United StatesIt's somewhat difficult to implement a system into the site that prevents certain combinations and reflects this accurately in the front-end. It's something we want to do, but it's not a short task.
The others articulated this pretty well, but I'll add my thoughts. I agree that the game request guidelines could be improved to articulate things more accurately, but I think quality standards are difficult to define in an exact manner. I don't dispute that the gray areas are gray, and could be less gray, but I think making it perfectly clear is an impossibility.
The fundamental issue is that webgames, mobile games, and indie freeware downloads are very high in quantity compared to other platforms, and can sometimes be absurdly low quality. A webgame can be a thing a 15 year old made in 3 hours that 5 people have played ever, and is also provided as a downloadable executable. Consoles can have awful games, but they're typically less in quantity, still reasonably widely played, and/or commercially notable.
If we say that webgames need quality control, the question is "What are the specifics of the quality control?" Other users have expressed a dissenting opinion that webgames shouldn't have quality control, but I haven't heard that view from enough users to believe that it's a majority opinion of the users of the site.
I think Oh_DeeR's description is a relatively accurate description of the current expectation: "Browser, mobile and fan games will be judged under higher scrutiny due to their abundance. That includes production quality, extent of game/run content, speedrun relevance, originality, impact among other criteria."
Responding to the points in the original post in particular:
I believe the words "short/trivial flash games" were added to the game request form when the text was rewritten around 1 year ago by my memory. For the sake of the discussion, it's not exactly new. We could find a better synonym for the word "trivial" to speak a little more nicely about things. I don't find the argument about Super Mario 64 to be a realistic comparison; Super Mario 64 is a commercial release that sold 11 million copies. Additionally, the criteria is more about game content than category content.
User feedback on this topic can help us better understand the varying viewpoints on the topic. I think discussing gray cases is useful.
We can potentially temp ban for the short term if it's obvious from site logs that they aren't getting the point. Implementing a more modular ban structure is something we want to do to help better deal with this.
Davy1337: Run pending, mod inactive, okay.
I added the last 2.
Joeypals: Generally we want someone in charge of the marathon running the page, or explicitly authorizing someone else to run the page. Does anyone from NoReset use this site, or can they just DM me on Twitter telling me to add the page with you as moderator or something. We're not trying to make this overly difficult, but having confirmation that they're authorizing you to make the page on their behalf is preferable here I think.
Joeypals: Who all is in charge of organizing this marathon? This is the first we've heard of it.
It's difficult to trace this back through the logs easily. I've clicked reject in the past and accidentally hit Enter instead of shift when going to type which sends a blank request. My guess is whoever handled it accidentally did this. I didn't handle this request.
Horridhenry257: Adding to Liv's response: The game request guidelines were added later on and weren't retroactively applied. The user not running the game can be a factor in changing moderation, but if they're actively maintaining the board we're generally not going to remove them just for that reason. I'd recommend discussing it with the moderator. The user has numerous runs and is active on the site.
Komrade: I did most of that due to them not verifying runs in a long time and/or not logging on in a long time. Rollbuster has verified some runs here and there, so I didn't remove him.
Liv: Thanks, seriously.
Adding some to the discussion. I don't totally disagree with anything you're saying, but I would advocate that there has to be some line drawn for what is and isn't tracked. We might disagree with what that line is.
You specifically mention: "If people want to compete in something and our system can facilitate that, we should facilitate them"
- This is decently far off the current juncture, but I'm reminded of the SRL days when we raced IRL races of "Get Food"and "Take a shower", which they put a stop to a few months after it started for getting out of hand
- I also recall this run: https://recordsetter.com/world-record/complete-super-mario-land-2-6-golden-coins-while-sticking-tongue-out/27225
- And then there's a million quizzes online on sporcle if one wants to speedrun those.
- Then there's the really gray area of "Me and my brother made this flash game and it takes 30 seconds and we both run it"
- As far as google maps style things, this article shows some: http://geoawesomeness.com/10-top-google-maps-games-of-all-times/
I'm an advocate of "Just because we can, doesn't necessarily mean we should"
More towards your point, I think there are things we could definitely do better to isolate the search bar and the front page from putting things in everyone's face. For example, what if a game existed that was better deprioritized in the search bar and not on the front page? In my mind some of the site limitations are imposing on this at least a little bit. Along these lines though, I definitely do not want the million quiz games.
We added the webgame, mobile, and rom hack type tags a couple years ago to help alleviate user concerns. I still find the results when typing "Super Mario" in the search bar to be quite annoying.
What are the worst games on Cyberscore right now?
We're going to be issuing bans for users who submit fake runs to "test" moderators. I see this behavior as a detriment to the quality of the site's leaderboards and to the people moderating the site. Letting a few people get by doing it would just encourage more people to engage in this behavior. If people do it on an alt account and we find out about it, we're going to issue a ban on the main account.
I don't wholly disagree with sentiments of encouraging people to be more thorough with moderating, but I find "testing moderators" to be a highly detrimental way to go about it.
I'm aware a rules page would help clarify the expectations. I also think that the lack of a formal rules page doesn't mean people can go around engaging in detrimental behavior.
I re-reverted the change after some discussion bringing up a (from my experiences) seemingly recurring pattern on this subject.
We added staff as shown here: https://www.speedrun.com/about
If we decide to take on more people later, we may further reach out to a few others who applied.
Wallyzorde: Board doesn't have rules, the runner doesn't have runs, and is somewhat inactive, okay
ShadowClaw: Mod highly inactive, okay
Eclipsed: That board certainly has a lot of variables. This board would benefit from a theoretical "checkbox matrix" to assign variables only to certain categories.
BlazingCharizard: Mod requests should go through the game mods, but seeing as you don't have a run listed, they're probably going to say no.
Mister_Ornicar: If you link your run here, we can probably look at adding you.
wdaemon: Mod inactive, run pending, okay.
Kurisama: Added because this board keeps coming up in this thread for inactivity and you have runs.
Prinnyboyo: Mod inactive, run pending, okay.
tocaloni1: Seems fine, in that that user hasn't been verifying runs for that game.
Redloko: User logged in and processed the run after your post it seems.
Wipeoutjack7: Mod inactive, run pending, okay.
joeeytfox: Mod highly inactive and you already have a run up, okay.
I was asked to revert the change. The audit logs do say Baz removed himself. Along with that the logs say a bunch of you removed yourselves and/or self-downgraded to regular mod. I don't really understand why, other than confusion about how to use the settings.
This seems close to how it was I think? The confusion of all of you clicking random buttons without me knowing why makes it difficult to make sense out of why people were doing things.
A series of ports is fine in my opinion, especially for older consoles. Caught up to here.
