Should the Main Tournament Shut Down?

[Sir Donald 3.2]

The option that I would vote for isn't in the poll:

Suspend operations for one Season (6/7 weeks) upon the resolution of the Current Season.  We did it before.  We can use the hiatus to flesh out any changes discussed here.  (A "Long Break" to me implies more than 1 Season.  It may be necessary,m but I'd rather hope not...)

Also move to suspend the new Rankings process until the start of the next Season.

There have been some ideas that I can glom on to here as a "Senator":

1.  We don't really "need" Results Writeups for more than 1 match per week per division, and Light and Middle are somewhat expendable in this regard.  If we're short, just work on the one that interests you the most.  Don't try to fill in all of the holes.  (Except in Finals week, where there is only 1 match per division.)

2.  Super's 4-4-2-2-2-1-Rerank seems good.  At least it spreads the load a bit.

3.  By the same token, reducing the downgradable fighters to 2 based on margin and/or rating (prefer rating) also seems okay.  If we do 1 week reranks, then it'll still need to be in pool form (but no writeups required) but 5 matches are easier than 14, right?


Now, as for reducing the number of contestants per Season, while that won't hurt Godlike, we can't do it in the other 3 Divisions without some major league culling.  Grobyc.  46 Seasons between appearances.  I know, worst case, but even taking a rough estimate of 300 fighters per division, that's still a 20-Season turnaround (for 15 slots which assumes that each season has a new champion that doesn't promote.)  Currently, with 6-Week Seasons, we have about 8.5 Seasons a year.  That means that fighters that lose would have to wait between 2 and 2.5 years for another shot on average.  By adding a week, we'll probably make it a full 3 years.

So we may need to consider culling anyway.  Writers: Which are harder to write for: Mains from obscure games or Optionals from mainline games?  (By Optionals, I don't mean "there's a chance you can't get him/her, I'm talking "they're not that important".  In large casts, some mandatories could also count.)


I also was developing an idea wherein each class was divided into 2 (or 4) "Conferences" based on who played what.  The "Conferences" would be set up so that we avoid the possibility of games with low overlap meeting in the early rounds.  Perhaps we could also look at this with the "Regular Writers" being the focal points of the "Conferences".  Not any individual writers, mind, we don't have enough slots and writers are human.  But more like groups of majorities.  The rule is "write what you know".  If not enough people know both sides, what good is the match?


I wouldn't mind the Tourney sharing billing with the DLWiki, (or other community projects,) but there's work there too.  Namely, integrating the Stat topic into said Wiki and updating as material is generated.  Again, we could use a Single-Season Hiatus to get the wiki ready for public consumption.  (And if more time is needed, then more time will be used.)


Finally, a tangent:  Having the tournament on the main site provides it two advantages over Forum-based Tourneys:  First is Anonymous (and non-Forumites) Voting.  The only other advantage to main site is visibility.  The current Vote Totals on the site are in the 60's and by Hal's estimate, Super prods for 1/3rd of that.  That's still around 40.  By contrast, I don't think that many forum tourneys crack 20 nor that even one breaks 30.  (Of course, my Forum Invitationals barely cracked 10 on their best weeks.)  This raises questions in my mind as to whether the tourney would be viable if it wasn't listed at all on the main site and/or forum membership was a prerequisite for voting.  On the other hand, Forum Tourneys provide a method of recalling one's vote, which a main-site tourney lacks.

[Dhyerwolf]

Might as well note this since it's relevant to the work barometer. I'm basically cool with the amount of writeups I generally do (Which is to say, that I generally grab who I like to some degree). Granted, I'm generally on auto-pilot, but I always was writeup wise! (Not exactly my strength).

Djinn, those letter things look cute, and if you could actually substantially throw the essence of a dueller into it, it would work. But...man, what makes a stat an A or an A+. A fine example is that Cecilia has an A+ in Magic. Is that a reflection of her variety or her magic stat?

[Excal]

Generally avoided this since I've not cared much about the main tourney in ages, however...   a longer tourney doesn't seem like a bad idea.  And the split proposed by Super really does feel like the way to go.  Avoiding a crunch night seems like a better idea than simply trying to reduce the amount of work that has to be done on one night.  And once you do get there, there's less work anyways.

The ideas of changing division changes also works, though you could just do champ vs. the biggest loser (ie. the guy who lost to the loser of the loser of the runner up).  Honestly, one match feels like it'd work better than two here, given that the issue is writer burnout.

