Continuation of Roundtable Discussion

RoboSparkle

2012-11-28 05:12:48 pm

Magical. Flying. Bathtub

Quote from PJ:

Change of topic.

RBY, I love your mustache. Let's be friends.

Is there a pic of this? I wanna see the tache!

PJ

2012-11-28 05:15:38 pm

Is PJ

Why look for a pic when you can have a video? Just go watch SGDQ footage.

Riskbreaker Y

2012-11-28 05:18:19 pm

LOL. I don't get offended easily, but you're right. No need to get involved in a food fight I didn't start. I think you're swell too Poxnor. And thanks again for the coffee in Utah.

PJ: We can be homies.

Carcinogen

2012-11-28 05:26:10 pm

I wanna be homies with people too, because that's kind-of the point of joining any community. If I've done anything to irk anyone about something, feel free to PM me about it on Forum and IRC and we can discuss it.

Brossentia

2012-11-28 05:38:55 pm

No pain, no gain

Since this all seems like it's coming to an end of this discussion (or, at least, a pause), I'll throw out a few suggestions that might bridge people's ideas together.

1. The division between SRL and SDA is real to some point, but it's not something sanctioned by either groups. In general, the staff of both want to work together, but individuals in each may be fighting for some sort of elitism. There's not a really good way to quell any of this. However, those who wish to try to do some healing might start trying to help each other out. When you see a runner of the same game, go and cheer for them! If they want suggestions, feel free to offer them. Work individually to build a community.

2. If you have problems with someone from another community, it may be a good idea to talk to them directly. Even if it's in the best of interest, talking about someone behind their back can cause even more division. You might see that things can be resolved. If not, it's better to keep from drawing more division than to stir up controversy.

3. Popularity causes change. Because of this, long standing members here can act as an example for those entering the community. Most people will adopt to the environment -- if we're friendly, they'll try to be friendly. Just as mods act as examples on a chat, we all act as examples on the forums because of our time here.

4. Riskbreaker Y has the best moustache. Seriously. He looks like Freddie Mercury.

There really is no easy solution to all of this, and it requires individual attitudes to change. Not everyone will change, but f a majority does, this will make a huge difference. If anyone else has something to add to this summary, that'd be great.

Also, this thread taught me who Cosmo was. I feel stupid now.

Since this all seems like it's coming to an end of this discussion (or, at least, a pause), I'll throw out a few suggestions that might bridge people's ideas together.

1.  The division between SRL and SDA is real to some point, but it's not something sanctioned by either groups.  In general, the staff of both want to work together, but individuals in each may be fighting for some sort of elitism.  There's not a really good way to quell any of this.  However, those who wish to try to do some healing might start trying to help each other out.  When you see a runner of the same game, go and cheer for them!  If they want suggestions, feel free to offer them.  Work individually to build a community.

2.  If you have problems with someone from another community, it may be a good idea to talk to them directly.  Even if it's in the best of interest, talking about someone behind their back can cause even more division.  You might see that things can be resolved.  If not, it's better to keep from drawing more division than to stir up controversy.

3.  Popularity causes change.  Because of this, long standing members here can act as an example for those entering the community.  Most people will adopt to the environment -- if we're friendly, they'll try to be friendly.  Just as mods act as examples on a chat, we all act as examples on the forums because of our time here.

4.  Riskbreaker Y has the best moustache.  Seriously. He looks like Freddie Mercury.

There really is no easy solution to all of this, and it requires individual attitudes to change.  Not everyone will change, but f a majority does, this will make a huge difference.  If anyone else has something to add to this summary, that'd be great.

Also, this thread taught me who Cosmo was. I feel stupid now.

VorpalEdge

Edit history:

VorpalEdge: 2012-11-28 06:06:50 pm

VorpalEdge: 2012-11-28 06:03:03 pm

VorpalEdge: 2012-11-28 05:51:31 pm

VorpalEdge: 2012-11-28 05:43:06 pm

VorpalEdge: 2012-11-28 05:40:46 pm

2012-11-28 05:39:54 pm

welcome to the machine

SDA is not the place to talk about moderation issues at non-affiliated sites or marathons. If you want to talk to leaders of other sites, then go talk to them, instead of hoping they eventually read a post here.

Axel Ryman

2012-11-28 05:45:34 pm

We all scream for Eyes Cream

Quote from Brossentia:

Also, this thread taught me who Cosmo was. I feel stupid now.

You mean he's not a green fairy who goes around granting wishes for a 10 year old while married to a pink haired fairy named Wanda?

