When editing a guide, it would be very useful to have a "this is a minor edit" toggle option that disables the guide update notification, so that I don't have to send a notification to the game's entire community when I fix a spelling error, reword a sentence, adjust the formatting, etc.
@ShikenNuggets Mod-only restriction (or maybe mod+creator only restriction) - far too easy for someone to hide nasty changes that way otherwise.
That said, I like your idea.
Could we get some more detailed information on our own speedruns? In game statistics, we can see most recent runs, total hours of playtime for a game, etc. On personal profiles, I can only see that I have 1066 runs, but I'm curious to know the sum of my current PBs (rta), sum of IL pbs, sum of all obsolete/current runs, etc. I think there's just an opportunity for numbers to be seen that might be interesting to some people :)
The site generally needs better and more accessible documentation for its users. There currently isn't an up-to-date formatting guide (and there hasn't been for almost a year), and there's a lot of information regarding site moderation, game requests, etc, that's buried in random unmarked forum posts (such as stuff like this, and while that in particular is arguably fairly obvious, that information should still be listed somewhere that people can actually see it without having to dig through months/years of mostly irrelevant forum nonsense).
Ideally I think there should be some kind of "General Info" or "FAQ" page that's very prominent (could be displayed in the "More" dropdown on the top bar) and aggregates this information (or at least links to various other pages or forum posts) so that it's fairly easy for new users to find all this stuff. I'd be willing to personally help create and maintain something like this.
If there was an easier way to add pages and such, I probably would've attempted to make some kind of FAQ section already. I also wanted to make a guide for board setup, such as what each tool does in edit game for the actual leaderboard but unfortunately there isn't any way for us to actually add new pages. That's exclusive to Admins with code-access, possibly only Volvagia and Pac. And I don't really want to make a stickied forum thread with bad formatting and such for the images.
Disable post deletion for non mods on the forum.
Can the auto-playing embedded stream on the front page be removed, or at the very least, can we get an option to remove it in our user settings?
Autoplay video is one of the great crimes of website design, and it eats data and bandwidth for those of us unfortunate enough to have limited connections.
Suggestion - stop automatically calling every 1st place on this site a 'World Record'. Often there are better times elsewhere. It'd be much better if the moderators of each game did their research and manually assigned a 'World Record' status where appropriate.
Lmao. Okay.
Some people don’t want their times on the site so mods can’t just add them. Additionally, nobody can ever claim something as a definitive WR because who knows what exists outside the realm of video. I think you’re looking into the term a little too much, most people here know that the term can be loose and there might be a faster time somewhere else.
(As an aside, I don’t think the site ever actually calls anything a WR, just 1st place. It’s only users and communities who generally use the term)
Things I dislike about the site:
There are "main categories", "misc categories", and "game extension" categories. I think automatically making certain runs NOT a "misc" category based on number of entrants would be a good change. I ran SMB2 "Princess only Any%" and was a little surprised to see it listed as a "misc." category when it has more runs than many other NES games. Rather than leaving it up to a moderator to decide what is and isn't, an automated system based on the number of runs could be good.
I'd also say that the "category extenstions", "misc." and "main" categories should all be under the same title card. If I open "Legend of Zelda" I should be able to toggle between main, misc, and extension categories on that same page. Ideally a mod should be able to create multiple "boards" for the game -- like individual levels categories, full game, high score, oddball stuff, etc. Maybe a selection of pre-set boards, but multiple boards would be great.
There are no values other than "time" -- having custom values (time, score) and the ability to rename those values could help for different types of runs.
Having multiple names for a game is important. If you search for "The Peace Keepers" you'll not find it on the site because it is listed as "Rushing Beat". This is kind of bonkers, as the image actually shows "The Peace Keepers" and the runs are in the US version of the game.
Things that would be cool:
Having a "cobweb" game selection -- games that haven't gotten a run in a while, as a search option.
Having the ability to search games by oldest WR.
Having the ability to search for MULTIPLE user histories would be neat. "How do I compare against so-and-so" could be answered by searching for both and only showing games where both runners have submitted something.
