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SupporterDemos are a good place to start, such as ghostrunner and hello neighbor. There are also many free to play multiplayer games, but your luck will vary there. Just search by free games on steam, and if something peaks your interest, see if its on the site.
Best case scenerio, yes, stream your attempts; however this isnt really an option for older devices. For example, my old google pixel would get really hot and crash after 30 mins when i would stream, so be mindful of your hardware limitations. Alternatively, which will probably work in your case, is to record at 30fps in 360p (or 240p). It will look like a potato but hey, at least its in one segment.
If you want decent quality for youtube, split segments is usually your best bet, but do be mindful of rules. It sounds like if your max is 4gb recording, then storage is 16gb? There are many workarounds, just see what works for your device, especially if it is old.
So typically for mobile games, experienced mobile moderators will say that a run longer than 1 hour may be completed in separate video segments, but must be completed in one sitting. I would check with the mods to make sure, but most mobile runners know of this limitation.
I do see what you are saying, but there would need to be organization restructure in communities and on the site. Let me explain:
For the sole discussion of moderator abuse on leaderboards, i have experienced this first-hand when I used to moderate subway surfers as a super mod. A verifier (with standard mod status) claimed world record in a highly coveted category, only for myself to retime the run to find it was actually third place, and also a self verification. They were put on probation for violating our internal moderation rules (which were actually quite strict, and I dont think people realized that).
Your proposal would potentially have prevented that; however, out of the 28ish users on the mod team at that time, only 3 users had ever played the game. There would be no point to separate out categories for 3 users, and they were held to the same standard as world records claims (a much higher standard than your average joe runner). Most people would say that it would be crazy to have 25 runners who have never touched the game outside of some casual playthroughs to moderate a leaderboard, but truth is (in agreement with your position), its not hard to coach new mods on various techniques in a run, what to look for, and how to check for various forms of cheating.
Most communities on the site, like @hahhah42 said, are very small and are just "for fun" and dont function as a structured organization. Those that do are usually poorly structured from not the best fit mods for the position.
If im not misunderstanding, it seems you want leaderboards to carry themselves more professionally, which i agree with you on that, but that would take an entire culture shift on sr.c for that to happen.
On most large boards (that actually have a good repuation), there are generally internal rules in place for who can verify who's runs (sometimes bots do this). This typically means no self-verification (and some boards super mods just dont verify at all, they have different responsibilities) and elimiates some of the bias you mentioned.
As for smaller leaderboards, it just doesnt make sense in most cases to have more than 1 moderator. They most likely will run the game, since in most cases, you can be a better run moderator when you have strong game knowledge.
For what you are referring to, this just sounds like a toxic community that has been established for a long period of time. These communities usually exist for older speedgames, and usually fragment with time. I have personally seen this go so far as to all category world record holders removing all their runs to protest a moderation team, and while sad, these extreme acts are usually what it takes to rebuild a community.
@Symystery yes thats correct, the leaderboards caused too much stress for the site, so they have been maintained off-site.
@Camcorder not directly related to this topic, but to the roadmap you mentioned. Are there plans to release some sort of public roadmap for changes in the future? Since the last major site update, the small feature updates have been releasing on a rolling basis and it would be nice to see what is being changed.
Congratulations on the accomplishment @Akuretaki !
Interesting submission to get a notification on lol
https://www.speedrun.com/forums/speedrunning/dll4d
Shoutout to the time we got SR.C together to speedrun the error message on a calculator