Poxnor

2012-11-28 05:49:09 pm

Moo! Flap! Hug!

Quote from Brossentia:

When you see a runner of the same game, go and cheer for them!

This. Many times over, this. I'm not saying it's some magic bullet that's going to somehow cure everything. But, I think that if, as individuals within the community, we made a positive effort to encourage and cheer on others who are running or learning to run games (especially new members to the community!), that could go a long way to helping with some of the "rot" and negativity that's starting to seep in. Positivity breeds positivity.

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2012-11-28 05:49:42 pm

2012-11-28 05:49:14 pm

INTJ

I'm sorry if I stirred up some negative discussion, that wasn't my idea

My point is simply: Keep in mind, if you are a person where people listen to you, that the crowd is likely to follow your example. I do not expect anyone in SDA/SRL/SMW/etc. to be ill-natured, but maybe sometimes a bit careless?

"edit:" I've though about it for a fairly long time now whether I also submit my second part or not. In the end I decided to do it... I hope it doesn't spawn any negative discussion :/

Poxnor

2012-11-28 06:06:05 pm

Moo! Flap! Hug!

I've thought long and hard about how to reply to Yagamoth's post.

Basically, I think there's some sage wisdom that should be heeded in those words. Now, I want to be abundantly clear: I have nothing but the utmost of respect for the staff at SDA. All of you are bloody amazing for all the awesome work you do for such a great community. But, perhaps, "careless" is the right word for the occasional uttered phrase. That a game is "stupid" or "terrible," or that one runner "raped" the record of another runner.

This observation is all just in-line with the observation that, as the community grows, perhaps the admins and other prominent members of the community need to make the conscious effort to be more positive to each other, even when it comes to the less-popular (i.e., not world-record SM64/OoT runs) accomplishments. I know the "Casual" board was meant to be part of that, but maybe let's take it just a touch farther (yay for cheering Smiley

) The positive attitude will spread, and quickly Smiley

I've thought long and hard about how to reply to Yagamoth's post.

Basically, I think there's some sage wisdom that should be heeded in those words. Now, I want to be abundantly clear: I have nothing but the utmost of respect for the staff at SDA. All of you are bloody amazing for all the awesome work you do for such a great community. But, perhaps, "careless" is the right word for the occasional uttered phrase. That a game is "stupid" or "terrible," or that one runner "raped" the record of another runner.

This observation is all just in-line with the observation that, as the community grows, perhaps the admins and other prominent members of the community need to make the conscious effort to be more positive to each other, even when it comes to the less-popular (i.e., not world-record SM64/OoT runs) accomplishments. I know the "Casual" board was meant to be part of that, but maybe let's take it just a touch farther (yay for cheering :) ) The positive attitude will spread, and quickly :)

CosmoWright

2012-11-28 09:44:24 pm

Quote from Poxnor:

I know the "Casual" board was meant to be part of that, but maybe let's take it just a touch farther (yay for cheering Smiley

) The positive attitude will spread, and quickly Smiley

Reminds me of https://twitter.com/congratsio -- a twitter bot that Cronikeys made for spreading the love

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-11-29 03:03:50 am

2012-11-29 02:59:44 am

Might be magic...

In nearly any kind of gaming community, there is going to be a large proportion of impressionable (and immature) teenagers. IMO the most effective thing that people can do is to set a good example. If people start to get mouthy, don't publicly start an argument on the forums - that will just encourage it. Send them a PM to say that kind of thing is not called for and try to get them to edit their post to tone it down a bit. Also try to avoid sounding like their parents Smiley

At any rate, the community usually figures out who the trolls are pretty quickly and they soon end up becoming extinct (or banned in extreme cases).

And yes, at one stage I *was* one of those teenagers with far too much time on my hands, but that was before things moved to the internet (all those catty arguments took place at school Tongue

)

Flip

2012-12-09 05:36:40 pm

1-Up!

Public verification trials are currently live in the verification forum.

mike89

2012-12-15 08:25:17 am

SEGA Junkie

So I read over this topic with fresh eyes, and before I make a post I'm just going to say: you guys are fucking amazing. I love that I can put something like this out there and you guys can dissect it, address the relevant bits of it and make reasoned suggestions for improvement, without resorting to personal attacks when we disagree. This is a community, after all, and the best there is on the internet at that. Let's keep it that way.

