I think that we should add a waiting period of 12 hours between bubbling and qualifying a map based on what I have seen and experienced as a taiko modder (that I assume applies to other modes, which is why I'm making this general). This may seem inconvenient and pointless at face value, but I assure you that the reasons for this change are great enough to justify the minor inconvenience it would pose to nominators.

The current state of ranking

Currently, if a map has 2 BNs that agree to nominate it, bubbling practically doesn't exist as the BNs will typically nominate very close to one another, sometimes even instantly (within a few minutes of each other). This isn't just an assumption, you can go through the most recent ranked maps and look at the gaps between bubble and qualification for yourself. As of writing this, (April 10th, 11:41 AM PST), the 10 most recent ranked maps in all modes have gaps of 7 minutes, 11 minutes, 8 minutes, 2 minutes, 69 minutes, 10 hours (the first qualification was literally the same minute, though), 22 hours (after being popped once previously), 10 minutes, 3 minutes, and 7 hours.

Obviously, the majority of maps are currently under this 12 hour gap I propose, and therefore are, in my opinion, not letting enough time for people to notice the map and mod it while it is bubbled. Since the entire point of bubbling a map is to bring it to the attention of other modders, this practice of instantly qualifying maps is making the two-step process completely pointless and therefore detracting from the overall quality of maps in the ranked section.

Why this is bad practice

While this is a positive for the BNs as it simplifies the ranking process, I believe that the negatives this practice brings to map quality and making sure we are putting flawless maps into ranked every time far exceed the need for simplicity. One of these negatives is that there are issues that maps can have that are not technically unrankable, but should be fixed, and are only worth being fixed (to mappers and BNs) if the map is either not nominated or in bubble state. Otherwise, any of these issues that are pointed out while a map is qualified will most likely be argued against on the terms of "technically not unrankable," which, in my opinion, is a lazy excuse to use against a legitimate and good suggestion, and is no way to be putting maps into the ranked section where they will never be changed.

The most prominent example of issues that are like this is tag issues, such as adding missing tags or removing duplicated or unnecessary tags. This is something that has been contentious in the past, with some maps being disqualified due to having tags that misrepresent the music, and other maps with duplicate tags being waved into ranked with BNs giving the excuse of "nothing technically unrankable about duplicated tags." This is currently acceptable, but I believe it would be avoidable if people didn't qualify maps within 2 minutes of nominating them. I have been notified there is nothing in the RC stating anything about duplicate tags. A similar issue that typically is only addressed while a map is bubbled is audio quality. If someone gives a mapper better quality audio than they are using while their map is qualified, the chances are they will not take it as it isn't unrankable to rank a map with poorer audio quality than what is available. Basically, all of the guidelines in the RC are treated this way, but since BNs aren't letting maps be bubbled for a decent amount of time, any map that breaks the guidelines most likely will not fix something that is pointed out while in qualification, as it is up to the mapper whether to disqualify their map or not. This includes issues such as inconsistent or incorrect kiai usage, enable countdown inconsistencies, guidelines regarding guest difficulty naming, poor quality backgrounds, certain metadata issues, and other issues that can contribute to an overall sub-optimal player experience.

The purpose of the bubbled state

Another thing that the bubbled state is for that I already briefly mentioned earlier is bringing a map to the attention of the general modding community. If a BN missed anything on their first pass, then the community can pick up on it and fix it easily while the map is in a bubbled state. However, with the way maps are being ranked, that is impossible. Now, if attention is brought to a map to the general modding community, it is in a state where both the mapper and BNs are very reluctant to reset the nomination process. Basically, any subjective issues can be ignored, and, as I mentioned before, fringe-unrankable issues or unnecessary guideline breaches can also be practically ignored since they aren't strictly unrankable, even if they would genuinely increase the quality of the map or if there is no legitimate reason why the change should not be made.

Now, you may say to yourself, "but the purpose of a second BN is to make sure that the first BN did not miss anything. If a second BN nominates it, then the map didn't need further modding." And that is where I'm just going to have to disagree. I have seen several maps just within the past week that could have been modded better, even with very simple things such as finisher inconsistencies, and very often these second nominators leave very few points, if any at all, and I doubt I am the only person to have caught these kinds of problems in qualified maps. Most people, however, will not even bother leaving points on qualified maps because it's quite futile to expect a mapper to willingly disqualify for a subjective or technically unnecessary change. In the case of my example with the finisher inconsistencies, the second nominator did not leave a single suggestion on the map. This isn't meant to say that the second nominator is bad, I'm saying that I think it would be better if people had the opportunity to mod a map while it was bubbled so that mappers and BNs would be more open to these kinds of changes.

