Hi. Let's go over the rules here as I have deleted some comments.

Do not post or link ROMs here in the forums. Don't talk about where to get them either. You can do all that elsewhere on another platform.

I will give a free piece of advice. Don't download a "ROM" that's an .exe file. If you do, for the love of God don't run it unless you're a fan of malware.

I have been thinking it might be an alright idea if I post MD5/SHA1 hashes of the game so that you can check yourself to verify you have a good, unaltered ROM.

That’s a legitimate question and I think it’s fine.

The IPS patch for the practice ROM is in the resources page.

Hi, there's a SRC site-wide issue where your submitted runs may not show in pending on your side. I've been seeing a lot of duplicate submissions and I figure this is the reason why. When you do submit your run, we DO see it on our side even if you don't see it on yours.

This is the thread that mentions the issue: https://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/mbiuw

Hopefully they will get this fixed soon, but nothing we can do about it unfortunately.

Additionally, if you necro a thread and you provide no valuable input to make it worth bringing back up near the top of the threads, I'm deleting your comment. That sends it back into the abyss where it belongs.

@Mars02, emulators themselves aren't illegal, so not really breaking any rules posting that.

@wrboiek_niski, my five minutes of searching around the web produced nearly nothing as well. It could be like another ZSNES as far as I know (terrible emulator). I think we have an acceptable number of emulators and platforms for folks to run on already. To express it a little more bluntly, it would be a lot of effort on our part to appease one person.

I get your point and I understand where you're coming from. However, with a meme board that already has 41 categories on it, I feel it's not very unique and doesn't really add much value to it. Some of the other mods might feel differently about that, but that's how I feel about it. If you wanna run that on @Scrimsion's unofficial board, go for it.

We need concrete data about its accuracy before we'd even consider it. If you have such data, please provide it.

So, essentially this is a category where all the levels are completely free aside from 4-2 and 8-4...and we already have an 8-4 IL category.

Side notes about that video. That emulator isn’t permitted and neither is the turbo function you’re using.

Wii option has been added.

SNES Classic is accepted for All-Stars runs, not NES runs.

Sure, that console is official hardware from Nintendo, but you're running an emulator on top of it which kinda throws out the "official" part of it. Sure, the emulator is approved itself, for the PC version which is what people generally use emulator on. We don't have data on this setup. The NES/SNES Classic runs at 60FPS natively and most PC emulators run at the NES framerate of 60.0988139. So which is it in this scenario or is it even something different entirely? For this game, that difference is much more significant compared to many other games. Also, are there some inconsistencies with this kind of setup that's unnoticed or unknown? We don't have answers to those questions. There's no guarantee X emulator behaves exactly the same between one that runs on PC and one that runs on a console. Figuring all that out takes a fair amount of time, effort, testing and analysis. In my opinion, that's a lot to do to accommodate one or two people. One person saying "seems fine to me" isn't enough unfortunately.

The statement about your run being nothing special is subjective and irrelevant at the same time. We've tried to tighten the rules down across the entire leaderboard to be consistent no matter if you're near the top or near the bottom or somewhere in between. Folks find it unfair if some people can follow one set of rules and others can't. For instance, we used to have a time threshold on whether or not you had to provide a video with your submission and we got rid of that and basically adopted the "no vid, no did" policy.

A point of advice for any game you speedrun is to check the rules to see what is and isn't permitted. We do list approved consoles and platforms in our rules. If something isn't stated or unclear, you can always ask for clarification.

I hope this post didn't come across as incendiary or anything like that as that's not my intention. I'm just telling it how it is and explaining our side of things.

I feel there's some confusion and maybe I didn't make it clear.

You can play that version, and submit runs with it. That's fine. We just haven't added "Wii" as a platform, but I think we probably will.

We're aware of that and considering adding just the Wii as an option. However, some of us feel like that could cause some confusion and some folks would submit under the wrong platform.