Having a % score based off of the WR could be good too. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., is great, but even if it isn't public it'd be nice to see the % difference in time. If I have the WR in a game at 4:59.95 and 2nd place is 5:00.15 its a different story than if 2nd was 7:00. Just be a neat metric to see how far ahead/behind you were.
I also think a built-in "speedrun score" could be something neat -- having a ranking system that gives point values based off of your placement (or time) compared to others in the same game could be a neat leaderboard, especially if it had different categories (e.g., "All games", "NES", "SNES", "Zelda games", "Mario games", etc.). Making it a limit to only count games with X runners to be calculated could make for a pretty neat leaderboard.
My reply for most of your suggestions is that you cannot take that control away from the individual game communities and put it into some kind of algorithm, because of the vast differences the games have and the various needs and properties the categories themselves present. The score thing just sound atrocious, some xbox achievement level horse shit. The search and filtering stuff is cool, more data and discoverability is always welcome.
@Overswarm About the whole main, misc, extension thing: It shouldn't be sorted automatically because it isn't just about the amount fo runners where a category belongs, it's about what it is. Take SMO's Dark Side and Nipple% as an example, Dark Side beats the game but Nipple% doesn't, it's just a meme and as such, in most cases, it shouldn't be a main category despite having more runners. I do agree that it would be nice if the category extensions would be at the same place as the others, similarly to ILs.
It's being discussed what should be done about highscores here.
I do agree on the new search features and the comparison thing (as long as it only compares the games/categories both played).
I disagree with any kind of score system for users, that would imply that a certain runner is better than others which very often isn't the case, despite the runner having a better score. And even if that isn't the case, it would take way too long to find a good balance and even implementing all of it, it just wouldn't be worth it.
[quote=Overswarm]automatically making certain runs NOT a "misc" category based on number of entrants[/quote]
Why? Just let the community decide whether a category deserves to be considered a main category or not. Not even taking things like meme categories or special condition categories into account (one game I moderate has a Misc category that definitely should never be a main category, regardless of how many people run it), you'd never be able to make a one-size-fits-all algorithm that everyone on all 14k games would be happy with.
[quote=Overswarm]I'd also say that the "category extenstions", "misc." and "main" categories should all be under the same title card[/quote]
This is where the site eventually wants to go with this. Category extensions are a band-aid solution.
[quote=Overswarm]There are no values other than "time" -- having custom values (time, score)[/quote]
It's unclear what exactly the site should do regarding score runs. There's more info about that in this thread.
[quote=Overswarm]I also think a built-in "speedrun score" could be something neat[/quote]
I'm not personally a huge fan of this sort of thing (arbitrarily assigning numbers to things and trying to get the highest number is a really stupid reason to do stuff IMO), but that aside, while something along these lines could work for some games (the Goldeneye community famously has their own ranking system on https://www.the-elite.net ), it's another one-size-fits-all issue. Making a scoring system that would work for every game on the site is an impossible challenge. Better to just let each community create a ranking/scoring system for themselves if they want to (as many have done) rather than forcing everyone to use an inevitably flawed global one.
Here's some (probably bad) ideas I had. My main issue is that when running a board that there's not a lot that can help weirder games out like MMOs. I understand the needs of many outweigh the needs of few, but games like the one I run could benefit from multiple IL-like boards (one for Main Map, one for Challenge Hall), I also remember someone bringing up how a game they ran (SuperTuxKart) could also benefit off of this so who knows what other game could benefit from it? ^^; - I also still think being able to better organize variables with subvariables could be beneficial to some games, but I can understand how that would make things messy and would only really benefit the aforementioned MMO boards.
idk, just thought I'd throw in my own two cents.
For the community deciding thing, this would be letting the community decide -- the people who run the game. If a category is a "meme" category it, by default, will have a small number of runs. I recently added a game to the site and am the only run, it is a rare game and is essentially a "meme" game -- but the Any% category is considered more legitimate than a misc category in others. By default misc categories are hidden on profiles and misc categories are hidden on the boards unless someone goes looking for them.
