IL removed / what's going on?
4 years ago
Czech Republic

Hey. I'm not a Doom runner, but still, I feel like there's something wrong going on in this game and I wonder how it's even possible that this is happening on speedrun.com.

Ultimate Doom has been one of the games that I would like to run at some point, and as likely most speedrun.com users, I'd like to track my times here. That is no longer possible, because it has essentially been removed from speedrun.com. The reasoning behind the removal of IL (from Tezur0's post) was this and it feels mostly flawed:

--- Reasoning ---

  1. The speedrun.com boards are incomplete
  • Example picked at random: E1M4 Max has 2 entries on speedrun.com, but 36 on dsda

You can complete the leaderboards (unless the players explicitly ask you not to). Users who don't wish to use speedrun.com shouldn't be affecting the existence of the leaderborards on speedrun.com. There are reasons why people choose to use this website and there are reasons why people choose not to use this website. Still, I believe speedrun.com expect to be able to submit runs of a game they wanna run, if they find a game and run it, but find out they can't submit runs, what's the point of it being on speedrun.com?

  1. Their existence leads to confusion. There is an expectation that they are the source of truth when it comes to doom speedrunning. As mentioned above, this is not true.

speedrun.com has never claimed to be the ultimate source of truth. People can explicitly ask to get their runs removed (and moderators must do so), even if they held a world record. Just that rule alone proves that speedrun.com can lack data. That doesn't mean it's wrong. DSDA is not the ultimate source of truth either, it is not complete and never will be complete, that's impossible to achieve.

  1. Authenticity - doom speedrunning has various important requirements to prove the authenticity of runs. Among them, using compatible source ports and recording demos. These are fundamental in the community and the speedrun.com boards aren't really set up to serve this purpose.

I think moderators should be able to deal with this stuff. If your requirements on verifying runs are so high that you can't provide the proof in a speedrun.com submission, those requirements should either be changed or you shouldn't act like you own the leaderboard. AFAIK, everything you can provide on DSDA can be done on speedrun.com.

  1. It's a poor investment to expend lots of effort maintaining a board that is actually a mirror of another board, but simultaneously only a tiny subset.

It's kind of a red flag for a moderator to say this. You should expect having to invest into moderation of a game here, otherwise what's the point of moderating it? (and I don't want to sound rude, I don't expect every moderator to spend every day here, but you shouldn't be avoiding moderation via these methods) It might be a tiny subset, but it might be a subset of people who WANT to have their runs tracked on speedrun.com, but you remove all of their runs. Some of these runners might be proud of having their runs here, be it world records or just personal records, but those were not just a few runs, and you shouldn't be punishing these people just because some other people don't use speedrun.com.

  1. The speedrun.com boards are missing lots of relevant categories (as a necessary result of 4)

I might be misunderstanding this, but I don't see how this can't be fixed. Anyway not really getting what you mean here.

--- Summary ---

  1. The speedrun.com page is nice for casual players or as a landing page for people coming in from google or elsewhere on the site, but not really the place for serious competition.

Well first of all, you can make it a place for serious competition, there's no reason why this wouldn't be possible. But even if you couldn't, just as you are implying, it's nice for casual players. So casual players should be denied of personal tracking? Obviously they shouldn't, and they shouldn't be expected to submit to an external website.

  1. Runners interested in working on ILs would be best served by joining the doom speedrunning community proper, either in the discord or on the doomworld forums.

That's very subjective. Again, some people just want to do their stuff on speedrun.com and that's it. They don't want to feel obligated to join a Discord server or some external forums. They can just play their game, have fun and eventually submit something when they're happy with their time.

My final thoughts and issues with this:

The website:

Expecting people to use an external website submit runs is crazy, let alone thinking they want to use email to submit runs. Quality and design of the website follows very old standards, you can't possibly think people want to use it, there's just no other option.

Evading / breaking rules:

Referring to a different leaderboard is a way to easily evade many rules and I don't think that's okay. Moderation rules say that you don't own the leaderboard, this kind of workaround makes you own the leaderboard, you can do whatever you want with it.

"The users moderating a game should represent the consensus of the players of the game" - This is clearly not happening. Many players probably don't even know, but they can't possibly be happy that their runs suddenly disappeared from speedrun.com, neither can they be happy that they now have to use an external website that's so uncomfortable to use / view.

"Do not list a player's runs on a leaderboard if they explicitly do not want it listed." and other rules that give players the option to not be listed are easily evaded. Because you have a website where anyone can submit your runs and you can't possibly protect yourself. I don't think it's okay to force people to use such leaderboards that have too different rules from speedrun.com's rules.

People who just want to watch:

You no longer can! If you wanted to see a specific level, you could easily open it in ILs and you'd see the video, if it was there. Not everyone has to use speedrun.com to submit runs, they can just search runs and watch them. And surely, not all games have to require a video, but most players will still submit with a video, just in general. Now you have to literally buy the game to be able to watch someone's run.

I feel like this decision was very detached from the community, at least when it comes to speedrun.com users and I don't think you are choosing the right solution.

Russia

there's one thread on this already - https://www.speedrun.com/doom1/thread/mxkas , where everything was said and extra conclusion was made by me not so long ago No need to create extra threads, while I do appreciate your effort going extra mile creating this wall of text, this topic is way more complicated than you might be seeing it.

Czech Republic

The topic you are linking is about ILs. I'm extending that to failing to follow moderation rules, which is kinda a big deal and I didn't want to mix the thread too much, not everything was said. And surely, it might be a complicated issue (although implying that I'm seeing it too simply is a bit strange to me, you could as well explain it properly instead of just throwing "too complicated, not worth to put my time in it" etc.).

It took 4 months to even post your conclusion, and then you still say that you might do something about it or you might just ignore it, even though you admit that it completely killed Doom on speedrun.com.

You must know that it's not a community decision - and your community are not only the runners. You couldn't have asked everyone, so removing over 300 IL runs definitely doesn't sound like a decision people would agree on. And apparently, they don't.

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not accusing you of being a bad moderator or anything, I don't want you to be kicked out of the moderation or anything like that! I'm just trying to inform you that this to me doesn't seem to comply with the rules.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
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Latest news
New moderation for Classic Doom/Changes coming soon

Hey everyone so I'm gonna make this short because I have to go to work shortly.

I was made a moderator for the Classic Doom's here on SRC, and there's going to be changes.

  1. All IL's/Episode run categories are going to be removed

This is because DSDA exists. There's no logical reason for I

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