Reasoning for the length

So why 12 hours? Because we used to have 24 hours and everybody hated it, 8 hours is too difficult to remember, and I think 6 hours is way too short. If you consider a (very) active modder's everyday life, they probably work about 8 hours, sleep about 8 hours, and sometime between those two, go on osu! to check out maps and play the game. While I am aware there is more than one modder in the game, I'm basing this off of a single person's life because it's simple and easy to explain, and also because in some modes there really are only a few people who are willing to check bubbled/qualified maps. A 6 hour period would allow for someone to go to sleep and wake up and see a map they have never seen before in the qualified state, meaning they were denied even the possibility of modding it. A period of 12 hours allows BNs to take a map from nothing to qualification within the same day while still allowing a decent period of time for people with average lives to be able to have the opportunity to check the map while it is bubbled.

Negatives and other considerations

And what about the drawbacks of this proposal? I honestly cannot think of many, I would appreciate it if someone could think of some reason why there shouldn't be a mandatory time period between bubbling and qualification. The only thing I can possibly come up with is that it's kind of inconvenient if 2 BNs are checking a map at the same time for one to wait 12 hours before qualifying it, but that is not enough of an excuse considering all of the positive effects I've explained here and, from a former BN's perspective, is something I would be willing to do for the sake of general ranking quality. Another very small thing would be that it takes half a day longer for a map to go from pending to ranked, but given that there are maps that have been sitting in bubble for literally months, I don't see that as much of an issue, and obviously the BNG doesn't think so either if they are willing to let several maps sit in bubbled state for so long (the most prominent of which being this map that was nominated on August 9th, 2020).

One consideration is multi-mode sets, which I kind of already addressed in the title. I specify first and last instead of first and second because I think that this period should apply equally to every set. It would ridiculous for a 4-mode set to have to wait 84 hours to enter qualification (7 wait periods of 12 hours).

I would also like to add that this waiting period would apply to every instance of the nomination process. If a map is disqualified, they shouldn't be able to bypass this restriction as a disqualification does not guarantee that all of the issues, subjective and unrankable, have been addressed. This point is highly open to discussion, I would be willing to allow a shorter period since it is true that disqualification puts a map in a spotlight and typically fixes most of the issues the map has, so maybe 6 hours would be acceptable, but for now I'm going to say that the 12 hour period should apply. This might have a drawback of people being even more reluctant to disqualify maps, however, people are already incredibly reluctant to disqualify maps as we are, so I don't think it would make much of a difference.

The same discussion that applies to the disqualification thing might not apply to a map being reset from its bubbled state as this might make maps open to abuse from modders with bad intentions. My proposal for this would be that the timer doesn't reset on a bubble reset similar to how the ranking timer does not reset when a map is disqualified, so if a map is modded 6 hours after it is nominated and it is reset, when it is bubbled again, the timer will start at 6 hours instead of restarting. Although I would prefer for the 12 hour period to be applied on every nomination, I think it's also important to take into consideration other possibilities.

qualify don't really get that much attention, let alone a bubble that absolutely nobody seems to care
it's just a waste of time for everyone involved if this was applied

while i imagine this is going to be fairly unpopular, the idea is reasonable enough, though it is going to have the end product of people hating dqs even more than they currently do.

for context, why was the 24 hour version walked back?

there's been enough speed-qualifications i've seen for this to be acceptable

Ephemeral wrote:

while i imagine this is going to be fairly unpopular, the idea is reasonable enough, though it is going to have the end product of people hating dqs even more than they currently do.

for context, why was the 24 hour version walked back?

- bubbled state did not contribute significantly to visibility, bubble pops were rare regardless in mv2 time.
- In mv1, nominators would pop bubbles when they felt significant changes were happening, resetting the 24hr timer. In mv2 with nominations reset every update, this became more ambiguous and confusing when 24hrs would take effect.
- difficult to keep track of
- it made mappers more averse to doing big changes for bubbled/qualified maps since that would be an extra wait factor related to the 2nd point

also side note,

Nifty wrote:

and other maps with duplicate tags being waved into ranked with BNs giving the excuse of "nothing technically unrankable about duplicated tags."

This example isn't really relevant. Not only is having duplicate tags not detrimental, it is beneficial as you can search for specific phrases using quotation marks around them. Having the exact album title with repeated words makes it searchable this way, while it would not be able to be searched that way with the other tag removed. It is not unnecessary and contributes positively to searchability. This was already expressed in the thread but not clearly. So your perception of that event was off.

