NOT RC but I'm putting it here for easy access thanks

So guys. You and I have issues with the veto system in its current state. Let's discuss!


Please review relevant information pages before posting, so that decisions can be informed based off of both the current existing rules and current existing problems

help/wiki/People/The_Team/Beatmap_Nominators/Beatmap_Veto
help/wiki/People/The_Team/Beatmap_Nominators/Rules#veto


This has also been discussed on twitter, on vetoed beatmaps, on discords, in the osu!dev server on occasssion but mostly ends up as noise that has gotten lost and lead to no changes and only the mood of discontent with the current state of affairs is left. I do have some ideas of my own, but would like to hear other's opinions as well. This thread is to discuss issues with vetoes as a system presently, and ideas on fixing that. Anything targeting specific users may be subject to removal, as this can lead the thread to go off the broader topic.

This thread will periodically be edited to summarize current issues and solutions pointed out. Other NAT and GMT may edit this post for that purpose.

Ideas for improvement may be implemented individually or in tandem with other ideas and proposals. If entire system rewriting proposals are written those will be linked and briefly summarized as a point for the improvement ideas.

Present Issues
this list is not final
this list is a mishmash of varying opinions of issues, some may disagree these are issues. that's fine, let's figure this out

1. Veto mediation outcome may not represent general community opinion.
2. Vetoes can take up a lot of unnecessary time when outcome is already clear.
3. Vetoes can be initiated for basically any reason big or small.
4. Mediation only includes the voices of mediators, and not others who are invested in beatmap discussion.
5. Mediation results can be confusing and long to read.
6. Vetoes may include multiple issues, which can be unclear how to vote on during mediation.
7. Vetoes should be to prevent low quality maps from ranked, not shoehorn disagreements.
8. A veto immediately halts the ranking process before seeing if it's valid or before the mapper responds
9. Some mediators may not care about the veto or may not be knowledgable for that speicifc issue.

Ideas for improvement
this list is not final
this is not what will happen or is planned to happen, but a collection of floated ideas for discussion for potential implementation.

1. NAT summarize mediation outcome and link to the list of individual mediations on the BN website, making what needs to be fixed easier to parse.
2. Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.
3. Reduce the time on mediation for issues which are quickly checked. Problems such as background images or difficulty names could have their time reduced to 3 days for instance, while spread and entire difficulty quality issues would remain at the standard 7 days mediation.
4. Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.
5. Instead of the above, allow vetoes to be appealed in cases where community opinion is against the veto, this time mediated by NATs. This would allow the veto to be re-evaluated with the community thoughts better in mind.
6. Move mediation to the NATs hands
7. Weigh "bad" vetoes more heavily in current BN evaluations
8. In response to this, make each single definable issue in a veto be voted on separately?
9. Clarify the purpose of mediation - for opinion or for should never be ranked?
10. Make mediation yes/no only and get rid of neutral entirely. If nominators don't feel strongly on an issue they would be directed to vote to dismiss. This way only substantial issues multiple people agree on would be upheld.
11. Represent both mapper and vetoer opinions and base arguments clearly on the veto site itself.
12. Allowing other community members as part of mediation, handpicked, or apply to a selection specifically for that purpose. Such as non BN experienced mappers, modders.
13. "Suspend" the qualification timer for the veto discussion, keeping the map in qualified but unable to be ranked. *note: this was brought up in several posts, so i linked just one
14. For each veto, call specific people who are experts in the field when applicable.
15. Require at least 1 NAT to agree to place a veto
16. require 5 bns to start a veto, then 5 mediate. Other numbers to balance could be like 3/7 or so.
17. In tandem with removing neutral, allow people to opt-out if they don't care to mediate a particular issue.
18. Kite's proposal on how to handle mediation, requiring a step for vetoes to reach that point by a vote of the mapper, 2 bns, 2 vetoing bns, 2 NAT. If the discussion leads to no results, hand to the NAT. *note: this propsal has many other details as well, some overlap with the rest of this list. some don't. click for full post.
19. suggestions should be made and responded to in order to be considered grounds for a veto
20. Make staying a BN harder to raise the competence floor and the rest of Mun's post! very thought out proposal. please read
21. If issues arise after mediation, allow mapper to go through mediation again, but with exclusively NATs.

Please keep in mind that proposals that are basically get rid of vetoes entirely will not be accepted. While the system is not perfect, it is necessary for the push and pull quality maintenance of the ranked section. Improving the system is what is being looked for here, and basically anything goes so long as stopping maps for quality issues would exist in some form or another.

The ideas listed so far are quite good imo, i don't think the first one is ''that'' useful, since the bn explanations individually would make it more reliable and open to discussion. Also, i personally like the 2 BNs needed for vetoes and also the power to someone dismiss vetoes depending on general community opinion + analysis, ideally someone from within NAT or a group of people within the NAT that are more motivated for that extra task, this could potentially work well and give mappers/community more chance to overcome questionable vetoes.

I think the potential solutions presented by the post are already good enough and idk why it wasn't implemented from the start as it's seems like the most logical way to make vetos work. I also think that vetos should only focus in gameplay issue, veto on a diffc name, a bg, etc don't hinder the maps quality, gameplay or how a player will see a map as the most Importen thing about mapping is gameplay. I also think that vetos should be more closely followed and punished when abused. The veto button comes with responsibility abusing that for small nitpicks is toxic and is also stopping the flow of mapping in general. I also think cross mode vetos are terrible a taiko bn should not be able to veto std, Mania, ctb and other way around.

most of the ideas for improvement seem pretty good but im heavily against

"Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation."

This just creates a contest to see who can shout the loudest to overturn the mediation, would prefer that in cases of clear community opinion going the other way that cases could be appealed and then NAT could vote and come to an agreement among them. If the NAT agrees with how the BNs handled it then i see no real use in overturning it.

Vetoes shouldnt just be dismissed because they people are angry, they should be dismissed if clear counterarguements have been made.

PS: can also give veto mediation back to NAT cause the current BN rng for each mediation is pretty bad. Furthermore the fact that some BNs really shouldnt be mediating as seen in some of the mediation posts from recently. I trust the expertise of the nat more way more than that of your average bn.

1) perhaps? personally don't have the biggest issue with reading mediation posts as within the first few lines it says whether it was upheld or not upheld. (though at times responses are omitted based on what they voted and it never really seemed too clear. ie votes that disagreed were not present. note: does not include thrown out votes.)

2) definitely support the idea of having 2 BNs necessary to veto something, it would allow for a more visual representation of, "hey there are other bns with similar issues to me!" instead of it just being said in the original post. (sometimes people just note they asked others but aren't too transparent about it, making it more on the ambiguous side.) i like the reasoning of 2 BNs to push a map = 2 BNs to veto a map, it makes things seem more fair. i say this as it has been argued sometimes about how 2 BNs looked over the map and thought everything was fine but 1 BN comes and takes it down.

3) for general, not specific to the map issues, i agree that cutting the time in half to like 3-4 days would be much better. (a la mamma mia veto as of late.) because realistically, it is not hard to open a background or look at a difficulty name. given the example i noted, multiple people on the thread, on twitter, and on discord were complaining about how the host would have to wait a week over something like this. that creates unnecessary community uproar, putting aside the legitimacy of the veto at hand, just the content of what it contains.

