"Marbleland Slop"

I'm prompting a wider discussion of this since there is a lot of room for varying opinions of what classifies as "slop" being posted on Marbleland.
Consider a couple of things: construction (objects sloppily placed with no effort?), gameplay (is it even remotely worth playing?), and level preview/icon (does it represent any of the gameplay?).

My goal is not to shame anyone for whatever levels they upload - hostile discouragement for level creation is the opposite of what anybody wants. I am concerned with the general opinion of where the line is between a level worth uploading/keeping on Marbleland, and when it is considered spam and there is reason for removal or recommending some change. Because of how often people complain about the amount of low-effort levels are being posted, I want to hear people's thoughts about how creators could be encouraged to build something with more care, or how "better" levels can be put more in a spotlight.

These examples I find to be different enough to judge case-by-case. I am hoping to be as much of a neutral party as I can be, and especially not target specific creators. Level thumbnail is pictured first, then a screenshot of the whole level.

Exhibit 1: " our dogs! " - Very playable classic level editor-style, but questions about the skybox and icon choice. (And a help trigger asking for no deletion.)


Exhibit 2: " His Second Anime Level " - Similar case to the first level, although uses custom edits of pre-existing MBU interiors. The same author mentioned that the level before this is a meme level.


Exhibit 3: " You Know What's Invisible Though? " - The player jumps on two invisible blocks to collect gems, and is immediately teleported to the finish.


Exhibit 4: " Super Hole " - A thin, near-full-circle platform that is sloped for extra challenge.


It is also important to say that there is no intention of filtering out every "slop" level on Marbleland, just to keep a limit on ones being uploaded in the future. If people decide that these levels (or similar) are plenty worthy of being on Marbleland, that will accomplish just as much as the opposite, or anywhere in between.

I'm very much in favor of letting people be as expressive as they want with their levels, even if others may deem it as low quality. I feel removing certain levels should rarely happen unless a level is impossible, a direct copy of someone else's level, contains actual NSFW imagery in the skybox or level thumbnail (NSFW help text would be a grey area and would be at the discretion of how others perceive it) or contains any personally identifying info. That is basically my few guidelines on if a level should be removed or not, I'll delve more into the considerations you provided below:

Construction:
Everyone is free to build their levels however they want, even if that entails gem spam and random interior spam. We all have to start from somewhere when making levels, and some choose to start with gem/interior spam in the LE. It's very unfair to a new level builder if their level gets removed just because they are inexperienced and/or don't have access to Constructor or don't know how to use other level building software. If an established creator wants to create an unfunny meme level with random slop, they also should be free to do that. This would also extend to levels that mix different game assets with each other, and mix challenge scores with different game themes (ATs with a MBU/MBP/MBG theme).

Removing these would basically be saying "You are not allowed to have creative freedom with your level-building process, you must stick to following the design philosophies that all established creators implicitly follow." We currently don't remove these sorts of levels which is great, but I don't want a precedent to be set where we start removing levels based on people's different interpretations of slop, which could lead to some grey areas down the line. I'd rather keep the new level builders happy and not stressed out over whether their level will count as spam or not, and I will simply just not play the level if I don't like what I see initially. All the examples you posted would be given a thumbs-up from me to stay up based on this logic. 

Like I said above, the only levels that should be removed with regards to construction are duplicate or impossible levels. Someone uploading another person's level without their permission is flat-out plagiarism as a general rule of thumb, but there certainly are edge cases in which it could be permissible to do so (archival purposes maybe). Impossible levels should usually be instantly removed too. What's the point of playing a level if you can't even finish it after all? I could see an edge case where someone uploads a really difficult puzzle level that we have to try and figure out, but hints at the very least need to be given to guide the player in the right direction.

Gameplay:
A lot of what I could say here I think I already covered in my construction segment. If I had to add any more to it though, there are a lot of levels out there that are more polished than just gem/interior spam, and people still consider them "Not worth playing" so moderating levels based on this will end very poorly and create unneeded double standards.

Level Preview/Icon:
This is a non-issue to me. These should be treated as a design preference more than anything, just like mixing interiors or mixing challenge times. The first example is pretty innocent, just a little kid showing off his dogs. Can't get more wholesome than that, even if it doesn't convey the level well it's still cute. If someone isn't interested in the level based on that, it is as simple as not playing it. Example 2 is a meme level, so I think all expectations of any good quality should be thrown out the window automatically. Example 3 is the most abysmal case of a misleading preview, but I'd much rather not see it removed because the actual level has nothing wrong with it. As I said with example 1, everyone has a choice to simply ignore the obvious bad quality levels. No one is forcing anyone to play slop if they don't want to.

Level previews are just another avenue to express your creativity. If someone doesn't want to use a traditionally good level preview, that is fine, no one should stop said person from doing so unless it has actual NSFW pictures, or it reveals someone's personal info. This would apply to the skybox and any textures the level has too. Puppydog's Therefore mod would be an example of breaking the "no personal info" guideline.

I think I agree with a lot of what Mazik said, though I did only kind of skim over it past the first section. Ultimately, Marbleland should be a free platform to do whatever as long as it isn't NSFW, but it doesn't mean that people have to like it.

This is why I've suggested a sort of "featured levels" section a few times before. Not a place that only highlights the best levels, but simply all levels deemed "playable" by... Maybe a select group of people. This idea allows people to upload whatever levels they want onto Marbleland, solves the issue of these shit levels taking up space in the recent levels list, and also should help communicate to the people churning out this slop content that they should maybe try harder to make an actual product when their levels aren't reaching what the community deems to be the bare minimum.

It doesn't have to be a small group, but just a collection of people trusted with the responsibility of successfully identifying decent levels, and then any one of them can add levels to the Featured section. Again, I find it important to stress that this potential Featured section simply denoted levels that meet the bare minimum in the community's eyes, and is in no way an exclusive club of some kind. In fact, ideally, the majority of new levels on Marbleland would be "featured" like this. I suppose the only issue comes with what to do with older levels uploaded to the site before the implementation of the Featured section.

Levels absolutely should not be deleted from Marbleland unless it is straight up plagiarism or contains unsafe content for children. Marbleland (as an extension of the CLA) is meant to be a comprehensive collection of every MBG/MBP/PQ custom level ever made anyway, and so it should be a goal of the website to archive everything the community has done. If this logic were applied to the CLA itself, then I'm sure countless levels would have been lost over the two decades of Marble Blast history as a result of this content filter.

Yoshicraft224: This is why I've suggested a sort of "featured levels" section a few times before. Not a place that only highlights the best levels, but simply all levels deemed "playable" by... Maybe a select group of people.

I do like this approach quite a bit - my personal irritation with all the "slop" is that it's mixed with the rest of what I actually want to spend time playing, or even just scrolling through. If Marbleland had a "Featured" section, I would hope for that to be considered the "main" category that loads by default in PQ.

Yoshicraft224: ... and also should help communicate to the people churning out this slop content that they should maybe try harder to make an actual product when their levels aren't reaching what the community deems to be the bare minimum.

Echoing this heavily. 🙏🏻

Yoshicraft224: I suppose the only issue comes with what to do with older levels uploaded to the site before the implementation of the Featured section.

Totally fine doing the dirty work here lol, I'm sure that there are several people who would be happy to contribute.