Now, a bunch of responses (and probably clarifications or even alterations of my position):

Quote from Omnigamer:

On the leaderboards idea, I'm unsure if SDA should try to pick up that end. It sounds like Cosmo has something in mind for that, and frankly trying to mix in leaderboard tracking with regular submissions would be too chaotic to handle smoothly. It starts to get further away from SDA's mission as well. However, I think it would be great if there were some ways for the two sites to talk to each other. Even something as simple as providing a link to the specific leaderboard or being able to associate the leaderboard submission with the SDA submission would be great.

I'm starting to come around to this position a lot more. I had really liked the idea of those leaderboards being linked to SDA in some way, and I think there's room for some cross-promotion here: the game page could link to the leaderboard in some form, and vice versa. This relies on a certain amount of good will from all parties, but I have no doubt that it exists. puwexil's idea of a runner contact card is something that would really help move in this direction.

Quote from Rakuen:

It's an archive. It's right in the name. What does an archive do? It preserves and provides knowledge. My vision is for SDA to be the #1 stop for knowledge in the speedrunning community.

Quote from Manocheese:

But it's far better to have a place where the information is kept for good, available to everyone, and carefully written, not just glossed over as briefly as possible in a chat room. In Nate's history topics, he says that that's one of the reasons he created Metroid2002. It's also why the Strategy Wiki should be used more than it is now.

This is admittedly something about SDA I had not considered at all. Being that I've been with SDA for longer than the Strategy Wiki has, I have always viewed the runner's comments as the place to document all the known information about a certain game, and as many of you know I can be rather thorough in doing so. However, these aren't permanent, and there's not really any reason to go digging through various iterations of a run to look for something like that in the comments.

This is something that TASvideos does very well; it's not required, but highly encouraged to document any and every useful bit of information you know about a game, so that it can be of use to future authors. This is something that would require something of a cultural shift, but it's certainly feasible that current runners can put information together in this way. Communities for some of the more popular speedrunning games have done this already outside of SDA, after all.

Quote from yggdrizzle:

Good idea: put a 'coming soon' section on the front page, with "game | time | runner | link", linking to the twitch archive or Youtube, if the runner has a recorded run they intend to submit.

This is a really good idea, but the question is, where does it go? I've commonly heard complaints that the past marathon pages are impossible to find, and yet they are literally two clicks away from the front page. This makes it hard for me to believe that even it appearing on the front page as a tab alongside all the other ones will gain any traction.

Of course, if you're proposing that the front page gets redesigned entirely to make all sorts of things more visible, I can get right behind that...

Quote from Finapse:

The community in #speedrunslive is often hostile to people and I've seen them say "fuck off and go make your own damn website, then" when presented with any sort of suggestion.

I wanted to find a better quote to bring up this point, but I really couldn't. It's only tangentially related to speedrunning but I feel it's important here.

My dad, in the course of his work, talks a lot about the concept of a "personal brand"; that is, what attributes, abilities and opinions that person is associated with. This is relevant to us because, now that most speedrunners stream, and most of those who do stream talk to the chat, we get a bit of an idea about who they are. They all have their own brand. For example, take trihex. Before streaming, all we knew about him is that he played Yoshi's Island a bunch. Now you'd be able to describe him as excitable, stylish, and pretty much the embodiment of hype. Werster? Rage central. Breakdown? Eloquent commentator. The list goes on!

Where I'm going with this is, streaming enables us to get to know speedrunners individually, as people. We should take this opportunity more often, rather than taking the easier option of lumping them in with this or that group of people who you may not like. The marathons are great for this, it's easy to start up a conversation with just about anyone, even if you don't really know them all that well.

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

Not speaking for the staff for this question, but I'm curious how you guys would feel about this:
After 60 days, 2 verifiers is enough to go through verification.
After 120 days, open a game up for public verification.

Quote from Flip:

Public verification trials are currently live in the verification forum.

I'm curious how Flip in particular has viewed the public verification trial so far. I don't think the SMW verification teaches us anything that we didn't already know, but in my opinion the Black Plague trial has been a huge success: you have people kind of familiar with the game able to provide guidance, you have the runner himself answering questions the verifiers bring up, which I feel is quite important, and you have people going out of their way to learn about the game itself and what it looks like normally, to help understand just how good the run is. The last point is the one that I think is the most promising - with how much information is available across the internet, even without an actual playthrough of the game any speedrun watcher worth their salt would be able to reasonably say whether a run looks like a speedrun or not. Of course the old standards for verifiers should always take precedence in case of a disputed verdict.

