Reading MrSergio's post made me want to reply (thanks for inspiring me to give it a shot)
Ranking maps in osu! runs under the philosophy that everyone can do it if they put the work in. Such a mentality is very healthy to stir up new players dreams to get into the mapping sphere, although i can't speak for myself in this category, a lot of mapper have come from such background.
Throughout the years you would often hear that there is a bias against some mappers or even unknown mappers which turned up to be false seeing the rise a many new faces in recent times. I personally have seen it mostly through the mentorship program which i have been a mentor for for 6 cycles and been a judge on multiple contest (also done a lecture on advanced modding with more planned) in the hopes of getting peoples gears of imagination spinning and cultivate their love of creating.
Such a mindset would inevitably create over saturation as the community grew and we fostered new talent. Along the way you would also get mappers who were still in there developing phase wanting to get a map ranked to keep a momentum or motivation going for the sake of mapping. Almost everyone has a story about their "awful first map" and such with some continuing on that trend for the rest of their ranking career.
Now the problem arises that the disparity between the old guards or excellent mappers of our community are being put in the same category as those newby maps which met the minimum for ranking. This of course creates the notion that "everyone is rankable if it doesn't break the rules" which in all fairness is true as long as you could find Nominators ready to lower their standards in the most extreme of cases.
Keeping the last part in mind i would like to propose a new category: Official
The idea is that those maps are being lifted above the pool of casual or underwhelming maps and put into a higher tier regarding quality. Like this you would distinguish between quality maps and just ranked maps.
Let's define ranked as "just having a leader board" and "follows the rules" while Official would be all of those but also have "ASSURED QUALITY".
To be added could be possible monetization of these maps but that could be left up to debate. I'd suggest a donation box on the map page for the mapper to keep it mostly community driven. Like this you would battle and seriously deflate the whole mapping commission market which will undoubtedly create a toxic environment battling the shitmaps made through these once and for all as elite mappers would be incentivised to just create their best.
There are a couple of remarks to add which tie in to the growth of osu!.
if you go to the qualified section you will see that there are about 50 or maybe even more maps waiting to be checked by a handful of people for quality standards. If that "handful" was 50 people then i'd say that it consistently feasible to have quality checks even when 20% of those are having a rough patch in real life. Let's not forget that people are working on these and not robots, mostly people around the age of 18-25 which don't have an awful a lot of time to dispose.
With this logistical problem in out sites concluding that sub par maps would pass is not only expected but also assured. Anyone who has ever judged a map rigorously will know that such an endeavor can take up to hours especially when some sets have like 5-6 diffs.
The solution to this is not to get more people into quality checking. Leaving quality checks to the ones who have experience in such a field is of the utmost importance: You dont higher some dude form the street to fix your plumbing issue, you ask a professional cause you want THE GUARANTEE that the job will be DONE and it will be DONE GOOD. Like this we should throw away any form of public or community driven quality checks. Such a thing is ridiculous and will only cause mapper to play to the fiddle of the masses which will lead to a decrease in variety in mapping. We have to leave the options open for everyone to have a chance remember?!
I would also like to stress the lack of innovation in the field of modding and nominating. As a two times BN drop-out the biggest reason which got my motivation about the whole nomination progress tilted was the fact that you spend too much time as a BN on checking for unrankables. It is, and i stress, of utmost importance to develop a machine(AI, Bot, etc.) to check all of these issues. It will soon not be feasible to fulfill the demand for maps if we want to keep the same mentality going. I would consider myself highly opinionated and have often been refereed to as "unforgiving" when it came to quality issues of any kind from my mentees over the years. Having to spent your time checking for unrankables takes away form the time a BN could've spent to actually mention quality issues or other more important issues than "you muted a sliderhead by accident lol"
Checking for unrankables is a brain-dead routine which takes up more time than it should and just like "everyone can make get a map ranked" everyone who is willing to mindlessly "farm" maps with unrankables can get into the BNG.
