The Future of SDA

Radix

Edit history:

Radix: 2015-01-23 05:53:33 am

2015-01-23 05:52:15 am

I'm addicted to games

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

There have been a lot of notable runs of that game that stood for a long time, from Exo's 37:18 to Ohon's 36:35, not to mention whatever was done on it in the years before I followed the game. But all we have on SDA is a very unoptimized 44:12 from 2008. That's partly our fault for not submitting anything since then

Partly? No, it's entirely the runners' fault. The site isn't going to go post someone's run without permission. A runner has to submit a run to get it on SDA. If SDA has old runs, it's not SDA's fault.

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

The design still looks like 1998'

I hear this a lot and I think it's rather silly. Do you know what most webpages look like in 2015? Flash and ad video play ridden, full of links to "sponsored" content like "one weird trick..." and "you won't believe..." and "the top X blah...". No thanks!

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

volunteer staff unfamiliar with the games write the synopses and newsposts for them (Syphon Filter 3 is described as "a Metal Gear Solid-style game" when the two play nothing alike),

Yes, the site is mostly volunteer. We don't bring in money because I refuse to make it like every other ad-ridden 2015 internet site out there. That does mean people are doing this in their spare time. If you think a page page has a bad description, please make a thread about it and it'll get changed.

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

verification takes an extremely long time

A lot of people said things like this, sometimes with other colorful words like "glacially". How long would folks think is acceptable here? The average time in verification for popular games is mere days! More obscure games of course will take longer.

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

there's no history preserved on the game pages (the most recent submission completely replaces the previous one and all its comments, which WOULD be something cool to archive

Yeah, this is a mistake. I'm pretty sure there is work in progress to remedy it though.

Quote from ING-X:

The most egregious case of this was ZFG who submitted an OoT any% world record to SDA a couple of years ago, only to retract the submission when the run was beaten by a few seconds because it wasn't the world record anymore.

That's just crazy. There is no reason to be bullied into tactics like that. We can't post runs instantly, so of course there is a chance a run will be improved between submission and posting.

Quote from ING-X:

What if I got a run that was very clean and by all measures acceptable for SDA submission, but was (say) 30 seconds off the world record (which isn't much in a 3 hour run)? What would the other TP community members think if I submitted that run? Would they reject it during verification? Would someone else get a world record run and submit it themselves to nullify my submission the day afterwards?

If you get that run, then please submit it. If verifiers are jerks over 30 seconds in 3 hours, they'll get banned from verification. If someone submits a better time, good for them! Maybe SDA will actually have good runs again!

Quote from Mr. Kelly R. Flewin:

SDA is NOT a WR site...

Which just means we're not trying to be an authority of what a WR is... but somehow that turned into "don't submit any WRs to SDA". Huh!

Quote from Gaël:

personally, I feel like SDA has failed as an archive when they became irrelevant to entire communities by refusing decent runs despite verifiers acceptance because "they felt the category wasn't worth it" or when they kept timing runs with absurd timing method disregarded by the runners themselves.

I'm not sure what particular instances you're referring to, but we try to have global rules to cover all games. What exactly is absurd about that? The same for categories. Obviously a lot of communities for individual games have created a lot of categories for their games, and that's cool, but here we only want to focus on standard categories.

Quote from Gaël:

I don't think SDA should change its video quality requirement because I like the idea of being able to find a clean recording of a run

Thank you!

Quote from mike89:

Foremost in my mind is information and strategy, ergo the Knowledge Base. But the obvious problem is that it's hidden away.

It's linked right on the front page... how is that hidden? Does it need to sparkle and glow?

I'll probably post more later, I need to get to work.

[quote="Aaron_Haynes"]There have been a lot of notable runs of that game that stood for a long time, from Exo's 37:18 to Ohon's 36:35, not to mention whatever was done on it in the years before I followed the game. But all we have on SDA is a very unoptimized 44:12 from 2008. That's partly our fault for not submitting anything since then[/quote]

Partly? No, it's entirely the runners' fault. The site isn't going to go post someone's run without permission. A runner has to submit a run to get it on SDA. If SDA has old runs, it's not SDA's fault.

[quote="Aaron_Haynes"]The design still looks like 1998'[/quote]

I hear this a lot and I think it's rather silly. Do you know what most webpages look like in 2015? Flash and ad video play ridden, full of links to "sponsored" content like "one weird trick..." and "you won't believe..." and "the top X blah...". No thanks!

[quote="Aaron_Haynes"]volunteer staff unfamiliar with the games write the synopses  and newsposts for them (Syphon Filter 3 is described as "a Metal Gear Solid-style game" when the two play nothing alike),[/quote]

Yes, the site is mostly volunteer. We don't bring in money because I refuse to make it like every other ad-ridden 2015 internet site out there. That does mean people are doing this in their spare time. If you think a page page has a bad description, please make a thread about it and it'll get changed.

[quote="Aaron_Haynes"]verification takes an extremely long time[/quote]

A lot of people said things like this, sometimes with other colorful words like "glacially". How long would folks think is acceptable here? The average time in verification for popular games is mere days! More obscure games of course will take longer.

[quote="Aaron_Haynes"]there's no history preserved on the game pages (the most recent submission completely replaces the previous one and all its comments, which WOULD be something cool to archive[/quote]

Yeah, this is a mistake. I'm pretty sure there is work in progress to remedy it though.

[quote="ING-X"]The most egregious case of this was ZFG who submitted an OoT any% world record to SDA a couple of years ago, only to retract the submission when the run was beaten by a few seconds because it wasn't the world record anymore.[/quote]

That's just crazy. There is no reason to be bullied into tactics like that. We can't post runs instantly, so of course there is a chance a run will be improved between submission and posting.

[quote="ING-X"]What if I got a run that was very clean and by all measures acceptable for SDA submission, but was (say) 30 seconds off the world record (which isn't much in a 3 hour run)? What would the other TP community members think if I submitted that run? Would they reject it during verification? Would someone else get a world record run and submit it themselves to nullify my submission the day afterwards?[/quote]

If you get that run, then please submit it. If verifiers are jerks over 30 seconds in 3 hours, they'll get banned from verification. If someone submits a better time, good for them! Maybe SDA will actually have good runs again!

[quote="Mr. Kelly R. Flewin"]SDA is NOT a WR site...[/quote]

Which just means we're not trying to be an authority of what a WR is... but somehow that turned into "don't submit any WRs to SDA". Huh!

[quote="Gaël"]personally, I feel like SDA has failed as an archive when they became irrelevant to entire communities by refusing decent runs despite verifiers acceptance because "they felt the category wasn't worth it" or when they kept timing runs with absurd timing method disregarded by the runners themselves.[/quote]

I'm not sure what particular instances you're referring to, but we try to have global rules to cover all games. What exactly is absurd about that? The same for categories. Obviously a lot of communities for individual games have created a lot of categories for their games, and that's cool, but here we only want to focus on standard categories.

[quote="Gaël"]I don't think SDA should change its video quality requirement because I like the idea of being able to find a clean recording of a run[/quote]

Thank you!

[quote="mike89"]Foremost in my mind is information and strategy, ergo the Knowledge Base. But the obvious problem is that it's hidden away.[/quote]

It's linked right on the front page... how is that hidden? Does it need to sparkle and glow?

I'll probably post more later, I need to get to work.

Nyasupan

2015-01-23 06:30:53 am

Quote from Mystery:

Cronikeys is female. Please don't assume gender.

I am sorry, I will edit asap.

J.Y

2015-01-23 07:04:17 am

I'm not trying to step on your toes here Radix, but you seem to take a very defensive standpoint against some of the suggestions that people have mentioned here, especially things regarding the layout of the forum. Maybe you're thinking "if it's not broken, don't fix it", which I can understand in some ways, but I have to say that I agree with what mike89 said (and maybe other people too): the KB could be more prominent on the frontpage.
I've been hanging out on SDA for 3 years and been a registered forum member for 2½, but the number of times I've visited or even thought about the Knowledge Base are very few, partly due to it being a bit hard to spot if you're just scanning through the top of the page.

Worn_Traveler

2015-01-23 07:07:40 am

Formerly known as Skullboy

I'm one of those people Ghostwheel described as "SDA being right for". I like the simplicity of the front page and how it focuses only on runs and not other things. The links to the forums, kb, and other areas are there if I want to use them. I don't think SDA should ever get away from accepting high quality videos, even if that means we never have the fastest runs but I do believe we can be doing more to help connect the various communities. I guess the challenge is finding balance between what the various members of the communities want. Balance is not always easy to achieve though.

I don't mind the forum setup but is there a way to set up the forum search so search Post Content is not checked by default. Newcomers and others can find the appropriate threads more easily that way. Allowing new threads for category might be a good idea at this point too.

A lot of people have mentioned having links to the obsoleted runs on the game page and I agree with it. It doesn't have to look like TASvideos site but if we're going to call ourselves an archive, let's make it easier to get to the "backroom" where the obsoleted runs are shelved.

Having links to the kb, maybe the leaderboards, and other relevant sources on the game page is a good step to go in as well. However, with that being said, the run on the page should still be the main focus, as that run is someone's work of art that they put time and energy into.

I hear a lot about our timing methods being wrong or useless, etc but no one ever explains why. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind it. One thing all communities need to do, including SDA, is to communicate better and not assume things.