One more thing I want to say: a big part of why I decided to go to AGDQ was so I could continue this discussion with any interested parties. While I'm there I'm more than happy to have discussions on any topic that's been brought up in here, I'd love to get even more ideas together to make SDA and the overall speedrunning community stronger still!

So I read over this topic with fresh eyes, and before I make a post I'm just going to say: you guys are fucking amazing. I love that I can put something like this out there and you guys can dissect it, address the relevant bits of it and make reasoned suggestions for improvement, without resorting to personal attacks when we disagree. This is a community, after all, and the best there is on the internet at that. Let's keep it that way.

Now, a bunch of responses (and probably clarifications or even alterations of my position):

[quote=Omnigamer]On the leaderboards idea, I'm unsure if SDA should try to pick up that end. It sounds like Cosmo has something in mind for that, and frankly trying to mix in leaderboard tracking with regular submissions would be too chaotic to handle smoothly. It starts to get further away from SDA's mission as well. However, I think it would be great if there were some ways for the two sites to talk to each other. Even something as simple as providing a link to the specific leaderboard or being able to associate the leaderboard submission with the SDA submission would be great.[/quote]

I'm starting to come around to this position a lot more. I had really liked the idea of those leaderboards being linked to SDA in some way, and I think there's room for some cross-promotion here: the game page could link to the leaderboard in some form, and vice versa. This relies on a certain amount of good will from all parties, but I have no doubt that it exists. puwexil's idea of a [url=http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/continuation_of_roundtable_discussion_162.html]runner contact card[/url] is something that would really help move in this direction.

[quote=Rakuen]It's an archive.  It's right in the name.  What does an archive do?  It preserves and provides knowledge.  My vision is for SDA to be the #1 stop for knowledge in the speedrunning community.[/quote]
[quote=Manocheese]But it's far better to have a place where the information is kept for good, available to everyone, and carefully written, not just glossed over as briefly as possible in a chat room. In Nate's history topics, he says that that's one of the reasons he created Metroid2002. It's also why the Strategy Wiki should be used more than it is now.[/quote]

This is admittedly something about SDA I had not considered at all. Being that I've been with SDA for longer than the Strategy Wiki has, I have always viewed the runner's comments as the place to document all the known information about a certain game, and as many of you know I can be rather thorough in doing so. However, these aren't permanent, and there's not really any reason to go digging through various iterations of a run to look for something like that in the comments.

This is something that TASvideos does very well; it's not required, but [i]highly encouraged[/i] to document any and every useful bit of information you know about a game, so that it can be of use to future authors. This is something that would require something of a cultural shift, but it's certainly feasible that current runners can put information together in this way. Communities for some of the more popular speedrunning games have done this already outside of SDA, after all.

[quote=yggdrizzle]Good idea: put a 'coming soon' section on the front page, with "game | time | runner | link", linking to the twitch archive or Youtube, if the runner has a recorded run they intend to submit.[/quote]

This is a really good idea, but the question is, where does it go? I've commonly heard complaints that the past marathon pages are impossible to find, and yet they are literally two clicks away from the front page. This makes it hard for me to believe that even it appearing on the front page as a tab alongside all the other ones will gain any traction.

Of course, if you're proposing that the front page gets redesigned entirely to make all sorts of things more visible, I can get right behind that...

[quote=Finapse]The community in #speedrunslive is often hostile to people and I've seen them say "fuck off and go make your own damn website, then" when presented with any sort of suggestion.[/quote]

I wanted to find a better quote to bring up this point, but I really couldn't. It's only tangentially related to speedrunning but I feel it's important here.

My dad, in the course of his work, talks a lot about the concept of a "personal brand"; that is, what attributes, abilities and opinions that person is associated with. This is relevant to us because, now that most speedrunners stream, and most of those who do stream talk to the chat, we get a bit of an idea about who they are. They all have their own brand. For example, take trihex. Before streaming, all we knew about him is that he played Yoshi's Island a bunch. Now you'd be able to describe him as excitable, stylish, and pretty much the embodiment of hype. Werster? Rage central. Breakdown? Eloquent commentator. The list goes on!

Where I'm going with this is, streaming enables us to get to know speedrunners individually, as people. We should take this opportunity more often, rather than taking the easier option of lumping them in with this or that group of people who you may not like. The marathons are great for this, it's easy to start up a conversation with just about anyone, even if you don't really know them all that well.