As such you would actually see who is actually a capable modder instead of an AI stand-in.
"but who will make this AI think you are talking about": Peppy should pay someone to do it. At the moment the core part of osu! the maps are in danger and lazer could handle another year or two in development.
TL;DR
-Osu! growth is pushing the limits of the past system and it needs refinement
-Official category above ranking for Official maps. (possible monetization in this category would nullify shitmaps people do as commissions)
-Develop AI to assist the increasing demand for nominations and filtering of "incapable" or "unfit" members
Obvious problems:
"what about old maps?"
If the spotlight team is any indication there is a dedicated fanbase of old maps which could assist in determining which maps should be elevated to that stature of Official. All of this would require a lot of effort and i expect a year long project to be made out of it. Peppy might even have to look into hiring competent people to make sure this will be a success. As of now, up in the air but i guess the bold strokes have been presented
"Objectivity vs subjectivity"
We are a community driven game so check-mate
"Loved"
will stay as it is, it is not harming or interacting reasonably with the proposed system to introduce complications
"Controversial maps"
Chill your tits. A controversial map doesn't mean it is a map of sub par quality, in fact with this new system exchange of ideas should flourish as the ideal of Official maps, would be only attainable if you are actually good at mapping.
"UR as a metric for quality"
No. You want a stable system and not one which can be easily rigged by circle jerking. Any form of public voting is INHERENTLY going against the concept of QUALITY ASSURANCE, so please refrain from any such system in your suggestions.
As an addendum i would like to propose also the foundation of osu!archives. There have been a handful of people making guides and those are well and good but as MrSergio said there is a need for more in-depth osu! exchange. I was prepared to create a mathematical system describing and defining everything a map does to help normalize vocabulary on a well defined logical system. I gave up that endeavor as my studies came in their way but if there is interest in an exchange of higher concepts i am willing to help create such a foundation or at least support it with content.
(also Sergio, get on that book, would be really cool to have a book about osu C: )
Cheers, hope someone reads this : D
Smokeman
Ranking maps in osu! runs under the philosophy that everyone can do it if they put the work in. Such a mentality is very healthy to stir up new players dreams to get into the mapping sphere, although i can't speak for myself in this category, a lot of mapper have come from such background.
Throughout the years you would often hear that there is a bias against some mappers or even unknown mappers which turned up to be false seeing the rise a many new faces in recent times. I personally have seen it mostly through the mentorship program which i have been a mentor for for 6 cycles and been a judge on multiple contest (also done a lecture on advanced modding with more planned) in the hopes of getting peoples gears of imagination spinning and cultivate their love of creating.
Such a mindset would inevitably create over saturation as the community grew and we fostered new talent. Along the way you would also get mappers who were still in there developing phase wanting to get a map ranked to keep a momentum or motivation going for the sake of mapping. Almost everyone has a story about their "awful first map" and such with some continuing on that trend for the rest of their ranking career.
Now the problem arises that the disparity between the old guards or excellent mappers of our community are being put in the same category as those newby maps which met the minimum for ranking. This of course creates the notion that "everyone is rankable if it doesn't break the rules" which in all fairness is true as long as you could find Nominators ready to lower their standards in the most extreme of cases.
Keeping the last part in mind i would like to propose a new category: Official
The idea is that those maps are being lifted above the pool of casual or underwhelming maps and put into a higher tier regarding quality. Like this you would distinguish between quality maps and just ranked maps.
Let's define ranked as "just having a leader board" and "follows the rules" while Official would be all of those but also have "ASSURED QUALITY".
To be added could be possible monetization of these maps but that could be left up to debate. I'd suggest a donation box on the map page for the mapper to keep it mostly community driven. Like this you would battle and seriously deflate the whole mapping commission market which will undoubtedly create a toxic environment battling the shitmaps made through these once and for all as elite mappers would be incentivised to just create their best.