4) neutral, possibly against this last one, but it depends. it is very similar to how the QAT used to be, (i mean even having a bn jury is similar except a bigger pool.) but "someone else" is what worries me because it is not clear. (i don't really expect it to be right now, but that is my general concern.) citing the veto on vell's map again, the position of the community was quite clear, and emphasized multiple times but a) the vetoer stood their ground and sent it to mediation. (the idea of having a second bn necessary to veto with would help to remedy this and provide better transparency when necessary.) b) the community, bns, etc felt that the veto itself was wrong and who knows, sometimes against the odds things get upheld. it just depends on who gets picked. but i digress, in theory i feel that being able to dismiss some vetoes would be good and more reliant on the community which is important in this kind of game, it's community based.

tl;dr i feel the current list of improvements are worth thinking about as well.. improvements to the current system, but they won't necessarily make everyone happy.

i think i like your ideas, and i have one to propose

how about making maps still QFed until community decides to DQ the map after veto process? (but can't be moved to ranked until veto ends)

since veto's real problem for mapper is 'wasting time unnecessarily with controversal/silly issues'. let's keep instant DQ for significant RC related things

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

I like most of the other ideas, though unsure about requiring more than one BN.

This one though is kind of difficult to define, beyond using "common sense" which fails more often than it should. My main questions are:

1. What constitutes "clearly against"?
   Even the most controversial vetoes have some amount of support usually, and vice versa (e.g. My Movie). It's very difficult to get an accurate reading on community opinion because that usually differs between groups and between sites (osu, discord, credit, twitter...). Thus it is also not really possible to justify such a decision on evidence, which could lead to people being unsatisfied with the decision and perhaps questioning the integrity of those making the ruling, in all but the most clear-cut cases (e.g. beatmapsets/934576/discussion#/1577482). Especially because staff/NAT may have connections to the mapper/vetoer and though I generally trust the NAT to remain impartial, its still a valid concern I believe.
2. What is the "general community"?
   As mentioned above, discussion in the osu community is split across multiple groups and platforms. I don't think it makes sense to weight all these people's opinions the same when it comes to more in-depth mapping questions - then again players being the ones the maps are made for, their opinions should matter. beatmapsets/1052935/discussion/-/generalAll#/1441566 is an example of where player/community opinion is very relevant to a veto.

I dont think that option should be implemented anyway, but if people argue for it the points above need to be clarified/discussed imo.

Also adding another idea that I saw quite a few times:
Make "bad" vetoes (more?) relevant in BN evaluations.

Unsure if this is already the case since eval criteria are untransparent, and this could lead to BNs being afraid to voice valid concerns and do QAH out of fear of probation/being kicked, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.

Reading this and seeing all the recent discussions on vetoes, mediations etc, I do think that having vetoes need 2 BNs to go into mediation would make it not look like one person has all this power and all to stop a map from getting ranked which will stop these almost random vetoes over stuff that really doesn't matter. Also having a group who can completely dismiss vetoes that the majority of disagree with will definitely get rid of long drawn out and pointless discussions over something people don't agree with anyways. Maybe have a vote on if it should be dismissed or not. But yea that's my opinion :3c

I feel like the whole veto thing became more complicated than it has to be

"Having to get a second agreeing BN to veto as well or else it'll get dismissed"

This doesn't discourage BNs who are actively circlejerking.

Even when I was a BN as Bubblun, there was still an issue of vetoes / DQs over minor issues, the nomination team has become such to where there's more reward for bringing maps down than it is to bring them up. (Example: starting the QAH thing) I say that because there seems to be little remorse in how maps are handled now when it comes to DQs / vetoes.

They need to remain for issues bigger than "Adjust timing by 10ms" and "Add hitwhistles on these notes"

Big issues that used to be just enough of a reason for a valid veto:

Inconsistent difficulty fluctuations / bad spreads

Lack of hitsounds

Metadata, timing, Storyboard issues, video / lyric content

Rankables (Unsnapped notes, silent hitcircles / heads, etc)

Questionable mapping choices overall (This wasn't always a bad thing, as vetoes were at one point just a simple way of coming to an understanding with the mapper)


There's really no reason for a veto outside of technical things, plus general issues with the map. A missing hitsound is not worth another 7 day wait, I thought we as the nomination team cared for the mapping community enough to give some leniency with that stuff.

We team as a whole shouldn't be actively venting out maps, because there's still a demand of pushing maps out there for the community. Before BNs were allowed to DQ, only the QAT / NAT could do it, and that created a balance of quality and also quantity. With even fewer BNs now than before, I don't know why they all have permission to halt the ranking process like an NAT can.

The issue with community vote is the community doesn't always want what everybody wants. What that means is, if enough people say "yes" then surely everybody wants this, right? No.

There's little understanding for mapping / nominating how you want to nominate and allowing others to do so the way they want to.

I bring this up because I think the issue is less-technical / political and more-so moral. We as a community should have the decency to work with the system we have now. Changing it up for the sake of changing it won't fix the problem

i feel like sometimes it's not necessary to veto if the bn can communicate with the mapper privately and see if there will be any agreement before dropping a veto to the mapset
also would it might benefit the veto outcome to be more justified if you can pick some mappers who has specified expertise in what the veto is about, for example hitsounding, or metadata etc. its better to get a "general community opinion" if its also given more power to the community itself rather than limiting the bng to represent a "general community"

Moecho wrote:

i feel like sometimes it's not necessary to veto if the bn can communicate with the mapper privately and see if there will be any agreement before dropping a veto to the mapset
also would it might benefit the veto outcome to be more justified if you can pick some mappers who has specified expertise in what the veto is about, for example hitsounding, or metadata etc. its better to get a "general community opinion" if its also given more power to the community itself rather than limiting the bng to represent a "general community"

↖↖↖↖
damn i mean cho

Moecho wrote:

i feel like sometimes it's not necessary to veto if the bn can communicate with the mapper privately and see if there will be any agreement before dropping a veto to the mapset

usually they dont, thats why veto happens

the manner would be:
-ask the mapper if he could change it privately or in forum both works, like a normal mod
-and if both sides doesnt reach an agreement than proceed veto

but most just veto because a side think the issue is very troublesome

Since I personally think most of the issues listed aren't issues I won't comment on that, just on the proposed solutions.

Noffy wrote:

NAT summarize mediation outcome and link to the list of individual mediations on the BN website, making what needs to be fixed easier to parse.

This is good. The post could be split into two parts which are "what needs to be fixed" and then a list of all ideas for possible solutions provided by the mediators / vetoing bn.

Noffy wrote:

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

I think this achieves nothing except making the process more complicated. There is almost always atleast one BN that will agree with a veto considering how many BNs there are. Even if that's not the case, almost every one of us has good friends in the BNG that we could probably convince to support our vetoes, which is what is realistically going to happen.

Noffy wrote:

Reduce the time on mediation for issues which are quickly checked. Problems such as background images or difficulty names could have their time reduced to 3 days for instance, while spread and entire difficulty quality issues would remain at the standard 7 days mediation.

Sure, this makes sense.

Noffy wrote:

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

This point sounds like a bad idea to me. "General community opinion" is never clear - in most cases, on the map threads, it's the mapper and their friendcircle arguing with the vetoing BN and their friendcircle plus a few engaged mappers on both sides. If you want to consider more than that, how exactly are you gonna get an opinion from the "general community" and even then, there are certain aspects of mapping the vocal part of the general community doesn't care much about (low difficulties, hitsounding, ...) while other aspects they care a lot about (maps that are "controversial" in some way or another) so it would be just dismissing any veto based on certain aspects of mapping, which seems nonsensical.

Sylvarus wrote:

Also adding another idea that I saw quite a few times:
Make "bad" vetoes (more?) relevant in BN evaluations.