[quote=UraniumAnchor]Not speaking for the staff for this question, but I'm curious how you guys would feel about this:
After 60 days, 2 verifiers is enough to go through verification.
After 120 days, open a game up for public verification.[/quote]
[quote=Flip]Public verification trials are currently live in the verification forum.[/quote]

I'm curious how Flip in particular has viewed the public verification trial so far. I don't think the SMW verification teaches us anything that we didn't already know, but in my opinion the Black Plague trial has been a huge success: you have people kind of familiar with the game able to provide guidance, you have the runner himself answering questions the verifiers bring up, which I feel is quite important, and you have people going out of their way to learn about the game itself and what it looks like normally, to help understand just how good the run is. The last point is the one that I think is the most promising - with how much information is available across the internet, even without an actual playthrough of the game any speedrun watcher worth their salt would be able to reasonably say whether a run looks like a speedrun or not. Of course the old standards for verifiers should always take precedence in case of a disputed verdict.

One more thing I want to say: a big part of why I decided to go to AGDQ was so I could continue this discussion with any interested parties. While I'm there I'm more than happy to have discussions on any topic that's been brought up in here, I'd love to get even more ideas together to make SDA and the overall speedrunning community stronger still!

Ghostwheel

2012-12-15 09:49:52 am

The artist formerly known as Qxy

Quote:

This is admittedly something about SDA I had not considered at all. Being that I've been with SDA for longer than the Strategy Wiki has, I have always viewed the runner's comments as the place to document all the known information about a certain game, and as many of you know I can be rather thorough in doing so. However, these aren't permanent, and there's not really any reason to go digging through various iterations of a run to look for something like that in the comments.

I know I'm new here, so I probably don't have much of a place in this discussion. However, since its relevant, I just wanted to share that the part of the community that brought me here in the first place was the information building aspect. I don't stream and I don't plan on it, and I don't really have a competitive nature when running. But I enjoy being able to discuss strategy on a lot of games, and the members of the community are great at sustaining such a discussion. I will be putting what I discover on the strategy wiki when I finish my runs in an effort to keep it more comprehensive. It is definitely better to have all the current information in one place than to look through run comments and 50 pages of forum posts.

[quote]This is admittedly something about SDA I had not considered at all. Being that I've been with SDA for longer than the Strategy Wiki has, I have always viewed the runner's comments as the place to document all the known information about a certain game, and as many of you know I can be rather thorough in doing so. However, these aren't permanent, and there's not really any reason to go digging through various iterations of a run to look for something like that in the comments.[/quote]

I know I'm new here, so I probably don't have much of a place in this discussion. However, since its relevant, I just wanted to share that the part of the community that brought me here in the first place was the information building aspect. I don't stream and I don't plan on it, and I don't really have a competitive nature when running. But I enjoy being able to discuss strategy on a lot of games, and the members of the community are great at sustaining such a discussion. I will be putting what I discover on the strategy wiki when I finish my runs in an effort to keep it more comprehensive. It is definitely better to have all the current information in one place than to look through run comments and 50 pages of forum posts.

Lee

Edit history:

Lee: 2012-12-15 05:32:53 pm

2012-12-15 05:32:20 pm

Quote from mike89:

Quote from yggdrizzle:

Good idea: put a 'coming soon' section on the front page, with "game | time | runner | link", linking to the twitch archive or Youtube, if the runner has a recorded run they intend to submit.

This is a really good idea, but the question is, where does it go? I've commonly heard complaints that the past marathon pages are impossible to find, and yet they are literally two clicks away from the front page. This makes it hard for me to believe that even it appearing on the front page as a tab alongside all the other ones will gain any traction.

Of course, if you're proposing that the front page gets redesigned entirely to make all sorts of things more visible, I can get right behind that...

Front page redesign is needed, I don't think many people would disagree about that. Regarding the "2 clicks to get to a marathon page," you have to look at what actually happens. The 3 links that I actually click on on the front page are the links to the game list, the wooty, and the forums. I doubt most people even know what the other links even do, and it's not communicated very well on the front page. The difference between the KB and the Strategy wiki, for example, and why they're important, is unclear when you first look at the site. "Game List," "Forums," and "Live Streams" are all very self explanatory. The rest isn't as much. Then, once you get on the Features page (we've never really mentioned *GDQ's as a Feature of the site, even though I don't think anyone can argue against that point), the videos are at the bottom of the list. Given how huge the marathons have become, it's pretty low in visibility comparatively. A link to only the marathons on the front page is probably a nice quick fix, and of course I'll always support a front page redesign.

Quote:

I wanted to find a better quote to bring up this point, but I really couldn't. It's only tangentially related to speedrunning but I feel it's important here.

