This is more of an etiquette question but I was wondering if it's a bad thing for mods to add their own runs. The basis if this question is because, clearly, they don't have to approve their runs which means that at times, illegitimate runs can be added. I understand that sometimes only a single runner may be a mod and therefore, it makes sense that they'd just submit and auto-approve a time. But for games with multiple mods should it be that even if a mod submits a run, another has to verify? If not, I'm curious as to the reasoning and possibly what kind of a role a mod should have in the approval process. I.e. should a mod just be there to avoid "clutter" or should they judge correctness possible cheating.

The moderator's job is basically to try to best represent the game the way the general community is playing the game and wants times represented.

Moderators aren't required to "verify beyond all doubt no cheating" before approving. At a minimum I'd recommend "Does this time look reasonable, does the video look legit at a glance." (I dislike the word verified, I prefer "approved") Correctness is definitely something that should be judged (if even after the fact), but the role of the moderator is to represent what the community thinks should be correct, not to be the one making all the decisions.

Examples: 1: Whether a glitch should be allowed in a category is decided by the community. 2: Obviously cheated stuff should be removed by the moderator. 3: Really uncertain cheating should generally be decided by the community.

We want to have a flagging system eventually. The idea is that people will bring up illegitimate times and they'll be handled accordingly. If you approve your own run and it is obviously cheated, and someone brings it up, you probably won't be moderating much longer, so I don't really see an issue with approving your own runs. If it is felt that we need to add moderator self-approval enforcement options at some point it's certainly possible, but I feel that given there are other solutions to the problem (contact a mod for now), it's not a high priority.

If illegitimate runs get added, and it is brought up, they can be handled. Moderators won't get removed for mistakenly approving a run due to non-thorough review unless they're doing an exceptionally poor job in general.

I don't intend for these posts to be dissected word for word. I'm just trying to give you an idea of the thought process.

Okay, that's exactly what I was looking for though. I had the thought a while back but it's stuck with me so I decided to vocalize it to see exactly what is expected and the "legality" of it, for lack of a better word.

Thanks for the response!

I personally will take a look at a run if I've never heard of the runner, make sure it looks legitimate, though only a quick glance if the time is sort of reasonable for an unknown runner.

I'm only going to really 'verify' absurd sounding times from unknowns, and I'll even take those to the community to help if that ever happened. When a guy on Reddit spliced and TASed (yes, he did ¤both¤) a Zelda 2 WR run, I kept wondering if he'd submit it here.

If he had it would have been my first reject, heh.