Quote:One question I do have: how should I rate levels that require full knowledge of how teleports work? If there's going to be a level explaining partial posting and the reverse-reading-order rule, that might cause me to rate some levels higher than if not. (For instance, one of my own levels requires the player to know reverse-reading-order to avoid death traps. If we won't have a lesson explaining this, I will vote my level and any similar levels a 1, otherwise I will probably vote them higher.)
Yes, these principles would be mentioned either in lesson levels or (more likely for the case of partial posting) in a non-lesson level that teaches the concept. The idea of voting for a level in the context of an appropriate place in the set applies here as well - for the sake of voting, we'll assume that these concepts are already taught to the player.
I'm so glad you've brought up the whole idea of the "underdog" candidate. I feel like I've been dishing out a lot of 5s to these levels as well, not only because I love them but also because, frankly, I'm afraid they'll just get overlooked. I hope we're not alone in this. If CCLP3's voting results are any indication, the universally lauded levels tend to be those with some sort of gimmick that would render them inappropriate for an early spot in the set. This is pretty much the reason why I advocated for the staff to have a larger role in deciding what ultimately gets inducted into the final product and use the voting as only one piece of the decision-making process, because if this weren't done, CCLP1 would just most likely become "CCLP3-lite." Similarly, I also feel like it's easy (at least for me) to vote smaller, not-so-interesting-but-still-incredible levels a 4 out of 5 out of instinct. But if everyone did this or voted lower, these levels would definitely have a hard time making it into the set because they'd be up against all the levels with an average rating of above 4, even though they would be deserving of inclusion in the initial tier of levels. So I pretty much agree completely with you on your rating rubric.