Discussion about Timers on videos
6 years ago
California, USA

This discussion honestly shouldn't even involve what the mods do/need to do. We should be discussing whether we want to require timers on submitted runs and the pros and cons of it. It is then up to the mods to enforce the rules set forth regardless of how much work and effort it takes.

England

Bold texting does not make the thing true. You yourself said the rule was added to make you able to verify multi-part vods with missing segments. How is that not a moderator convenience? Otherwise, yes, you would have to reject them and deal with the fallout therein.

Abandon and Rebel also had plenty of other points that are valid outside the assumption that the rule exists, at least in part, for moderator convenience.

You're kinda leading the conversation in circles and then going "this conversation is going in circles". Like, yeah. Of course it is.

Victoria, Australia

This thread confuses me

AlexisMousy, FayeLilac and 4 others like this
England

If a video isn't split up and the person has proof of splits, i.e. screenshot or splits.io, why are we forcing them to retime a run while local recording/edit their video/restream their run just for the purposes of having a timer on screen?

This more stems into the PS4 issue I spoke about before but I'm sure it can be applied to regular local recorded videos.

If we had a rule stating they had to include screenshot of splits or a splits.io link if no timer is visable on screen wouldn't that be a middle ground for this discussion?

Just a thought I wanted to add to this. If its possible I'd like to see this looked into as a middle ground rather than this circular conversation that's happening.

Gxmwp likes this
England

That would be a start, but still wouldn't really address my point where runs with a timer are given carte blanche to just have chunks missing.

Part of my problem with this is how the same rule applies to every single game in the series regardless of length or appropriateness. When you get into the really long KH categories that take like 10 hours or more, some technical blip resulting in an inconsistency or missing minutes is very whatever because of just the sheer ratio of gameplay involved. In BBS or 0.2 and possibly some of the handheld games in the middle length brackets, a blip like that eliminates a significant portion of the run and honestly probably shouldn't be admissible timer or no. The "long-game" proof standard is being applied globally across an entire series of varied games, some of which really don't warrant it.

Which kinda goes back to the thing I said earlier about how if you're overwhelmed, you probably need game-specific mods at which point they can decide how best to run those games. KH is a series that encompasses too many games for global ruling to fit perfectly for all the games within it. It's part of why speedrun.com made the change recently that series mods do not inherit mod of every game in the series automatically (hence why Dax and BB were stuck in limbo), the admins of the site itself are trying to nudge people off doing that because it historically doesn't pan out especially well.

Illinois, USA

I'm really confused as to why nobody has graced my post with any real response. I feel (and it seems others agree) that I asked valid questions. I'm not going to retell the same story or ask the same questions if they're going to be ignored, since apparently all of my points are invalidated by my one point having the (admittedly true earlier) assumption that timer makes mods lives easier. I never stated that was the only purpose. I stated that was the apparent purpose as was being explained to my understanding. Regardless of that, the points stand. Am I just being ignored because I'm not "relevant"? Or because I'm calling out some of the problems present in the group of mods, in which the data supports that some mods do literally nothing to verify or check runs - basically their job? Neither of those invalidate my point, and your carelessness toward my points and those of others kind of reflects poorly on the whole community.

Punchy and DJSALTYNUTZ like this
England

As an additional point about the timer rule's lack of general necessity. I raise the further point that it's unnecessary because WR runs literally exist on the leaderboards right now without a timer. I've been having a private Discord convo without Ninten about this but I'm bringing this public because I'd much rather conduct this one in full view of the community.

At first I didn't want to post the runs or the runners name for fear that I'd screw the dude over or "snitch" and I'd rather not make enemies, but I met a response of generally not hearing the argument out unless I could show the runs, so that's kind of a shitty position to be put in. So I ran it by Nanners first and got his approval to snitch lmao. What an awkward fucking place to be put in.

Anyway yeah: http://www.speedrun.com/run/8yvp82oy http://www.speedrun.com/run/2ywrgj3m

literally the ps3 aqua crit record for 10 months and the 2nd place Aqua beginner times. It's not like these are obscure categories in games nobody cares about. But all of his videos are of high quality, do not skip and are totally in one piece.

