The japanese version features a shorter jump height which leads to different strats, as well as different amount of lag. Personally if I was more active as a runner I'd be more opposed to separate categories since it seems like a textbook case of where a region column makes sense, but multiple people in the community who are more active than I am would prefer to have it this way.

This is a long way to say it's that way because that's what the community as of late prefers.

I'm fine with the changes as long as every run where this ruleset qualifies is retimed to ensure fairness across the leaderboard.

I understand your concern, it is still in the queue. I personally have a much easier time verifying SNES runs vs FDS runs due to me running those categories significantly more, so I generally get to those runs first when I find time to moderate. Your run will be verified soon enough, either by me or another mod. Please continue to have patience.

Hello All,

7H3 has recently been banned for systematically stealing other's content and passing it off as their own. I personally do not know whether the runs submitted here are stolen or original content, as I was unable to find any other speedruns mirroring what was submitted by 7H3, but given their rampant abuse of trust towards other racing communities, I cannot in good faith give them the benefit of the doubt. They have been permanently barred from submission.

On the above discussion about having at least three active moderators, I agree that it is highly game dependent, but I don't think it should be removed. Having only one moderator is really the issue here (i.e. having all your eggs in one basket). Since "should aim" is different than "must have", it looks like it is more about normalizing the behavior, which is important on the site.

Perhaps it could be changed to one of the following:

"Leaderboards should aim to have multiple active moderators if qualified people are available."

or

"Leaderboards should aim to have multiple active moderators, aiming for 3 or more if qualified people are available."

I'm not sure how many games are large enough for this to actually be a useful feature, but if there was a way to see active players vs category, not just in a game overall, I think that'd be useful, especially when deciding on what to run in a new speedgame.

I like the sentiment of thanking moderators for what they do, but I don't really like this approach.

The biggest thing of note is attaching value to a moderator based on the quantifiable amount of verified runs they have in the past X amount of days is a bit unhealthy and will inevitably lead to rushed verifications and added pressure on what at the end of the day is a volunteer position. This is how you get people burned out and have people talk about horror stories from being on the moderation team. Being a moderator generally just takes time for very little reward, and adding stress of monthly goals/quotas is not a good way to run a community.

The second thing I want to talk about is the fact that verification of runs, while one of the most important duties as a moderator, is not the only thing moderators do. Specifically for SMB1/2J, there is pretty significant discussion on a variety of topics pertinent to the community and the leaderboards in particular discussed between us, despite this information not being prominent to those on the outside. It really is a thankless job in this regard in that the mod team spends significant time debilitating issues due to their passion for the game without their efforts being noticed. I can tell you of participation between many of the people with low or zero verified runs on these charts, showing heavy involvement elsewhere. The implication of thanking moderators who specifically verify runs implies that other moderators are not deserving of thanks.

I also want to stress again that this is a volunteer position. People's involvement ebbs and flows, however that doesn't mean they are undeserving of a spot on the board. Sure, if you were to go back a full year and see zero verifications, than there may be some reevaluation of whether or not that person is truly interested in being a moderator, but overall the approach shouldn't be to attack those who aren't verifying but to look at the problem as a reason to add more moderators to the team. As far as I can tell, there are no disadvantages as to leaving people on who don't necessarily have time right now to verify runs, as those who aren't interested in moderating the community should be leaving by their own volition, as we've already seen with i_o_l. There's also the point that looking at the past 60 days invalidates what has been a significant amount of work in the recent past. I know Roopert has verified hundreds of runs, but these graphs make it seem like he is barely involved. There are also the Category Extensions boards that are verified by the same moderators, which may change how the graphs even look.

Really again, I just have an issue with the initial approach of this. I feel like it could have just been said that the wait time is getting larger and we need to add more moderators, but instead this comes off as a passive aggressive attack on the mod team besides to the few that have verified runs as of late. If I greatly misinterpreted the intention of this post, I apologize, just something irked me about it.

The recent reminder on the SMB1 forum aptly applies to SMB2J as well. To copy the text of Tecate's forum post:

"Hi all,

Due to a rash of submissions lately that did not show a reset to the title screen prior to the run, we're posting this reminder to please show the reset to the title screen in your run submissions. If there is no reset to the title screen, we'll simply reject the run with a note to re-submit with the reset to the title screen shown.

This is just one of many mechanisms and rules we have in place to make sure all runs are valid.

