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[added] Mapping Ecosystem Changes - Vetoes

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Topic Starter
Hivie

Mapping Ecosystem Changes


The following changes serve to make contributing more easily accessible to the community, which consequently improves upon and simplifies all current systems in place for the mapping and modding community.


Expanding veto mediations to all BNs


It's no secret that having a small sample size of mediators can lead to an impression that the conclusion is misrepresentative of the mapping community. Involving all BNs (of the veto's relevant game mode) with mediations removes that concern and is a step towards the right direction.

See next point for concerns about this potentially being too much work.

Making mediation reason text optional


From past experience, mediation comments are often times used for flaming than as constructive criticism, with the mapper ending up following the original vetoer's suggestions if the veto gets upheld.

This, paired up with the fact that having less work involved with mediation allows more people to be involved with less hassle, is why this proposal is being made.

These are not final changes, but are proposals. We highly appreciate your input whether you're supporting these, want to discuss potential issues, or provide alternative solutions/approaches!
fayew
[General]

i have a quick question because i don't seem to understand one certain point

Involving all BNs with mediations removes that concern and is a step towards the right direction.
does this imply that all BNs of ALL gamemodes will be included in the veto mediation? even if they have almost to no experience with some gamemodes? this is not quite clear in how you wrote this out. if i'm correct then it leads to doubtfulness of benefit of this proposal, if not then i suppose it's better to state otherwise to make it more clear

also another quick question - are we really sure of making mediation reason optional? you're stating that veto is already "potentially too much work" - doesn't this mean that bns involved in mediation may simply say "yes or no" without looking at the map and providing zero arguments? there's a room for this plausible loophole.
Topic Starter
Hivie

fayew wrote:

does this imply that all BNs of ALL gamemodes will be included in the veto mediation?
All BNs of the veto's game mode, clarified in the original post
Resona
if we have everyone voting on vetoes can we just nuke on supermajority
fayew

fayew wrote:

are we really sure of making mediation reason optional? you're stating that veto is already "potentially too much work" - doesn't this mean that bns involved in mediation may simply say "yes or no" without looking at the map and providing zero arguments? there's a room for this plausible loophole.
could i please get a clarification on this? i think this point needs to be discussed because right now it does seem like a very huge possibility

upd: btw thanks for clarifying the first point, it indeed is now more sensible
melleganol
making all BNs vote is the right step, but making the reasoning optional is not.
Ryax
Involving all BNs (of the veto's relevant game mode) with mediations removes that concern and is a step towards the right direction.
In the case of a veto that isn't mode-specific (ex. diffnames, backgrounds) would it still be restricted to the set's mode, or would it involve the entire BNG?
Okoayu

fayew wrote:

fayew wrote:

are we really sure of making mediation reason optional? you're stating that veto is already "potentially too much work" - doesn't this mean that bns involved in mediation may simply say "yes or no" without looking at the map and providing zero arguments? there's a room for this plausible loophole.
could i please get a clarification on this? i think this point needs to be discussed because right now it does seem like a very huge possibility

upd: btw thanks for clarifying the first point, it indeed is now more sensible
OK but i think valid reasoning shouldnt need to extend to like more than a few sentences, if that's the expectation and people can write more if they want to sure
Noffy
Seeing how long remediations already take with how infrequent they are I'd be concerned about only getting 20-30% participation in vetoes if reasoning is required.

For example, the Super Driver remediation only had 45/75 submissions yesterday before we sent a reminder, when it had only 24 hours left after waiting over 10 days.

Reasoning used to be really important to disagree or agree with individual parts of a veto when mediation was 1 person = 1 vote. Now that vetoes are broken up into individual points on mediation I think just votes gives a better overview than it used to.

This is especially the case with surveying the whole BN over it
Monoseul

Okoratu wrote:

OK but i think valid reasoning shouldnt need to extend to like more than a few sentences, if that's the expectation and people can write more if they want to sure
I think the concern comes from possibility that if mediation statement becomes optional, BNs involved can just not look at the map and pick whatever choice they want - bias, spite, etc.. and it'll be impossible to tell if they actually did look at the map since there's nothing said, which can tamper with the mediation results.

At least with the current system, saying something (no matter how short) implies the BN looked at the map at all. Giving the option to say nothing kinda gives the opportunity to not do that since it won't be noticed anyways.

This might just be assuming too ill of other BNs but it's a possibility.

