Feedback thread
9 years ago
France

I have a few concerns about how co-op runs can be deleted by any player involved in them.

Very recently in a leaderboard that I moderate (PAYDAY 2), a user deleted an IL WR run he was part of without the consent of his other team mates, so that the new WR would be another slower run he did with another team. As the user in question also happened to be a mod for the game, I took the responsibility of (at least temporarily) demoting him from his role. However, as current site features stand, he was completely in his right to remove that run on the behalf of everybody else.

Which brings me to my point: what's protecting co-op runs from griefing, if team members start petty arguments years later and a runner wants to delete runs for revenge? Shouldn't there be some sort of majority system instead?

Edited by the author 3 years ago
mynameisAndy, dripping and 3 others like this
Tennessee, USA

Hey there, I had a suggestion for the site, but it's pretty minor.

When viewing my profile on the site, it takes a very long time to load. Unsurprisingly, it's because I run over 400 games (yeah, I know...). However, the reason my profile takes so long to load is because it's trying to load ALL of my games at once. If it were to load, say, 25 games when you look at it, then as you scroll down it loads more, etc., then my profile wouldn't take forever to load. A few people I've talked to before said that my profile wouldn't load at all because of slow internet speeds, etc.

So I was just curious if there was a way to have profiles load some games when you click it, then as you scroll down more will load? For people like me who run hundreds of games, this might help viewing profiles like this faster/easier.

If you want to test your internet speed (lol), here's my profile: https://www.speedrun.com/user/smartalec24

mynameisAndy, afnannen136 and 2 others like this
Israel

@andypanther Wether if games like that "belong" to the site or not, it doesn't matter - game request rules that were added in time are not applied retroactively, and this game was requested about 3 years ago.

Gaming_64 and Osmosis_Jones like this
Switzerland

Why not? Things have changed, no reason to not clean up the site.

Antarctica

The site can’t just nuke entire LBs and all associated times. They’ve said before that they don’t want to do this as it wouldn’t be fair to all of those games that have established communities and boards.

Osmosis_Jones likes this
United States

I've recently posted a few ILs in twitch clips and they don't embed, just linking to the clip. Any way to make them auto embed similarly to other videos?

Israel

Minor idea: In the user profile info, split the "Runs" stat into "Full game runs" and "IL runs", because running ILs in any game can skew the total number upwards (especially if a game contains a high number of levels).

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Gaming_64, Oxknifer and 3 others like this
Israel

@rm Can you explain the last question?

As I understood, If you talk about why developers of a certain game can't (automatically) moderate the leaderboard of their game on the site, that's because there is no connection between the two. Game moderators are volunteers that are responsible for managing the leaderboards, categories and rules for speedrunning a game, and also verifying runs of other people. Of course, developers can moderate their game if they originally requested it to the site, or if they were added as moderators by the super-mod.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Gaming_64 likes this
Israel

I think the site rules and moderation rules pages should be more accessible. Right now you need to pass a series of unrelated pages just to get to them, if you don't remember the exact URL.

For example, to reach the general site rules ( https://www.speedrun.com/rules ), you need to: Enter All Games page --> Request Game --> enter the link to Moderation Rules --> enter the link to general site rules.

Edit: just found out that there is a link to those site rules in the "About" page, but the links are so small and I never noticed them before.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Gaming_64 and Quivico like this
United States

Is there a way I can look at games from multiple consoles instead of just picking one? I feel like there use to be.

Antarctica

I think automatic emojis are just awful; they should either be removed or tweaked to work better (like needing to surround them in : to generate like twitch does in their chat) so they don't get inserted into various places in posts/guides.

It's annoying to change wording in any guides I post to avoid emojis like the ones created by "8)" or "bop". If it's too hard to change site wide then at least make the change for the Guides section of any LBs as I'm sure anyone actually posting a real guide won't want emojis littered through it.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Osmosis_Jones, Symystery and 4 others like this
Texas, USA

@Liv Sorting by runs with video proof on leaderboards (not just profile) would be a nice feature. It would be great to work on that feature alongside this feature: https://www.speedrun.com/the_site/thread/g79jt/60#29591

A user submitting a run could then click a checkbox regarding whether the proof link is a video, image, or link to a non-embedding video. Default checked would be video.

I think you ought to define proof a bit more. You just mean video proof, right?

Edit 10/28/2022: Thanks to the ELO team for allowing filtering by video and making an icon for runs that don't have a video!

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Quivico likes this
Israel

Add "total games played" and "total categories played" stats to the user profile info page. You can theoretically see those in the https://www.speedrun.com/users page, but this page is quite useless. You can't search for a specific username; and loading new info is so slow there, so only the info of the top 50-100 users can be seen easily. Alternatively, let us search for users in the users page.

Also, maybe add "ranking" in the users page? so users can know where they stand in relation to others, in terms of total games/categories played.

Gaming_64, Osmosis_Jones and 4 others like this
Netherlands

Custom favicon for the social 'website'.

Quivico likes this
Cumbria, England

It would be great to have a subforum for mods/supermods only: it might be a useful way to exchange info/support in cases where someone needs help and wants to avoid public posting as well as providing a useful repository of case histories/best practice for newer mods to go through.

Texas, USA

Mods, mods, and more mods!

Let me speak to you a bit about moderation clutter.

Being a moderator is a volunteer responsibility on this website. I enjoyed taking on moderator for about 75 games, and when life changed a bit, I decided to cut it down to 25-ish and hand-picked moderators to carry on the job for me. Then, I stepped down as mod from those other 50 games.