My dad, in the course of his work, talks a lot about the concept of a "personal brand"; that is, what attributes, abilities and opinions that person is associated with. This is relevant to us because, now that most speedrunners stream, and most of those who do stream talk to the chat, we get a bit of an idea about who they are. They all have their own brand. For example, take trihex. Before streaming, all we knew about him is that he played Yoshi's Island a bunch. Now you'd be able to describe him as excitable, stylish, and pretty much the embodiment of hype. Werster? Rage central. Breakdown? Eloquent commentator. The list goes on!

Where I'm going with this is, streaming enables us to get to know speedrunners individually, as people. We should take this opportunity more often, rather than taking the easier option of lumping them in with this or that group of people who you may not like. The marathons are great for this, it's easy to start up a conversation with just about anyone, even if you don't really know them all that well.

Emphatically agreed.

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

Not speaking for the staff for this question, but I'm curious how you guys would feel about this:
After 60 days, 2 verifiers is enough to go through verification.
After 120 days, open a game up for public verification.

Quote from Flip:

Public verification trials are currently live in the verification forum.

Quote:

I'm curious how Flip in particular has viewed the public verification trial so far. I don't think the SMW verification teaches us anything that we didn't already know, but in my opinion the Black Plague trial has been a huge success: you have people kind of familiar with the game able to provide guidance, you have the runner himself answering questions the verifiers bring up, which I feel is quite important, and you have people going out of their way to learn about the game itself and what it looks like normally, to help understand just how good the run is. The last point is the one that I think is the most promising - with how much information is available across the internet, even without an actual playthrough of the game any speedrun watcher worth their salt would be able to reasonably say whether a run looks like a speedrun or not. Of course the old standards for verifiers should always take precedence in case of a disputed verdict.

I also believe that public verification has been hugely successful, and would probably push for that system just as a default. We know who the expert are on these games, because they take the time and effort to type it out. Hell even if you've never run the game before, if you take that much effort to look, I'm willing to give you that credit.

[quote="mike89"]
[quote=yggdrizzle]Good idea: put a 'coming soon' section on the front page, with "game | time | runner | link", linking to the twitch archive or Youtube, if the runner has a recorded run they intend to submit.[/quote]

This is a really good idea, but the question is, where does it go? I've commonly heard complaints that the past marathon pages are impossible to find, and yet they are literally two clicks away from the front page. This makes it hard for me to believe that even it appearing on the front page as a tab alongside all the other ones will gain any traction.

Of course, if you're proposing that the front page gets redesigned entirely to make all sorts of things more visible, I can get right behind that...[/quote]

Front page redesign is needed, I don't think many people would disagree about that. Regarding the "2 clicks to get to a marathon page," you have to look at what actually happens. The 3 links that I actually click on on the front page are the links to the game list, the wooty, and the forums. I doubt most people even know what the other links even do, and it's not communicated very well on the front page. The difference between the KB and the Strategy wiki, for example, and why they're important, is unclear when you first look at the site. "Game List," "Forums," and "Live Streams" are all very self explanatory. The rest isn't as much. Then, once you get on the Features page (we've never really mentioned *GDQ's as a Feature of the site, even though I don't think anyone can argue against that point), the videos are at the bottom of the list. Given how huge the marathons have become, it's pretty low in visibility comparatively. A link to only the marathons on the front page is probably a nice quick fix, and of course I'll always support a front page redesign.

[quote]I wanted to find a better quote to bring up this point, but I really couldn't. It's only tangentially related to speedrunning but I feel it's important here.

My dad, in the course of his work, talks a lot about the concept of a "personal brand"; that is, what attributes, abilities and opinions that person is associated with. This is relevant to us because, now that most speedrunners stream, and most of those who do stream talk to the chat, we get a bit of an idea about who they are. They all have their own brand. For example, take trihex. Before streaming, all we knew about him is that he played Yoshi's Island a bunch. Now you'd be able to describe him as excitable, stylish, and pretty much the embodiment of hype. Werster? Rage central. Breakdown? Eloquent commentator. The list goes on!

Where I'm going with this is, streaming enables us to get to know speedrunners individually, as people. We should take this opportunity more often, rather than taking the easier option of lumping them in with this or that group of people who you may not like. The marathons are great for this, it's easy to start up a conversation with just about anyone, even if you don't really know them all that well.[/quote]

Emphatically agreed.