Unsure if this is already the case since eval criteria are untransparent, and this could lead to BNs being afraid to voice valid concerns and do QAH out of fear of probation/being kicked, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.

this has been talked about sometimes, but from what i've noticed from some other BNs is that this creates a mindset that they should not be vetoing because it can hurt you. i can understand if it's multiple times, ie 5-7. (just a rough number because it really depends on your mode.) but i don't think BNs should be made to be scared of voicing their concerns as that goes against the nature of what vetoes are supposed to be. as subjective as someone can think a veto is, the poster thought it was a serious enough issue to go as far to veto that, and making this be feared is almost as bad as taking it away entirely.

basically, please don't make vetoes be feared because it can be detrimental in a different way.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
unrelated to the above portion, something that i feel is a big issue is when multiple things are being submitted for veto mediation. say for example the vetoer has multiple problems that cannot be summarized as one idea. but not every mediator will react the same or even address all of the issues at hand. this feels quite faulty as it gives either a wrong or incomplete idea as to what the mediators feel with the issues.

NAT summarize mediation outcome and link to the list of individual mediations on the BN website, making what needs to be fixed easier to parse.

good, no objections here

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

While I don't think this is a bad idea, I'm not too sure if implementing it is. As you can see from lots of recent events, vetoing a map often results in the vetoing nominator recieving lots of hate (justified or not doesn't really matter here). A great example would be Cheri's veto on worldenddominator, she disqualified the map for something she considered an issue (and I think 9 other mediating bns agreed with her), yet she, and only she (except for maybe #8, but that's a different story), was met with an incredible amount of hate, simply because she veto'd a map by a well known mapper and people disagreed with her reasoning. Now, if we implement this rule, you would obviously require 2 nominators to veto a map, but I seriously doubt most people would want to be the 2nd bn for this, because of reasons I mentioned above. Being the 2nd vetoing bn puts you in the position of the responsible person, while no one cares if you simply state you agree with the veto in the replies. I'm very certain most people wouldn't want to be "the big bad veto guy", even if they actually agree with whatever the veto reason might be. Adding this rule might make it too hard to actually veto stuff imo.

You could also look at it from the perspective myxo pointed out.

Reduce the time on mediation for issues which are quickly checked. Problems such as background images or difficulty names could have their time reduced to 3 days for instance, while spread and entire difficulty quality issues would remain at the standard 7 days mediation.

good, no objections here

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

Bad idea, giving in to peer pressure is not how you should handle issues. The thing with "general community opinion" is that no one will care if you veto a map by some random unknown noname mapper, it heavily depends on whose map you veto (I doubt there would've been much drama if Cheri's veto would've been on some noname mapper's set).

Map should be push back to Pending（disqualify） by the nominators or mapper
instead of who vetos.

I don't agree with veto can directly pushing Qualified map back to Pending.
Map should be push back to Pending by the nominators or mapper instead of who vetos to avoid Re-nominate with mis-veto.
When a map having veto it should delay move to Ranked until the veto resolved.
And it should have a time limit (about 1 week) to deal with vetoed map,to avoid it stay in Qualified too long.

About Ideas
1.Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.
I think this will makes bn pairing and helps nothing. unless one of the veto is by one of the map's nominators.

ts8zs wrote:

About veto rules:
if they feel there are significant issues regarding beatmap quality
There should be a standard instad of feeling.
like
1.hitsound missing.
2.alone partten over maps avarage difficulty too much.
...etc
This is also telling what should do to mappers
instead of what nominator want mappers do.

well, most of issues can't be defined with certain categories, will mean nothing eventually since evgerything is correlated each other in mapping.
like worlddominator, cheri vetoed with HS aspect, but deetz' expanded this to larger view

One thing I think is unclear to mediators (from what I know) is that it seems to be unclear what the mediation is for. Is the question whether or not they think something is a good idea, or whether or not something in the map should be rankable at all? One of these two is much stronger than the other, and I don't see the point of mediation if it's the former. Either way, it should be abundantly clear.

Second, and more importantly, I feel like the weight of the mapper themself should carry a little more weight in the discussion. The reality is that the whole process from submitting a veto to mediation to having it mediated can happen without the mapper saying a word. An idea that I think might be good would be to have both sides (vetoer and mapper) clearly present their sides on the mediation site, and then present them to whoever will be doing the mediation in an unbiased manner.

Noffy wrote:

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

Except these, the proposed suggestions make sense, and have the potential to make the whole process both faster and more stable in the future.

Why I don't agree with these? Let me explain.

Noffy wrote:

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

The power to be able to dismiss a veto over a community opinion would make sense if the community was the one that has been nominating the beatmaps. There can be flaws as the people might not see clearly and yet, due to this issue the team would be required to remove the veto because community didn't support it / liked the map. This is a bad idea. Including community in such deep matters shouldn't be the solution. It might help, but it should not finalize the matter.

I don't support this idea at all.

Noffy wrote:

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

Even if this would require 3 BNs or more, it wouldn't be an ideal solution. What if the BNs don't want to check the map? They're not obligated to (unless they are assigned in an official mediation). Apart from that, the BNG has already enough people to get somebody that could easily support the vetoer's opinion, which wouldn't achieve anything, apart from getting another BN to support your opinion.

This one requires some tweaking I suppose.

what deetz said

veto wiki says: Beatmapping is extremely diverse and creative differences are to be expected. This is to be encouraged for the sake of creating a variety of content all players can enjoy!

judges should do their work from a more objective view rather than their own opinion

Left wrote:

i think i like your ideas, and i have one to propose

how about making maps still QFed until community decides to DQ the map after veto process? (but can't be moved to ranked until veto ends)

since veto's real problem for mapper is 'wasting time unnecessarily with controversal/silly issues'. let's keep instant DQ for significant RC related things

Not sure I really understand what the idea here is :<

Sylvarus wrote:

Also adding another idea that I saw quite a few times:
Make "bad" vetoes (more?) relevant in BN evaluations.

Unsure if this is already the case since eval criteria are untransparent, and this could lead to BNs being afraid to voice valid concerns and do QAH out of fear of probation/being kicked, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.

we currently do this but to an extremely minor extent. e.g. if it's clear abuse over multiple occasions (hasn't happened to my memory thankfully), or we write the nominators gentle reminders due to the issue you and some others have mentioned that being too harsh in this aspect can make vetoing scarier

_______

I and other NATs are checking this thread regularly and updating OP post as needed. Just DM me or someone if I missed something to add.

As for the issues re:
NAT dismissing vetoes
and
2 BNs for vetoes

I read and understand all these counterpoints and don't really have anything to refute them. I'll leave the ideas there for consideration but nothing in the OP is 100% guaranteed since right now it's floating ideas, so pointing out those flaws is greatly appreciated. Thank you guys so far

Once most ideas are hashed out with base arguments given, in a week or two I think we can move to a more specific proposal to work out details on as well.

Left wrote:

well, most of issues can't be defined with certain categories, will mean nothing eventually since evgerything is correlated each other in mapping.
like worlddominator, cheri vetoed with HS aspect, but deetz' expanded this to larger view

its not i want really talking about so removed them


i think we have same opinion about that vetoed map should keep in qualified.unless more change maded.because we couldnt see through the mapper's thought.

after made this change we can give the veto rights to every mapper/modder.

deetz wrote:

Second, and more importantly, I feel like the weight of the mapper themself should carry a little more weight in the discussion. The reality is that the whole process from submitting a veto to mediation to having it mediated can happen without the mapper saying a word. An idea that I think might be good would be to have both sides (vetoer and mapper) clearly present their sides on the mediation site, and then present them to whoever will be doing the mediation in an unbiased manner.

entirely agree with this, especially because actually finding the mapper's / vetoer's replies (or a clear statement of their opinions) can be... quite hard sometimes

@Noffy

i mean
=> no instant DQ with veto / but can't be ranked until veto process ends


that will solve mappers' time waste with silly/controversal issues (which is the actual reason mappers hate veto), while earning enough time to be discussed

Noffy wrote:

allow vetoes to be appealed in cases where community opinion is against the veto, this time mediated by NATs. This would allow the veto to be re-evaluated with the community thoughts better in mind.

