Ruling on an inactive game?
5 years ago
Lorraine, France

Sup.

I recently picked up a game, leaderboard seems dead. Got moderation, started to shake the place. This is a little early, maybe some runners come back, maybe some new people show up. But I was wondering: being the only one running, do I make my own rules? Categories? I never been in that position.

Obviously I wouldn't render previous runs obselete or make up nonsense, but there are a few things that could be improved. Mostly I'm tired of creating a new identic character for each run, and allowing to load a fresh save wouldn't hurt, virtualy the same as starting a new one. I'd also like to explore new categories, though I didn't find anything of interest as of yet.

So what I'm asking for is advice from experienced runners / moderators please. How do you handle such situation? I'll wait and see if I get returns from the community, but for now I am the whole community...

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Lorraine, France

That's the issue, the few runners are inactive and have little contact information. I already tried to contact most of them as moderators before doing a request for moderation. Like I said I'll wait to see if someone shows up before doing anything. My experience of adding or changing rules are community discussions as a runner, not as a mod though. Without a community I was wondering what the future may hold, how to handle that if the speedrun stays as it is.

Netherlands

How decisions are made on leaderboards is always different. Some communities only let active runners participate in rule changes, and other communities handle it differently. To me, there is never a general guideline on how one should make decisions for a leaderboard other then the base standards of rules Liv pointed out. Then there is only the people that care about it. Right now it sounds pretty simple: You reached out to your community, nobody is responding. You want to make a change to the leaderboard for.. I assume the betterment of the leaderboard. Wait a little until its safe to assume nobody is gonna respond to your requests and then make your decision. That way you can never say you blatantly took that decision without worrying about what your community thinks. It might be good to think about how a rule will affect the current list of runs on the board. You would not want to just invalidate any run on there without a really good reason. But do know that those runners and potentially future runners can always come back to you! Its not like any rule is set in stone. They should always remain up for debate by the community that runs it.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Pear, Imaproshaman, and Nariom like this
Iowa, USA

If you can't reach anyone and the community just isn't there anymore, do what you feel is best for the leaderboard. Choose to keep the runs, make a thread for others explaining the changes and why those runs remain or move them to a legacy category for "safe keeping".

There's no reason to daunt on this in my opinion, if you believe you can move the leaderboard forward then that is enough. There is always some anxiety handling this stuff, but you shouldn't let your feelings control what you believe is best for the leaderboard, there is always an uncertainty of the future but that's normal with anything, just do your best.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Pear, Imaproshaman, and Nariom like this
Lorraine, France

The previous runs are safe! It's mostly about allowing to use an autosave from the very begining of the run instead of going through character creation again and again. It doesn't even make the run shorter, only the time spent in between runs. But it's nice to have a broader insight on the question, it may come handy that's also why I'm asking. I'm thinking about loading removal for example, that would be a significant advantage over past runs, however they already could be improved by recent developments. And they could be retimed anyway.

Pear and Daravae like this
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
5 years ago

A board I inherited from inactive mods ( https://www.speedrun.com/pbol ) has a time-without-loads rule even though the game itself has no apparatus to separate loads (i.e. it has to be done in the verification process). Not something I'd ever institute myself but I've kept up with it in others' runs I've had to verify. My feeling is that as long as the rules make sense, keep with them.

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Pear and Nariom like this
Lorraine, France

Another runner and mod showed up, there is hope! Yeah the loadings question needs some work. He pointed out that it may change routing as it would allow for longer RT routes even if they are faster without loads, which may defeat the purpose. I was thinking about making an autosplitter ive been there before, there is no way I'm manualy retiming runs ;p

Pear likes this