Finally, I really like Dude's idea for the proposed break week, but it brings the issues of not only how to decide this stuff, but it also sounds more like work.  However, it occurs to me that there is a way to remedy this.  Just make it one or two matches, depending on interest.  And, since in Sage's case at least, it seems to be as much the fact that it's usually the same people involved that cause this, you could just make it this a kooky random or little used match for the break.  Have a little volunteer thing where people can stick a name in for a division in the first couple of weeks of a season.  First ones on the list get used and the person doing the nominating now gets to do the writeup with time to spare so that they can be replaced if the writeup isn't forthcoming.  And to keep it fresh, keep it to semi-popular NR and people who have, say, less than six seasons in the DL under their belts.  Hell, if the usual suspects want to take those, they can have first choice to take 'em or pass on 'em and as a reward for doing all of this stuff, can have the treat of seeing their dream matches show up on the front page.

[Xeroma]

Okay, at the moment there's only one thing I feel strongly about on this proposed change.

Get rid of writeups. If not all of them, at least results writeups. The interest/effort ratio is ridiculous at this point and it's just making people miserable. What's the point?

[Drifloon]

I have no objection to completely removing all the writeups, but there's no reason to get rid of the actual tourney whatever decision you come to.

[Cmdr_King]

I think we're relatively agreed that easing off on Results, and just using the ones that get sent in/Missing Comments people volunteer to take, rather than makign Sage do all 10 that aren't taken, is probably something we're doing.

It's been noted that, in terms of match Writeups, getting the actual writeups isn't so bad aside from the Week 3 crunch; the bulk of the writing staff are almost exclusively dedicated to them, so we have lots of people on hand for them.  The burnout THERE is, in fact, the editors, of which there are 2 (with 2 reservists) who have to fact check, match up the lengths, and simple grammar/spelling check every single writeup.  Not inconsiderable, nevermind that often times during crunches they just do the last three or four writeups themselves.

Tossing the idea around, we wondered if we might be able to ease off that as well.  At least on a trial basis, suspending active editing and seeing how the writeups look on-site in their natural state.  If it works out, we could probably just have editors for particularly egregious cases in which match length is very obviously out of whack (*coughOKhack*) or to translate Meeple, as specific examples.

[superaielman]

Going to be quoting in large blocks here, fair warning.

Edit: though maybe we could do something for that week to put nom pools on the main site for anyone who likes the tourney but doesn't bother signing up?  Maybe integrate Hal's nom-checker?  Dunno if that would work on the one week break since we'd have to be able to put something up and wouldn't really be giving ourselves time for rolling and writeups... well, something to think about anyway, maybe we can find a way to work it.

This idea I like. Tying it to a voting name people use and making sure we don't have spammers in action, but it could be a way to get people to submit pools. Tying it to known voting accounts (Say Draco Ignifier and Barubary for two fairly well known voters who don't post on site) would work well.

If we're going to discuss a membership drive while we're at it, then we totally need to tap the ROM-hacking community. They would really fit in here with our particular brand of OCD mathematics-loving group.

This goes for everyone, but please invite anyone and everyone who could possibly be interested to the DL here! Board sigs, real life friends, whatever gets people biting.


Possible season layout

Week 1- 4 matches per division
Week 2- 4 matches per division
Week 3- 2 matches per division, the people who won in week 1
Week 4- 2 matches per division, the people who won in week 2
Week 5- The old week 4
Week 6- Finals+Nom pools go up with a theorical way to tie it to the site.
Week 7-NR week+upgrades/downgrades. NR week is 1-4 NR matches that we put on the main site, plus whatever we do with upgrade/downgrades. This week has no required writing, since NR would be done weeks ahead of time.

We have only one week that is a 'surprise' ahead of itme, and that's finals and half of week 5. That seems better in theory.

[dude789]

It looks like results writeups are going to be reduced and that's fine. One questions I have is what's going to happen if one gets sent in by a voter supporting the dueller who ends up loosing and it's the only one that gets sent in?

[superaielman]

"There were no winning writeups, but..." WE can edit in a small blurb about that. I think one of the things we're in agreement on is to massively scale back results. I need to make a topic about that in fact.

Plus I askedabout a graph I saw. Maybe the RPGDL also needs just a little more advertising? [I can work with flash very slapstick, but--] There's a big section of YT that likes seeing Bleach X Character Versus Bleach X character. I'm sure there's folks out there who want to see more than just Cloud vs. Sephiroth? Perhaps upload some cheesy video about who would win? Again, this is more additive than subtractive. Also, if there are other tourney sites, do they have similar issues? If people have issues with the NR because it doesn't get enough umpf, but the NR DOES have a cult backing (does it?), perhaps there could be a way that those people could sponsor a character after having providing thorough stat backgrounds or what have you? Iono. Those are the only ideas I can think of. I don't think RPGDL needs previews, news, and all of that excessive (and more often than not, useless) stuff that could be added to a game-related website.