I'm in the middle about this but it's a thought I had when reading the original concern.
Drum-Hitnormal
not sure if i understand this correctly, does all BNs of that mode need to participate if a veto happens?

do i get forced to participate?

do we have choice of saying my vote should be discarded, due to not having strong believe its a hard yes or hard no, or simply don't have the skill required to judge the map?

i feel some people might not care too much if a certain map can be ranked or not, this might make the difference between fail or pass the veto, is better to not consider this vote

i think its good to allow more BN to participate, but not force them to if they dont want.

also i think there are way too many maps waiting to be ranked, its not really worth the effort to waste so much time on veto
achyoo

Resona wrote:

if we have everyone voting on vetoes can we just nuke on supermajority
Fully agree on this, just re-structure this community/forums/topics/1242984?n=1 imo this is a long time overdue

Re: Not needing a reason

I like to have faith in our fellow BNs that no one will actively harm it in that way, and even if we have a few troublemakers, volume of votes can equalize it. Might be an issue for TCM though. But like Noffy said, with the reasoning being broken up it may be fine to not have writing requirements. At minimum just one line, we don't want the barrier of entry to vote to be high to encourage participating imo.
lenpai
yeah i like this

participation would be mandatory or optional, given the scale?

mandatory comments would be nice
gzdongsheng
i'd assume whether participation (not the comment) should be forced can be a topic that up to the discussion too

The goal of the proposal is to avoid the negativity of the RNG council, so we'd like to have as much participation as possible in the mediation. However, there is no punishment of not participating in the mediation currently (or mostly just a re-roll), so i personally don't feel it's that practical to make it fully forceful, but rather just say that all BNs have the right to vote in the mediation
Maxus
Mandatory participation will only lead to the BNs making half ass decision if they are not interested, and skewed the decision in a bad way that won't differ much from having RNG council to begin with, or potentially can be worse depends on how many people doing that.

I think having optional participation is better so that only people who are invested with the mediation that will join the mediation, and will make more informed and better decision that really comes from them analyzing the issue properly. But i do think if they willing to participate in optional mediation, the reasoning must be required from their side.

It doesn't need someone writing long paragraphs to begin with + we do need to know what their reasoning if we want to ensure the mediation being done properly from their side. If the comments section being used for flaming, it's our job to sort of moderate that, the comments should only be for constructive opinion afterall.
fieryrage
very much against mediation reason text being optional, if mediation comments are being used to flame rather than criticize/help then that should be brought up with the BNs who do such a thing on a case-by-case basis. i don't see a reason to completely nuke that aspect of vetoes when the entire system revolves heavily around what other people think as it is. as okoratu mentioned, the reasoning can be longer if the person wants it to be, but a few sentences (or even one sentence as per achyoo) would work fine enough -- i don't necessarily think that'd be too much work for someone since they would already have to look at the map anyway

expanding mediation to all BNs i can kinda see the purpose of for the sake of a wider variety of opinions, but as noffy pointed out, the mediation process is already something that lots of BNs don't really utilize fully, even when they're selected on an individualized basis. expanding this would undoubtedly help in terms of that variety, but i don't really think it's going to shift the needle much in practice
fvrex
agree with maxus and fieryrage here, imo vetoes shouldn’t be mandatory to complete since not everyone wants to be involved & might just eventually lead to half-assed responses

an opt-out could be implemented through the BN site, like how mock evals were (default on, you can turn off/on at any time)

but yeah…if it is optional, there should definitely be feedback mandatory to add, even if it’s like 1-2 sentences
Okoayu
idk the way i see it currently rng god decides who's involved, and half-assed answers also have no consequences; last time i wanted to opt out of a veto cause i really didn't care i was told it's part of bn expectations

like idk at least this whole thing should be clearer at some point down the line :D
RandomeLoL
I am going to copy and paste my thoughts from elsewhere, which is ultimately to say the proposal is not really going to change much. If anything at all.

I'm quite indifferent when it comes to vetoes or the proposed stuff. In my humblest opinion, the problem with vetoes has always been optics and how they've been carried out. Not the system itself
The proposal is trying to move the needle to different, opposing places at the same time
You want more people to participate? No need to give comments. You want vetoes to offer insightful info? Encourage comments. Want more people in? Force Bns to vote. Want people to have agency? Make it an opt-in thing.
I think this discussion does prove that people are willing to favour one side of the coin or another depending on what they believe is more important (Convenience Vs. Reliability).

Personally, the Veto system is a necessary evil (or good). Both the community and BNs should be queried on what's the overall sentiment and how the optics could be improved.