We generally don't allow ACE (Arbitrary Code Execution) categories for the multi-Mario games. Those are SMB3 Any% and SMW 0 Exit. We put a sub-category on the All-Stars leaderboard a few years ago that did allow ACE and not one person ever put up a run after a couple of years, so we just removed it.

This next statement is just my personal opinion, but I feel like throwing a couple of games with a credits warp in with the rest of the games where you actually progress and defeat the final boss feels kinda silly and ruins the flow.

SRC is being pretty unresponsive today, so it’s probably not his fault. Anyway, I fixed the duplicates.

I don't know that we'd still call that the MariHour since it would be impossible to complete in an hour, but worth considering anyway IMO.

Please welcome @GTAce99, @xeroxfiend and @ImDangerous20 to the moderation team!

Yes, the main categories do typically take priority over the meme board. I mean it's just that, a meme board. It's not intended to be super serious. We also have to framecount most of the CE submissions because a lot of the categories are really short.

I wanted to take a few minutes and speak about this debacle that has happened over the last several days and maybe a few other things thrown in. Fair warning, this might be long winded.

First and foremost, posting tirades isn't really beneficial to anyone. It doesn't help you, it doesn't help us and it doesn't help anyone else. It's good at increasing toxicity and drama in the community. That's about it. I have plenty of other sources of undesirable drama in my real life. I do not like seeing it here. To be honest, sometimes having to deal with it here makes me wonder if all of this is even worth it for me to stick around.

We don't need performance reports, spreadsheets, screenshots and finger pointing. Especially with incomplete and inaccurate data. We're not employees and we're not sports players. We volunteer our free time for this. We're not paid. We aren't given any proverbial cookies. It's mostly a thankless job and there will never be a situation of where everyone is happy with the decisions that we make. I think some people have a misconception of what this position is and what it entails. To be straight honest with you, in my opinion, I find being a mod kind of a pain in the ass. From the outside, this seems like it seems like verifying runs should be an easy task with minimal time invested. I mean it could be that way. We could just glance at the runs to make sure it exists and just accept it. The queue could be knocked down real quick if we did it that way. However, since we value the integrity of the leaderboards, we do our best to uphold that integrity. Yes, it does take longer to do that. Verifying a 5 minute run takes longer than a 6 or 7 minute run due to the extra work that has to be put into verifying those. Frame counts, Bowser patterns, looking for cheating indicators very closely, asking the other mods to take a second look, etc.

I would like to remind everyone about a fact that we may forget about sometimes. This is a hobby. Nothing more. Nothing less. Everyone uses their leisure time to participate. Whether you're a moderator, runner or even just a viewer, this is a hobby. Nobody is losing money or going hungry or experiencing some major life crisis if their run isn't verified on their timeframe. In the grand scheme of life, it's not really THAT important. I'm trying to not declare bankruptcy or lose my home and vehicle because of a really bad event that happened almost 3 years ago. That's why I've disappeared, I've been working 80 hour weeks to get my life in order. So to me, there's a lot more important things to worry about of actual significance than "when is my run going to get verified?"

That being said, we do understand that many of you don't find the wait times acceptable, we hear you. We have reached out to three people in the community to join the moderation team. All three of them have confirmed interest and have all passed the testing process that we administer to verify competence and verification skills. If they accept, they will be added very soon.

When we reach out to people when we add new mods, we take more into consideration than just an ability to time runs. Maturity, involvement in the community, and your general character all matter. We like people who we believe make good ambassadors to the community and have the skillset to time runs as well. We have enough drama as it is. Someone can be great at timing runs, but if they are generally a jacksass and troll around on the Internet may not be a good fit.

Also, it seems like some people think we're a group of "good ol' boys" who hold our heads high up in the clouds and don't care about the rest of the community. I'm sorry if you feel this way, but I don't really think that's the case. I'll go into lesser known streams, people just starting out and offer support and tips if they desire them. Of course that's when I have time to do so when I have it. I just ask you who think that to take some time and really think about it instead of acting on your own or someone else's knee-jerk reaction.