I do have a "you can't please everyone" mentality but I do believe that SDA can be a better archive and repository for runs and information. I honestly don't care about WR and such. I just want to watch high quality runs. I believe that can be accomplished while also integrating in other suggestions. There is changing because it is right to change, and changing because everyone around you wants you to. Balance is key. I don't know anything about programming or site design and such but I know that it will take time and effort. We need to get the ball rolling, that's all.

SDA is still home.

I'm one of those people Ghostwheel described as "SDA being right for". I like the simplicity of the front page and how it focuses only on runs and not other things. The links to the forums, kb, and other areas are there if I want to use them. I don't think SDA should ever get away from accepting high quality videos, even if that means we never have the fastest runs but I do believe we can be doing more to help connect the various communities. I guess the challenge is finding balance between what the various members of the communities want. Balance is not always easy to achieve though.

I don't mind the forum setup but is there a way to set up the forum search so search Post Content is not checked by default. Newcomers and others can find the appropriate threads more easily that way. Allowing new threads for category might be a good idea at this point too.

A lot of people have mentioned having links to the obsoleted runs on the game page and I agree with it. It doesn't have to look like TASvideos site but if we're going to call ourselves an archive, let's make it easier to get to the "backroom" where the obsoleted runs are shelved.

Having links to the kb, maybe the leaderboards, and other relevant sources on the game page is a good step to go in as well. However, with that being said, the run on the page should still be the main focus, as that run is someone's work of art that they put time and energy into.

I hear a lot about our timing methods being wrong or useless, etc but no one ever explains why. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind it. One thing all communities need to do, including SDA, is to communicate better and not assume things.

I do have a "you can't please everyone" mentality but I do believe that SDA can be a better archive and repository for runs and information. I honestly don't care about WR and such. I just want to watch high quality runs. I believe that can be accomplished while also integrating in other suggestions. There is changing because it is right to change, and changing because everyone around you wants you to. Balance is key. I don't know anything about programming or site design and such but I know that it will take time and effort. We need to get the ball rolling, that's all.

SDA is still home.

philosoraptor42

Edit history:

philosoraptor42: 2015-01-23 07:15:54 am

2015-01-23 07:12:07 am

Dapper as fuck.

In re: the Knowledge Base: Yes it's got a visible link on the front page, but what about the forum page? I personally rarely look at the front page of this site. When I come here I come straight to the forums without ever touching the front page. Perhaps a KB link on the forums page (maybe on the top bar with Index, etc that persists no matter where in the forums you are?) could be added. I do occasionally use the KB, and having it so I can reach it straight from any place in the forums would be pretty handy.

Re: Timing: I think this is a harder one to fix. I can see where people are coming from on one side: If the community doesn't use SDA timing standard, then someone coming here and seeing a different time than on Youtube or Twitch could easily become confused. But I can also see SDA side: How in the heck are they supposed to keep up with the different starting/ending points that communities use for their games? I think IsraeliRD would have a mental breakdown having to keep track of all that. Them having their own timing standard to apply to every submission makes sense in this regard. I don't see an easy way to remedy this one.

In re: the Knowledge Base:  Yes it's got a visible link on the front page, but what about the forum page?  I personally rarely look at the front page of this site.  When I come here I come straight to the forums without ever touching the front page.  Perhaps a KB link on the forums page (maybe on the top bar with Index, etc that persists no matter where in the forums you are?) could be added.   I do occasionally use the KB, and having it so I can reach it straight from any place in the forums would be pretty handy.

Re: Timing:  I think this is a harder one to fix.  I can see where people are coming from on one side: If the community doesn't use SDA timing standard, then someone coming here and seeing a different time than on Youtube or Twitch could easily become confused.  But  I can also see SDA side:  How in the heck are they supposed to keep up with the different starting/ending points that communities use for their games?  I think IsraeliRD would have a mental breakdown having to keep track of all that.  Them having their own timing standard to apply to every submission makes sense in this regard.  I don't see an easy way to remedy this one.

presjpolk

2015-01-23 07:41:00 am

HELLO!

Back in the day, SDA was a pioneer in getting the knowledge and technology into the hands of the speedrunning community, to get high quality game videos made and watchable. In fact the SDA KB and forums *remain* a top resource for training runners how to stream and record well.

Back in the day, SDA was first place to check to find out and discuss how to speedrun games. In fact the SDA KB and forums *remain* the go-to place to start, even if you'll end up being redirected to a game-specific site.

60fps 720p Twitch streams direct captured from consoles via composite/component/RGB/HDMI are increasingly the norm these days. They don't technically meet SDA standards, but in terms of being able to watch the game and see how things work, they're much better than VHS recordings re-rencoded at SDA LQ quality, which were good enough back in the day.

Verification has also been somewhat obsoleted by a) the growth of the community putting more eyes on runs and b) live streaming. Some guy put up a fake Zelda 2 run on Reddit and it took the Zelda 2 Skype about 15 minutes to watch it, find all the things that were fishy about it, then find proof of TASing *and* splicing. Outsiders on Reddit found more evidence, and the cheat took his name off his post and deleted the video.

When verification *does* happen on SDA, it's usually either a community ratifying an already-known run they've been waiting weeks to verify, only to see it posted on the front page months after they've seen it, and possibly even obsoleted it. Or it's verified people who have never run the game, fumbling along looking for sloppy things to reject, things that mind you in the past SDA might have let through.

So speedrunning has actually in most ways far exceeded SDA's original standards. Where SDA has since raised the bar, it's been in ways that most runners don't seem to care about. Communities verify runs. Streams give good quality videos you can watch and re-watch.

Perhaps it's time for SDA to rededicate itself to improving the forums and the KB.

Forums: Taiga is no longer maintained. I'm sure it would not be a trivial task, but perhaps we need to move to some maintained forum software that will have more features. Vanilla Forums is open source software, mobile-friendly, and actively maintained. This way the forums could be improved, as they are one of SDA's core resources.

KB: Mayor K and the crew did a LOT of heavy lifting to improve the KB, and got a lot of games on there that weren't on there before. HDL and others did more to rework the tech areas. These can continue to improve. But how do we get the word out?

Front page and promotion: SDA getting its own dedicated Twitter account is a great start. I would suggest it, and the front page, consider highlighting the KB and the forums. Direct attention to them and the wealth of information in them. They I believe are the future of SDA.

Back in the day, SDA was a pioneer in getting the knowledge and technology into the hands of the speedrunning community, to get high quality game videos made and watchable.  In fact the SDA KB and forums *remain* a top resource for training runners how to stream and record well.

Back in the day, SDA was first place to check to find out and discuss how to speedrun games.  In fact the SDA KB and forums *remain* the go-to place to start, even if you'll end up being redirected to a game-specific site.

60fps 720p Twitch streams direct captured from consoles via composite/component/RGB/HDMI are increasingly the norm these days. They don't technically meet SDA standards, but in terms of being able to watch the game and see how things work, they're much better than VHS recordings re-rencoded at SDA LQ quality, which were good enough back in the day.

Verification has also been somewhat obsoleted by a) the growth of the community putting more eyes on runs and b) live streaming. Some guy put up a fake Zelda 2 run on Reddit and it took the Zelda 2 Skype about 15 minutes to watch it, find all the things that were fishy about it, then find proof of TASing *and* splicing.  Outsiders on Reddit found more evidence, and the cheat took his name off his post and deleted the video.

When verification *does* happen on SDA, it's usually either a community ratifying an already-known run they've been waiting weeks to verify, only to see it posted on the front page months after they've seen it, and possibly even obsoleted it.  Or it's verified people who have never run the game, fumbling along looking for sloppy things to reject, things that mind you in the past SDA might have let through.

So speedrunning has actually in most ways far exceeded SDA's original standards.  Where SDA has since raised the bar, it's been in ways that most runners don't seem to care about.  Communities verify runs.  Streams give good quality videos you can watch and re-watch.

Perhaps it's time for SDA to rededicate itself to improving the forums and the KB.

Forums: Taiga is no longer maintained.  I'm sure it would not be a trivial task, but perhaps we need to move to some maintained forum software that will have more features.  Vanilla Forums is open source software, mobile-friendly, and actively maintained.  This way the forums could be improved, as they are one of SDA's core resources.

KB: Mayor K and the crew did a LOT of heavy lifting to improve the KB, and got a lot of games on there that weren't on there before.  HDL and others did more to rework the tech areas.  These can continue to improve.  But how do we get the word out?

Front page and promotion:  SDA getting its own dedicated Twitter account is a great start.  I would suggest it, and the front page, consider highlighting the KB and the forums.  Direct attention to them and the wealth of information in them.  They I believe are the future of SDA.

Yagamoth

2015-01-23 08:10:43 am

INTJ

I haven't fully read through this thread yet, but it'll be some time until I can get back to it. I simply would like to underline one point from Aaron_Haynes for now:

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

think the best thing SDA could do it revamp the game pages to incorporate the knowledge base and forum thread as well as all accepted runs for the game, not just the current one (it always felt strange to me to willingly delete community history like that).