By all means, adverise and drum up new members wherever you can.

The problem is that a natural death of the DL will come mid-season when no one can be found to write the required amounts of stuff, and will probably involve misery and drama. While I respect the thought there, it's a lot better to discuss the idea before that comes to pass.

I'm pretty sure we could heave it through a final season at the worst, but yeah this isn't a bad thing to air out.

[superaielman]

As far as editing goes-

I'm talking to Hal about a writeup checker. All it would do is count characters. If it doesn't fall within that frame, it isn't accepted for site use. That would let us match writeups for length without sticking that on the editors. We can have someone glance over the writeups for obvious mistakes, but replacing a word or fixing a typo is easier than hacking away at a 3 line writeup vs a 8 line writeup.

[Taishyr]

Completely in favor of the writeup checker as it is currently proposed.

[Dark Holy Elf]

My only concern is that some matches merit more comments than others. Historically we've liked to match lengeths, but it's been fine if a high-profile, complex match has longer commentary than Krin vs. Gobi. If we have a fixed range we lose that flexibility. This may be too minor a quibble to stand in the way of a good idea, though.

How would this feature be used? Would each writer feed their writeup through the checker? (Also, don't most text editors have some sort of character counting feature anyway? Not that one on site is bad since it means writers don't even need to remember the range themselves.)

[superaielman]

Some matches do need more commentary than others, but no writeup needs Maria vs Graham cray. A small minumum length (Three lines~) and a maximum upper length (7 lines?) should give plenty of room to work with there. I have gotten complaints about the editors about writeups being more than double the length of the matching one, and that is overkill.

[Shale]

Can the writeup checker have an "electrocute OblivionKnight" feature?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Can the writeup checker have an "electrocute OblivionKnight" feature?

I wish.

[superaielman]

I was trying to be polite, but yeah OK is who I had in mind about writeup length.

[Yakumo]

I think we're relatively agreed that easing off on Results, and just using the ones that get sent in/Missing Comments people volunteer to take, rather than makign Sage do all 10 that aren't taken, is probably something we're doing.

It's been noted that, in terms of match Writeups, getting the actual writeups isn't so bad aside from the Week 3 crunch; the bulk of the writing staff are almost exclusively dedicated to them, so we have lots of people on hand for them.  The burnout THERE is, in fact, the editors, of which there are 2 (with 2 reservists) who have to fact check, match up the lengths, and simple grammar/spelling check every single writeup.  Not inconsiderable, nevermind that often times during crunches they just do the last three or four writeups themselves.

Tossing the idea around, we wondered if we might be able to ease off that as well.  At least on a trial basis, suspending active editing and seeing how the writeups look on-site in their natural state.  If it works out, we could probably just have editors for particularly egregious cases in which match length is very obviously out of whack (*coughOKhack*) or to translate Meeple, as specific examples.

Just a little note for the editors while I'm looking in here - I'm available to do editing most weeks, but you have to prod me into action.  I'm horrible about remembering "oh, yeah, Friday, there's stuff to do!"  If you don't want to do all the work or whatever PM me in IRC/Steam/something to get my attention and make me realize there's actually work to be done and unless there's something important going on I can grab a division or two.  If you're just talking about it in IRC there's a good chance I'm not really paying attention even if I'm at the computer.

[alanna82]

If you guys are really despirate, I'm willing to help in a pinch. I have every other weekend off of work, so if you know matches ahead of time and its a character I know, just PM me and I can do a write up. I tend to be able to do most obscure characters too.

I do like the write up checker idea. A write up does not need to be long, just a few sentences!

[superaielman]

If you want to help, do missing comments. We always need those.

[OblivionKnight]

I swear, I'll actually respond to Hal's question, but other thoughts I had today...

1) The front page should be more dynamic - change the face once a season, would be my suggestion. 

2) ...god I have crappy memory.  More later!

[Hunter Sopko]

I wouldn't say once a season, but Kazan's been there quite a long time. I say it's Rise's time to shine!

[superaielman]

Yeah, Rise would be perfect for the intro page. She's from a new, fairly fresh game and she's cool enough.

I am going to make another topic about the schedule redo.

[Yoshiken]

I wouldn't say once a season, but I would say regular changes are good. Maybe every 8-10 seasons or something?
Also, Rise for front page, yes. <3

[Dark Holy Elf]

8-10 seasons is pretty much what we've been doing, or near enough. Maybe every 4-5 if we wanted to speed things up? That's still half a year... more if we extend the season.

[Hunter Sopko]

Kazan feels like he's been up there more than 8-10 though. It was more Kazan kinda overstayed rather than a problem with the general mixing up, unless I'm wrong about when Kazan went up.