The issue is the same as mentioned before.. How we define "community opinion"? Cause this will probably lead into have popular mappers able to have a re-evaluation while new mappers can't and it's gonna be very unfair..

Noffy wrote:

Weigh "bad" vetoes more heavily in current BN evaluations

It's already hard enough to perform a veto (for what mordred said) so i think that if this is gonna afflict in a negative way the BN status no one would bother to veto something cause how we exactly define a "bad" veto? Is it a "bad" veto if the "community opinion" is against the vetoer?

deetz wrote:

An idea that I think might be good would be to have both sides (vetoer and mapper) clearly present their sides on the mediation site, and then present them to whoever will be doing the mediation in an unbiased manner.

I agree this could be a thing to have both the vetoer and the mapper to add a reasoning on the BN site when submitting a veto

Stop with secrecy and be more transparent with the mediation process in general, invite the mapper to be part of the discord channel the mediation is happening in so during its time it doesn't just end up becoming a process of collecting individual thoughts about the veto in question while discarding essential information that should influence the outcome.

Could you elaborate what you mean with "Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation."
Did you mean to lead into disqualification of the mapset instead of mediation? Because mediation is initiated by the maphost afaik(?). Not quite sure how to read or understand this since a single BN can just re-open their veto issue if the mapper disagrees with it, keeping it from proceeding. So I am not sure what kind of a purpose 2 agreeing BNs to initiate a mediation would serve.

I agree with many of the suggested ideas though, especially:
Reduce the time on mediation for issues which are quickly checked.
Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. (Could be handled via polls for example and enables the community to have a voice in the entire process.)

In general I'd wish that initiating a Veto requires more than just a single individual and that a minor discussion about starting a Veto happens within the BNG which helps in enforcing the Veto with more insight from various people and also helps the mapper to see that the issues listed are not coming from a single individual.

Kite wrote:

Stop with secrecy and be more transparent with the mediation process in general, invite the mapper to be part of the discord channel the mediation is happening in so during its time it doesn't just end up becoming a process of collecting individual thoughts about the veto in question while discarding essential information that should influence the outcome.

Veto mediation is as transparent as it can be already. Not sure what discord channel you are talking about - the way mediation is handled is that the map in question gets sent to the 10 BNs involved and they submit their thoughts (what gets posted on the map thread in the end) on the BN website. There is no discussion with other BNs

Myxo wrote:

Kite wrote:

Stop with secrecy and be more transparent with the mediation process in general, invite the mapper to be part of the discord channel the mediation is happening in so during its time it doesn't just end up becoming a process of collecting individual thoughts about the veto in question while discarding essential information that should influence the outcome.

Veto mediation is as transparent as it can be already. Not sure what discord channel you are talking about - the way mediation is handled is that the map in question gets sent to the 10 BNs involved and they submit their thoughts (what gets posted on the map thread in the end) on the BN website. There is no discussion with other BNs

Alright that's my bad then, wasn't quite sure how it was handled in the end. So you basically roll the dice and get 10 random BNs appointed to your mapset which each just individually submit their thoughts without any sort of dicussion happening between them? Not quite sure if that's really a good approach, and could be essentially the underlying issue with the entire thing. If there is not even a discussion happening between the people involved then do they even bother to read previous discussions before they submit their vote?

I still believe keeping the entire thing being anonymous and not involving the mapper directly into the mediation process could be handled better.

Kite wrote:

Could you elaborate what you mean with "Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation."
Did you mean to lead into disqualification of the mapset instead of mediation? Because mediation is initiated by the maphost afaik(?). Not quite sure how to read or understand this since a single BN can just re-open their veto issue if the mapper disagrees with it, keeping it from proceeding. So I am not sure what kind of a purpose 2 agreeing BNs to initiate a mediation would serve.

Veto mediation can be submitted by either vetoer or mapper if the discussion has reached a dead end.
If the disqualifying BN couldn't find a 2nd BN in support of this idea, it would not go to mediation, and instead be immediately dismissed, allowing the map to proceed through the ranking process after resolving the veto like any other mod. Constantly reopening issues just to press the issue without new arguments shouldn't be allowed in that case.

Noffy wrote:

Kite wrote:

Could you elaborate what you mean with "Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation."
Did you mean to lead into disqualification of the mapset instead of mediation? Because mediation is initiated by the maphost afaik(?). Not quite sure how to read or understand this since a single BN can just re-open their veto issue if the mapper disagrees with it, keeping it from proceeding. So I am not sure what kind of a purpose 2 agreeing BNs to initiate a mediation would serve.

Veto mediation can be submitted by either vetoer or mapper if the discussion has reached a dead end.
If the disqualifying BN couldn't find a 2nd BN in support of this idea, it would not go to mediation, and instead be immediately dismissed, allowing the map to proceed through the ranking process after resolving the veto like any other mod. Constantly reopening issues just to press the issue without new arguments shouldn't be allowed in that case.

So essentially with this approach the mapper himself would want to avoid initiating a mediation at all costs for higher chances to get his way? Hmm, I'm not sure if that's a good workaround in the end. Perhaps the mapper could instead call the nominating BNs into the veto discussion and if one of them agree after a dead end it would go into mediation.

"Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed."

Mostly on the agree me with others (Mordred,etc) but I also found this kind of redundant being that majority of bns already ask opinion beforehand placing a veto and as we see through threads, there is always going to be someone who agrees unless it very clear the veto shouldn't even be there.

Feels like an over complicated process to vetoing that with Mordred concerns around this, I can't help but feel this will only hinder to get people to veto more than it already has.


"Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation."

I'm kind of on mordred with this one. The thing about vetoes is that often times, most vetoes will have no drama, end with some form of compromise, and we move on.

Whether that be with HS, spread, etc

The problem that I have with this is that the community's opinion is often bias especially when the involved maps that of their friends/or favorite map of the mapper in question.

What you will have is a system that is simply giving in to peer pressure when it comes to cases such as when the mapper's is popular, while most cases other cases such as say for a new mapper, will have less power in this regard.

Whilst a solution to the issue I have can be form, it still doesn't change the inconsistencies for this and overly complicates a situation more than what it already has

How would the community's opinion outweigh if majority of the bns agree with said veto? Are we going to let the community decide that even if a majority bns agrees, waives the veto at had just cause of a popular mapper? As that is what you will have here.

Even if we decide to have a community voting to negate some of the bias and to gather more people in the community, it still will lead to more popular mappers having more control, as well as lead to potential problems with people even be willing to veto in the first place, negating it's function as it will make feel that bns in question shouldn't even voice out their concerns at all.

Whilst the idea itself is not bad and even some of this is just speculation of what will happen, but even then in practice could leave to too many questionable problems, that I truly do not see it more than an hinderence to bn's at hand and possibly even to some mapper's.

I do think at the very least having this done case by case for the more extreme situation when the disagreement is more blantantly obvious (extremely one-sided) for example

Another small improvement in-case such as when drama arises when bns do vetoes a map, is simply having the ability to let the mapper go through mediation again, but not through bns, but NATs this time when they still have an valid argument at hand and completely disagrees with the mediation results.