Personally I love going "back in time" to read about old runs, older thoughts and kind of the evolution of how certain games developed. I feel like this would be something 'relatively simple' (It's never as simple as it appears, I know) to incorporate - instead of replacing the old run/comment, have it in a folded list of "obsoleted runs" or something like that. Further, sometimes there are even things and techniques in old runs and older posts people who currently run a game forgot about (Example: You can skip the 30 second cutscene in Secret of Mana in Matango, but we only rediscovered this ~5 years later).

A small example of SDA "archiving" old runs instead of removing them: I personally loved Zyres commentary on his Skies of Arcadia: Legends run, and I liked going back to it once in a while. But now that the run is obsolete that gets a bit more tricky

Thank you for this discussion Smiley

I haven't fully read through this thread yet, but it'll be some time until I can get back to it. I simply would like to underline one point from Aaron_Haynes for now:

[quote="Aaron_Haynes"] think the best thing SDA could do it revamp the game pages to incorporate the knowledge base and forum thread as well as all accepted runs for the game, not just the current one (it always felt strange to me to willingly delete community history like that).[/quote]

Personally I love going "back in time" to read about old runs, older thoughts and kind of the evolution of how certain games developed. I feel like this would be something 'relatively simple' (It's never as simple as it appears, I know) to incorporate - instead of replacing the old run/comment, have it in a folded list of "obsoleted runs" or something like that. Further, sometimes there are even things and techniques in old runs and older posts people who currently run a game forgot about (Example: You can skip the 30 second cutscene in Secret of Mana in Matango, but we only rediscovered this ~5 years later).

A small example of SDA "archiving" old runs instead of removing them: I personally loved Zyres commentary on his Skies of Arcadia: Legends run, and I liked going back to it once in a while. But now that the run is obsolete that gets a bit more tricky

Thank you for this discussion :)

BaronHaynes

2015-01-23 08:12:50 am

Strange days, incredible days

Quote from Radix:

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

There have been a lot of notable runs of that game that stood for a long time, from Exo's 37:18 to Ohon's 36:35, not to mention whatever was done on it in the years before I followed the game. But all we have on SDA is a very unoptimized 44:12 from 2008. That's partly our fault for not submitting anything since then

Partly? No, it's entirely the runners' fault. The site isn't going to go post someone's run without permission. A runner has to submit a run to get it on SDA. If SDA has old runs, it's not SDA's fault.

I don't think SDA's archive being volunteer submitted puts all blame for its lack of content on people not participating if they have issues with how the site operates. A lot of speedrunners these days who are active on games didn't get their start through SDA, and if you didn't grow up with it and get more immediate reactions from other places, you might not see the point. My issue is with the idea that SDA can build a gallery space and exclusively blame the runners for not filling it, when there may be a lot of barriers to doing so, and from the point of view of runners, not enough reward.

Quote:

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

The design still looks like 1998'

I hear this a lot and I think it's rather silly. Do you know what most webpages look like in 2015? Flash and ad video play ridden, full of links to "sponsored" content like "one weird trick..." and "you won't believe..." and "the top X blah...". No thanks!

Don't strawman me, please. I'm saying the site is white text on black background, no images, and news updates written like blog posts. You get kind of a quirky comment and a text link to your run, no easily accessible comment thread to talk about it. There must be something in between that and Buzzfeed.

Quote:

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

volunteer staff unfamiliar with the games write the synopses and newsposts for them (Syphon Filter 3 is described as "a Metal Gear Solid-style game" when the two play nothing alike),

Yes, the site is mostly volunteer. We don't bring in money because I refuse to make it like every other ad-ridden 2015 internet site out there. That does mean people are doing this in their spare time. If you think a page page has a bad description, please make a thread about it and it'll get changed.

I'm not advocating bringing in money or running ads. And yeah, not everyone writing the posts or game pages is going to know about every game. But it can give the impression that SDA doesn't value your contribution when a newspost is like "I guess this is a game about shooting dudes or something? Well anyway, Runner X did it in 25:37, which is probably really good, I don't personally know".

Quote:

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

verification takes an extremely long time

A lot of people said things like this, sometimes with other colorful words like "glacially". How long would folks think is acceptable here? The average time in verification for popular games is mere days! More obscure games of course will take longer.

How much longer should they take, though? 6 months from submission to front page seems excessive to me, even for an obscure game (and again, it was verified in 2, and took another 4 months just to be posted). With the current system, maybe that's an understandable amount of time, but what I'm suggesting is to ease up on the restrictions so the function of the site is more accessible. How about all submissions going to public verification (and being viewable) immediately? Linking the verification list on the front page, rather than having to dig into the forums to find it? One of SDA's biggest barriers to entry, in terms of being appealing to a speedrunner in the Twitch era, is its long turnaround process. Yes, I believe verification takes an excessively long time compared to what it could, and I say that as someone who submitted their first run in 2005, and with no intent to insult the people who put work into the site.

[quote="Radix"][quote="Aaron_Haynes"]There have been a lot of notable runs of that game that stood for a long time, from Exo's 37:18 to Ohon's 36:35, not to mention whatever was done on it in the years before I followed the game. But all we have on SDA is a very unoptimized 44:12 from 2008. That's partly our fault for not submitting anything since then[/quote]

Partly? No, it's entirely the runners' fault. The site isn't going to go post someone's run without permission. A runner has to submit a run to get it on SDA. If SDA has old runs, it's not SDA's fault.[/quote]
I don't think SDA's archive being volunteer submitted puts all blame for its lack of content on people not participating if they have issues with how the site operates. A lot of speedrunners these days who are active on games didn't get their start through SDA, and if you didn't grow up with it and get more immediate reactions from other places, you might not see the point. My issue is with the idea that SDA can build a gallery space and exclusively blame the runners for not filling it, when there may be a lot of barriers to doing so, and from the point of view of runners, not enough reward.

[quote][quote="Aaron_Haynes"]The design still looks like 1998'[/quote]
I hear this a lot and I think it's rather silly. Do you know what most webpages look like in 2015? Flash and ad video play ridden, full of links to "sponsored" content like "one weird trick..." and "you won't believe..." and "the top X blah...". No thanks![/quote]
Don't strawman me, please. I'm saying the site is white text on black background, no images, and news updates written like blog posts. You get kind of a quirky comment and a text link to your run, no easily accessible comment thread to talk about it. There must be something in between that and Buzzfeed.

[quote][quote="Aaron_Haynes"]volunteer staff unfamiliar with the games write the synopses  and newsposts for them (Syphon Filter 3 is described as "a Metal Gear Solid-style game" when the two play nothing alike),[/quote]
Yes, the site is mostly volunteer. We don't bring in money because I refuse to make it like every other ad-ridden 2015 internet site out there. That does mean people are doing this in their spare time. If you think a page page has a bad description, please make a thread about it and it'll get changed.[/quote]I'm not advocating bringing in money or running ads. And yeah, not everyone writing the posts or game pages is going to know about every game. But it can give the impression that SDA doesn't value your contribution when a newspost is like "I guess this is a game about shooting dudes or something? Well anyway, Runner X did it in 25:37, which is probably really good, I don't personally know".

[quote][quote="Aaron_Haynes"]verification takes an extremely long time[/quote]
A lot of people said things like this, sometimes with other colorful words like "glacially". How long would folks think is acceptable here? The average time in verification for popular games is mere days! More obscure games of course will take longer.[/quote]How much longer should they take, though? 6 months from submission to front page seems excessive to me, even for an obscure game (and again, it was verified in 2, and took another 4 months just to be posted). With the current system, maybe that's an understandable amount of time, but what I'm suggesting is to ease up on the restrictions so the function of the site is more accessible. How about all submissions going to public verification (and being viewable) immediately? Linking the verification list on the front page, rather than having to dig into the forums to find it? One of SDA's biggest barriers to entry, in terms of being appealing to a speedrunner in the Twitch era, is its long turnaround process. Yes, I believe verification takes an excessively long time compared to what it could, and I say that as someone who submitted their first run in 2005, and with no intent to insult the people who put work into the site.

presjpolk

2015-01-23 08:15:11 am

HELLO!

Verification is quick now. Publication is the slow part. Seems like the active devs migrated to GDQ. We need a way for new people to contribute help.

philosoraptor42

2015-01-23 08:36:13 am

Dapper as fuck.

Quote from presjpolk:

Verification is quick now. Publication is the slow part. Seems like the active devs migrated to GDQ. We need a way for new people to contribute help.

This. I see things get verified pretty quickly. Getting to the game page is the longer part. I would be willing to help out with things as my time allowed. Not sure what I could help with though.

BaronHaynes

2015-01-23 08:43:41 am

Strange days, incredible days

For obscure games, there's still a forced 2-3 week wait to enter public verification. I knew Snapshot wasn't going to get enough verifiers, but there was no way to send it straight to public. Having the option to skip that step could potentially put obscure games on the same turnaround level as popular ones.

Making public verification the default is an interesting option as well (though it has its own potential drawbacks as people have argued). Being able to scan the list and immediately watch and review a run in one trip could encourage more activity from people. Signing up to verify and having to wait for the video to become available is more of a commitment, especially if you don't know how long it'll take.

presjpolk

2015-01-23 08:45:39 am

HELLO!

Instant public verification option would also make it clear when delays are the fault of the runner not getting his videos uploaded.