[quote=UraniumAnchor]Not speaking for the staff for this question, but I'm curious how you guys would feel about this:
After 60 days, 2 verifiers is enough to go through verification.
After 120 days, open a game up for public verification.[/quote]
[quote=Flip]Public verification trials are currently live in the verification forum.[/quote]

[quote]I'm curious how Flip in particular has viewed the public verification trial so far. I don't think the SMW verification teaches us anything that we didn't already know, but in my opinion the Black Plague trial has been a huge success: you have people kind of familiar with the game able to provide guidance, you have the runner himself answering questions the verifiers bring up, which I feel is quite important, and you have people going out of their way to learn about the game itself and what it looks like normally, to help understand just how good the run is. The last point is the one that I think is the most promising - with how much information is available across the internet, even without an actual playthrough of the game any speedrun watcher worth their salt would be able to reasonably say whether a run looks like a speedrun or not. Of course the old standards for verifiers should always take precedence in case of a disputed verdict.
[/quote]

I also believe that public verification has been hugely successful, and would probably push for that system just as a default. We know who the expert are on these games, because they take the time and effort to type it out. Hell even if you've never run the game before, if you take that much effort to look, I'm willing to give you that credit.

Flip

2012-12-22 09:00:55 pm

1-Up!

Well that brings the trial run of public verification to a close. I would post my reflections on it but I'm about to go out of town for nearly a week and won't have access to the forums to discuss with all of you, so I'm going to wait until I get back (next weekend-ish) and post my thoughts then and I'll be more available for actual discussion as opposed to posting something now and coming back to 1000 posts to read.

zewing

2012-12-22 11:58:34 pm

just( •_•)>⌐■-■ ..... (⌐■_■)wing it

Quite an interesting thread. After reading all of it all I can say is leaderboard is good and verification is definitely improving on SDA. I don't know where but I think someone posted about members of SRL that were being assholes. I am a member of Team Speedrunslive every time I stream and chat and I make sure that I represent SRL proudly. It makes everyone (especially Cosmo who has done nothing wrong) look bad. So let's all be friends and repect each other's opinions/views. Both SDA and SRL are great sites and will continue to be so.

HDL

2012-12-25 08:09:31 am

Quote from mike89:

My dad, in the course of his work, talks a lot about the concept of a "personal brand"; that is, what attributes, abilities and opinions that person is associated with.

Out of curiosity, does your father work in Psychology? I took a course called Developmental Psychology and one of the topics was about having a personal brand (closely related to personal mission statement).

S.

2013-01-09 04:07:33 pm

It's been a week. Where are Flip's reflections?

Flip

2013-01-13 01:49:03 pm

1-Up!

Yeah good call, forgot to come back to this. Have some other stuff to work on this afternoon but I'll get back to this as soon as I can.

Flip

2013-01-13 09:27:04 pm

1-Up!

OK!

Re: Public Verification

First of all I want to say that the public verification trial was an overall success. In terms of the structure, I think we made a lot of good choices to help the verification flow productively and not spiral into worthlessness. There are a few elements that I feel will be beneficial to the future success of this type of verification. First of all it was clear from the beginning that this wouldn't have a voting structure. Verification at SDA has always been about content. Quality over quantity etc. Secondly, I feel like public verification has to have a time limit. If I just say "I'll make a decision once it seems like everybody has had their say," then I risk missing out on a more thought out verification because I rushed the verdict. I think it's only fair that people who take the time to download and watch a run know how long they have to get their verification in.

So, is public verification the new way here at SDA? Maybe, but probably not entirely. What we learned from Penumbra: Black Plague is that public verification can help solve one of the longest standing problems here at SDA - runs that sit around and don't get verifiers. We learned that in the absence of experts, groupthink can be an appropriate substitution.

What I learned from Super Mario World is that (not surprisingly) the same people who were my verifiers were largely the most informed and persuasive verifiers who posted in the public thread. Now there were way more echo verifiers than in the Penumbra thread, but they didn't do much in terms of adding content. In that scenario, the verification would have been posted faster in a private verification system.

So, could we adopt public verification universally? Yes. Do I think that it's the right move for us right now? No. I think (and I think nearly everybody agrees) that we should go forward with this for runs that don't get verifiers. I think UraniumAnchor's proposed timeline above will work for that purpose. 60 days for 2 verifiers required instead of 3 and 120 days to go public. Private verification has been an SDA staple as long as we've existed, and in recent months it has become a much more efficient process. I'd like to go forward with private verification for runs that can get verifiers and utilize public verification to ensure that all submitted runs have a chance to be verified.

