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.

I have a few issues with this proposal, and I know sometimes all issues cannot be resolved, but I think it's a good idea to be mentioned since there are a few key distinguishing factors that I believe were mentioned but cannot be fully justified in the case. First of all, might I add that people in BN in all modes are or could be under the age of 18, and we all know that is a rejecting factor for getting into NAT (18+)

SOME ISSUES
I may not be the best person in terms of proposals, but the main issues I believe stem from these:

1. The influence of BNs is very abnormal when it comes about talking about it to your friends. Imagine if someone just wants to be NAT just for the sake of it and they vote that person and did a bad job, is it still going to be a trial NAT just until elevated people pass on if they're useful in NAT..?

2. The influence of becoming a BN evaluator is no surprise there, but the overal evaluation process is a pivotal part into gaining experience for some people, and given the fact that the NAT do several different jobs and get more leniance on if they cannot meet their criteria if that's the case. If people can't evaluate as properly as they can be political in this case, then I don't see how option 2 of BN's choosing people into NAT would be the most efficient.

THE INFLUENCE PART OF THIS PROPOSAL
The influence part of this proposal is a pretty big and probably a very disputable topic in all communities. The only reason why this is probably a very big topic is because of how biased it can be.

E.g:Evaluators come in and one of the is your friend, you believe that they are a good candidate because you know nothing about the other candidates and if they're good enough to be NAT

How are we certain that this system cannot just be focusing on not only voting 'for your friends' aspect, but also promoting neutrality in these votes if you do not know who another applicant is..? People in the BNG always have their friends on their sides, and it also promotes negative influence on certain aspects in communities of bigger populations. Not only that but it also may promote egotism if this was the case.

NAT is a very authoritative position, and people who choose to want to be NAT should know about the cost and the effort they must make whilst in NAT. At least from the mania side of things, we have all our NAT's focusing on jobs and that should be no exception for any other game mode, especially bigger game modes. This also means that NAT should be more transparent with their BN-counterparts, which is why these proposals were made.

Some Sort Of Solution
I don't really have a solution for this, but I do personally believe that each mode should have an NAT leader. This is a huge aspect of it, and considering the only NAT leader is in taiko as we speak they don't really grasp the other modes in full fluctuation. I do believe especially with how big some modes have been growing lately, especially with the BNG of certain modes as well, there's a big say into possibly promoting some sort of NAT leader as well to promote these types of things.

At least some concerns from my end, but some of them cannot be fixed, which is why I'm very hesitant about this proposal.

Decku wrote:

How are we certain that this system cannot just be focusing on not only voting 'for your friends' aspect, but also promoting neutrality in these votes if you do not know who another applicant is..? People in the BNG always have their friends on their sides, and it also promotes negative influence on certain aspects in communities of bigger populations. Not only that but it also may promote egotism if this was the case.

As opposed to the current system where the NAT hand picked candidates and whether they were or not qualified up to the standards of the NAT? I can get being against any form of non-merit system but we are working under the assumption that all members of the are acting and performing in good faith. stating that a system can lead to some form of nepotism when a vote amongst the relevant team rather than internally is more transparent and a wider audience for scrutiny feels quite strange to me.

Onto my own opinions, I do love having some autonomy within the process so I'm pretty excited to see these proposals, while perfering proposal 2 over 1

How would the voting system in Proposal 2 work? (ex. preferential, single choice, multiple choice)

exact details on the voting system can be ironed out once we figure out which direction we want to go.

I'm against giving power to purple people, but I also feel that the RNG thing is foolish.

Wouldn't it be better if instead of the current trial nat system, it was simply less immersive? smth like "NAT application rounds" and then go for the trial nat depending on the results, preselection would make much more sense.