Asvarduil

Edit history:

Asvarduil: 2015-01-23 09:01:40 am

2015-01-23 09:00:14 am

Having read through the thread, and speaking as a casual "newcomer" to speedrunning who runs a grand total of one game infrequently, I think saying what I think the vision of this site shoudl be is all sorts of wrong/irrelevant. Instead, what I can do well, is give my feedback on what I see going on in SDA.

What's Working
The community. It's the primary reason I come here, to be honest - these forums have a great userbase (Shout-outs to Ghostwheel - sorry my Radiant Historia plans are on temporary hiatus - Gyre, and Zewing in particular.) I'll repeat myself: I've not yet encountered such a good userbase on the Internet. I didn't think it was possible, you guys proved me wrong. That's a thing!

I've read the GDQ coordination threads in part, that's another aspect of how SDA serves the growing speedrun community. Sure, you could just have a massive Skype call to hash out things, but the asynchronous nature of this forum is nice for those living in various other timezones (including timezones outside of the United States!) Having seen people from France and Australia on GDQ streams, this is an invaluable tool for the multinational participation in these major community events. These events are directly keeping SDA relevant, from what I see, so that should figure into the calculations of the community at large, in my opinion.

What Isn't Working
The actual archives. I've watched a couple, but ultimately I feel this aspect of the site to be more and more useless as time goes on. Most records here for games I care about have been overshadowed by better times and/or new categories for significant amounts of time. YouTube and Twitch are the kings of online video media, and there's great tools to capture runs. If the current video standards are applied to YouTube recordings of runs (better still, those runs can be linked to their runner's Twitch/YouTube account), it will ultimately lead to SDA's archive - a list of runs - being more and more relevant as time goes on.

The forum design. As much as I love the forums, and some of the cool, lightning fast functionality, the forums themselves look amateurish, to say the least. There's all sorts of good styling libraries out there (Twitter Bootstrap springs instantly to mind) which can allow you to quickly create a slick, professional look.

"Oh, Asvarduil," you might say, "this is a secondary gripe that has nothing to do with the future of SDA!" "Ah," I would reply, "but it does!" It sort of goes back to the old "the clothes wear you" thing - what you wear influences how others and yourself perceive you. If you want to get a date, you don't go out in your holey jeans and ragged T-Shirt; you put on something nice.

Let's do something, right quick. Here's a link to what I view as the primary competitor to SDA - SpeedRunsLive. After you're done, click back here. Notice some differences? I sure do. The front page is a quick reference to on-going streams, I can immediately get in on the action. The site is set up such that anything I want to do costs me no more than one or two clicks. The pages themselves just look good; they're polished and you can tell care went into the craftsmanship. This site looks like it was done for speed runs, alright - it seems hastily done, with features added over the years, and it certainly works well (and quickly.) But answer something - if you had to choose between the two sites, where would you rather be? As much as I love this community, I'd rather be on SpeedRunsLive - it just puts a better foot forward.

(Yes, that was all one point, but I feel it necessary to address this site's design. I see SRL getting tons of traffic, and this great site getting none. Unfortunately for me, it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to have a theory on why that is, unfortunately. Fixing the design will do much to keep SDA relevant. Visuals aren't everything, but they do count. They totally count.)

And, there's a knowledgebase? Where is it? This thread is the first I've heard of it.

Having read through the thread, and speaking as a casual "newcomer" to speedrunning who runs a grand total of one game infrequently, I think saying what I think the vision of this site shoudl be is all sorts of wrong/irrelevant.  Instead, what I can do well, is give my feedback on what I see going on in SDA.

[b]What's Working[/b]
[i]The community[/i].  It's the primary reason I come here, to be honest - these forums have a great userbase (Shout-outs to Ghostwheel - sorry my Radiant Historia plans are on temporary hiatus - Gyre, and Zewing in particular.)  I'll repeat myself: I've not yet encountered such a good userbase on the Internet.  I didn't think it was possible, you guys proved me wrong.  That's a thing!

I've read the GDQ coordination threads in part, that's another aspect of how SDA serves the growing speedrun community.  Sure, you could just have a massive Skype call to hash out things, but the asynchronous nature of this forum is nice for those living in various other timezones (including timezones outside of the United States!)  Having seen people from France and Australia on GDQ streams, this is an invaluable tool for the multinational participation in these major community events.  These events are directly keeping SDA relevant, from what I see, so that should figure into the calculations of the community at large, in my opinion.

[b]What Isn't Working[/b]
[i]The actual archives[/i].  I've watched a couple, but ultimately I feel this aspect of the site to be more and more useless as time goes on.  Most records here for games I care about have been overshadowed by better times and/or new categories for significant amounts of time.  YouTube and Twitch are the kings of online video media, and there's great tools to capture runs.  If the current video standards are applied to YouTube recordings of runs (better still, those runs can be linked to their runner's Twitch/YouTube account), it will ultimately lead to SDA's archive - a list of runs - being more and more relevant as time goes on.

The forum design.  As much as I love the forums, and some of the cool, lightning fast functionality, the forums themselves look amateurish, to say the least.  There's all sorts of good styling libraries out there (Twitter Bootstrap springs instantly to mind) which can allow you to [i]quickly[/i] create a slick, professional look.

"Oh, Asvarduil," you might say, "this is a secondary gripe that has nothing to do with the future of SDA!"  "Ah," I would reply, "but it [i]does![/i]"  It sort of goes back to the old "the clothes wear you" thing - what you wear influences how others and yourself perceive you.  If you want to get a date, you don't go out in your holey jeans and ragged T-Shirt; you put on something nice.

Let's do something, right quick.  Here's a link to what I view as the primary competitor to SDA - [url=http://www.speedrunslive.com]SpeedRunsLive[/url].  After you're done, click back here.  Notice some differences?  I sure do.  The front page is a quick reference to on-going streams, I can [i]immediately[/i] get in on the action.  The site is set up such that anything I want to do costs me no more than one or two clicks.  The pages themselves [i]just look good[/i]; they're polished and you can tell care went into the craftsmanship.  This site looks like it was done for speed runs, alright - it seems hastily done, with features added over the years, and it certainly works well (and quickly.)  But answer something - if you had to choose between the two sites, where would you rather be?  As much as I love this community, I'd rather be on SpeedRunsLive - it just puts a better foot forward.

(Yes, that was all one point, but I feel it necessary to address this site's design.  I see SRL getting tons of traffic, and this great site getting none. Unfortunately for me, it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to have a theory on why that is, unfortunately.  Fixing the design will do much to keep SDA relevant.  Visuals aren't everything, but they do count.  They totally count.)

And, there's a knowledgebase?  Where is it?  This thread is the first I've heard of it.

btrim

2015-01-23 09:00:53 am

I don't usually come to the site to watch published runs. I do understand some people do.

I come to the forums to check threads that are mostly dormant except for sharing strats (which is usually done via twitch/skype/twitter and/or with highlights/youtube) or PBs (which is easier on speedrun.com leaderboards)

I agree with others saying that if the site needs a new goal/mission, then the KB is a good one. SDA could easily be the Speedrunning wiki (I've actually seen some speedrunning topics on wikia). Putting the KB at the front of the site would allow easy linking to newly published runs for those who use the site for that purpose. It would be easy to link to previously published runs. The main KB page for each game could be the published runs page (if applicable) along with strats, glitches, tricks, categories, forum topics, etc. Previously published runs could be linked from there as suggested.

One of the huge benefits of centralized sites such as SDA and speedrun.com is to allow for small communities to flourish without having to host and create their own leaderboard/wiki/forum/etc for each and every game or series. Part of that is making people feel welcome to add or request a game that's missing and put all that data in place. I don't think I ever felt welcome to do that, or I just forgot that the KB existed. Maybe I'll try to do that with one game this weekend to see how it goes.

If the community wants the SDA wiki to be the place to go for these purposes, and SDA wants itself to be, then it might need to act a little faster.

I'll contrast with speedrun.com. Pac may have gone a little too fast there and now we're patiently waiting for them to fix some severe security issues. But that site is Game/Series focused, including availability of a per-game forum, resources, guides, etc. It could easily become *the* place to go to share runs, talk about strats, categories, timing changes, community races, tools, etc. Most communities use the leaderboards and that's it, but everything else that might exist for that game on that site could be a click away.

SDA had (better) forums and (better) KB capabilities before speedrun.com came about, but they're not as easy to find for each game.

I don't usually come to the site to watch published runs.  I do understand some people do.

I come to the forums to check threads that are mostly dormant except for sharing strats (which is usually done via twitch/skype/twitter and/or with highlights/youtube) or  PBs (which is easier on speedrun.com leaderboards)

I agree with others saying that if the site needs a new goal/mission, then the KB is a good one.  SDA could easily be the Speedrunning wiki (I've actually seen some speedrunning topics on wikia).  Putting the KB at the front of the site would allow easy linking to newly published runs for those who use the site for that purpose.  It would be easy to link to previously published runs.  The main KB page for each game could be the published runs page (if applicable) along with strats, glitches, tricks, categories, forum topics, etc. Previously published runs could be linked from there as suggested.

One of the huge benefits of centralized sites such as SDA and speedrun.com is to allow for small communities to flourish without having to host and create their own leaderboard/wiki/forum/etc for each and every game or series.  Part of that is making people feel welcome to add or request a game that's missing and put all that data in place.  I don't think I ever felt welcome to do that, or I just forgot that the KB existed.  Maybe I'll try to do that with one game this weekend to see how it goes.