It may be the case that public verification works so well for obscure runs that we make it the standard option in the future. We're getting bigger and bigger and the volume of runs we handle may just mandate that in the future (along that note, 420K?!?). For now though, using public verification for obscure games seems to be an obvious step forward for our site. Some people think that we're just delaying the inevitable here, or that we should just go straight to 100% public verifying right now, but I want to try and preserve the integrity of private verification while it is a feasible option.

As far as implementation goes, this will need to be built into to our new backend system and as you all know it takes a little bit of time to get our feet under us after a marathon, so we will let you know when to expect public verification implementation.

Well now's your chance to weigh-in in an intelligible way or just tell me what an idiot I am, if that's more your thing.

OK!

Re: Public Verification

First of all I want to say that the public verification trial was an overall success. In terms of the structure, I think we made a lot of good choices to help the verification flow productively and not spiral into worthlessness. There are a few elements that I feel will be beneficial to the future success of this type of verification. First of all it was clear from the beginning that this wouldn't have a voting structure. Verification at SDA has always been about content. Quality over quantity etc. Secondly, I feel like public verification has to have a time limit. If I just say "I'll make a decision once it seems like everybody has had their say," then I risk missing out on a more thought out verification because I rushed the verdict. I think it's only fair that people who take the time to download and watch a run know how long they have to get their verification in.

So, is public verification the new way here at SDA? Maybe, but probably not entirely. What we learned from Penumbra: Black Plague is that public verification can help solve one of the longest standing problems here at SDA - runs that sit around and don't get verifiers. We learned that in the absence of experts, groupthink can be an appropriate substitution.

What I learned from Super Mario World is that (not surprisingly) the same people who were my verifiers were largely the most informed and persuasive verifiers who posted in the public thread. Now there were way more echo verifiers than in the Penumbra thread, but they didn't do much in terms of adding content. In that scenario, the verification would have been posted faster in a private verification system.

So, [i]could[/i] we adopt public verification universally? Yes. Do I think that it's the right move for us right now? No. I think (and I think nearly everybody agrees) that we should go forward with this for runs that don't get verifiers. I think UraniumAnchor's proposed timeline above will work for that purpose. 60 days for 2 verifiers required instead of 3 and 120 days to go public. Private verification has been an SDA staple as long as we've existed, and in recent months it has become a much more efficient process. I'd like to go forward with private verification for runs that can get verifiers and utilize public verification to ensure that all submitted runs have a chance to be verified.

It may be the case that public verification works so well for obscure runs that we make it the standard option in the future. We're getting bigger and bigger and the volume of runs we handle may just mandate that in the future (along that note, 420K?!?). For now though, using public verification for obscure games seems to be an obvious step forward for our site. Some people think that we're just delaying the inevitable here, or that we should just go straight to 100% public verifying right now, but I want to try and preserve the integrity of private verification while it is a feasible option.

As far as implementation goes, this will need to be built into to our new backend system and as you all know it takes a little bit of time to get our feet under us after a marathon, so we will let you know when to expect public verification implementation.

Well now's your chance to weigh-in in an intelligible way or just tell me what an idiot I am, if that's more your thing.

Ghostwheel

2013-01-13 10:00:27 pm

The artist formerly known as Qxy

Sounds good to me. The two trials were great examples of the types of runs public verification can most easily and quickly handle: runs that are well done, pretty easy accepts for well known games, and those that have been stuck in verification limbo because they're obscure.

My only worry would be if there was some dispute over the play quality of the run, as in these cases anonymity of opinion is more important. However, in this system, where 120 days should have passed before the run qualifies for public verification, this doesn't seem like a problem.

In short, great job! I think this was handled very well. In addition, thanks to all who have contributed to the changes over the past few months.

presjpolk

2013-01-13 10:12:23 pm

HELLO!

As someone whose run is probably destined from public either way, I like your reasoning, Flip.

Rakuen

Edit history:

Rakuen: 2013-01-13 10:32:27 pm

2013-01-13 10:31:55 pm

Weegee Time

I think maybe a smaller threshold might be more ideal, like 45/90 days. If you haven't gotten 2 verifiers in 3 months, I'm feel pretty safe that you won't get it in 4. A month's shorter turn around time is pretty significant both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of time in verification. I feel that's a decent compromise between responsiveness and allowing opportunity for private verification. The thresholds can always be played with a bit to figure out what works.

Other than that, I agree with you Flip. You're right, with a super popular run, usually the first handful of people cover everything and then everyone else ends up parroting (including me). There may be the odd extra observation here and there, but it does slow it down and clutter it a bit.