That's the main part that I want to talk about but I'll touch on a few other subjects.

As you all saw, Pellsson was banned from the Mario Discord server for some comments that he made in the chat. First of all, I feel that we are all grateful for his contributions to creating a practice ROM for the community. I don't think anyone feels any differently on that front. When I found out he was banned, I was a little skeptical myself, I'll be honest about that. Then I saw what was posted, and I understand why now. While there's some debate on whether or not he should have been banned, here's my thoughts. It was the correct decision. Does it suck? Yes it does. However, the rules were very much broken. They did not show any favoritism. I find it a bit hypocritical that people complain that the Mario communities show favoritism, but when favoritism is not shown (in this case) and the correct action was taken, people are complaining that he shouldn't have been banned because he's a big contributor. That's favoritism. You can't have it both ways that suits what you like. I am also a person who tries to avoid favoritism. I like to follow the rules as defined and I don't really care if you're "X popular player."

Pellsson has also deleted his SRC account and deleted his posts according to the audit logs (yes we have those) if you all are wondering about that. Maybe he will come back around at some point, and maybe he won't.

I also want to remind you all that the Mario Discord is ran by the SMB3 folks. Well I am a moderator for the SMB3 board, so I'm like the one lone person sort of in the middle. None of the SMB1 moderators have mod privileges in that Discord, including myself. If anyone has an issue with how things are handled there, you need to take it up with them. We cannot help you.

Adding more categories to the CE (meme) board. We currently have 41 categories on the CE board. I feel that is sufficient. Heck, I personally feel it's too many. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't remove some of the categories, but I don't know how many more good categories could be added. I'm not sure how getting bored with the game and it's stale is an issue with this many categories alongside the main game categories. If you're that bored with it with that many to choose from, it might be time to start working on a new game. Some folks are doing their own unofficial leaderboards for other categories and that's perfectly fine. Y'all do your thing.

I have also noticed some rumblings about people getting their runs verified immediately or at least ahead of others. Now I can't speak with 100% accuracy on this as I don't micromanage things like that, but here's an explanation why. We do go to various people streams and watch them live. If they get a PB and we're already there and know that it's real and already know the time, we can just go ahead and verify the run. We already have the information we need. We may have already timed it. Once it shows up in the queue, there's not really much we need to do about it besides accept it. I have done this as well although I'm not lucky enough to catch people PB that often. Aside from that, when I verify runs, I pick the oldest and go down the line typically. I feel this is how it generally is for the rest of the mod team, but like I said I don't monitor that.

I think that's about all I had on my mind at this time and I'll say one last thing to wrap this up. If you have issues or concerns on how things are done, you can ask us privately or if you bring it up in the forums, try to do so in a calm and thought out manner. We're not some evil government that rules with an iron fist that is waiting to be overthrown by the people with flaming arrows and pitchforks. We aren't perfect and we make mistakes just like anyone else. Just try to be civil and chill out a bit.

This might be cliche, but, "it's just a video game."

The audit log confirms he has deleted his posts and deactivated his account.

If you have an unofficial leaderboard, Discord server or whatever, you can post it here.

Put all of the relevant information in one post. If information needs to be added or changed, edit your post. Don't post another response.

This thread is not intended for conversations and comments. Any of those will be deleted.

Since I'm somewhat back, I'm trying to spend a little time cleaning up the forums when I have a few free minutes of time here and there.

Having an unofficial leaderboard and all that is perfectly fine. Y'all have your fun, I don't really care one way or another and I don't want to make people discouraged or feel looked down upon because they want to run "unofficial" categories. This clogging up the forums with it is getting absurd and out of hand though and it needs to be dealt with.

Please keep discussions of unofficial things outside of the forums. I will likely do some purging of threads within a few days or at the very least, locking them.

As a side note, if you necro the threads with no useful information to warrant pushing it back to the top, I'm deleting your post so that it goes back where it belongs.