If the community wants the SDA wiki to be the place to go for these purposes, and SDA wants itself to be, then it might need to act a little faster.

I'll contrast with speedrun.com.  Pac may have gone a little too fast there and now we're patiently waiting for them to fix some severe security issues.  But that site is Game/Series focused, including availability of a per-game forum, resources, guides, etc.   It could easily become *the* place to go to share runs, talk about strats, categories, timing changes, community races, tools, etc.  Most communities use the leaderboards and that's it, but everything else that might exist for that game on that site could be a click away.

SDA had (better) forums and (better) KB capabilities before speedrun.com came about, but they're not as easy to find for each game.

zewing

2015-01-23 09:02:47 am

just( •_•)>⌐■-■ ..... (⌐■_■)wing it

Technical and Run Quality Standards:

Video standards should stay the same, though if it HAD to change, probably make the standards slightly higher (by higher, I mean have something like s-video be lowest possible level of acceptable video quality, which isn't even that hard if you understand how splitters work. By perspective, I capture s-video on a tv that has no s-video port, and all I do is input all 4 cords into my dazzle and only split the yellow composite cord, thus giving me no video quality loss).

I only mentioned technical quality of a run because this is really the only aspect of speedrunning that has very little meaning since it doesn't really help improve times. However, I think that the rise in streaming has at least impacted all of us on how we present ourselves, which would make this proposal (If I absolutely had to propose any kind of change among run quality vs. tech quality) rather easy to implement. Most of us in the community already actively help others with information on capture cards and, more importantly, the first step in video improvement with s-video.

As for gameplay quality, that's a ridiculously hard thing for a casual viewer to look at and think "oh, this run is clearly slower than this other run". To anyone who would watch a run on this site, the initial thought would be "that is very impressive." Really, the only people who would look at a run with an intense stare are the very small percentage of this world's population that speed run / know about speed running. So basically, verification standards for runs (among the actual gameplay aspect) are only going to get higher as the time goes by.

Use of SDA timing:

I am, and shall always, be under the impression that "SDA timing" is NOT a competitive standard to time runs. Unless everyone in the community uses this exact timing in a run, it shouldn't have any use outside of this site.

That being said, however, know that each and every game that is submitted to this site has conflicting timing methods. Some communities reset, some use In Game Time, some use the standardized "SRL method" (pretty much first input of run until loss of character control, a really basic and recommended method that should just be called "Standard RTA timing" or something of the sorts to keep it from affiliations), some use the Nico timing standard (power on - THE END), and even some use the SDA timing method. So right here, each run has AT LEAST 4 different timing methods.

I'm not sure how to address this with a "fix," but as long as runs are being hosted on SDA's site, using SDA timing for SDA Submissions should stay the standard (TASvideos does their own thing as well), but it would have to be up to us (either runners of said run, or the SDA Youtube account) to make sure the difference in timing methods are address if the run is uploaded to another site. BUT, I do think it may be somewhat of a good idea to at least raise the possibility of making a standardized time for each game submitted to better reflect the communities themselves.

Categories themselves:

This is a rather hard issue to deal with since, a few months ago, I recall there being an issue with how Metroid Prime low% would have been handled on this site since there was (correct me if I'm wrong) a 21% definition for low%, which would have obsoleted a very highly respected 23% (22%?) segmented run from a while ago. This wasn't really a problem since no one was currently submitting a low% run, but there were some concerns that, due to the run's difficulty, it should not replace the other low% runs (that, by definition, were no longer low%). I am unsure how to proceed with this, just thought I'd address it since this is also apparent in SM64 (I am not calling these communities out, but the categories on that page do not fit any reasonable definition for a standardized speed run).

Japanese RPG Clause:

OK, I am HIGHLY against any forms of speed gaming that allow for an inhuman advantage, but I do think POSSIBLY allowing runners from Japan to submit runs of certain games using their rule sets should be at least talked about. In brief, almost every RPG that is NTSC-J region allows the use of turbo, whereas every non-japanese based community strictly bans said function unless it follows SDA's ruleset. This would at least help connect Japan to SDA since very few Japanese speed runners are able to submit due to the way their community handles their games. I see issues with allowing this (especially when you look at SDA's slogan, more importantly the word "legitimately"), but it's not such an absurd idea when you consider each community has their own standards and rules.

Forums:

I'd probably recommend maybe more ways to organize? Eventually what would constitute a newer console? Based on the forums, the Nintendo Gamecube is considered a newer console. It could be worth it to organize forums (at least new / old consoles) by generation at the least. I only felt the need to raise the newer/ older console forum thread since this is, honestly, a current issue when you realize PS4, XBOX One, and Wii U are now consider newer consoles.

I am not demanding these change, but it would be worth it to consider, even for a moment, what I've written. If anything, the JRPG clause could be considered the weakest thing to add, but everything I think has some sort of weight.

KB would also be great if we all chip in.

Also, these aren't all the things that could help with an SDA change, just what I could think of that wasn't talked much about.

Quote from presjpolk:

Verification is quick now. Publication is the slow part. Seems like the active devs migrated to GDQ. We need a way for new people to contribute help.

Quote from philosoraptor42:

This. I see things get verified pretty quickly. Getting to the game page is the longer part. I would be willing to help out with things as my time allowed. Not sure what I could help with though.

You could volunteer for PRC (if they send you a request that is, you'd have to talk to the admins here about it), which is a simple way to help get a run on the front page faster. I haven't been able to help with PRC due to my router (sorry guys, I'm trying to get a new router to help again).

Technical and Run Quality Standards:

Video standards should stay the same, though if it HAD to change, probably make the standards slightly higher (by higher, I mean have something like s-video be lowest possible level of acceptable video quality, which isn't even that hard if you understand how splitters work.  By perspective, I capture s-video on a tv that has no s-video port, and all I do is input all 4 cords into my dazzle and only split the yellow composite cord, thus giving me no video quality loss).

I only mentioned technical quality of a run because this is really the only aspect of speedrunning that has very little meaning since it doesn't really help improve times.  However, I think that the rise in streaming has at least impacted all of us on how we present ourselves, which would make this proposal (If I absolutely had to propose any kind of change among run quality vs. tech quality) rather easy to implement.  Most of us in the community already actively help others with information on capture cards and, more importantly, the first step in video improvement with s-video.

As for gameplay quality, that's a ridiculously hard thing for a casual viewer to look at and think "oh, this run is clearly slower than this other run".  To anyone who would watch a run on this site, the initial thought would be "that is very impressive."  Really, the only people who would look at a run with an intense stare are the very small percentage of this world's population that speed run / know about speed running.  So basically, verification standards for runs (among the actual gameplay aspect) are only going to get higher as the time goes by.

Use of SDA timing:

I am, and shall always, be under the impression that "SDA timing" is NOT a competitive standard to time runs.  Unless everyone in the community uses this exact timing in a run, it shouldn't have any use outside of this site.

That being said, however, know that each and every game that is submitted to this site has conflicting timing methods.  Some communities reset, some use In Game Time, some use the standardized "SRL method" (pretty much first input of run until loss of character control, a really basic and recommended method that should just be called "Standard RTA timing" or something of the sorts to keep it from affiliations), some use the Nico timing standard (power on - THE END), and even some use the SDA timing method.  So right here, each run has AT LEAST 4 different timing methods.

I'm not sure how to address this with a "fix," but as long as runs are being hosted on SDA's site, using SDA timing for SDA Submissions should stay the standard (TASvideos does their own thing as well), but it would have to be up to us (either runners of said run, or the SDA Youtube account) to make sure the difference in timing methods are address if the run is uploaded to another site.  BUT, I do think it may be somewhat of a good idea to at least raise the possibility of making a standardized time for each game submitted to better reflect the communities themselves.

Categories themselves:

This is a rather hard issue to deal with since, a few months ago, I recall there being an issue with how Metroid Prime low% would have been handled on this site since there was (correct me if I'm wrong) a 21% definition for low%, which would have obsoleted a very highly respected 23% (22%?) segmented run from a while ago.  This wasn't really a problem since no one was currently submitting a low% run, but there were some concerns that, due to the run's difficulty, it should not replace the other low% runs (that, by definition, were no longer low%).  I am unsure how to proceed with this, just thought I'd address it since this is also apparent in SM64 (I am not calling these communities out, but the categories on that page do not fit any reasonable definition for a standardized speed run).

Japanese RPG Clause:

OK, I am HIGHLY against any forms of speed gaming that allow for an inhuman advantage, but I do think POSSIBLY allowing runners from Japan to submit runs of certain games using their rule sets should be at least talked about.  In brief, almost every RPG that is NTSC-J region allows the use of turbo, whereas every non-japanese based community strictly bans said function unless it follows SDA's ruleset.  This would at least help connect Japan to SDA since very few Japanese speed runners are able to submit due to the way their community handles their games.  I see issues with allowing this (especially when you look at SDA's slogan, more importantly the word "legitimately"), but it's not such an absurd idea when you consider each community has their own standards and rules.