There are a couple of remarks to add which tie in to the growth of osu!.
if you go to the qualified section you will see that there are about 50 or maybe even more maps waiting to be checked by a handful of people for quality standards. If that "handful" was 50 people then i'd say that it consistently feasible to have quality checks even when 20% of those are having a rough patch in real life. Let's not forget that people are working on these and not robots, mostly people around the age of 18-25 which don't have an awful a lot of time to dispose.
With this logistical problem in out sites concluding that sub par maps would pass is not only expected but also assured. Anyone who has ever judged a map rigorously will know that such an endeavor can take up to hours especially when some sets have like 5-6 diffs.
The solution to this is not to get more people into quality checking. Leaving quality checks to the ones who have experience in such a field is of the utmost importance: You dont higher some dude form the street to fix your plumbing issue, you ask a professional cause you want THE GUARANTEE that the job will be DONE and it will be DONE GOOD. Like this we should throw away any form of public or community driven quality checks. Such a thing is ridiculous and will only cause mapper to play to the fiddle of the masses which will lead to a decrease in variety in mapping. We have to leave the options open for everyone to have a chance remember?!
I would also like to stress the lack of innovation in the field of modding and nominating. As a two times BN drop-out the biggest reason which got my motivation about the whole nomination progress tilted was the fact that you spend too much time as a BN on checking for unrankables. It is, and i stress, of utmost importance to develop a machine(AI, Bot, etc.) to check all of these issues. It will soon not be feasible to fulfill the demand for maps if we want to keep the same mentality going. I would consider myself highly opinionated and have often been refereed to as "unforgiving" when it came to quality issues of any kind from my mentees over the years. Having to spent your time checking for unrankables takes away form the time a BN could've spent to actually mention quality issues or other more important issues than "you muted a sliderhead by accident lol"
Checking for unrankables is a brain-dead routine which takes up more time than it should and just like "everyone can make get a map ranked" everyone who is willing to mindlessly "farm" maps with unrankables can get into the BNG.
As such you would actually see who is actually a capable modder instead of an AI stand-in.
"but who will make this AI think you are talking about": Peppy should pay someone to do it. At the moment the core part of osu! the maps are in danger and lazer could handle another year or two in development.
TL;DR
-Osu! growth is pushing the limits of the past system and it needs refinement
-Official category above ranking for Official maps. (possible monetization in this category would nullify shitmaps people do as commissions)
-Develop AI to assist the increasing demand for nominations and filtering of "incapable" or "unfit" members
Obvious problems:
"what about old maps?"
If the spotlight team is any indication there is a dedicated fanbase of old maps which could assist in determining which maps should be elevated to that stature of Official. All of this would require a lot of effort and i expect a year long project to be made out of it. Peppy might even have to look into hiring competent people to make sure this will be a success. As of now, up in the air but i guess the bold strokes have been presented
"Objectivity vs subjectivity"
We are a community driven game so check-mate
"Loved"
will stay as it is, it is not harming or interacting reasonably with the proposed system to introduce complications
"Controversial maps"
Chill your tits. A controversial map doesn't mean it is a map of sub par quality, in fact with this new system exchange of ideas should flourish as the ideal of Official maps, would be only attainable if you are actually good at mapping.
"UR as a metric for quality"
No. You want a stable system and not one which can be easily rigged by circle jerking. Any form of public voting is INHERENTLY going against the concept of QUALITY ASSURANCE, so please refrain from any such system in your suggestions.
As an addendum i would like to propose also the foundation of osu!archives. There have been a handful of people making guides and those are well and good but as MrSergio said there is a need for more in-depth osu! exchange. I was prepared to create a mathematical system describing and defining everything a map does to help normalize vocabulary on a well defined logical system. I gave up that endeavor as my studies came in their way but if there is interest in an exchange of higher concepts i am willing to help create such a foundation or at least support it with content.
(also Sergio, get on that book, would be really cool to have a book about osu C: )
Cheers, hope someone reads this : D
Smokeman