^ This way there is more assurance since mediation is at the end rng, which can lead to some unfortunate circumstance such as the mapper simply being unlucky.

Whilst the NATs themselves is bias in their own form, they could at the very least laxed the restrictions depending on the veto in question and possibly give more alternatives than the vetoer or mediators have gave.



For me personally whilst the idea of shorten time for mediation for certain cases and having some of the other adjustments will be nice especially, but I do not think these ideas in question really helps the situation and simply, creates more issues that arises in the bng

The list of potential improvements seems partially good, but I don't fully agree with some points:

Ideas for improvement wrote:

NAT summarize mediation outcome and link to the list of individual mediations on the BN website, making what needs to be fixed easier to parse.

This would be helpful to make the feedback clearer, but I'd like to mention that all the individual comments should be included, not only those in favor of the overall outcome. The reason for this is that counterarguments can be absolutely valid and provide a different view on the matter, even if it's the minority opinion. I guess the summary could still only include the arguments from the majority (like it has been until now) in order to avoid confusion.

Ideas for improvement wrote:

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

I'm not too sure about this, how would you decide what the general community opinion is? Most people who talk about vetoes are those who disagree or complain about them which could lead to a biased result. The community is often split regarding some topics so it would be quite arbitrary. Also, this statement only mentions cases where they community is clearly against the veto, but not where it is clearly in favor of it. In any case, I think a better solution for this would be the possibility to appeal a veto result if it doesn't represent what the community thinks.



I also want to address some of the issues that were already mentioned:

Present issues wrote:

Veto mediation outcome may not represent general community opinion.

Mediation only includes the voices of mediators, and not others who are invested in beatmap discussion.

Both of these issues could be solved by including other users who are not BNs or NAT into the mediation jury. These users could either be handpicked by the NAT/BNG if they are known to be good at modding and analyzing maps, or they would be able to apply as a veto mediator and be accepted if they have proven to have enough knowledge/expertise. The size of the jury could also be increased in order to make the result based less on RNG but rather more representative of the majority, especially for the smaller game modes.

Present issues wrote:

Vetoes can be initiated for basically any reason big or small.

This is definitely a problem in the current system because vetoes can be done for trivial things that don't really affect the map's quality. Vetoes should be used in order to prevent low quality maps from getting ranked, not to forcibly stop the ranking process because of a disagreement. Many vetoes are being justified by saying "they are supposed to be subjective", which is true, but this does not mean that any veto is valid and makes sense. I think there should be a distinction between a subjective concern and a personal preference because the latter is something that should not matter regarding quality assurance. There will always be some maps someone dislikes/disagrees with and that is okay.
Anyway, this issue could be solved by defining rules as to what kind of things vetoes can be used for. For example, someone could veto a map because they think the sliders look ugly, but that is just a matter of preference and should not be part of a veto.
Moreover, making clearly invalid/unreasonable vetoes should be punishable because it means that the BN is not able to differentiate between actual quality concerns and negligible issues. This is similar to how BN applicants are usually denied if they point out things in a map that are totally acceptable.



I think the list of issues and improvements can also be expanded though, here are some ideas:

Issue: A veto causes an immediate halt to the ranking process before even determining whether it's valid or not and before the mapper even has a chance to explain their thoughts.

Possible solution: This one would require some coding from developers but it would be cool if the qualification timer could be suspended for as long as the veto discussion lasts. This would mean that vetoed maps remain in the qualified state until there is a result. If the veto is upheld or the mapper agrees to make changes, the map will be disqualified, otherwise the timer will simply continue from where it left off. The advantage would be having access to replays during qualified, but it would also change one major factor: Right now when mediation occurs, the map has already been taken down so many BNs might (unconsciously) think that it doesn't hurt to make changes at that point, but the question should be whether those changes are absolutely required and warrant a disqualification or not.

Issue: Some mediators might not care about the veto and/or don't have much knowledge in that particular aspect. In those cases their input is probably not very meaningful compared to someone who is more invested and proficient in it.

Possible solution: This idea was brought up by someone in the dev server, basically for every veto you would only call people for mediation who are experts in that specific field, for example timing, metadata, hitsounding etc. unless it's a general issue such as song representation, overall quality concerns or spread.

honestly i think what would be a great thing is to make vetos harder to place (while still keeping the idea of vetos valid and applicable when needed), and also reduce the disruption a veto can cause over small issues

the suggestions you laid out are pretty good, although i think a good idea could be to instead of getting a 2nd BN to agree with the veto, to get an NAT member to agree with the veto before applying it, considering that it would make sense to have some NAT input on the removal of nominations (as getting one other BN to agree to an invalid veto probably isnt that difficult), so instead of 2 BNs being needed, 1 BN and 1 NAT are needed,

for smaller issues (such as the most recent one regarding diffnames, BGs, etc) then giving the NAT power to dismiss vetos that are contentious is a good idea, but imo this would have to be thought out more as the community reaction can sometimes be wrong or blown out of proportion for a veto that is actually valid (maybe have 2-3 NATs agree on if the veto should be dismissed) but then the process might become too convoluted,

i also think its a bad idea to increase punishment for "bad" vetos (as it might discourage some QAH work) but incorporating vetos on the BN evals more is a good way to do this (just dont like directly kick bns for "bad" vetos),

it might be a good idea to have a special probation mode for consistently "bad" vetos?

i know my post is quite big but i hope this gave you some ideas to think about, its good to see an actual discussion on the topic instead of just bashing one side or the other.

Left wrote:

@Noffy

i mean
=> no instant DQ with veto / but can't be ranked until veto process ends


that will solve mappers' time waste with silly/controversal issues (which is the actual reason mappers hate veto), while earning enough time to be discussed

ts8zs wrote:

Map should be push back to Pending（disqualify） by the nominators or mapper
instead of who vetos.

I don't agree with veto can directly pushing Qualified map back to Pending.
Map should be push back to Pending by the nominators or mapper instead of who vetos to avoid Re-nominate with mis-veto.
When a map having veto it should delay move to Ranked until the veto resolved.
And it should have a time limit (about 1 week) to deal with vetoed map,to avoid it stay in Qualified too long.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

Issue: A veto causes an immediate halt to the ranking process before even determining whether it's valid or not and before the mapper even has a chance to explain their thoughts.

Possible solution: This one would require some coding from developers but it would be cool if the qualification timer could be suspended for as long as the veto discussion lasts. This would mean that vetoed maps remain in the qualified state until there is a result. If the veto is upheld or the mapper agrees to make changes, the map will be disqualified, otherwise the timer will simply continue from where it left off. The advantage would be having access to replays during qualified, but it would also change one major factor: Right now when mediation occurs, the map has already been taken down so many BNs might (unconsciously) think that it doesn't hurt to make changes at that point, but the question should be whether those changes are absolutely required and warrant a disqualification or not.

maybe can add this to main post? same opinions

if u care about a map, follow it and voice ur opinion before it hits qualifed. if u dont care why even veto?

Will just talk about the ideas for improvement here since i think they're the most important and i don't see real issues on the presented ones.

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

No reason for this imo, 1st BN can easily find someone else that agrees with their concern, more if that 2nd BN is on their friends circle, the only case i think it'd create a difference is when very dumb vetoes happen, which i don't think i've seen yet. Plus, if you end up applying this please make it so 2 BNs are needed to START a veto, otherwise the toxicity against the BN that DQd will remain and may be even worse.