Forums:

I'd probably recommend maybe more ways to organize?  Eventually what would constitute a newer console?  Based on the forums, the Nintendo Gamecube is considered a newer console.  It could be worth it to organize forums (at least new / old consoles) by generation at the least.  I only felt the need to raise the newer/ older console forum thread since this is, honestly, a current issue when you realize PS4, XBOX One, and Wii U are now consider newer consoles.

I am not demanding these change, but it would be worth it to consider, even for a moment, what I've written.  If anything, the JRPG clause could be considered the weakest thing to add, but everything I think has some sort of weight.

KB would also be great if we all chip in.

Also, these aren't all the things that could help with an SDA change, just what I could think of that wasn't talked much about.

[quote=presjpolk]
Verification is quick now. Publication is the slow part.  Seems like the active devs migrated to GDQ.  We need a way for new people to contribute help.
[/quote]
[quote=philosoraptor42]
This.  I see things get verified pretty quickly.  Getting to the game page is the longer part.  I would be willing to help out with things as my time allowed.  Not sure what I could help with though.
[/quote]

You could volunteer for PRC (if they send you a request that is, you'd have to talk to the admins here about it), which is a simple way to help get a run on the front page faster.  I haven't been able to help with PRC due to my router (sorry guys, I'm trying to get a new router to help again).

__sdfg

2015-01-23 09:05:31 am

D:

Quote from Radix:

Partly? No, it's entirely the runners' fault. The site isn't going to go post someone's run without permission. A runner has to submit a run to get it on SDA. If SDA has old runs, it's not SDA's fault.

Instead of assigning fault, it would be better to ask what can be done to get more runs submitted. This question has been asked before, but it doesn't seem everyone has been satisfied with the answer so far.

Quote:

Quote from Aaron_Haynes:

The design still looks like 1998'

I hear this a lot and I think it's rather silly. Do you know what most webpages look like in 2015? Flash and ad video play ridden, full of links to "sponsored" content like "one weird trick..." and "you won't believe..." and "the top X blah...". No thanks!

People new to the site will have unconscious expectations of what a modern site looks like. There are many things that could be done to make the site look more attractive without going through any of the horror stories listed in your post. You can see an example of what I mean here.

Keep in mind that not everyone will visit the site through the home page, which is where the most visible activity is. I honestly would not blame someone looking for a Mega Man speedrun from looking at the layout and the fact that the most recent run is from 2005 and thinking the site is abandoned.

I understand that redoing the entire site is a big undertaking, but the current layout is detrimental to the site, and your counterargument is fallacious and somewhat offensive.

Quote:

Quote from Gaël:

personally, I feel like SDA has failed as an archive when they became irrelevant to entire communities by refusing decent runs despite verifiers acceptance because "they felt the category wasn't worth it" or when they kept timing runs with absurd timing method disregarded by the runners themselves.

I'm not sure what particular instances you're referring to, but we try to have global rules to cover all games. What exactly is absurd about that? The same for categories. Obviously a lot of communities for individual games have created a lot of categories for their games, and that's cool, but here we only want to focus on standard categories.

The problem with the category thing is that it encourages people to create separate community sites to keep track of their runs rather than submitting the runs to SDA. Since video hosting is the most visible part of SDA, this further discourages people from using SDA at all.

The first example that comes to mind for me is the pacifist category in Ninja Gaiden, which has seen competition from multiple runners, but I don't believe has ever even been submitted. I believe a contributing factor is that the runners assumed SDA wouldn't accept any runs in that category anyway (I remember at least one runner saying that several times on stream).

The fact that people would put a lot of time and energy into planning and attempts for a run and then assume they aren't allowed to submit it to SDA actually is kind of absurd if you think about it.

Quote:

Quote from mike89:

Foremost in my mind is information and strategy, ergo the Knowledge Base. But the obvious problem is that it's hidden away.

It's linked right on the front page... how is that hidden? Does it need to sparkle and glow?

As several people have said in this thread, linking to it from the game pages would help. Remember that not everybody visits the site from the main page, and they likely won't see it at all if they come in from Google.

[quote="Radix"]Partly? No, it's entirely the runners' fault. The site isn't going to go post someone's run without permission. A runner has to submit a run to get it on SDA. If SDA has old runs, it's not SDA's fault.[/quote]
Instead of assigning fault, it would be better to ask what can be done to get more runs submitted.  This question has been asked before, but it doesn't seem everyone has been satisfied with the answer so far.

[quote][quote="Aaron_Haynes"]The design still looks like 1998'[/quote]
I hear this a lot and I think it's rather silly. Do you know what most webpages look like in 2015? Flash and ad video play ridden, full of links to "sponsored" content like "one weird trick..." and "you won't believe..." and "the top X blah...". No thanks![/quote]
People new to the site will have unconscious expectations of what a modern site looks like.  There are many things that could be done to make the site look more attractive without going through any of the horror stories listed in your post.  You can see an example of what I mean [url=https://gamesdonequick.com/]here[/url].

Keep in mind that not everyone will visit the site through the home page, which is where the most visible activity is.  I honestly would not blame someone looking for a [url=http://speeddemosarchive.com/MegaMan.html]Mega Man speedrun[/url] from looking at the layout and the fact that the most recent run is from 2005 and thinking the site is abandoned.

I understand that redoing the entire site is a big undertaking, but the current layout is detrimental to the site, and your counterargument is fallacious and somewhat offensive.

[quote][quote="Gaël"]personally, I feel like SDA has failed as an archive when they became irrelevant to entire communities by refusing decent runs despite verifiers acceptance because "they felt the category wasn't worth it" or when they kept timing runs with absurd timing method disregarded by the runners themselves.[/quote]

I'm not sure what particular instances you're referring to, but we try to have global rules to cover all games. What exactly is absurd about that? The same for categories. Obviously a lot of communities for individual games have created a lot of categories for their games, and that's cool, but here we only want to focus on standard categories.[/quote]
The problem with the category thing is that it encourages people to create separate community sites to keep track of their runs rather than submitting the runs to SDA.  Since video hosting is the most visible part of SDA, this further discourages people from using SDA at all.

The first example that comes to mind for me is the pacifist category in Ninja Gaiden, which has seen competition from multiple runners, but I don't believe has ever even been submitted.  I believe a contributing factor is that the runners assumed SDA wouldn't accept any runs in that category anyway (I remember at least one runner saying that several times on stream).

The fact that people would put a lot of time and energy into planning and attempts for a run and then assume they aren't allowed to submit it to SDA actually is kind of absurd if you think about it.

[quote][quote="mike89"]Foremost in my mind is information and strategy, ergo the Knowledge Base. But the obvious problem is that it's hidden away.[/quote]
It's linked right on the front page... how is that hidden? Does it need to sparkle and glow?[/quote]
As several people have said in this thread, linking to it from the game pages would help.  Remember that not everybody visits the site from the main page, and they likely won't see it at all if they come in from Google.

presjpolk

2015-01-23 09:10:00 am

HELLO!

Side note: One of of the most trafficked sites on the Internet literally still has a design from 1996. Having a 'dated' design is entirely unimportant.

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2015-01-23 09:21:58 am

2015-01-23 09:11:55 am

All the things

I also think that you're being a bit too defensive on this Radix. The whole point of this thread is to gather ideas and criticisms; you can argue your point of view, but trying to pick out and respond to individual things you don't agree with is going to derail the thread pretty quick. This applies to others as well; if we spend too much time arguing how this-or-that specific opinion is wrong, things will go downhill fast. Let's stick to the big picture Smiley

So below is some food for thought. I trimmed it from my original post so that people would (maybe) read the whole thing, but it seems relevant to put out with the way discussion is going. I have a few examples of some extreme changes that shift focus around at the cost of re-imagining the main purpose of the site. I'm not saying any of them should actually happen, but they represent things that might fill needs of some parts of the community. Ignore any amount of technical or social requirements to actually achieve any of these; that's not the point.

================

Community News Portal

This take the cues from fighting game community sites like Shoryuken.com, Smashboards.com, and Dustloop.com . The idea is to incorporate the events and happenings of the wider community rather than only the internal processing of SDA. "News" in this case can refer to upcoming special races, significant game records (even if not submitted to the site), promoting upcoming marathons, and other misc news. The forums, Knowledge Base, and videos all exist beyond that. This serves the purpose of consolidating general speedrun focus to SDA and gives everybody a way to make use of the site. This by itself puts the focus on the community aspects, but the rest are left as resources for budding runners and collaboration.

World Record/Leaderboard Tracker

I am listing this as a possible aim for discussion purposes, but note that I do not personally believe this is a path SDA should be taking. This approach modifies the mission statement of SDA to instead track the fastest known times for various games and categories. This means proactively seeking out new runs, or at the very least creating a way for users to add runs themselves. Essentially, this follows some semblance of the vision behind the SRL Leaderboards project, but also carries all of the difficulties they encountered. SDA would then have to become THE authority for speedrunning rules and categories, which is both a technical and social problem. This also downplays the idea that the site exists as a Mark of Quality; whereas a sole runner of an obscure game has some motivation to make the run as good as possible before submitting to the current SDA, they could instead get instant gratification by listing an unoptimized run as the fastest known without spending time to improve it further.