It'd be utterly, UTTERLY mad if these runs with such clean, crisp quality got a retroactive reject because of the timer issue when runs like this: http://www.speedrun.com/run/oy28956y

Would be allowed under the current ruleset, despite the fact about six minutes are missing from the WR run for Ven Beginner and in 3 different chunks, just because it has a timer. That's like, 7% of the entire run. That /really/ isn't a small amount of time at all for a run that short. I raised this issue to Ninten in this private convo and got told to find another one with 5 minutes missing? Which no, I don't really feel I should be obligated to do at all, one example of this happening on a long-standing WR is bad enough because I seriously doubt it's just gone unnoticed by everyone besides my stupid ass.

But literally just for the sake of argument, I found multiple other runs anyway, and it wasn't really that hard: http://www.speedrun.com/run/nz1go09z

28 minutes missing from this 3D run off the start. You could make the argument that this was done for the KH relay and so people verified it live by seeing it. I think this argument is bunk for a leaderboard, but fine, moving on.

http://www.speedrun.com/run/9yoe2rdz

About 5 minutes missing off this KH1 JP run, and this one isn't even especially old?

I do not have to look particularly hard or very far to start finding multiple examples of runs with large (large in this case being defined as "above 5 minutes" which is totally arbitrary and varies in meaningfulness across games but that's the range I was asked to work in by Ninten.) sections of actual gameplay being missing. It is just absolutely constant across the boards to varying degrees. Ninten's own Sub-3 in 2FM is missing about 2 minutes 30 seconds, which I argue is significant, but since 5 minutes seems to be the bar to pass....

So there you go, two examples, one of them being a currently standing WR of the timer rule being unnecessary to actually verify runs since ya'll seem to have done just fine without them and several examples of runs missing bonkers large chunks of their run time and I didn't even look very hard. You clearly do not need this rule to function and the rule itself invites a poor standard of verification across other games.

(P.S Abandon and Rebel's posts really do deserve responses. I appreciate that I'm getting answers but it's a little frustrating seeing them go without being engaged.)

abandon likes this
England

Since Swift made mention to it, I'd happily mod the BBS (all versions) and DDD (all versions) boards too if you guys ever needed the help.

But that conversation is for another thread.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Florida, USA

I've never been super active in the community aside from a couple of pretty shitty runs, but I have been keeping up with all of this nonsense and it's so odd to that we require videos have a timer but allow for chunks of a video to be missing. The idea that I could have a bad segment and go "oops better edit that out real quick", rerecord with a timer that's consistent with how long that segment normally takes, then steam that run and cut the stream where the drop happens go "lol internet sucks" then pick up after the segment ends blows my god damn mind. Cheating seems legitimately easy so long you make sure to cheat with a timer.

Punchy and abandon like this
England

It's worse than just segments being missing. Remember that run of Ven Crit I was talking about earlier where there was 30 minutes missing?

It turns out I was completely wrong, it was Ven Beginner, but it wasn't 30 minutes missing, it was /only/ 30 minutes present in an hour and twenty minutes of gameplay which means a staggering well over 50% of this run was missing:

This run isn't on the leaderboards anymore presumably having been pulled at some point but the description of this video ltierally reads: "Highlighting for Leaderboard purpose" which means it has to have been on the boards at some point in time. It was 2 years ago, which I'm sure will be used as the fourth excuse in a row to dodge having to actually answer for it, but the rules have basically barely budged an inch in that time frame so I don't doubt something like this could happen again.

Given that I've been accused of lying about this run's existence by an actual leaderboard mod, it's pretty satisfying to be vindicated over this one. And multiple people besides me have told me they've been effected by this happening in the past and it's likely to continue occurring without some shift in what's an acceptable run.

Also, 2 days without a proper mod response is a bit worrying considering you've got like 11 mods. I can only assume you guys are trying to talk it over amongst yourselves and arrive at a compromise. There are many members of the community within this thread who've vocalised their intent to see change as per JHobz's initial request, and many more who also want change but are afraid to speak up because of past unpleasantness in trying to get things like game-specific mods implemented over the past year or so.