When mods do not step down or are not automatically pulled from their position, it leads to moderation clutter. For instance, Super Mario Sunshine has 11 moderators, which might make sense for 58 active players, but I bet not all of those mods are active -- for instance, @zelpikukirby has not been online for 5 months. Another example is with Color Switch, which has 7 moderators. Only 3 of those mods have been online in the past 4 weeks, so naturally, the three who are active could keep being mods. However, the game only has 2 active players. Are three mods even necessary?

I'd like to suggest a better way to handle stepping down as a mod and mod transfering.

  • At the very least, mods inactive for several weeks should be automatically stripped of moderatorship. Perhaps a notification could be sent before the final week as a warning: "Notice: Your moderator status on (name of game) will be removed if you remain inactive for one more week." The amount of weeks is up to the site mods to decide. I'd say 4-6 weeks is fair.
  • If a mod loses their mod status and there are zero mods left on a game, let's not use this massive, unweildy thread to replace them. Perhaps we could make a "Back-up mod" bank of volunteer users willing to step into the roles of inactive mods.
  • Beyond that, if a mod is active, but they do not actively verify runs and others seem to be doing all the work, they should not be a mod. This most likely happens on leaderboards with three or more moderators. It seems obvious to nix the role of the inactive mod, but in practice, this is not done and it leads to moderation clutter. Asking someone to step down is awkward, ya know? I have no suggestions on this particular point, but felt it should be brought up and maybe someone can suggest a change to how we currently do this (which you can refer to in the massive, unweildy thread)

The role of a mod is multi-faceted and, therefore, stripping anyone of the role can lead to some discontent. However, if it is made clear to moderators that they must remain active in order to keep their status as a mod, I believe implementing an automatic system for filtering out inactive mods is worth it. Imagine all the time you'll save site mods from that god-awful "moderation request" page...

Cheers! :))

Edited by the author 3 years ago
XandoToaster and Th3on3C like this
Canada

[quote=Oxknifer]mods inactive for several weeks should be automatically stripped of moderatorship[/quote]

3 months is where we draw the line for completely inactive, I wouldn't want to do anything less than that. I'm not entirely against the idea of automated removal, but there are some technical issues around things like email notifications that we need to resolve before we ever consider anything like this. Also worth noting, this would mean significantly more games would have no moderators, and I have some concerns about increased mod-sniping since it's relatively easy to pull a list of games with no moderators.

[quote=Oxknifer]If a mod loses their mod status and there are zero mods left on a game, let's not use this massive, unweildy thread to replace them. Perhaps we could make a "Back-up mod" bank of volunteer users willing to step into the roles of inactive mods.[/quote]

The thread sucks and we need a better system for that, sure, but this is just silly. If the game only has one super mod, anybody who should be a "backup mod" should probably already be listed as at least a Verifier anyway. And how are you expecting these "backup mods" to be chosen in the first place? Only thing I can think of is that they'd be chosen by the previous super mods, but if they couldn't be bothered to appoint new moderators before stepping down, I don't think they would bother to ever assign any "backup mods" either.

[quote=Oxknifer]Beyond that, if a mod is active, but they do not actively verify runs and others seem to be doing all the work, they should not be a mod[/quote]

On paper this sounds reasonable, but in practice globally enforcing this as a hard requirement is a terrible idea. Just to list a few reasons:

  • "I've got some IRL stuff going on and won't be able to verify runs for a bit" too bad, speedrun.com says you're a bad moderator, buh bye.
  • Many games appoint one or two mods who's primary roles are not run verification.
  • Having more mods than you strictly need under normal circumstances is a good thing, so if you get a lot more runs than usual or some of the mods get busy (or go completely AWOL) everything still gets handled smoothly.
  • If you haven't verified a run in a while (either because you're maliciously lazy, or you just genuinely haven't had a chance to), this incentivizes you hit the "Verify" button immediately when a run is submitted, without actually properly verifying it, in order to retain your mod status.
  • You can get around this relatively easily just by editing and then "re-verifying" any run that's already on the board, or submitting a fake run, "verifying" it, and then deleting it (we can check for this stuff, but this all just further complicates everything).

I understand where you're coming from with this, and there's definitely a bit of a gap with how we handle cases of active people who aren't really doing anything as a moderator and we definitely need to figure something out there, but every mod team is different and operates differently, so enforcing a hard requirement here (especially with an automated system) is highly problematic.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
XeroGoFast and Oxknifer like this
Texas, USA

I agree with your points, Shiken. This was more of a "putting it out there" for discussion rather than a suggestion to implement, especially the comment about non-verifying mods. It is a really tough issue because, yes, many non-verifying mods contribute in other ways.

To clarify, back-up mods for zero-mod games would be a group of 25-50 exceptional srcom mods who are willing to mod any game, personally selected by site staff (or who have submitted an application). It would not be per game. More of a catch-all.

Edit: Yikes, it's not that bad of an idea. Imagine a web-game becomes zero-mod. Hey, @Jumpyluff (theoretically) volunteered to step up for web games? Cool, he can mod in the interim and help look for an active player who might want to take his place.

Also, I'm going to make a point here. "Yeah, no" is not constructive criticism and does not invite conversation. This is a feedback forum, not a shut down feedback forum. It doesn't happen as often as it used to here, but when it does, it comes off as annoying, cold, and uninviting. Sending this sort of illogical fallacy or this one as a response to anything detracts from a positive forum environment and really reminds me of the old srcom days when nobody respected anybody on here. Remember that site mods set the tone for all users, so positive constructive criticism is always the way to go.

I'll just link some other examples of really bad responses I've seen on this thread: [redacted]

Just a pet peeve of mine.

Edited by ShikenNuggets 3 years ago
Canada

[quote=Oxknifer]back-up mods for zero-mod games would be a group of 25-50 exceptional srcom mods who are willing to mod any game[/quote]

Yeah, no.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Lonne likes this