THIS ADDON IS STILL IN BETA TESTING. FEEL FREE TO USE IT NOW, BUT IT WILL CHANGE AS IT IS DEVELOPED.
FIND A NAME THAT IS SCORED TOO HIGH? LOOK AT THE BOTTOM.
FIND A NAME THAT IS SCORED TOO LOW? Chances are your judgment is just flawed, but leave me a comment.
There are many tools out there to make it easy to rate a player; to judge them based on a limited amount of information. Their job is to take what you can know about a player and extrapolate a number to estimate what you don't know. Some do this by measuring DPS; some by calculating a score for a player's gear; and some by comparing achievements. But these measures are flawed: DPS depends on the fight, gear does not alone give an indication of skill, and a person can be carried through heroics and raids to get those achievements through no effort of their own.
However, there is one single choice that irrevocably* defines how a person views the game, their character, their role within WoW, and how they want to be perceived by others. By examining this single choice, you can accurately predict whether the person you are about to group with takes the game seriously and wants to advance, or is just another example of someone full of themselves.
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A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.
The Bible (Prov. 22:1)
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NameScore is an addon to objectively evaluate the name of a character in the game. When enabled, you can see the score for a player's name by mousing over them and examining the tooltip. For quick identification, the score is assigned a letter grade A-F through standard grade divisions. The score and grade will be color coded, with higher grades as bright green while any failing grades will be bright red.
The grade is determined by a variety of factors grouped into four categories:
- Legibility / Readability
- Appropriateness
- Aesthetics
- Miscellaneous
The addon uses a variety of measures, including language parsing, linguistic theory, and a dash of "Would it makes sense for someone to have this as their actual name?" to determine the final score for a character. Should you wish to know more about how a person's name was graded, target them and type /namescore. Their name will be submitted for grading and you will be able to review the results.
A slightly more detailed explanation as to the grading process can be found in the addon folder, under the file Scoring.txt
* unless, of course, one pays a fee.
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Special thanks to:
- Tiae on the UI and Macros Forum for providing me with an algorithm for scoring, even though I decided it didn't fit and abandoned it.
- The other members of BU for their assistance and suggestions.
- And, of course, Robby -- without whom I'd never find bugs or enjoy working on addons!
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Capturing names that are scored too high (i.e. I haven't yet thought up a name quite as stupid as the one they picked):
If you find someone whose name is excessively high, target them, and type /namescore add. You won't get any confirmation, but their name will be stored in the addon's variables.
You can then message me here on WoWI and I can either give you instructions on how to PM me the data, or give me your server, faction, character name, and regular play time and I will log in to retrieve the data from your computer!
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To do list:
- Add in additional information to name tables for appropriateness filters.
- Create a configurable threshold that automatically boots people from groups if they have a namescore below said threshold.
- Allow arbitrary input so players can see what their namescore would be for a character with an arbitrary name.