Thanks!"

Minor feature request, but allowing non-supermod moderators to see audit logs for a leaderboard would be nice. I feel if someone is elevated to moderator, they should be able to see what is happening in a leaderboard so I don't know why it is locked to a higher level.

There is a lot of discussion of bugs on the site both in the thread on this forum and in the discord for speedrun.com . I like the discussion that has been had in both locations, but it is often hard to track what has and hasn't been reported. Having something as simple as a google form could do wonders for bug tracking.

An example I like to point to is the bug tracker Dotsarecool uses for the SMW Practice cart. Here is the form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfWDnfrobLrJ5w83F_0VaiGZjWNsvcwesrFnFX2xMs_Z344jA/viewform Here are the responses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CfIgGdY0Z74KoVm7Y55PqhbpBRxWx8_pPxF2bGoGtRs/edit#gid=1461405420

Obviously it would have to be tweaked to meet the needs of the site, but it'll allow for a bunch of things, such as:

1. More useful information up front. Having requirements such as browser in the form will allow for conversations to skip the same questions asked for nearly every bug report.
2. Give users information on whether or not the bug they are experience is experiences by others.
3. Add extra transparency in showing what the status is of a bug (even if it is just in a queue somewhere, being stored in a readable format is better than ignored and buried under 4 pages of a forum post).
4. Help keep track of bugs reported on multiple platforms.

Just a thought I had.

So Mario ROM hacks are actually part of the Mario series, however they are given the ROM Hack game type. You can see a list of previously approved leaderboards that follow this pattern here: https://www.speedrun.com/mario#gametype=1&or_gametype=on&not_gametype=off&sorting=release&direction_sort=off . I'd recommend using the request game feature under the mario series and emphasizing it is a hack during the submission process.

There is a corresponding thread on the forums for SMB1 as well.

Again going back to the precedence example, in a very similarly timed game SMB1, there is precedence to use the fastest official version of the game. VC rereleases and emulators are allowed, however in the case of a lower framerate/disadvantage from using these platforms, these differences are just chalked up to be a disadvantage of not using the fastest version of the game. This is true for the all-stars version of the game as well, as the Japanese version of the game is faster due to faster flagpoles, in which despite a measurable discrepancy we do not retime for those who use the US Cart.

In the case of emulators however, unofficial emulators (i.e. non-VC) generally are banned in the Mario community and speedrunning communities at large when they become faster than the official version of the game. That might be my perception and the reasoning could very well be due to the other inaccuracies on those emulators, but it makes sense to me as the emulators that are allowed coincidentally either are accurate to the original hardware or slightly slower. On the opposite side, other games where the virtual console release or playing it past its initial platform is actually faster (e.g. Paper Mario WiiU VC and Wii for Super Mario Sunshine), we often see runners use said version of the game meaning using the official fastest version of the game even if it isn't the original hardware for competitive advantage isn't even that unheard of, but that is a separate argument.

Going back to SMB2J as precedence, I think that retiming as opposed to just using the fastest version outright makes sense, as an advantage in using unofficial hardware in the form of flashcarts with a ROM isn't in the previously established spirit of allowing said platforms (i.e. for convenience rather than an advantage), and given that games on the FDS are a bit of a special case in speedrunning as a whole, I don't think that using this timing method exclusive with the FDS version and not retiming for the US vs Japanese version is problematic.

To expand on the point I was trying to make with SMW and SMB3, regardless of actual gameplay differences the idea of using the same board is consistent with the idea of not retiming runs done on the US cart. I get that the argument you are tying to make is that the advantages in one platform negate the disadvantages to an extent that this should be viewed as a trade-off in consistency vs time-loss and therefore not be adjusted, but in other 2D Mario runs, there is definitely precedent in straight-up conforming that a version of the game is better but not readjusting the time. In SMW, besides two powerups being present in the US release, neither of which present an advantage in speedrunning (a marginal case can be made for the cape in VD1 being advantageous for low-level runners in certain categories), the J-version is seen as strictly superior (https://smwspeedruns.com/Version_Differences#J_Version_Superiorities). Despite this, versions are not retimed, for what I assume is the ease of playing the Japanese cart on SNES hardware. I've also talked about the example of SMB1 All-Stars US vs J. I probably shouldn't have used SMB3 in my original example, but even then there is a clear advantage for certain platforms using the link you stated, with the version ranking being listed on that document. I highly doubt that a unified leaderboard depresses turnout for the game in spite of this. If anything, it just gears people towards using certain platforms.