Community Wiki

This approach focuses instead on the wealth of knowledge accumulated on SDA and puts an emphasis on user discussion and technical knowledge sharing. The vision here is to emphasize resources and permanence of information to support the community as a whole. The tricky part is making that information-sharing aspect itself a necessity for the community, and not simply "if I feel like it." Part of it relies on the branding itself being a draw; everybody needs to know to use SDA because it is SDA. What this downplays is any form of video submission that's left; there is no longer any submission process, or mark of quality. Tighter integration of wiki pages with run videos is one thing, but if it's opened up to that degree then there is no longer any enforceable peer review for the videos, so they'd be for reference only. It's more accessible, but forfeits Mark of Quality in the process.

SpeedrunTube

This is more off-the-wall than other approaches, but puts a focus on video-sharing aspects. The idea is to go all-in on being a video archive of speedrun content, but requires some pretty radical changes to the submission process to make practical. The goal in this case is to be a repository of speedrun videos of varying qualities, but provide user rating systems that serve the purpose of verifying gameplay and video quality. For example, users can rate the technical quality of the gameplay separate from the cleanliness of the video and have it organized by game. Also consider flagging options for cheated runs or objectionable content. There are a lot of problems and filtering that would come along with this, but it serves a couple purposes well: a social platform based solely around speedrunning videos, and a way for high-quality runs to gain visibility and peer review. This approach lowers the focus on collaboration since it caters to viewers of speedruns and not solely runners themselves. Not saying that the forums and KB are gone, but it would be hard to maintain them as a focus while the videos are the most visible aspects of the site.

Speed Demos Archive

There's of course always the option to keep things as they are, albeit with tweaks. SDA can keep the same spirit it started with by just keeping content rolling. If this is all that's necessary, discussion shifts to what tweaks are needed to match up with the community at large. For this to be an option though, SDA needs to be able to convince current and future runners that it is worthwhile for them to pay attention to. Other services provide instant gratification beyond what the current SDA is capable of in terms of run publishing, so it doesn't make sense to some runners to submit at all. Only some of that can be solved by beautification means; some amount of reform to the verification process needs to happen to be attractive. That also means striking a balance with exclusivity to preserve SDA as a mark of quality.

=======================

I also think that you're being a bit too defensive on this Radix. The whole point of this thread is to gather ideas and criticisms; you can argue your point of view, but trying to pick out and respond to individual things you don't agree with is going to derail the thread pretty quick. This applies to others as well; if we spend too much time arguing how this-or-that specific opinion is wrong, things will go downhill fast. Let's stick to the big picture :)

So below is some food for thought. I trimmed it from my original post so that people would (maybe) read the whole thing, but it seems relevant to put out with the way discussion is going. I have a few examples of some extreme changes that shift focus around at the cost of re-imagining the main purpose of the site. I'm not saying any of them should actually happen, but they represent things that might fill needs of some parts of the community. Ignore any amount of technical or social requirements to actually achieve any of these; that's not the point.

================

[b]Community News Portal[/b]

This take the cues from fighting game community sites like Shoryuken.com, Smashboards.com, and Dustloop.com . The idea is to incorporate the events and happenings of the wider community rather than only the internal processing of SDA. "News" in this case can refer to upcoming special races, significant game records (even if not submitted to the site), promoting upcoming marathons, and other misc news. The forums, Knowledge Base, and videos all exist beyond that. This serves the purpose of consolidating general speedrun focus to SDA and gives everybody a way to make use of the site. This by itself puts the focus on the community aspects, but the rest are left as resources for budding runners and collaboration.

[b]World Record/Leaderboard Tracker[/b]

I am listing this as a possible aim for discussion purposes, but note that I do not personally believe this is a path SDA should be taking. This approach modifies the mission statement of SDA to instead track the fastest known times for various games and categories. This means proactively seeking out new runs, or at the very least creating a way for users to add runs themselves. Essentially, this follows some semblance of the vision behind the SRL Leaderboards project, but also carries all of the difficulties they encountered. SDA would then have to become THE authority for speedrunning rules and categories, which is both a technical and social problem. This also downplays the idea that the site exists as a Mark of Quality; whereas a sole runner of an obscure game has some motivation to make the run as good as possible before submitting to the current SDA, they could instead get instant gratification by listing an unoptimized run as the fastest known without spending time to improve it further.

[b]Community Wiki[/b]

This approach focuses instead on the wealth of knowledge accumulated on SDA and puts an emphasis on user discussion and technical knowledge sharing. The vision here is to emphasize resources and permanence of information to support the community as a whole. The tricky part is making that information-sharing aspect itself a necessity for the community, and not simply "if I feel like it." Part of it relies on the branding itself being a draw; everybody needs to know to use SDA because it is SDA. What this downplays is any form of video submission that's left; there is no longer any submission process, or mark of quality. Tighter integration of wiki pages with run videos is one thing, but if it's opened up to that degree then there is no longer any enforceable peer review for the videos, so they'd be for reference only. It's more accessible, but forfeits Mark of Quality in the process.

[b]SpeedrunTube[/b]

This is more off-the-wall than other approaches, but puts a focus on video-sharing aspects. The idea is to go all-in on being a video archive of speedrun content, but requires some pretty radical changes to the submission process to make practical. The goal in this case is to be a repository of speedrun videos of varying qualities, but provide user rating systems that serve the purpose of verifying gameplay and video quality. For example, users can rate the technical quality of the gameplay separate from the cleanliness of the video and have it organized by game. Also consider flagging options for cheated runs or objectionable content. There are a lot of problems and filtering that would come along with this, but it serves a couple purposes well: a social platform based solely around speedrunning videos, and a way for high-quality runs to gain visibility and peer review. This approach lowers the focus on collaboration since it caters to viewers of speedruns and not solely runners themselves. Not saying that the forums and KB are gone, but it would be hard to maintain them as a focus while the videos are the most visible aspects of the site.

[b]Speed Demos Archive[/b]

There's of course always the option to keep things as they are, albeit with tweaks. SDA can keep the same spirit it started with by just keeping content rolling. If this is all that's necessary, discussion shifts to what tweaks are needed to match up with the community at large. For this to be an option though, SDA needs to be able to convince current and future runners that it is worthwhile for them to pay attention to. Other services provide instant gratification beyond what the current SDA is capable of in terms of run publishing, so it doesn't make sense to some runners to submit at all. Only some of that can be solved by beautification means; some amount of reform to the verification process needs to happen to be attractive. That also means striking a balance with exclusivity to preserve SDA as a mark of quality.

=======================

Asvarduil

2015-01-23 09:23:32 am

Quote from presjpolk:

Side note: One of of the most trafficked sites on the Internet literally still has a design from 1996. Having a 'dated' design is entirely unimportant.

Agreed. Dated and unpolished are two completely different things. A 1996 look works just fine for Google, since the purpose is quickly finding and presenting links to information. However, that's not really the role SDA fills, it's a bit more involved than that, and as such I feel that the unpolished look is doing this community more harm than good.

AllTheHighwinds

2015-01-23 09:30:38 am

I've always considered SDA a museum for speedruns as where SRL was more of a racetrack. I understood early on SDA's mission was to archive actual videos of the speedrun and thus the stringent quality requirements and the long process. So really to keep this place up to date is also very much up to the runners and community to keep submitting high quality runs. It's also pretty nice to see when a runner posts their knowledge in the run comments.

Anyway as for things that may need a change, I would definitely say the knowledge base. It's my least used resource. The last thing I used it for was to look up info about encoding my run. I've used the forums rather extensively, watched plenty of runs and check the w00ty site to see who's on from our community that isn't posted on SRL (I too am not on the SRL front page).

Antilles58

2015-01-23 09:35:57 am

#FailFish

There are a lot of great ideas floating around in here. I'm a software developer, so if there's any way I could contribute, let me know. I can't volunteer to do anything huge necessarily, but I'd certainly be interested in discussing what the needs are and if I can be of service.

Radix

2015-01-23 10:17:10 am

I'm addicted to games

Well if me disagreeing with things I see as unfair/wrong is defensive, then yes I'm defensive. I also wrote the earlier post in a rush, as a response to all the posts that happened overnight, before I started work in the morning.

Obviously a lot of people visit the forums and like talking to people. That some of those people don't even visit the news page and thus know there is a KB at all is a little strange. How do those people know about runs being published and/or the slow rate of publishing if they're not checking the news? Color me confused now.

Someone spoke of "white on black" as being dated... seriously? We can't fix the site by changing the color scheme. It needs content, which the runners have to submit. Again and again people talk about the old runs, I can't fix that, only YOU can (color me Smoky the Bear now).

The verification system is faster than it used to be. Posting is faster than it used to be. Improvements are being made RIGHT NOW to make things even better. But none of that matters without the runners submitting stuff. Color me a broken record now.

Adding links to KB articles / forum threads from game pages / runs sounds like a great idea. I don't think it'll happen until we get a way to auto generate the game page html (right now it's all done manually, but yes there is work in progress to fix this).

Well if me disagreeing with things I see as unfair/wrong is defensive, then yes I'm defensive. I also wrote the earlier post in a rush, as a response to all the posts that happened overnight, before I started work in the morning.

Obviously a lot of people visit the forums and like talking to people. That some of those people don't even visit the news page and thus know there is a KB at all is a little strange. How do those people know about runs being published and/or the slow rate of publishing if they're not checking the news? Color me confused now.

