let me know what you think. could social media for speedrunning or seasonal leaderboards be a good direction?
if srdc had a bigger community, the chat would move so fast and the servers will go down (a lot) ....
[quote=bold]the chat would move so fast[/quote]
- How is this forum meant to go fast?
- Slowmode
- And why's that a bad thing?
I don't get why there should be seasonal leaderboards INSTEAD of the leaderboards we already have. (at least it sounds like you'd have them replaced) From my point of view the leaderboards are like the Guinness World Record Books -> they record the best achieved runs ever. And imo it should stay that way. I get your idea of seaonal leaderboards - it is like yearly sports seasons - and that is a good concept. I feel that only the most played speedrun-games would make good use of it. Our main seasonal events are marathons to show off runs. For more competitiveness you can do races or even these crazy break the record live events. So that's why I feel seasonal leaderboards are not really needed.
About the "new" runners that are learning routes mainly by the current "WR run" and/or by getting introduced to it: Some of them don't care about the history of the route, maybe even most of them. For those that are interested -> there are always ways to find out more. Like watching old runs, reading old guides... I'm also fond of routing history. That's why I like to keep old routes up as guides. You can explore it, maybe someone finds a part of it useful years later...
Concerning the community: true there is only a small percentage of users active in the global src forums. That can certainly be improved with various measures. The forum still seems pretty simplistic with it's functions compared to others. Also my experience is that small speedrun-games tend to use the game-specific-src-forum more often than larger games which go over to discord. Same argument as above... the functions are to simplistic at some community-size and you need smth better.
You should plan out your video more in the future, such as with opening with "I will be covering x, y, z points and this is my overall argument". The stream-of-consciousness narration turned me off as a viewer and I'm not sure what your point is.
Some responses to your video, with that out of the way:
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I kind of prefer that there isn't an "overarching speedrun community", actually. Every speedgame is different, so in the end it makes sense that people from different games' community don't really talk to each other (unless there is an obvious connection like games in the same series, etc). Why would a Super Mario runner ask a Minecraft runner about a Mario specific speedrun issue, for instance?
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I don't get what your deal about "leaderboard problem" means. Documentation of a speedrun strategy, and keeping track of a speedrun's world records are two separate issues. Removing or revamping a leaderboard does not magically improve a speedgame's tutorials or community helpfulness etc.
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I do think that speedrun.com's "guides" and forum features leave a lot to be desired, but at the end of the day, it's up to individual community members to shoulder the work of making solid tutorials and guides. In addition, running a game and making speedrun tutorials are also two separate things; it's not uncommon for someone else other than the world record holder to be the one making speedrun tutorials. Simply being a speedrunner and being able to make good video tutorials (often requiring good video editing knowledge for instance) are different skillsets and you can't expect every speedrunner to be a professional level video editor as well. If you're in a more niche speedrun community and there is a lack of devoted individuals among you that can make high quality, accessible speedrun tutorials... well, tough. A better speedrun.com UI won't save you.
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At the end of the day, the people who have their ear to the ground and are listening in on the most obscure Discord conversations, and talking to the best runners in private etc will always have an advantage, as high quality speedrun tutorials will always lag behind bleeding edge discoveries. That will always be true, people who seek knowledge more are rewarded for it.
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I also think that Discord has its own advantages over forums. When you're trying to give lot of tips and troubleshooting to a new runner, where you will exchange messages rapidly, a chat client is preferable. And important stuff can be pinned as well.
As a final aside, I do agree with a lot of these points regarding speedrun tricks documentation at the end of the day. However, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for speedrun.com to improve, I would recommend making your own wiki. Speedsouls is a good example: https://wiki.speedsouls.com/Main_Page
seasonal leaderboard make really no sense for absolutely any game other than the most active ones. sm64 might have even a hundred unique runners a month but lets take ape escape 1 and youll get 0 or 1 on average and ape escape isnt even a small game with a couple of runners.
forums may be good in the example you provided about leaving your ideas to people interested but discord is way better in basically every other way. talking to people on forums is slow and weird since forums dont update on realtime. and id say having one thread per every game would be extremely messy and good luck talking about even two different categories at the same time.
and new people looking at speedrunning trough the wrong "lens" is basically their own fault. if you get intimidated by a big leaderboard or super fast wr then whyd you start running a game just because its popular, wouldnt blame src on that though src could help on that.