1. Ask the community about their opinion.
2. Listen to it.

The only thing that makes speedrun.com better than sites like SDA or TwinGalaxies is that it's run by the community.

Not asking the other 50 runners for their opinion is basically rendering this entire site a useless waste of time.

(Note that this is the third consecutive time the mods changed something on the board without consultation from the community. And every single time it's been arbitrary decisions, that some people didn't agree with)

You are welcome to start a Ninja Gaiden Category Extensions board if you want a place for you meme/challenge runs to reside.

No, I don't care about that. Besides the fact that there's a meme/challenge run on the board now(Pacifist), this post isn't about that.

This post is about mods asking the community about their opinion.

This isn't "Four people's leaderboard", it's the Ninja Gaiden leaderboard. It's for the Ninja Gaiden community, foremost, not for you or any of the mods alone. I'm fine with the "Category Extensions" being removed, as long as it's decided upon by the community. If many people like Arcus, Riche, Backslash, BFOB, Sinister, you etc. all tell me "Hey, can you please remove the run, it's kinda silly", I would have, because it's not my leaderboard. It's the Ninja Gaiden leaderboard.

Where was the Problem to just put it under Miscellaneous? You would not have to see it if you don't want to, but it is still there for people that are interested. It's not like NG has 50 different categories and it would be all confusing.

Besides Low% and Pacifist% are equally Meme/Challenge categories and would have to be removed by that standard. Any% is the only "real" category for this game.

I don't see why 100% should have been removed, and I think pacifist should fall into Misc. also. There were even some runs in the 100% category.

Pacifist is not a meme category. any%, low% and pacifist are traditional categories for games like this (NG2, Batman, etc..). They had them at gdq, they're not misc at all for these games. I can agree to the whole "ask the community" point, but you can't compare pacifist to that all pickups category.

Well, while I do admit that it was the removal of All-Pickups that inspired me to make this thread, it's not just about that category or categories as a whole. I mentioned this was the third consecutive case where the mods did this.

The second one was the addition of the offline emulator rules. From what I gather there was some discussion about cheating at other retro games, but we never saw such discussion here.

I'm mentioning that case, because it has nothing to do with me(I don't do PB attempts in Ninja Gaiden anymore) and because, like this case, it was done with no prior consultation with the community. It also has nothing to do with anything like a category.

The moderators are entitled to their opinion, but changing the board in a way that affects runners, should be consulted with the community first. If WhiteHat suddenly announces(he seems to be the public face of moderation here), that emulators aren't allowed and removes those runs, are we supposed to accept that?

I think it's bad to simply put this under "all pickups was removed!", because it's not the root problem. The problem is the lack of communication(this time it wasn't even announced) and the part that I mentioned above, that they're not questioning whether other people might disagree. Even if WhiteHat or another mod puts the category back, this won't change.

Also Garadas, WH specifically said "meme/challenge runs".

Pacifist is a traditional category... where you don't kill enemies.

What we have on the board is not Pacifist, it's Pacifist Low%. Why? Not even the mods know, it's an arbitrary challenge. That's what makes it a meme/challenge category. Even All-Pickups was more legit than that.

I don't think it's possible to ask EVERY runner in the community his opinion. I was part of the discussion about emulator rules, and i still agree with those. It was a discussion between people that run the games and know all the games very well, also people that are active and supportive in the NES speedrunning community. So it makes sense to me.

I also agree with the emulator rules(after the changes the mods made, following the criticism that could have been avoided by simply asking the community if they where fine).

Oh and I didn't say we needed a 100% approval rate from every single runner in the community. I just wish it was asked to more people than nobody, though.

¤edit: And I apologize for the spam

Yeah, I guess that's true. Overall, I'm not really sharing my opinion on any of these categories, mind you, mostly stating my observations.

I don't really care about the other categories that much(even on retrieval of a category, my runs won't be added on this board, unless a mod does so for me, I guess). I'll leave whether they're good or meme categories to everyone else, I don't have any intention of disputing the result. The whole "this is the right way" is not that interesting to me.

I honestly don't see what the problem is. I think meme/challenge run categories should be acceptable if there are people running them. On the contrary, standard categories such as Pacifist, any%, No Pickups, etc. should remain as they are, the heart of the speed category lists.

We as speedrunners should be able to speedrun a game as we choose, then put it up to a vote of sorts, as to whether or not it should be added in as a meme category. I agree that this is a community site. Without the community, there isn't much here. So it should be voted upon and discussed. Should feet% become a category? Put it to a vote. Are there enough people doing feet% to add it in as a category? Is one person doing feet% worthy of being added as a meme category?

I bring these up because they aren't decisions that should be decided on by one person or a few people, but opened up for people to give their two cents on, if they care to. I'm not a mod and I have great respect for the mods here. But I also have a lot of respect for the hundreds of hours someone may have put in for a category that currently doesn't exist. And due to the final decision of a few, never will.

Speedrunning records of all kinds should be recognized for the hard work committed to them. Not just standard any%, pacifist, etc. However, all categories, especially the meme ones, need to be more clearly defined. What is low% vs pacifist? What is minimalistic vs low%?? Let's very clearly define each category...defined rules are a must if we are to have meme categories at all.

Just my two cents on the subject. Hope I didn't ramble too much. With that said, I'd like to thank the mods as well as the runners of all categories, standard and meme, for all your continued hard work. It's why this community website exists.