Reduce the time on mediation for issues which are quickly checked. Problems such as background images or difficulty names could have their time reduced to 3 days for instance, while spread and entire difficulty quality issues would remain at the standard 7 days mediation.

Agree, but maybe some BNs wont have enough time to properly present their opinions, 3 days is not much time tbh

Instead of the above, allow vetoes to be appealed in cases where community opinion is against the veto, this time mediated by NATs. This would allow the veto to be re-evaluated with the community thoughts better in mind.

You mean "with the opposing part thoughts better in mind", BNs are also a part of the community and we also have our opinions, the fact that vetoes seem to be harsh is something we can not fix because it's still a DQ and right now there is no way to create a discussion without it. A suggestion post will end up in a DQ eventually if they keep disagreeing, talking to the mapper will do the same. It would be really nice to have a hiatus state to extend QF time while the discussion takes place, but i highly doubt that would be implemented.

Move mediation to the NATs hands

I don't see the difference with how it is right now, except it'd probably have less opinions compared to current mediation

Weigh "bad" vetoes more heavily in current BN evaluations

Nope, as said before by other people, please don't make BNs fear vetoes

Edit:

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

if u care about a map, follow it and voice ur opinion before it hits qualifed. if u dont care why even veto?

No real way to know about the map existence before it hits qualified tho, unless you're looking for things to veto in pending/bubbled.
The bubbled state doesn't tend to last very long since it goes to qualified quite quick most of the times.

imo u could make the veto requirement by having 5 bns agreeing with it, taking the map down and then let other 5 bns on mediation decide the final outcome. i think this way is more balanced so dqs can be placed more wisely and not that easily like now by 1 person only

Nikakis wrote:

imo u could make the veto requirement by having 5 bns agreeing with it, taking the map down and then let other 5 bns on mediation decide the final outcome. i think this way is more balanced so dqs can be placed more wisely and not that easily like now by 1 person only

if this happens i think 5 might be a bit too high of a requirement to get vetos done, and also its a bit too small of a number to mediate imo, maybe a 3/7 split instead (3 BNs needed to veto and 7 BNs to mediate)

Nikakis wrote:

imo u could make the veto requirement by having 5 bns agreeing with it, taking the map down and then let other 5 bns on mediation decide the final outcome. i think this way is more balanced so dqs can be placed more wisely and not that easily like now by 1 person only

The reason to have an anonymous jury is to avoid bias, if you split it like this, half of the jury will be already on the agreeing side, it'd maybe work if you kept the 10 bns jury but then it's a quite large amount of bns involved into a single veto

DeviousPanda wrote:

Nikakis wrote:

imo u could make the veto requirement by having 5 bns agreeing with it, taking the map down and then let other 5 bns on mediation decide the final outcome. i think this way is more balanced so dqs can be placed more wisely and not that easily like now by 1 person only

if this happens i think 5 might be a bit too high of a requirement to get vetos done, and also its a bit too small of a number to mediate imo, maybe a 3/7 split instead (3 BNs needed to veto and 7 BNs to mediate)

Crissa wrote:

Nikakis wrote:

imo u could make the veto requirement by having 5 bns agreeing with it, taking the map down and then let other 5 bns on mediation decide the final outcome. i think this way is more balanced so dqs can be placed more wisely and not that easily like now by 1 person only

The reason to have an anonymous jury is to avoid bias, if you split it like this, half of the jury will be already on the agreeing side, it'd maybe work if you kept the 10 bns jury but then it's a quite large amount of bns involved into a single veto

then i guess we could make it 5+10 but idk it might be a lot

NAT summarize mediation outcome and link to the list of individual mediations on the BN website, making what needs to be fixed easier to parse.

Doing a TL;DR seems beneficial, but I wouldn't make it more than two or three sentences. Making it longer would take additional time for little gain. The more we can make BNs' reasoning speak for itself, the better, I think. Both faster and less chance we misinterpret stuff that way.

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

As a mapper disagreeing with a veto, the optimal (but maybe not very moral) strat would be to alinate the 1st vetoer so that any potential 2nd vetoer gets dissuaded by this, regardless of how reasonable the issue vetoed for actually is. You'd basically want to exploit the fact that few BNs want to waste their time and ruin their reputations for nothing in return. This seems like a bad meta to have, and we kinda already have it to a lesser degree.

Then there's also what mordred and myxo said.

Reduce the time on mediation for issues which are quickly checked. Problems such as background images or difficulty names could have their time reduced to 3 days for instance, while spread and entire difficulty quality issues would remain at the standard 7 days mediation.

Think time being case-by-case is ultimately good. Could come with some rng drawbacks if we don't manage to replace enough people in time, but benefit probably outweighs it.

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

This is unrealistic to properly gauge. Best we can do is hold a vote, and that's exactly what we're doing.

Instead of the above, allow vetoes to be appealed in cases where community opinion is against the veto, this time mediated by NATs. This would allow the veto to be re-evaluated with the community thoughts better in mind.

The entire reason we're doing mediations is for them to be conclusive, the decision shouldn't need to be questioned often enough for something like this to be a procedure. NATs' word also does not weigh more than BNs', so NATs specifically doesn't make much sense.

Move mediation to the NATs hands

We've already tried this. All it did, from what I can tell, was shift the responsibility on a smaller pool of people. It got to the point where you'd mediate pretty much all vetoes, and it kinda gets to you. BNs can handle this equally well in most cases, sometimes even better.

Weigh "bad" vetoes more heavily in current BN evaluations

There are few enough BNs that want to veto already. If we're going to do this it should only be in extraordinary circumstances, at least for now. Worst case scenario the mapper has to wait for 7 days (or ~3 days if we implement the other thing), before proceeding with ranking.

In response to this, make each single definable issue in a veto be voted on separately?

Probably needs a proposal. E.g. how to handle vetoes due to a combination of smaller non-veto-worthy issues, how to submit the vetoes, how many mediators for each one, how there'd be displayed on the site, etc.

Clarify the purpose of mediation

Agree, should be clear from the wiki page, if it isn't already.

Make mediation yes/no only and get rid of neutral entirely. If nominators don't feel strongly on an issue they would be directed to vote to dismiss. This way only substantial issues multiple people agree on would be upheld.

Agree, although believe this ties closely into being able to partially agree with a veto, as this seems to be the most valid use of neutral rn. Shouldn't be a blocking change tho, I think. Can always vote uphold and specify only wishing to uphold certain parts of the veto.

Naxess wrote:

Agree, should be clear from the wiki page, if it isn't already.

I'd add that it should even be clear from wherever people go to do the mediation itself.

My thoughts about changing how vetoes are done:


I agree with deetz' solution on this subject entirely on making the mediation process more clearer, would help get rid of a lot of the bias on if you're meant to judge if you think it should be allowed to be ranked or not and what the mapper's intention was.

My next point I want to talk about is mediation time. I do think time should be reduced for smaller vetoes that are quick to reach a conclusion. Don't really see any drawback to implementing this.

Next, I do think there should be a second opinion before a veto is placed since you do need 2 BNs to icon a map so it makes sense for 2 to veto/disqualify one. As I don't really see an issue with a second person having to voice an issue, as to me vetoes should be focused on larger issues that multiple BNs disagree with. (I mean if people are gonna shit on a veto they would shit on it after mediation too so it doesn't really change anything besides the mapper feeling less targeted that a sole person has that much power to stop their maps ranking process.)

Lastly, I don't really think NATs should solely handle vetoes as for the most part you'll get less opinions which will just make the outcome more unclear as it's a smaller sample size.