After talking to some people about this I'm made aware that the issue probably lies within how people see the qualified section and the resets therein. However, I think that is a much larger issue that has to be addressed over a much longer period of time as it requires a rewiring of how people see qualifications and disqualifications, and for now, my proposal would still benefit ranking in general, as the issues regarding qualification seem to imply that bubbling basically means nothing. I also forgot why the 24-hour wait was walked back, but it seems that it may have just been poorly implemented. As I've addressed in this proposal, I think 12 hours is a much more reasonable wait time, and the conditions for maps that have been reset can be negotiated and formed into a reasonable and understandable method.

If the redefining of qualification and disqualification is something that people want to take priority of to address this situation, then I think that would be a fine substitute for implementing this rule. However, I still think that my proposal would be of benefit for the time being while it is being taught that disqualifications are not as serious as people think they are.

As for the "difficult to keep track of" part, I'm going to have to say that this really is not a valid criticism. Checking maps in accordance with the RC and mode-specific rules and guidelines is difficult, but people can't get by with nominating unrankables simply because it's not easy. I would really hope that people are putting more effort into checking maps than it takes to go to the history tab and figure out how long it's been since the first nomination.

And yeah, I don't know why it was so engrained in me to think that duplicate tags were unnecessary. There's literally nothing in the RC regarding them. However, every other guideline in the RC still applies, so this doesn't delegitimize anything else in the proposal other than that specific instance.

getting more eyes during times where it helps is something I support but I don't think I'm following how bubbling "bring[s] a map to the attention of the general modding community" in a significant enough way to matter here. that and 12 hours is a very short amount of time, so even if bubbling were a significant attractor of modders, you'd be chancing actually getting any more mods during it

I agree about mappers'/BNs'/system's faults in discouraging changes during qualified but I don't understand how this would help

I guess there is just some confusion as to what the bubbled state actually means. As I said in the original post, I've always thought it was meant as a suggestion by a BN that a map is good enough to rank, and opens it to criticism from the community that it otherwise wouldn't have gotten. And then when a map is qualified, that is a more serious proclamation of readiness, leaving only for unrankable issues and serious mapping mishaps to be caught, primary through QAH. But apparently, this isn't a shared mentality across the game. I think that "if attention is brought to a [qualified] map to the general modding community, it is in a state where both the mapper and BNs are very reluctant to reset the nomination process" is still a true statement regardless of the technical definition.

So, if qualification really is just to bring attention to a map, then what is the purpose of bubbling a map? The descrption of the ranking procedure doesn't even include bubbling as a part of the nomination process.

I think that this proposal would help since I think there are still a lot of people who think the ranking process works the way that I've believed it to work. I know several people just within my mode who look through bubbled maps to check for insignificant or subjective issues that think modding qualified maps is a waste of time due to how mappers and BNs treat them. Like I said before, if the priority is taken to make sure everyone is on the same page about disqualifications and modders begin feeling more comfortable with modding qualified maps, then I guess this proposal doesn't really matter, but that still leaves this issue: What the hell is purpose of having bubbling as its own thing when ranking is treated more as "if you have 2 nominations, you can qualify your map and enter it into the ranking queue"? I would argue that getting rid of this term altogether would make people much more open to receiving qualification the way it is meant to be received.

it's not even fair to the 1st nominator to have 12 extra hours to have his nomination resetted compared to the 2nd bn considering that they both checked the map.

fwiw 12 hours or even 24 hours isn't enough to catch mistakes and suggest improvements from the community. that's why we have qualified, which is 7 days. whether a map is nominated once or twice shouldn't matter for what kind of suggestions you can make - if the mapper cares about their map they'll probably want to apply stuff they agree with, same as if the map was just nominated once (if they don't that's their loss)

the reason for the original 24h rule was giving room for bns to pop, but that's now unnecessary since bns can dq and vetoes can happen in qualfiied + it discouraged mappers from making changes in qualified because of the added wait time, which is where the map gets most attention

tl;dr: qualified exists for this purpose

pimp wrote:

it's not even fair to the 1st nominator to have 12 extra hours to have his nomination resetted compared to the 2nd bn considering that they both checked the map.

I mean, under this logic the entire 1st/2nd nomination paradigm is faulty. Some BNs still prefer to wait to qualify a map for the reasons that I have brought up in this post.

