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I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Quote from VorpalEdge:
this thread is a lie.  ktwo's runs were never removed!!

actually, he chose to resubmit them, so they are back up.  By they, I mean Addams Family NES, Journey To Silius, and Power Blade.  Enjoy.

cobra triangle and solomon's key were not reposted, as both have since been obsoleted.  The verification thread for the new cobra triangle run is around somewhere, and that should be on the front page soon.  The new solomon's key run(s) are in verification, so assuming they pass, you'll have things to look forward to.  It's been indicated to us that we shouldn't bother reposting the existing runs in the meantime, but if you'd like to watch them (they are, after all, good runs), they are and will forever be available on archive.org.

I would also like to take this opportunity to announce a change in policy.  SDA will no longer remove runs at request, at least not without a reason we agree with (cheating, etc).  We haven't yet decided on exactly what legalese we want to use to indicate this (we will eventually put it on the submit page), but the gist of it is that when you submit to us, we get a permanent, irrevocable license to host it.  Events in the time since the original posting of this thread have convinced us that this is necessary.

I don't really want to go into more detail, but if this seems heavy-handed to you, remember that SDA has never advertised that we would remove runs at request as a condition of submission.  It's not something we've ever promised runners, and we've never been under any sort of obligation to do it.  We basically did it for ktwo as a favor, but there were other run removal requests after his.  One of those turned out much less amicably, such that we feel we have to be explicit about it.  And here we are.

but stupid stuff like that isn't what speedrunning's about.  let's welcome ktwo back to the site.


Isn't that unnecessary? how many runs have you lost due to people wanting to remove their runs...
Thread title:  
Fucking Weeaboo
Didn't you read the entire statement, gia?

Quote:
We basically did it for ktwo as a favor, but there were other run removal requests after his.  One of those turned out much less amicably, such that we feel we have to be explicit about it.  And here we are.


Sounds like a sound enough reason to me to make an official statement/rule about it.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
don't know the specifics but doubt a rule would kill a very strong conflict between two parties, which is what I get from reading that, of course rules help so everyone is in the right mindset, making rules and official statements is fine. I asked for how many runs have been removed, not an indefinite number, although probably I should also ask how many runners since you can do multiple speedruns
Exoray
This is more out of convenience for us at staff.
People who submit here are already giving us the rights to host the video. The change vorpal describes above doesn't change these fundamental rights. They are still the same and the only right we get is to do exactly that. Host the video here at SDA.

Removing runs is not something out of the ordinary and thus it does mean quite a lot of manual work to get it done. This work takes time. Time we could better spend working with all of the submissions we are currently backlogged with. When runners eventually want their runs back up again (ktwo is not the only one) it just means even more work.
All we're doing is making it so that people won't have to be indecisive in the first place, which will save everyones time.
Edit history:
VorpalEdge: 2013-03-31 02:29:20 pm
welcome to the machine
Quote from gia:
Isn't that unnecessary?


We have received legal threats because someone felt we weren't removing their runs fast enough.  It is necessary for that reason alone.  It also takes us work, and then often people would change their minds and decide to leave their runs on the site, enough so that we were intentionally waiting months before even getting started on removing runs, because people would usually change their minds.

It's conceivable that a run removal feature could be built-in to the site redesign, and thus sooner or later get rid of the it-takes-work argument.  That's not likely to happen, however.  It's not good for the community, and while SDA is definitely included in that, I don't just mean the direct interests of the site itself.  I can't really think of a shittier situation than someone spending time improving an old run, and for the community to verify it, prerelease check it, etc, only for someone to have a change of heart, unclick 'hide run' or whatever, and obsolete it instantly.

Ultimately it has the effect of making knowledge harder to find, which makes it harder on subsequent runners and everyone else.  Yeah, things will always be up on archive barring a cataclysm (we do not have the capability of removing things from archive, at all.  once something's on archive, it's there forever, so it's impossible to disappear runs from the internet even if you wanted to), but searching archive is a pain, and someone might not know to look there.  Speedruns are public knowledge, in much the same way that tricks and strategies are.  That's why I help out at SDA to begin with.  In a hobby that depends so highly on people building upon the works of others, sharing is an imperative, I think.  It's how the community grows.

Also, fuck legal threats.

I know it seems as if we're arbitrarily limiting a freedom you enjoyed, but it really is for the best.

To answer your question, I can think of five people who have requested run removals off the top of my head.
Will this new rule apply to cases where a runner wants their run pulled after a better run of the same game but in a different category is submitted? For example, back when I submitted my Hitman: Blood Money IL runs on Pro difficulty, I asked to have my SS of the same game on Rookie difficulty taken off the site, because it was just a plain less interesting and less impressive category (and it was a run into which I'd put much less work), and I wanted to channel the attention of visitors to the game page to my new and (in my opinion) significantly better run. I would guess that this sort of removal request is more common than runners just outright pulling all their runs of the site, though I don't actually know of any other cases.