As an example, the "All Levels" category in SMB2 has less entrants than the Any% (Peach Only) in SMB2, but only 3 mods have submitted a time for that category. It's objectively more popular, but not necessarily with the gatekeepers. I don't see why an empirical metric shouldn't be used instead of an arbitrary metric decided by (mostly) arbitrary people.
You can see evidence of arbitrary decisions in multiple games -- Super Mario Bros. 3, for example, has its Any% as its last category while 100% is its first -- despite Any% having drastically more runners than 100%. Zelda II has Any% as its first category and 100% (all keys) as its second, but 100% has significantly more runs. They have the same situation on both games but with the opposite action -- its arbitrary.
Legend of Zelda "second quest -- Low%" has five entrants, and its one of the most popular games of all time. The Legend of Zelda "Traditional Dungeon Order -- No Glitches" has twenty two entrants. Assuming these were on the same board (the site's intended direction), why would the more popular category be listed as "misc" or "category extension"? What would the process be to change that and is that process the best way of going about it?
If the popularity of a run matters, that can be done automatically. If the decision is arbitrarily chosen by a select few, is that really the best outcome? I have the world record for Wolverine, but it doesn't mean I should decide whether or not a "Wolverine -- 100% All Burgers" category should be considered a 'main' category or not if others would want it to exist as a main category and actively run it.
I don't really care about SMB2 (just a visible example) and I'm not saying that certain categories shouldn't be manually chosen by mods to be considered main categories even if they don't have any runs; there's certainly room for arbitrary decisions, but in the opposite direction. Rather than arbitrary choices being exclusive, they should be inclusive -- e.g., mods saying "even though 100% is an unpopular run due to its length, it is a staple of the boards and a legitimate run that should be showcased".
I do think a system that is arbitrarily exclusive by nature and creates gatekeepers doesn't actually provide any benefit. Having one that allows for the natural, organic growth of a board without having to deal with gatekeepers seems to be a better long-term system, especially when this site doesn't have any direct forms of communication.
Meme category do not have less runs by default as seen in my example with Dark Side and Nipple%. And the "main" category shouldn't just be the most ran one, it should be a good one that is entertaining, good for beginners or the most competitive one. There are even more reasons depening on the game, but it's definitely not just the most competitive one imo. Mostly the best one is also the most competitive one but not always. Back to Nipple%, it doesn't beat the game, it's just a part of the game and as such I don't think it would be a good "main" category, it should be one that beats the entire game like Any% imo.
I could definitely see the "main" category requirement being a full game (meaning start -> ending), but my point was more the arbitrary nature of the various boards. Speedrunning is more or less fragmented at the moment, but it is growing. As people stop running (but remain inactive mods), certain runners become mods on dozens of boards, and new blood come in with new ideas, arbitrary can lead to unnecessary sluggishness or conflict.
[quote=Overswarm]this would be letting the community decide -- the people who run the game[/quote]
No, that's not letting the community decide. That's letting an arbitrary algorithm (created by people who don't run the game) decide. The way things are currently, the community gets to decide. If the people who run the game want a misc category to be changed to a main category, all they have to do is ask the moderators to change it. You're talking as if the moderators get to decide everything even if it's not what the community wants, and that just isn't the case. Moderators aren't supposed to be the all-knowing, all-deciding rulers of the community, they're supposed to be representatives of the community who maintain the leaderboards and fulfill the community's wishes as necessary. If the community wants something to change and the moderator unreasonably refuses, then that moderator should (and will) be replaced.
And again, no matter how fancy the algorithm is, A: you'll never be able to make one that works for everything and satisfies everyone, and B: there's no way that it can account for categories that should not be main categories, regardless of how many people have run them.
You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist with a solution that wouldn't work.
[quote=Overswarm]this site doesn't have any direct forms of communication[/quote]
While this is true, it doesn't really matter. The moderators are still responsible for being available for communication and checking the forums and such when necessary, and if they fail to do so they can be replaced. Also, as of 6 months ago all new moderators appointed by site staff are required to have valid contact info linked on their profiles.