EDIT: Forgot to include one last point:

About neutral votes in vetoes, I think that button should be removed and instead replaced with an option to opt out of a veto if you ain't feeling strongly about upholding or dismissing. Since to my knowledge, vetoes are mandatory to participate in unless there's some circumstance where you arn't able to look at the map and there isn't a way to opt out of vetoes you don't care about willingly. A simple solution to this problem would be to just re-roll new people to fill the vacant spots if some people opt out of that specific veto. (Assuming that isn't already in the system as to me it isn't clear if there is something like that in place already.)

The least that should be done is holding people accountable.

There is nothing but common sense and fair play holding us back from just vetoing every set in qualified right now. If those break there should be some formalized process to not only appeal but mediate the veto itself either through just the NAT or again the BNG.
Else the optimal strategy for someone want I to maximize that QH output would be to just veto everything they can as there is no downside to messing up a veto, in contrast to how nominating a map blindly can cause serious problems ergo why it is disincentivized.

It shouldn't deter people from vetoing maps in fear of getting punished for a veto which did not pass. In that sense it's less harsh than a failed qualifization and should mostly count to the qah performance with a too low performance implying a stripping of the afgected BN's ability to veto for a certain amount of time or similar.

Alternatively an a priori discussion before a veto takes root could be implemented to judge if it should be followed through mediation.


A veto should be the last step during a dispute and that should be made clear through these mechanics.

(Sorry if I am restating things mentioned above, I wrote this hours ago but I didn't press send...)

OP wrote:

Please keep in mind that proposals that are basically get rid of vetoes entirely will not be accepted

why I even bothered to read all the prose at the beginning when it ends with this lol

otherwise I agree with Moecho and deetz

There has to be a solution that includes the nominating BNs and allow them to voice their side and thoughts, because a veto also affects them and not just the mapper. In the current approach the mapper also often falls flat with their arguments being buried in walls of discussion text. These things need to be adressed somehow.

I've compiled some ideas that could be worth considering down below:

Procedure on Veto
*Min. 2 BNs required to initiate a veto, allowing solo rogue actions should be prevented with such a powerful tool
*Not immediately push back the mapset into Pending but place it on hold, during this period discussion should happen where all sides, including nominating BNs can voice their thoughts and try to reach a conclusion or compromise.
*In case of a dead-end, all involved people (2 Veto BNs, 2 Nomination BNs, and Mapper) submit a vote to the NAT wether or not a mediation should happen with reasons given why or why not. Possibly 2 NAT members are chosen to review the votes submitted and approve or disapprove the mediation for a total of 7 Votes. Should the mapper decide to not submit their vote the mediation will be automatically carried through, should one of the Veto BNs decide to not submit their vote, then the mediation and veto are automatically canceled.

Procedure on Mediation
*Same as before, random BNs are picked and have to submit their thoughts and judge the viability of the veto.
*All involved BNs receive a small summary that highlights the most important arguments of both conflicting sides.
*All involved BNs need to confirm that they have read and understand what the discussion is or was about.
*All involved BNs proceed to submit their final thoughts and verdict.

Procedure Post-Mediation
*If the verdict is in favour of the mapper then the veto is canceled.
*If the verdict is in favour of the veto then the mapper should attempt to compromise with suggestions given or offer their own compromise to the problem.
*Should the further discussion lead to no results, the case will be directly handed to the NAT for inspection. At this point any further action will have consequences for either the mapper or the BNs that issued the Veto. Nuke if the Mapper isn't willing to compromise after the involvement of NAT and a frowny face for the BNs if the NAT finds the veto to not be substantial in the end.

___________________

A few things change and a few things stay the same with this approach. Overall this approach will still offer fast results for obvious flaws in a map but provide a bigger obstacle to vetos of a more subjective and questionable matter. With the risk of a potential punishment involved both parties will think a second time before proceeding further and overall it should prevent things from escalating as they have recently. The biggest role during the mediation is still on the BNs involved, with the only difference that now instead of given an unbiased opinion about the nature of the veto they know the circumstances and arguments of both sides to make a better judgment that doesn't disregard any important information from both parties.

To add a bit more to the voting submission part towards NAT. The most common result would be 3x No - Yes x2, in a sense one might think it's useless to allow the vote in the first place but there is a reason behind this idea. The NAT get's some insight on where people stand regarding the veto the more so if the votes deviate from the most expected result (which is bound to happen). The other reason is that a veto should be in a slight disadvantage against the mapper, since he has proven his work was good enough to be qualified in the first place.
I believe harsh issues will have no problem finding some way of resolution anyways.

To end it on a more personal note, I don't think that the priviledge of veto is something every Beatmap Nominator should have from the get-go. It should be a right that's earned through a record of good work that proves the credibility and expertise that this person can be entrusted with.

Noffy wrote:

Left wrote:

i think i like your ideas, and i have one to propose

how about making maps still QFed until community decides to DQ the map after veto process? (but can't be moved to ranked until veto ends)

since veto's real problem for mapper is 'wasting time unnecessarily with controversal/silly issues'. let's keep instant DQ for significant RC related things

Not sure I really understand what the idea here is :<

this means a veto will no cause dq immediately until more community voice (the two nominators,owner mappers,other modders,bng,nat) comes in.
to realize this. we need:

1.veto will not cause dq immediately until the two nominators or mapper admits it.
means we should respect mapper's opinion or it have real problems.

2.vetoed map will not move to ranked until veto issues dismissed.
this creates time for vetoer and mapper and the two nominators and community to talk about it.

3.vetoed map will be dq when it reach a time limit.
means the problem veto said must be resolved by dismiss or fix.

these measures can help veto resolve real problems instead of subjective opinions.
dq by subjective opinion should be agree with mapper or commnuity.
subjective veto should respect mapper&community's opinion.

Present Issues wrote:

Mediation only includes the voices of mediators, and not others who are invested in beatmap discussion.

A mapper earlier pointed out a very interesting suggestion regarding the inclusion of a separate jury. I'd like to give my two cents on the matter.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

Both of these issues could be solved by including other users who are not BNs or NAT into the mediation jury.
These users could either be handpicked by the NAT/BNG if they are known to be good at modding and analyzing maps, or they would be
able to apply as a veto mediator and be accepted if they have proven to have enough knowledge/expertise. The size of the jury
could also be increased in order to make the result based less on RNG but rather more representative of the majority, especially for the smaller game modes.

This idea of a separate jury is something we've seen used in real life (jury duty), and it works well in especially nuanced scenarios.

We could include a team of experienced volunteers from the osu! mapping community who have passed extensive evaluations to act as voices for the mapping community. Allowing experienced mappers that are outside of the BNG to weigh in provides them with an official format on which they may influence vetoes and avert needless twitter clutter. It also brings in voices that are more representative of the community, which may subsequently alleviate issues related to under-representation.


I would also like to address a mentioned idea for improvement:

Ideas for Improvement wrote:

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation.
This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

I would argue that a 3rd BN, or even a 4th/5th/6th/7th BN be necessary for a map to go into mediation. As we've seen already, there have been a number of questionable vetoes.

Allowing every single BN the power to directly interfere with nomination is potentially disruptive, and requiring two BNs to agree to undergo veto is a silly intervention that can easily be abused. As Cheri mentioned earlier, much of the discussions revolving around the veto is being unofficially discussed on separate platforms. There should be more transparency regarding this discussion as it involves more than just a single group of individuals.

QATs previously have held sole authority in this matter, but a difference was that the team had barely 10 people. In comparison, the BNG has around 40 members (the exact number, I am not too sure).