If I were to make the same request with regards to runs submitted after today, would I have to persuade a green name that removing the old run was in the best interests of SDA and the community in order to have it removed?

By the way, notwithstanding the above concern, I agree with all the sentiments you've expressed in your last post.

P.S. Welcome back ktwo. Smiley
Exoray
No it probably wouldn't apply in the case you describe ExplodingCabbage, seeing as that could be handled as a regular obsoletion and thus made with little extra effort.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
If you got actual legal problems I can see why you want to cover yourselves, and that alone makes a change necessary. I would argue it is indeed your fault it took you apparently so long to remove the run that someone felt obligated to go to a lawyer (how long, a year? lol, if it was a week I hope and it probably was something more serious that you could have at least removed the main link from the front page game list to help the guy out), and the change should go towards that problem instead. But the policy is certainly way cheaper.

I've heard a lot of times what a mess the backend work is, and also a lot of times calls for some sda 2.0, maybe you should do 1.0 first. The only heavy thing the site gets is the video streaming as far as I can realize, excuse I can't comprehend how could the back end be such a mess as you have said countless times, I understand it's different to be there than look from outside. You should use the next marathon to gather some money to hire a programmer, some big known company preferably so no one can claim the money going to your pockets, or the opposite, make a public contest, the guy/company to offer to implement "x" (you'd have to define what x is) for the less money wins. You don't need to pay for 2.0, 1.0 would do, and oversea companies could do the work cheaper.

I don't exactly agree with the rest of the post, I mean putting a run up takes work from several people not just the runner, sure, but most of the time all those runners go and give back somehow. For example then they go and verify someone elses run, just like theirs was verified before. So in the end everyone has paid their share in full (some more than the others)(and talking sda, excluding server costs from the equation :)). As for the admins they do the work because they want and hopefully like it, they aren't forced, and should hire or quit if there's too much work for their tastes at the moment.

About knowledge, you just said the run stays at archive.org, so your point is that people can't look there, really? all the guy has to do is create a thread and the forum's historian should link the run, that's how it works on the internet. It's not like that one video will be the only source of knowledge about the game in the world anyway, if it is, the lost knowledge wasn't that complex to begin with.

And well, about five, five is a little number, I hope. Well it should have been little if not for the backend, and the legal issues lol.
Not a walrus
If you really think we could get the kind of quality and complexity of code we need from an outside source without paying out the nose then I really have to question if you've ever had to contract that sort of thing out before. Having been on both ends of the equation the kind of costs you're talking about are not something we'd want to pull out of the pockets of the charities we support at the marathons.
Edit history:
ShadowWraith: 2013-03-31 09:04:24 pm
.
You're telling us to hire a professional web developer/database engineer so we can cater to the < 10 people who have wanted their runs removed? Do you really thing that would be a good use of our resources?
think he may have interpreted vorpal's post as a complainypants "the technology won't do it so we can't either". fact is if people randomly asking for their runs to be taken down were a priority for us then we would implement the functionality. better to focus on the other reasons given in vorpal's post. community's about sharing and adding content, not taking it away. community leaders should indicate that direction.
Would it be within the scope of the new policy to comply with a runner that wanted their name removed from the run? As in leaving the run up, but scrubbing the user who completed the run to anonymous or something?
Exoray
Quote from Thehealbus:
Would it be within the scope of the new policy to comply with a runner that wanted their name removed from the run? As in leaving the run up, but scrubbing the user who completed the run to anonymous or something?

Yes requests for removing your real name will still be honored as long as a valid reason for it is supplied with the request. (Job-related etc.)
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Yeah I do that kind of work, far more complex work I'd like to think (high reads and high writes on VLDBs, along high CPU processing, with limited money), but once again I don't know how bad you got it. I commented on two options, paying through the nose or paying as little as possible on a contest, even mentioned outsourcing to a cheaper place, we got 350$/mo workers here for instance (yeah they aren't great most of the time, but cheap). I don't care how many people use your missing feature frankly, select insert update and delete are basic functions. Also I didn't say "sda delete 1.0" I said "sda 1.0". Yes, I was assuming the whole of sda is underperforming. Do I change the assumption to "we fixed everything except deletions" since you jumped at it?

What I get now is that you could do it, you just don't want to because you are against it, so you want the policy instead. I was arguing because I thought there were possibly better options, but I got your problem wrong.
Edit history:
UraniumAnchor: 2013-04-02 06:58:01 pm
UraniumAnchor: 2013-04-02 06:57:50 pm
Not a walrus
$350 a month does not buy quality coding work. Maybe a PHP script full of security holes.

Also that's a pretty shameful salary, period.
.
We 'could' do it. But why would we? It's a waste of resources for us to do that. Deletions are not a regular request, and given that we're changing the policy we have no reason to invest in backend support for them anyway.

You can assume what you want, but we're not going to waste time on implementing a system that affected less than 10 people total when we could be (and are) using that time and effort to improve systems that are used by many many more people.