This problem isn't going to go away by ignoring it anymore. So, at least drop us a line that you're talking about it so we know we're not yelling into a vacuum over here.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
TSB_Jimmy and abandon like this
Illinois, USA

As Punchy has brought up, it's a bit frustrating that any dissent is either being ignored by the mods or claimed to be false proof or not enough proof - a mod accused Punchy of being a liar about that run, the requirements of proof are being pushed farther and farther away every time we provide evidence, and many, many arguments are just simply falling on seemingly deaf ears. It would honestly be nice to get some kind of notice of "Hey, you've raised some points and the mod team is currently discussing them and deciding what complaints are important" or something. I don't want to start having to individually PM'ing mods or tweeting at them to get response. Although apparently the only way to get a real response is to tweet "Scuffed Mods", and rather than providing productive discussion, it just starts fights. I (and I'm sure a few others of us) would also welcome a group chat on discord if you don't want to have a massive forum discussion - just include everyone who has raised any point and make it something where anyone else who has something to say can be added.

But it truly concerns me, as a "citizen" of this community, to see that the mods seem to have no interest in doing anything regarding this discussion. It also concerns me that I have heard multiple people (who will remain unnamed) say things like "I won't post in the forum because I just got on the good side of all the mods, and I don't want to get on their bad side again". That immediately reflects poorly on the community, that we all have to be on the mods' good side, and it also makes me wonder less and less why other communities think of our community as "the worst community in speedrunning". And these points don't even bring into account the fact that I have had issues trying to even suggest something to moderators through PMs after explicitly being told "Hey, if you have a suggestion, PM a moderator." I have evidence of such a situation that I can provide if requested, although I'd prefer not to name names.

Edit: As an addendum, I've heard multiple people say "The mods are handling this like it's an attack on their character. It wasn't that in the first place, but the longer they wait to answer, the more I'm questioning their behavior."

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Punchy, TSB_Jimmy, and swift like this
Florida, USA

Favoritism is what i see Personally if a WR has skips it shouldnt be apporved Imagen submitting this to guinness they surely wouldnt approve of this

A video with random skips, a segments are missing minutes?! WHeres the logic in that?

If the runner has issues with his local recording or w,e then one should find a way to make it most efficent as possible

All my PBs are from start of the RTA to the END no skips in addition to good quality

All i say its a load of humbug favoring someones faulty run just because they are well known in the community

Edited by the author 6 years ago
North Carolina, USA

[quote]...I'm just going to bring up computer crashes, CPU encoding overloads...[/quote]

I'm absolutely convinced that the Kingdom Hearts community is just making shit up to complain for the sake of complaining. NO other community gives a shit about anything you are talking about. These are far left-field edge cases AT BEST.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Georgia, USA
AlexisMousy
She/Her, They/Them
6 years ago

Alright well after catching up on everything that's been said. Let me have a few words, though you don't have to listen to me if you don't want, I'm just saying my piece.

Non mods and Mods a-like are bringing up some decent valid points except some randos who I've honestly never even heard of. Lemme just say this though and honestly it's been bugging me. I know there are people saying that some want change and are just too afraid to say it and what not, but why do people like punchy have to take up the mantle for them??? that's like asking the mods to check time stamps because someone doesn't want to put a timer on their VOD. It's doing someone else's work for them.

The whole conversation has run around in circles with argument into counter-argument into counter-counter-argument, but why though? As dead as some I've heard say the community is, there are plenty of active runners who are involved and even new runners from within the last month or two that are getting more involved. None of our active community members who talk in the discord with each other, and who pop into each others streams to help people just get through the run have seemed to complain about this rule we have.

So the question comes down to this, if so many people aren't against this rule but a small minority are, then why are we having this discussion? Now if you really want to be civil about this, then how bout we put it up to a vote? For or Against? and put it in a place where only those who have submitted a run to our LB's are allowed to vote. Ergo nobody who shouldn't have a say can put in a vote. Wouldn't be hard to do either, because if a person wants a vote then they can say "hey, my runs are here can I have access to the voting?" That way anyone who truly cares about this and even has the right to have a say about how the KH community should be done can have a say.