Crissa wrote:

Nope, as said before by other people, please don't make BNs fear vetoes

I've been here long enough to see the good and the bad, and beatmap nukes were very VERY rarely used. Proper communication with the mapper should be prioritized over vetoes.

If too many questionable vetoes arise out of the BNG, it could potentially be even more taxing on the NAT than if they were to handle vetoes from the start.

I like the idea of a map going into a qualified limbo, where it's not dq'd and doesn't require bns to renominate, but also doesn't let the map get ranked until the issue comes to a conclusion. understandable if this can't happen, it'd need a bit of work by the web devs to make a system where an issue isn't solved until the initial bn and mapper mark as resolved.

also a fan of the idea of making mediations a strictly yes/no answer

Hi i have onions

Noffy wrote:

Veto mediation outcome may not represent general community opinion.

This is a bit vague, but for the sake of argument, I'll assume this just means "the mapping community as a whole." Unfortunately, neither popularity nor prominence are effective tools of argument. The point of vetoes and mediation has never been to represent community opinion. The point is to receive the educated opinions of a broad pool of qualified individuals. If the community, including more experienced mappers and modders within it, finds the outcome of a veto incompetent or unpalatable, that is not a problem with the structure of vetoes and mediation - that is entirely a problem with the capability of current members of the BNG. No amount of community structuring will fix this.

Noffy wrote:

Vetoes can take up a lot of unnecessary time when outcome is already clear.

Certainly a big one, often mediation can just look like a big waste of time. There are two potential cases for this:

1. Mediation is overwhelmingly likely to uphold the veto, and the mapper refuses to comply.
2. Mediation is overwhelmingly likely to dismiss the veto, and the vetoer refuses to drop the issue.

Before a veto actually takes place, the two processes can look very similar. A nominator offers suggestions/points out issues with a map, the mapper refuses to make changes to adequately accommodate these suggestions. The only way that we see which case it is (or if it's one of these cases at all), however, is by letting the veto take place. The way to fix this issue is simple: if there is no significant time constraint, suggestions should be made and responded to in order to be considered grounds for a veto, unless the veto is for general quality issues and specific suggestions to improve the map enough to be adequate cannot be made. This will catch most of the silly vetoes like diffnames and having a couple seconds of sliders in a normal, and also allow for less polarized discussion to take place on more high-profile, controversial issues that the mapper may refuse to assess. It will also make it evident to involved parties as well as potential mediating BNs whether this falls into case 1 or case 2.

To put some additional work on naxess - if this is an acceptable change to the veto system, an Aiess feed for suggestions placed on qualified maps would be quite useful and conducive to discussion.

Once we've figured out what case it is, however, there's the issue of how to deal with it:
In case 1, I see no issue at all. Mediation brings in more allegedly educated opinions, and the time it takes allows for cooler heads and for more relevant discussion to take place on thread.
In case 2, everyone is wasting their time for a single nominator committing too hard. With the changes suggested above, this should rarely, if ever, happen - and if they do, it will be the result of that nominator's incompetence, not the fault of some sort of systematic inadequacy stopping the vetoer from causing problems. Focus should be on minimizing the impact of this in cases where it's possible to:

Noffy wrote:

Reduce the time on mediation for issues which are quickly checked. Problems such as background images or difficulty names could have their time reduced to 3 days for instance, while spread and entire difficulty quality issues would remain at the standard 7 days mediation.

Sounds like a solution to me.

Noffy wrote:

Vetoes can be initiated for basically any reason big or small.

I do not view this as a problem. If an issue is small, but significant enough to have a noticeable impact on the map, and the mapper refuses to apply as in case 1 above, it's worth vetoing for. If not, it should be caught by the process detailed above.

Noffy wrote:

Mediation only includes the voices of mediators, and not others who are invested in beatmap discussion.

I was under the impression that this was a positive, not a negative. Any neutral and otherwise uninvolved mediator that doesn't do their due diligence in looking at the discussion on the thread and making a decision based off of the arguments represented there is not doing their job properly. This is not a problem with the structure of vetoes and mediation, this is a problem of the competence of current BNs.

I think I've presented my case enough on these issues, so I won't go further with the rest of the present issues.
tl;dr: Most of these are not issues that we can solve by changing how vetoes are handled, we can only solve them by changing who vetoes are handled by.

Part 2: Solution Boogaloo

I hope you didn't think that those proposed solutions could escape my complaining spree!

Noffy wrote:

Make vetoes require 2 agreeing BNs to go to mediation. This would be equal to how many BNs are required to push a map to qualified. If a disqualified map can not find a 2nd BN to support the veto, it would be immediately dismissed.

This is, in the best of circumstances, useless. Many nominators are friends, or at least in active communication, with each other. This is not a question of the competence or validity of a veto. This is a popularity contest.
Whether a veto is valid, helpful, or effective is not a function of how many people agree or disagree with it, no matter their position. All this does is cause a vetoer to seek validation instead of real feedback.

Noffy wrote:

Give NAT or someone else the express power to dismiss vetoes if general community opinion is clearly against the veto. This could happen both before and after mediation.

I must agree with Stack in being vehemently against this motion. General community opinion should never factor into a veto, more people believing something doesn't make it any more correct. More people believing something doesn't even mean it's a better argument. This amendment would give credence and direct support to a community ready to turn every veto into a dramatic, controversial shouting match - not support a community that wants to see more thoughtful, meaningful discussion.

Noffy wrote:

Instead of the above, allow vetoes to be appealed in cases where community opinion is against the veto, this time mediated by NATs. This would allow the veto to be re-evaluated with the community thoughts better in mind.

Noffy wrote:

Move mediation to the NATs hands

I have only one thing to say to these. This would not be anywhere near necessary if the BNG was competent enough to handle these cases effectively.

Conclusions

So having complained for several pages, what actionable conclusions are there to this rant?

1. Require* suggestions on thread before vetoes occur

A nominator that intends to veto a map for a specific issue that can be pointed out and fixed by the mapper - i.e. there are specific points on the timeline at which a perceived problem occurs - should first pose it as a suggestion. This gives time for several aspects of these suggestions to be discussed - whether solvable, valid, or even worth DQing for at all.
If there aren't specific points to be made and/or the perceived issues are not solvable through specific suggestions, vetoes should be allowed to skip this, as there's not much room for non-veto discussion there.

The goal of this amendment is to make the act of vetoing more thorough and transparent. Requiring vetoes for specific problems to undergo discussion before a veto is placed means the vetoing BN has to actually make their case to the mapper before ever coming to the conclusion of "I'm blocking this map from being ranked for the time being."

2. Make staying a BN harder.

It's absolutely no surprise to see that some members of the BNG appear to be incapable of living up to the expectations that accompany their station. People aren't perfect, and NATs are not perfect judges of capability. However, it's simply too hard to lose the title. Get someone to help you with your mods and the test, keep your head down, nominate a couple of safe maps every once in a while, and boom - you now have and can maintain a title that essentially just says "My opinion is more important than yours." The floor for competence is too low and very ill-maintained.

Review of BNs' performance should be more strict, and underperformance should be met with a more solid response than just tossing them onto probation, giving the message of "be careful and active for a month, then you can stop caring again."

From where I stand, these two measures implemented together are capable of both minimizing frivolous vetoes and, importantly, making vetoes as a whole less necessary. Requiring discussion of specific points means the potential for the nominator challenging a map and the mapper to come to an agreement - veto doesn't take place. Raising the bar for BNs means higher standards in general when ranking maps, resulting in less maps that any nominator would consider an affront in terms of quality - fewer general quality-based vetoes take place.