On The Topic of Difficulty Changing

[Hex]

This week has been fun, hasn't it? Tons of excitement, tons of competition, tons of birthday hype. Now for something a lot less interesting.
The difficulty changing board at warp r sucks. It's archaic, clunky and ineffective. We need to update it.
My suggestion is to move it to the forums in some capacity. I'm not too versed in how the forums work, but what I imagine would be a better system would be something like this:
Someone can create a thread with a "Difficulty" tag or something of the sort. They suggest the map, suggest the difficulty that it should be changed to, and give a valid, reasoned argument as to why it should be changed. Not too different to the warp r board. My next suggestion is that, to avoid fringe opinions, for someone to have a valid argument they must, at the creation of the thread, have two other community members that agree with this change and cosign the thread. It would also, due to it being a thread and all, be really easy to put a vote thing like the map threads use for difficulty.
Point is, we need to update the archaic system that is the warp r board. It's absolutely useless.
There might be issues with a vote getting skewed due to people not noticing or caring about the thread, and of course voting on a difficulty change and actually getting someone to change it are two totally different matters. But this really needs to happen.
So, thoughts? Improvements I haven't thought of? Major issues that might arise? I'd like to know what yall think.

 

[Srentiln]

I'm not very familiar with all of xenforo's options, but the closest thing to what you are saying that comes to mind is a forum section with "moderator approval" enabled for all new posts. Perhaps instead of it being forum based, make it form based where the submissions go to a table (map, current rating, proposed rating, short why) with a way for people viewing it can agree or disagree. Having it on the same webspace as the forums would allow us to either directly or indirectly pull usernames from the forum accounts to prevent stacking the votes.

 

[henniboy321]

I agree that the current system is old and not up to date. So here is what I suggest

We have a different sub-forum or prefix(together with map submissions I'd say) @rickyboy320 , possible?. This means that the board is semi-resposible for changing of difficulty. Here is what happens if you want to change the difficulty of a map. Any green can nominate a map and a certain points. The person in question has to explain WHY he wants the difficulty changed. At this point any green can jump and give their opinion on the matter. If three greens agree and no other green is against, the map will get changed after one week. If the diffculty change gets 1 for and 3 against the change is automatically declined. If after a week neither scenario is reached, one of the board members will their opinion and final decission. If he agrees, the map will get changed otherwise no, this will happen immediatly as others already have had their chance to express their opinion.

Feel free to suggest changes to my design.

TL, DR:

Green+ applies for change of difficulty and other green+ can give their opinion:

• If no one is against and at least 3 green+ are for, the change will happen
• If only the applier is for and at least 3 greens are against, the change will not happen
• If after one week neither situation has been reached, a board member will jump in(2)

(2)

• Board member disagrees, change will not happend
• Board member agrees, change will happen
• If multiple board members have strong opinions about this, a poll will be held in the discord channel for board members and the outcome will determine whether the change will happen or not

 

[Hex]

I'm all for this. This would prevent fringe opinions, allow for debate, and let tie-type scenarios be resolved by the people whose job it is to be acquainted with map design and difficulty. In responding to a thread, it's probably a good idea to make it that people should write FOR or AGAINST at the first word of their responses to prevent ambiguity.

 

[AliBlossoms]

I'm all for this. This would prevent fringe opinions, allow for debate, and let tie-type scenarios be resolved by the people whose job it is to be acquainted with map design and difficulty. In responding to a thread, it's probably a good idea to make it that people should write FOR or AGAINST at the first word of their responses to prevent ambiguity.

There could also be one of the voting things on the top with point numbers like this. So you wouldn't have to look at every post to know how many points people want a map to become.

1
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5

 

[rickyboy320]

There could also be one of the voting things on the top with point numbers like this. So you wouldn't have to look at every post to know how many points people want a map to become.

1
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5

The problem with that would be that there's little reason for discussion. The core idea of changing a map's points always has been reasoning *why* rather than the majority (similar with board etc). People can vote and explain why they voted what they want, that's the reason hex/henni came up with what they came up with.

We can make an additional greenies subsection, similar to map submissions for difficulty adjustments. My original idea was to put them into the map-submission threads, but that'd probably be a bit cluttery with the whole review system going on there as well.
I like henni's idea, although the 'after a week' idea proves tedious and unreliable. (Once the thread loses momentum, it drops down to a point where it's quickly forgotten about. Often I personally forget any such things that should happen in 'one week' (or with the board's two weeks at least). Not sure how different one week will be, but we can try anyways.

That said, I think votes with weak or no argument should be regarded with less priority than those with a good arguments. If someone just says 'AGAINST' without any explanation whatsoever, it's in no way fair to count this towards the eventual discussion, as neither side has anything to go on. Thus, I'd rather see a majority consensus rather than a majority vote, with a breakthrough board-member if no such consensus is reached.

 

[Hex]

One thing that also needs to be stressed is that this place should NOT be a place for people to complain about a map's state in FFA. Basically, saying "x map should be in the valley" isn't any type of argument for anything. That's why we had a denom ballot. And a reason against letting people vote for all five difficulties is that GENERALLY a map's difficulty will only be changed by one. It's a yes/no scenario, and instead of an anonymous vote there should be a conversation about it, as our difficulty system is subjective and based on difficulty relative to other maps on the server.