You legitimately wrote down in your response to the "confusion" here "The only valid purpose I can see is for database/history/archive/statistics purposes" over hobby runs and newcomer runs.

You wrote down the exact purpose of sites like this and why they exist.

You wrote that down, knowing full well what that means and why.

And yet you and your team still went through with this instead of rethinking your decisions, thinking that this will "better" the board and make it more "competitive".

Fun fact: It doesn't. It puts people off from running when you act this strict. It scares away newcomers. It can cause the game you run the board for to go closer to dead status in terms of activity. It also makes your board, your community and the entire mod team look bad to everyone's eyes, both the speedrunning community and the general audience. It does the opposite of encouraging competitiveness.

You do not deserve to run these boards if this is the kind of elitist attitude you wish to bring to the wider community of speedrunning. Please reconsider as soon as possible and retract this change, especially since this goes against the site's guidelines.

Ya know, I never thought I’d see the day when SRC moderators perform the equivalent of “political suicide” on a leaderboard, but here we are…

I'm just completely in awe of this decision. If I were a top runner of a game that cares as much about their ranking as you seem to, I'd rather see MORE people on the list of the game's runners, not less.

Not only that, but imagine if every game did this. Those awesome videos detailing a game's speedrun history couldn't exist. They rely HEAVILY on SRC listing all historical runs of a game that weren't removed or "unverified." You're basically erasing the history of your game's speedrun scene with your elitist attitude.

Get more mods if the current mods can't keep up with the run submissions. You don't get to tell people they "need to learn strats."
Why are you banishing the runners that are having fun and not looking to beat WR?

Not a runner of Resident Evil 4, but I've been speedrunning in general since 2012 and have started many leaderboards myself.

Just wanted to chime in and say if I decided to try out running Resident Evil 4 right now and saw the "time limit" rule, I would change my mind and not even bother.

The point of any speed game community beyond the growth of understanding of the game, is the growth of the community and bringing in new runners and competitors of ALL levels. A rule like this is a deterrent for anybody wanting to get involved, let alone runners with disabilities that can't achieve the BS "par time" you've set.

I get the idea behind this but deleting existing already verified runs is idiotic at best and denying more casual runners the ability to participate meaningfully isn't much better, just because someone can't get anywhere near the top doesn't mean they have nothing to bring to the game.
I also get not wanting to add more mods because you don't know how trustworthy they are, however you have this nifty thing called verifiers that have very limited powers and can be easily overruled by mods / supermods, why not, instead of going with the nuclear option, have a set of verifiers that are pretty much just there to handle the "bad" runs and require approval by actual mods for runs that meet your "standards", I get not wanting to appear like your moderation standards vary depending on how fast the run is but I don't think any but the smallest leaderboard actually give the same amount of attention to top tier runs and bottom of the leaderboard runs and I don't think any runner is under the impression that they are given the same attention either.

I'm sure there's been enough feedback as it is, but I'm someone who's been wanting to get into speedrunning but hasn't had the time to do much yet

However, this was always the concern I had from getting involved in such a dedicated community and it holds me back from pursuing it further because I'm afraid of toxicity and elitism like I see in several gaming spheres

All this is doing is pushing me further away from speedrunning as a whole, as much as it seems like it could be fun to get involved

Moderators are not board dictators. Moderators will sometimes need to make decisions people don't like, but moderating isn't about YOU. This is just a selfish, elitist choice. "We don't like seeing this on the board." This is the take from someone who shouldn't be a moderator. As someone who has been moderating RE games for 4 years now, this is what moderating is like sometimes. You're right in that people have no respect for mods. People submit every PB, it sucks when you have 5 runs in the queue from one person in the span of a day or two, but you can handle this by looking at the fastest run, then just fly through the slower runs since they're obsolete anyway. This choice is a regression and disgrace on the RE community, and a slap in the face to those of us who have tried to make it a welcoming place to everyone. I thought we were past the days of RE mods power tripping, but I guess not.

this is an abominable decision. i hope either you reverse this quick-like or you get thrown out as moderators by your community. speedrun leaderboards are not to be run by fiat.

I am a moderator for several games, one that has hundreds of runs. This isn't a good look. Its like you only want certain runs on the boards. I read over the rules as well. It's a long read. Way too over the top IMO. Speedrunning is inclusive to all. Not everyone will put up a top time. Not everyone has the ability to put up a top time. Listing older runs shows landmarks and motivation. Even the current record holder had a time that was around the run you removed at one point. No one starts out at the top. You had a chance to quickly fix this mistake and literally doubled down on it. You created publicity doing this in a very negative way. No one new will want to run the game because of this. I know i would never want to put a time up on this board knowing what went down. Fix this mess. Grow up please. Elite behavior does not belong in our hobby.

The rule has been removed and all rejected runs have been re-verified. On top of that, offtopic, clearly rude and/or jokey replies on this post have been deleted. This post will remain locked for a while until things calm down.

Any new threads further discussing this will be deleted, enough has been said and a conclusion was reached.