Anyways, I've said enough and I should end here. If you read all that then thank you I suppose.

England

[quote]but why do people like punchy have to take up the mantle for them??? [/quote]

I'm not. I don't speak for anyone besides myself and I don't claim to. There are like, 7 or 8 other people who are not me in this very thread alone who spoke for themselves about it. I know other people like them exist because I've heard their goddamn whining about it over a period of 2 years, I hope they can get over themselves long enough to make their voices heard, but I'm not and can't do it for them.

[quote]that's like asking the mods to check time stamps because someone doesn't want to put a timer on their VOD. It's doing someone else's work for them. [/quote]

Yes, you know. God forbid the KH mods be held to the same standard of work ethic as literally every other leaderboard on speedrun.com. You know, I only hear this from people/mods who only run/moderate KH. Absolutely nowhere else would this be considered unusual or asking too much.

I literally do this for people all the time on every other game I moderate. It's unthinkable that all KH mods combined can't deliver the same type of work that I do on my own.

[quote]The whole conversation has run around in circles with argument into counter-argument into counter-counter-argument, but why though?[/quote]

Because the reasoning from the moderation themselves has thus far been pretty circular and evasive. If you intentionally lead a conversation in a circle, you do not get to point to it's circularity as an argument for the entire discussion being moot. That is a stalling tactic and I'm not having it.

As it stands, there have been multiple arguments from me, Rebel, Abandon and Swift that have basically been ignored and gone entirely without decent answers.

If one finds themselves unable to answer them satisfactorily, then really search inside yourself why you're trying to give an answer in the first place.

[quote]None of our active community members who talk in the discord with each other, and who pop into each others streams to help people just get through the run have seemed to complain about this rule we have. [/quote]

ah ok so only certain people count, gotcha

bunk

I don't like talking in the general discord because timmi moderates it and he basically told me in no uncertain terms earlier in the thread to go fuck myself for daring to criticize certain aspects of the leaderboards. When the people who are dissatisfied or have problems are treated with open hostility, it is completely unsurprising that the general community spaces look like nobody has any issue.

also this isn't even true since apparently rebeldragon, abandon, swift all don't count as active posters for some reason?

[quote]if so many people aren't against this rule but a small minority are, then why are we having this discussion?[/quote]

"Small minority"

the number of people in this thread against it vs the number of people for it is actually in the against camps favour so no, I don't think it's a small minority at all.

Furthermore, silence is not equivalent to agreement at all and it is not to be taken as such. Most runners of any video game don't really engage with the administration discussions, doesn't interest them, doesn't mean they all automatically agree 100% with everything.

And we're having this discussion because there's honestly numerous issues to be solved here, this is just one such place to start. Game-specific mods seems to be the topic of more concern for most people, so that might be a better place to start tbh.

[quote]Now if you really want to be civil about this, then how bout we put it up to a vote? For or Against?[/quote]

I honestly don't think a straight vote at this juncture is an amazing solution to a problem this multi-faceted since I don't even think most people who want change would be able to unify on a type of desired change. It's too early to vote on anything, since we haven't even really decided what to vote on. Polls are, in my experience as a long-time moderator of other games, a great way to feel out what people think, but not an excellent thing to actually make substantial decisions with.

Enough people at this point (and numerous times in the past) have expressed interest in seeing things changed that at this point the discussion should really be about what that change should look like and then if people want to go ahead with it.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
TSB_Jimmy and abandon like this
Tennessee, USA

Correct me if I'm wrong because it has been a couple days since I have read everything, but has there been a possible solution thrown out there yet? The only one I can really remember is make people stream or local record their entire run, timer or no timer. If no timer, then mods have to do the timing. If with timer, then everything is fine. If someone opts to stream and their stream dies, obs crashes, etc., then that's just too bad for them. That is what I remember at least, again, correct me if I'm wrong.