If the concern really is putting people at a disadvantage and therefore depressing interest in the run due to having to play on a specific version at the top level, I really think that concern is overblown. The differences between the All-Stars versions amounts to less than two seconds, in a category that has more time-save than that even in the top time of the game. If someone is worried about being able to initially compete due to their version of the game, than that person most likely didn't have the motivation to start running it in the first place. This is coupled with the fact that the Japanese cart for the game is incredibly cheap and the version differences only affect one category. In many games, including Lost Levels, I've seen people originally start on the US cartridge and transition over to the Japanese cart when they wanted to "upgrade" their gameplay in order to become more competitive.

On the other hand, retiming rules I've seen work the opposite way of what you are proposing. Oftentimes, not accepting the time as-is is confusing and having to do so may be a demotivating factor in getting times on the leaderboard. The fact that a beginning runner may not have a propensity to look at the rules in the first place also points to not retiming the inferior versions being pretty fruitless, as given the propensity to use the fastest version of the game across nearly the entire site, the assumption of losing time to regional differences initially may be the assumption from the player.

If the concern is primarily from encouraging consistency across FDS to Lost Levels from a timing perspective, I think this concern is also overblown. At least in my opinion the runs and communities are pretty different, so cross-platform interest is less important than consistency from platform to platform (i.e. SNES to SNES). That's also just my opinion.

Unsure if this is too similar to Any% D-4 (technically it is a subset), but Any% D-4 No S+Q could be a fun category to have on here.

For the second point, I've never considered it to make sense.

There is precedent from the speedrunning community at large to use the fastest version. There is also precedent just in the lens of Mario speedrunning with SMW and SMB3.

In SMW, running 96 on a US cart is sacrificing 18 seconds of free timesave with no adjustments made. In SMB3 they are all on the same board, even including the SNES versions in the same leaderboard (this doesn't work for Lost Levels, it just shows that there shouldn't be adjustments based on version).

Is this a speedrunning tournament or just a head to head tournament based on song score?

At least according to the affiliate agreement: https://www.twitch.tv/p/legal/affiliate-agreement/

Specifically the section "During the Exclusivity Period of any Live Twitch Content, you will not, nor permit or authorize any third party to, broadcast, stream, distribute, exhibit and otherwise make available such Live Twitch Content in any manner. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you have the right to make any Live Twitch Content available, during the Exclusivity Period, solely via the Twitch Services." expands on the exclusivity of streaming content.

For further clarification, it is talked about in the Affiliate FAQ: https://help.twitch.tv/customer/en/portal/articles/2798445-twitch-affiliate-program-faq

"The exclusivity clause does not otherwise restrict Affiliates from using other streaming platforms to do live streaming. For instance, an Affiliate is permitted to start a stream on Twitch and, after ending that stream, immediately start a new, separate stream on another platform -- assuming the Affiliate is not also using Twitch to broadcast that same content at the same time."

The last sentence outlines specifically that you cannot use Twitch to broadcast at the same time as you are on another platform.

Just a minor game theme suggestion:

Having the ability to keep the default background would be nice. Unless there are some settings I'm unaware of, changing the logo/favicon/trophies of a game will force it to use either a solid color background or one you upload yourself, rather than the nice greyscale one present throughout the site as seen here:

There is a workaround of just uploading that background image again, but it doesn't seem too hard to implement. Just something to keep in mind.

Something that hasn't been mentioned (which admittedly is easy to find if someone looked at the site) is that this tournament will be streamed on Mixer. It isn't a requirement that you stream on the service, but the main restream will be on Mixer. This is directly at odds with Twitch's exclusivity clause for affiliates/partners (in that content broadcast on Twitch cannot be on other services for at least 24 hours), so bear in mind some of the complications this may cause.

Hey,

If you don't know me, I'm a mod of Mario's Early Years: Preschool Frun. I made an educational Mario game speedrunning discord (since I doubt a discord could become active based on this game alone).

Invite can be found here (or in the sidebar of the game): https://discord.gg/KdQZFUc

I know the community isn't super active currently, but this can be a good place to discuss things in a matter that they are actually dealt with (forums on SRC are often a bad medium of discussion). Sorry if this seems spammy/self-promoting, I'm not trying to make it seem that way.