That's exactly my predicament Shiken. I know I have the best known time with a video, but I don't feel like I have the record. The WR is about a minute ahead of me, and I could see how there could be more optimal paths than what I took to save the minute, so it's not like I wanna call cheating or anything. I am mildly skeptical about the fact that the WR was done on emulator while mine is on original hardware, so there may be some load time shenanigans, but I can't tell that w/o video. Either way I would much rather push to beat that time, than just claim mine as the best time due to the lacking video.

That's my main concern with no video. When a run disappears it does make it seem somewhat shady, in that you are may be trying to hide something. I think what may be best in situations like this, is maybe set some kind of community rules within each game that say like "Hey, if your proof goes missing, you have X amount of time to re-upload or something before it is removed. Mods will notify you a two weeks before removal from leaderboards." This way it is clear and upfront when you submit your time, but also give runners (even ones who may have left the scene only to find youtube decided to delete their video) a chance to fix the record and keep their spot on the boards.

Another aspect I think is worth thinking about is it can very game by game (community by community) as how big / active it is can play a role. If someone set a record in say....OoT in 2013 and by the 2015 it's been removed from youtube or wherever, the community is large and likely many people saw it and can vouch for it.

In another case, let's take the game that got me curious about this in the first place, Tonka: Rescue Patrol on gamecube. Very small community, pretty inactive. Shoot, I only really decide to try to run it and go for WR just cus I thought it may be a silly enjoyable thing to do for a little bit. In cases like this where the game doesn't have a big scene in terms of speed runs, other than when it was first verified, there are likely few people who can come out to say "Yea, it was there, run was legit etc." The run being verified in the first place does hold a decent amount of weight, but sketchy runs have made it into boards in the past, and honestly likely still do until someone notices something odd.

I think from what I've seen in the thread so far, there is some merit to the "No Vid, No Did" mentality. Not having a video does make it hard to prove the record is legit to people who may come into the game later, people can't watch the video to see what strats the runner used or that they themselves could use in a run, and so on. I also see how just saying anything that loses a video should be removed can be problematic, cus runs that were legit could be removed if youtube or twitch decides it is having a bad day. It seems there is no easy answer to this, and I didn't expect there to be, but it is interesting to see the thought process behind the thinking.

Edit: I do want to be clear that by no means do I think the run that currently holds WR in the Tonka game was cheated or anything like that. I only bring up cheating as it is something that someone potentially could get away with if they hid it in their run well enough (via splicing or some other method) and if the video is removed later, no one would have any way to notice the cheat in the future. It is the main danger I see of keeping records that no longer have video evidence.

That seems pretty reasonable. A runner coming outta the blue with a WR with no prior interaction with anyone does seem suspect if the video disappears. It does also make sense that if you can see a progression it likely was legitimate, but somehow the video got deleted either by an expired twitch vod or something happening to the owners YT channel.

One of my other concerns is it does make it hard to also double-check to make sure that the original run wasn't cheated or had some advantage (say emulator vs. original hardware).

There's a lot to consider, so I'm glad to see your input! I'm not trying to enact any sweeping changes, this has just been something I've been curious about since the situation came up.

I was curious the community's opinion of this. Should WRs with no video evidence still be kept on the ranking boards? I ran into this in a game I was running (very, very small, inactive community, ran it for lols) and got a second place time on the boards using the strats I could find through my playthroughs. Seeing the WR was ahead of me by a minute, I was curious as to what strategies they utilized that I wasn't, and could implement them into my runs. When I went to check the video, it was either made private or deleted by the runner (link has given me both responses) and I was wondering what the community thought about this subject?

I am not making this post to try and force my way into the #1 spot, as the run was validated at some point in time, and it was faster than mine, so they deserve the spot, but it is a bit of an interesting situation and was curious as to what the community thought on the matter. Thanks!