With that solution though, you are saying that people without a capture card can not submit runs at all. The recording on the ps4 is garbage and skips during a stream. Someone finished a run the other day of KHFMHD and got time, then when retiming it, in this case spiliting at the start of the run and the end of the run when looking at the past broadcast from the ps4, the difference was over a minute and a half, which is obviously unacceptable. No amount of mod work can fix this. So the solution brought up is that people must stream or local record, and they can not stream from ps4. At this point you are just moving the problems from one group of people to another.

"I honestly don't think a straight vote at this juncture is an amazing solution to a problem this multi-faceted since I don't even think most people who want change would be able to unify on a type of desired change."

Then bring up some possible desired changes. At this point it has just been Side A says something, Side B counters them, Side A counters them. We get it that not everybody wants to be required to have a timer on screen. There are others that it inconveniences, but they do it anyway. Then there is the majority that simple do not care because it doesn't affect them. Both sides have made good points, in my opinion, as to why timers should be required or not required.

In the end, my opinion on all of this is that this is a leaderboard. Leaderboards do not equal speedrunning. They are tied, but you can do speedruns without there being leaderboards. So requiring a timer on the video is no big deal to me. If I don't feel like doing a run with a timer, or local recording the run, or streaming the run, then I just wont do it. If I pb, it is still a pb. Just because my time isn't on the leaderboards doesn't mean that it isn't a pb. It seems that people tend to forget that you can speedrun without having to have a time on the leaderboards. You could say that you dont have to have a timer in order to speedrun either, I suppose. The big question, I believe, is where do we draw the line. Do we require video proof but no timer? Do we not require either? Do we require both?

BranToast75 and Ninten866 like this
Antarctica

Im not reading long paragraphs, but I have NEVER and will NEVER ban or remove someone from the discord because of my personal feelings for them. (bolded for emphasis, not anger).

There are a few of people in the discord who I dislike (and at least one of them is aware of that dislike) and I have never once disrespected them in the discord, deleted any of their messages or treated them with any kind of malice. They have continued to post as if nothing is wrong between us. The discord is a public place and my job as a moderator of the discord is to keep spam/rude/problematic posts out of it - aka, keep it a civilized place where everyone is welcome to speak their minds. Ive had differing opinions than people in various discussion in the discord as well, but I never silenced them or abused my moderation powers on them (I've never treated with hostility either, believe it or not despite how head the debates had become).

This is not meant to be a "you should have known" kind of post. This is so that you, or anyone else for that matter, knows that just because I personally dislike somebody, it doesn't mean I would ever go so far as to remove them from a public, community discord. I keep my personal opinions to personal outlets (my twitter, forums, etc.) and I keep my personal opinions out of the KH Discord since that is not a personal place of mine. (that sentence sucks but it's 3am)

In short, don't feel terrified to speak there because of me. The owner of that discord would never let me get away with abusing moderation powers anyway, so if I did do something like that a quick message to them would end my time there. You are not the first person I dislike nor will you be the last. In fact, that discord probably has a slew of people (mods included) who dislike non-mods and vice versa and nobody has ever been removed or treated badly because of it. At the end of the day, all of us in there, mods and non-mods, are mature enough to keep personal arguments and feelings away for the sake of a unified community.

I thought it was obvious that my personal feelings expressed on these forums or my twitter account were separate from what happens in the discord but clearly I was wrong and it wasn't as clear as I had thought. So please, talk there and raise concerns there, it's what it's there for. All of us mods know better than to let our personal feelings control conversations in there and none of use have ever lashed out (nor will we ever).

One last note on that topic, I present you with some notes:

  • Punchy, you have a total of 2 posts in the discord, both coming on May 19th, 2016, and not a single post prior to or after that. 2 posts in almost an entire year of you being in the discord,

That is long before this thread's and my personal opinion of you's existence (it is also long before I got mod which was about 4-6 months ago).

  • 2 other people in this thread voicing disagreement with the current rules have never posted in the Discord (1 of them was never a member at all).

  • 2 people disagreeing with the current rules post semi regularly with maybe a post or two a week for probably half a year or so.