Someone spoke of "white on black" as being dated... seriously? We can't fix the site by changing the color scheme. It needs content, which the runners have to submit. Again and again people talk about the old runs, I can't fix that, only YOU can (color me Smoky the Bear now).

The verification system is faster than it used to be. Posting is faster than it used to be. Improvements are being made RIGHT NOW to make things even better. But none of that matters without the runners submitting stuff. Color me a broken record now.

Adding links to KB articles / forum threads from game pages / runs sounds like a great idea. I don't think it'll happen until we get a way to auto generate the game page html (right now it's all done manually, but yes there is work in progress to fix this).

kariohki

2015-01-23 10:38:40 am

waifus are laifu

I've been here since you sent stuff in on VHS and timed with a stopwatch. I've seen this site, this board drop from "the place you go for speedruns" to "oh that place is still around?" somewhat. Not here to be sads, though. Stream of consciousness ideas incoming.

Site layout/look: Compared to its "sibling" sites, it's dated. It doesn't need flashing banners and "you won't believe it" traps, but it needs a shower and a hairbrushing. Thing that jumps out at first to the banner on the front page being the old Quake-themed banner, vs the one used on the forums and GDQ layouts. The tiny, default logo social media buttons - that's such a big thing these days in spreading words. Bulleted list of things on the Features page without much enticement to click on things. The game pages themselves need more obvious download links and section separators (the run time works first as a jump link, and then a link to a download page for example. That can be confusing.) Links in general, really - the front page navigation blurs together by only being text IMO. (i think people say black on white is "dated" because every early 2000s site used that scheme?)

Site function: This ties heavily into the above because, what things should look like depend on what SDA is doing. For simplicity, pretend that it is decided it is a video archive site and central information and slow discussion area. Slow meaning the forums, vs fast like chats and chatrooms. The having old runs as a catalog is a very good idea for this purpose, having the history available for knowledge. That Knowledge Base needs to be put forward, definitely. The separation of the consoles in the forums should be cleaned up - maybe by "generations of gaming" idk.

Site content: The blue whale in the bathtub. Again, comes down to enticement - getting people to give SDA their stuff. A hard balance of speed vs quality. What do THEY get out of it? I'm stumped as to how.

Other: Feels like there's still so much separation between SDA, SRL, speedrun.com, and eventually GDQ will get there. Crosspromotion could be a thing? Like, why no link to "Get Yourself Speedrunning" on the SDA front page when that was advertised so much during AGDQ15? It would help dust off the misconception that we all hate each other and are rivals.
Maybe a little more transparency on the work in progress to upgrade the site (unless there's a forum thread somewhere doing that already) so that it's obvious that yes, things are happening. Even something as small as progress bars (example) when things are being made.
I don't know anything about what to do for timing rules other than a hoverbox over the SDA listed time that gives other site/community timings?

At one point I possibly had more words, but they are gone now. Also don't want to sound nitpicking-mean.

I've been here since you sent stuff in on VHS and timed with a stopwatch. I've seen this site, this board drop from "the place you go for speedruns" to "oh that place is still around?" somewhat. Not here to be sads, though. Stream of consciousness ideas incoming.

[b]Site layout/look:[/b] Compared to its "sibling" sites, it's dated. It doesn't need flashing banners and "you won't believe it" traps, but it needs a shower and a hairbrushing. Thing that jumps out at first to the banner on the front page being the old Quake-themed banner, vs the one used on the forums and GDQ layouts. The tiny, default logo social media buttons - that's such a big thing these days in spreading words. Bulleted list of things on the Features page without much enticement to click on things. The game pages themselves need more obvious download links and section separators (the run time works first as a jump link, and then a link to a download page for example. That can be confusing.) Links in general, really - the front page navigation blurs together by only being text IMO. (i think people say black on white is "dated" because every early 2000s site used that scheme?)

[b]Site function:[/b] This ties heavily into the above because, what things should look like depend on what SDA is doing. For simplicity, pretend that it is decided it is a video archive site and central information and slow discussion area. Slow meaning the forums, vs fast like chats and chatrooms. The having old runs as a catalog is a very good idea for this purpose, having the history available for knowledge. That Knowledge Base needs to be put forward, definitely. The separation of the consoles in the forums should be cleaned up - maybe by "generations of gaming" idk.

[b]Site content:[/b] The blue whale in the bathtub. Again, comes down to enticement - getting people to give SDA their stuff. A hard balance of speed vs quality. What do THEY get out of it? I'm stumped as to how.

[b]Other:[/b] Feels like there's still so much separation between SDA, SRL, speedrun.com, and eventually GDQ will get there. Crosspromotion could be a thing? Like, why no link to "Get Yourself Speedrunning" on the SDA front page when that was advertised so much during AGDQ15? It would help dust off the misconception that we all hate each other and are rivals.
Maybe a little more transparency on the work in progress to upgrade the site (unless there's a forum thread somewhere doing that already) so that it's obvious that yes, things are happening. Even something as small as [url=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/36723747/progress.html]progress bars (example)[/url] when things are being made.
I don't know anything about what to do for timing rules other than a hoverbox over the SDA listed time that gives other site/community timings?

At one point I possibly had more words, but they are gone now. Also don't want to sound nitpicking-mean.

BaronHaynes

Edit history:

BaronHaynes: 2015-01-23 10:41:16 am

2015-01-23 10:40:00 am

Strange days, incredible days

Quote from Radix:

Someone spoke of "white on black" as being dated... seriously? We can't fix the site by changing the color scheme.

What I said was that it was ONLY white text on black background, no images, and structured as a series of blog posts. I think that's a dated design scheme and limits what the site might be capable of with a more active one. I think it worked well for a long time but it feels inaccessible to a lot of people now.

Sorry to back-and-forth Omni, I agree that it could make things negative and lose the bigger picture, but I wanted to clarify this point.

AlecK47

Edit history:

AlecK47: 2015-01-23 10:45:03 am

2015-01-23 10:43:57 am

I've already posted my immediate thoughts, but upon further reflection it hit me that another site I've been visiting for years ( http://uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page - AKA the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, a TES wiki) would serve as a good example for what I would like to suggest: a revamp of the front page that could bring news, the KB and the site's archive function into focus. Tweaks to the game page and improved navigability would ideally follow as well, but having a main page that people want to visit seems to be an issue, and I think SDA could make use of a similar layout (albeit minus the ads). As for aesthetics, I'd like them to be improved (I wouldn't call the current look terrible or anything, but I agree that it can and should be improved in some way), but it's not something I'm particularly good at, so I won't focus on that here.

First off, the news feed is front and center, just under the logo, mission statement/introduction to the site and a few helpful links - not unlike SDA. But then there's more to either side of the main feed: wiki quick links on the left and featured content on the right. My thought was that SDA could have a similar layout with news (general community news and new SDA runs alike, ideally), flanked by a KB section with some quick links and similar spaces for the video archive and forum. Perhaps SDA runs could even have their own separate, more terse feed to one side of the main news feed, likely similar in size and placement to the featured content on UESP. This should immediately help site navigability and provide a more engaging front page that people will want to visit. More people visiting, and hopefully doing so more regularly, would at least alleviate one of the main issues SDA faces.

On a different note, I would like to second zewing's notion regarding the Japanese RPG community. Perhaps if we consider runs they submit to be their own category, both in terms of rules and gameplay, and include a quick disclaimer with a link to an FAQ on differences in community rules? Either way, it would be nice to acknowledge their community more at SDA, and would be in keeping with the community hub idea for SDA (whether that's the main goal in the end or just a "tweak," as omni put it).

I've already posted my immediate thoughts, but upon further reflection it hit me that another site I've been visiting for years ( http://uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page - AKA the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, a TES wiki) would serve as a good example for what I would like to suggest: a revamp of the front page that could bring news, the KB and the site's archive function into focus.  Tweaks to the game page and improved navigability would ideally follow as well, but having a main page that people want to visit seems to be an issue, and I think SDA could make use of a similar layout (albeit minus the ads).  As for aesthetics, I'd like them to be improved (I wouldn't call the current look terrible or anything, but I agree that it can and should be improved in some way), but it's not something I'm particularly good at, so I won't focus on that here.

First off, the news feed is front and center, just under the logo, mission statement/introduction to the site and a few helpful links - not unlike SDA.  But then there's more to either side of the main feed: wiki quick links on the left and featured content on the right.  My thought was that SDA could have a similar layout with news (general community news and new SDA runs alike, ideally), flanked by a KB section with some quick links and similar spaces for the video archive and forum.  Perhaps SDA runs could even have their own separate, more terse feed to one side of the main news feed, likely similar in size and placement to the featured content on UESP.  This should immediately help site navigability and provide a more engaging front page that people will want to visit.  More people visiting, and hopefully doing so more regularly, would at least alleviate one of the main issues SDA faces.

On a different note, I would like to second zewing's notion regarding the Japanese RPG community.  Perhaps if we consider runs they submit to be their own category, both in terms of rules and gameplay, and include a quick disclaimer with a link to an FAQ on differences in community rules?  Either way, it would be nice to acknowledge their community more at SDA, and would be in keeping with the community hub idea for SDA (whether that's the main goal in the end or just a "tweak," as omni put it).