And even if that is true, Naxess, it still feels very much like people are unwilling to make changes to maps that are qualified, no matter the actual intention of the section. If this wasn't the case, I wouldn't have a problem with maps being instantly qualified and this proposal would have never crossed my mind. However, since the 24 hour rule has been rescinded, I have modded many maps while they have been qualified, and typically those mods are rejected because mappers and BNs think things need to be unrankable or egregious in order for a dq to take place. In my experience, only newer mappers self-dq when they receive a mod on their qualified map, probably because they're much more willing to change their map to get it ranked, but that's just a theory.

Additionally, if the qualified section was being used the way you're saying it's supposed to be, then there would be a lot more disqualifications going on since a considerable amount of maps are very lightly modded or completely barren of suggestions from one of the nominators, usually the second (as I mentioned in the original post). There have even been maps ranked recently with unrankable issues, particularly barlines that are unintentionally detached from their notes. I'm not sure if an extra time in bubbled state would help this, but it surely would not hurt it.

For now I guess I can do my part and encourage modders to check maps while they are qualified. I know that most people think qualified maps are off-limits due to how reluctant people are to disqualification and also the existence of QAH which is meant specifically to check qualified maps (so then why does anybody else need to?).

Also, saying "nobody will mod the map if you give them the time to" is not an argument, and it's not a reason to not make a change. You're just speculating what will happen, I could just say "people will mod the map if they're given the time to" and have the same legitimacy. This is like saying that someone shouldn't rank a map because "nobody will play it." There's no way to prove that, and since I'm speaking from my experience I think it's safe to say that at least I will be checking the bubbled section, and I know at least a few other people who enjoy checking bubbled maps when they can. I would say the only reason people don't mod bubbled maps is because almost every single map is instantly qualified, so they don't have the chance.

I'm not sure if an extra time in bubbled state would help this, but it surely would not hurt it.

As we've seen with the 24h rule, it does hurt because of what me and Noffy mentioned earlier with mappers being even more adverse to small changes, such as improving mp3 quality.


As you can see, about a quarter of all qualified maps get suggestions/problems, and half of those get dqed, so I wouldn't say mappers are that unwilling to make changes. Most of these posts aren't even from BNs (even if BNs post the most individually), so the notion that only QAH are helping in qualified is far from the truth.

Besides, I think it would be better to focus attention towards making mappers more willing to make improvements in qualified than moving the place and time for those to a very short "bubbled" state, and in the process making it more difficult in qualified. One such improvement in the past year is that qualified now maintains the queue position after a dq, for example.

Don’t really agree, as we already have qualified section worth 7 days to check a map. When someone posts a mod in a qualified map there’s a Notification in BN server with the mod itself, if any bn is willing to check that and vouch for that mod or not it’s up to him but yea don’t think 12 hours between bubble and qual is worth it

Nifty wrote:

pimp wrote:

it's not even fair to the 1st nominator to have 12 extra hours to have his nomination resetted compared to the 2nd bn considering that they both checked the map.

I mean, under this logic the entire 1st/2nd nomination paradigm is faulty. Some BNs still prefer to wait to qualify a map for the reasons that I have brought up in this post.

i also have concerns regarding the ranking process but maps getting the nominations really close in time is not one of them. no BN is forced to qualify a map immediately after the map gets bubbled, most of us just prefer it that way.

whoever prefers to wait to qualify the map can do it too, not sure why a 1st nominator would agree with this condition though because it basically means they will be used as a "shield" for some time.

i mean i would agree with you, but honestly, what modder will just casually go to bubbled maps in pending and mod the set? the mentality of that modder would usually be something along the lines of, "but a bn already modded it, there's (usually) not any big issue"

although ppl argue that qualify exists, having a waiting period could rlly save dqs, although the thing is is that no one will actually check the map within those 12 hours, so not really any good doing that yk yk

First of - the reason people don't want to disqualify maps (however stupid their reasoning) is that they will have to contact their BNs again and wait until they respond and renominate. If bubbling was turned into "mini-qualified", same issue would occur, so you gain nothing.

Second, theres already so few people checking qualified, and checking bubbled maps is just not a viable practice. No one does it.

Basically, qualified is already there to secure quality concerns being addressed, and changing the bubbling system is not the way to fix mappers not wanting to disqualify their maps. Most often though, the quality concerns that you mention will be rather subjective, and if not, usually do get addressed and DQ'ed for.


As for "lightly modded" maps getting qualified - BNs don't necessarily need to "map for the mapper", they give suggestions if the current iteration of a pattern/idea etc is bad, but when the map is polished it's nonsensical to try and force yourself to mod things that arent really there. There are cases where the map definitely could get modded a lot more than it did before qualification, but this is once again not a problem with the bubbled state being irrelevant, it's to do with the quality standards of specific nominators.