So, I find it hard to believe I'm the reason for anyone's silence prior to about 36 hours ago since 2 people post without any "fear" of me (and have been doing so before and after I got mod) and 3 people never posted to begin with. Not sure how my presence has been preventing anyone from talking in the Discord at all, in fact it seems that the people who have issues with something just don't raise them in the Discord in the first place.

But I guess I can't assume anything, all I can do is clarify these things.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
FayeLilac likes this
England

First of all I've not read most posts because I've been in hospital and I don't have time for all that but just skimming through all this I'm going to add my 2p.

First when it comes to forcing local recordings:

Before I make any sort of decision within this community I always ask "Will this get more people interested in the community and running the games". With this change you would probably be restricting more people from running the games which is why personally I'm not that keen, there is a big reason why we moved on from the SDA days where if there was even a slight skip in your video or your audio quality was sub par or you ran the wrong sort of capture card etc etc your run was rejected. No one enjoyed that, hence SDA sort of just died and we got google docs / spreadsheets and eventually now Speedrun.com

As for requiring we local record, have you seen the file sizes of a DS capture card local recording? A 10 minute video is 4-5gb its obscene I'd be looking at ~300gb for a level 1 run and yeah no that's not happening. Sure this is less of an issue for the console games but for the DS games I'd rather not deter more runners from already dead games.

I'd rather have 20 runners all with shit quality videos and streams dying than 1 runner with HD quality and everything looking crisp, its a fun hobby and you should remember that. We are not here to make videos we are here to have fun.

As for requiring a timer on the screen:

I've been speedrunning since the SDA days and was the first Days runner and the first person to seriously run Chain of Memories. Back then we didn't ask for a timer on the screen because SDA verification process was obscene and took weeks (Hell some games got stuck in verification limbo for a month+ especially the longer / less popular games) because they cared more about the video's quality more than "going fast".

The timer on the screen became a lot more common when we started engaging with the JP speed running scene due to NicoNicos 30 minute streaming limitation meaning that you would have your video completely and utterly destroyed and thus their timers were a nice way to keep track of how you were doing etc etc. Eventually we got Wsplit and it just sort of became the norm that if you weren't submitting to SDA then you would have the timer on the screen so people could easily just move to a certain point and see how you was doing.

The timer rule mostly makes life easier for mods, but I kinda have to ask why is it that much of an issue anyway, no one is forcing you to have splits or to even split at the end (last I checked), its just a timer on the screen. I'm sure Hobz and Sonic will come in and agree when we say we have made alterations to people's final time if they split late / early in the past and it wouldn't exactly be that difficult to do it again. A minuscule timer that takes up barely any processing power / storage space is far more reasonable than asking people local record and every KH game has some dead space you could throw it in.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Ninten866 and FayeLilac like this
Arizona, USA

I just wanted to throw something in here. "the number of people in this thread against it vs the number of people for it is actually in the against camps favour so no, I don't think it's a small minority at all. " Considering how many people are active in the community, and how many have actually commented on this thread besides the people who were initially against the ruling is kinda proof of how few runners care about this in the first place. Abandon posted this forum in the discord, and correct me if im wrong, but it doesn't seem like anybody joined in the conversation. If you think there are a ton of hypothetical people who are also against the ruling but haven't posted in the forums for whatever reason, then we can also consider all the hypothetical people who don't mind this rule and also haven't posted on the forums. Also all the comparisons people keep making from our leaderboards to other leaderboards doesn't mean anything, considering how different the kh series is and the fact that the communities you compare ours to, dont have categories on the ps4 in the first place.Which ps4 streaming is how this entire thing started in the first place.

Illinois, USA

Ninten, I think what Punchy's saying is that you can't count non-voices for either side. It's like trying to count the votes of people who refuse to vote. Also, some of the "hypothetical people" are real, and I'be heard them say that they're worried they'll write something that could be unintentionally offensive or just don't want to get on people's bad side, despite having an opinion on the matter. When I'm not on mobile, I'd be glad to screenshot and censor their names and PM images to you if you'd like evidence of this.