Note on the timing: Seriously, the DL needs change in general if it's going to survive at this point. Something drastic like this is perfect for the tournament. Honestly, I'd prefer if we just switched our focus to user-created content like LFT/Reviews, but we don't have a lot of options until Hal has the free time to make such sweeping changes to the site. We discussed making all of those changes about 3? 4? seasons ago?
The DL is doing what it can, and Grefter, you don't even participate in the tournament, maybe something drastic like this which pulled you out of hiding is exactly what we needed.
A preliminary topic would have just died before it moved anywhere. People get apathetic and forget about things. Stagnation is how we've ended up where we are now.
Grefter has always participated in the DL politick. He stopped voting yes, but he's always chimed in on rankings, bootings and other DL administrative things.
Yes, the DL needs change, but this is honestly change for change's sake and not a healthy direction for the DL. People are not not obligated to boot anything. I'm sad to see an argument I regret making in the past coming back to haunt me. I used to use the "Obscurity doesn't matter because the DL has become pretty much the core group." argument against booting. It took me time but I realized that doing things with just the core group in mind is NOT the way to save the site.
We're becoming stagnant because we have a lack of new blood to the site as a whole. Would the other changes proposed to the DL help with that? Yes. But I'm not liking the attitude shift here in that we should just start doing things that appeal to the core group only (or that what the core group likes is obviously what everyone else likes), and this topic seriously worries me to that end.
Stagnation isn't a result of a failure to rank and boot. It's a failure of attracting people to the site, and a failure of remaining consistant. One might argue that ranking and booting have a big role in that, but I've never really been sold on it. The biggest problem is that we really don't even TRY to bring or keep people in anymore. We're honestly shocked when LFT brings in one or two more people... seriously, aim higher, guys.
The biggest thing of all that hurt us is that massive amounts of downtime we had in the end of '09. Off three weeks, which was no one's fault, then back for a couple, then we for some reason decide we need two more weeks off to retool the site? And people are wondering where everyone went? Timing has never been the DL's strong suit. I'm a lot to blame for it, but the weeks of downtime in between the past couple seasons hasn't helped either. We have more important goals at the moment in terms of restructuring the site, but we choose to waste time and effort on BOOTING?
Ranking and booting honestly has the opposite effect than what you said, Djinn. I mentioned it before, Gref has always been a vocal person in DL matters even if he doesn't vote. Booting isn't going to make people who aren't voting suddenly vote. It never makes anyone happy, and the claim that it helps the DL honestly has always been dubious at best, especially in recent years.
To touch on a point that NEB replied to me about before: People are voting to keep whatever they like, which is fine, but
I'm being arbitrary and obstinate when I say I want to keep them all despite the amount of arguing in the past I've done about the subject? A bit of a ranty aside and I apologize for this, but I've always been incredibly consistant with my philosophy for the DL and it's roster and I've always backed it up by going out of my way to play games so they'd have both voters and writers - even the ones people say no one wants to play. I like having all the different faces in the DL, regardless of if they're carbon copies or boring or not. I don't see how that's any less legitimate than cherrypicking.
Saying that my and others' blanket keep-all is a serious danger to the process and the DL is moot. We're still a part of the DL and even though we disagree with you, it's like you said. The process works. If enough people want to keep them in... thats what happens. They have the necessary support regardless of the peoples' reasonings behind the vote. If you're not happy with it, then thats unfortunate, but it's the best system we have. None of us are going to give up on the DL if things don't go our way anyway.
NINJA: But yeah, Tal probably sums up my point better.
