a few polls in heard from ED that that wouldn't work in his plans, but we're still stuck with the labels we chose for a different pattern squished into some other shape.

 

[SNESFAN]

hope he goes with 6 evenly sized buttons, I feel the current action buttons are a tad on the small size as it is,

 

[Kiga]

Here's a graphical version of proposal #7. The gamma is slightly non-standard, most fonts make it look more like a y, but I think I prefer this one because it's exactly a rotated lambda and cannot be confused with the letter Y.

Much better than with gamma original font, especially because making lambda as the only one which isn't symmetric  looks bad, gamma looked like an intruder. Either lambda/gamma aren't symmetric or we should chose other letters, like psi/gamma or psi/phi.

 

[_wb_]

I'm afraid that the name poll kind of thing did happen again.  We gathered up the best ideas we could find for a typical six button layout, then a few polls in heard from ED that that wouldn't work in his plans, but we're still stuck with the labels we chose for a different pattern squished into some other shape.

Yes, that is more or less what happened. Which is why if anyone has new proposals, they would certainly be welcome.

The problem of the non-standard button pattern is of course bigger for layouts like "SEGA-style" than for layouts like "Pandora-like" or "Playstation-Greek".

---

31 votes counted, and Pandora-like Latin is getting further ahead.

 

[MateriaFox]

could the two extra buttons be placed to the right or the top of the four original buttons? just curious to know if that would interfere with anything. sorry if this seems like a stupid question, as i am new here.

 

[foxblock]

It is somewhat suspicious that the layouts that are not popular (don't attract many positive votes) attract so few negative votes. E.g. lowercase Greek plus zeta/omega gets the least amount of positive votes (nobody chose it as #1 or #2), yet for some reason it does not get many negative votes either. Maybe that just means it's a good compromise proposal: sufficiently Pandora-like, sufficiently Latin-like, sufficiently Greek-like.

Going with that logic 4) Extended SNES is an even better compromise since it gathered not only more positive votes, but also less negative votes. I think we have a winner here...

(oh and I noticed how the two greek-lowercase options got nuked after you posted that, so I suspect this to happen to 4) soon, too... people, heh)