But in short these changes -- aimed towards BNs -- are probably going to be inconsequential. Some will like them, some will not. Same as our current system really.
Maxim-Miau
I have only read until Drum-Hitnormal's post and i wanted to ask if it wouldn't maybe be possible to give the opportunity to vote to every BN, but they are not forced to vote if they don't want to? And if they are going to vote they are then forced to give an opinion, making the BN forced to at least take a look at the map before submitting any vote.

I don't know if i made my point clear enough, if there is a few more questions i can try to re-explain what i meant (if this wasn't brought up already 😅)
Nifty
I think NAT should be mediating vetos since they're kind of ultimately in charge of how the game mode looks in terms of what is ranked, e.g. Assessing Nominations. A lot of BNs (at least in taiko) are either so disconnected or generally not interested/knowledgeable in most veto subjects (such as double bpm or heavy sv/gimmick -- maps only a handful of nominators touch in the first place, and the most veto'd subjects) that it would devolve into either a popularity contest or a matter of who has the loudest voice.
Decku
I read through all of it, and I don't really see the big appeal of making a veto a mandatory thing for every single BN, consider that people are away for 2 weeks and they've finished their noms for the month, and then they're forced to do a Veto for no apparent reason, doesn't seem fair to take that time away from them when they're busy doing something else.

Another solution would be to maybe consider making an entire squad of people who can be in charge of vetoes, similar to that of the QAT, where they would judge the veto at hand and consider the facts and opinions of both sides, and see if they're able to, similar to our current system, except not RNG. I don't think the RNG part of it would work because all BN's have completely different opinions to mapping and modding, and even then my own proposal might not work.

I just don't see the appeal of changing this, it's a flawed system yes, but continuing to change this would make it even more flawed if you make the entire veto system mandatory for all BNs.
achyoo

Decku wrote:

Another solution would be to maybe consider making an entire squad of people who can be in charge of vetoes, similar to that of the QAT, where they would judge the veto at hand and consider the facts and opinions of both sides, and see if they're able to, similar to our current system, except not RNG.
For standard at least, the people that, in my opinion are most suited to be in the squad you mentioned, are not even in BNG right now. If your proposal were to happen, picking from BNG imo is also not ideal because the skills needed to judge vetoes like this are not assessed during BN applications. That's why I think opening it to the entire floor is good, we use quantity of opinions to our advantage instead of the analysis and judgement of a small group of people. If you were to create a group of people to judge, it would have to be a separate usergroup, that is NOT under the NAT to ensure no conflict of interest. The selection process for this group would be a headache to figure out though so I'm against it.
Decku
But would there any sort of penalty for people not wanting to participate? Literally half-assed opinions is what we are trying to avoid here too, we want people who are inside these vetoes to be fully participating in these discussions, or fully conscious making their vote..?

When people choose to not participate vetoes, they are warned, and considering that you're going to open it to the entire floor, the entire system needs to be more leniant on the people that don't want to participate. Consider a tick on the BNG website, the same as showing interest as an evaluator, but instead as a veto-mediator.


At least this is probably the best case scenario for this honestly. Because I don't see people wanting to 100% actively participate if they cannot.
Hugged
In short, I'm in agreement with Decku. Make veto mediation opt-in.
HowRengar
I'm more inclined towards having all bns of the veto's game mode in the mediation, in my opinion it could provide a higher range of perspectives (which can mitigate some possible biases on the decision making) while also having the oportunity to get more constructive feedback on the map. However, I think that we should still have the option to not participate in case we're not feeling confident enough to judge the map.

About the "used for flaming than as constructive criticism", I really think that it is not a problem with the system itself, but rather with the BNs who make such comments.

On the other hand, I disagree on making reason text optional. In my opinion, having to explain our choices makes us think a bit deeper on the map's issues, and I see that as a positive thing.
Decku
The main issue with this is just the level of engagement from others. We don't see veto's happen that often (or at least in mania), so the overall BN majority could participate, but that's also including people that take time off from nominating to focus on IRL matters.

If we're going to force all BN's to do it, there shouldn't be a penalty for not abiding by this construct, it shouldn't be mandatory.

But overall the opt-in option is just probably the most viable option for now.
Topic Starter
Hivie
We've implemented the "expanding veto mediations to all BNs" part, but kept mediation reason text a requirement per community feedback.

Don't hesitate to start another discussion about anything you'd want to see improved!
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