Idk how possible this format is or what the main problems would be, it'd be great if some nat can tell me if this is feasible.

with proposal 2

Example:

NAT picks person 1,2,3 and says we will promote 1 person to NAT

person 1 gets 80% fail from all BN votes
person 2 gets 50% fail from all BN votes
person 3 gets 70% fail from all BN votes

each person gets voted pass or fail by all BNs

can we set some threshold and say all 3 fail so no new NAT is chosen, NAT must pick different people on next round?

i think its obvious someone is a bad choice if most BN says so, lets honor BN's choice in who can become their boss

btw, can we increase the min age requirement for becoming NAT? i feel 18 years old is not really enough life experience for someone to properly take care and lead a group of 20-40 BNs , also effectively affecting user experience of millions of players

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

btw, can we increase the min age requirement for becoming NAT? i feel 18 years old is not really enough life experience for someone to properly take care and lead a group of 20-40 BNs , also effectively affecting user experience of millions of players

Don't think the age requirement needs to change, 18 is the legal age of adult and that doesn't mark the same as mental maturity. I do believe that when this comes into play it is noticeable from other NAT's and other BN's that someone has the mental capacity to be an NAT. This isn't about life experience, but more about what they can contribute into the NAT.

I do fully believe about the "all 3 fail" proposal, that is definitely something that could be used if this proposal is accepted, but I am still against it.

I have a third proposal, which sort of combines both proposals:

The idea is that we want to give the BNs some agency over who becomes an NAT. I believe a good way to do this is to have them vote on evaluators like in Proposal 1, but allowing the NAT to hand-pick evaluators detracts from the agency we want to give to the BNs. After-all, the NAT would have all the power to just pick from their own hand-picked evaluators, I feel like it sort of defeats the purpose.

Giving the final vote on who becomes an NAT to the entire BNG (like in Proposal 2) gives even more agency to the BNG, which is what we want. The role of the NAT in this process is to create that curated list to ensure that all final candidates are in fact capable of carrying out duties as a NAT.

I believe ranked choice superiority. If your first choice doesn't make the cut, your second or third choices can help decide between the remaining candidates.

I suppose this proposal is a little more complicated than either P1 or P2, which goes against the theme of simplification for these internal structural changes, but carrying out these extra votes is not a tall order, it's as simple as sending a (ranked choice) poll in the gamemode's respective channel in the BN server.

I support proposal #1, I'e said it multiple times before I've always hated the RNG aspect of selecting who gets into BN evaluators. So many promising candidates just never got a chance to become BN evalers, and missing one usually means waiting months before the next cycle.

I don't agree with proposal #2 on voting for who becomes NAT though, as being RNG picked for the initial BN evaluators still excludes promising candidates, and leaving decision making of who turns into NAT to BNs really makes no sense; as a BN I have no idea how the candidates are doing in evaluations, discussions and the like. The vote will mostly come down to name value and perceived competence rather than actual ability (and MOTIVATION!! THIS PART IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN MOST PEOPLE THINK since the NAT burnout and turnover issue is no secret)

I would more likely prefer Hugged's proposal more than the two proposals given.

Hugged wrote:

I have a third proposal, which sort of combines both proposals:

Regarding my own proposal, I still have concerns about it (after some discussion with others).

How much of the BNG cares to be involved with its bureaucracy? How much of the BNG just wants to nominate maps without much care about management?

My proposal would be unnecessarily complicated if it's the case that most BNs don't care about this process. It would be giving them unwanted responsibilities.

Assuming it's the case that most BNs don't care too much, I actually lean more towards proposal 1. Most of the agency stays with the NAT, and perhaps the BNs can (optionally) perform a simple pass/fail/neutral vibe-check vote amongst their peers who are interested in becoming a trial evaluator. However many evaluators the NAT wants to trial, they can take from the highest vibe-check passing candidates, then the actual evaluation/NAT selection process stays unchanged.

I'm curious if a full BNG-wide poll asking "How involved do YOU want to be in the NAT selection process?" can help us decide how much agency is good to give the BNs in selecting NATs.

id be very happy with #1 if it was more of a BN voting of the top X candidates to get to bn evaluation rather than just nominating a candidate. This would already act as an initial filter for BNs to decide while the options are still wider. this would take into consideration the general sentiment of the BNG for a candidate on a higher level.

if #2 passes through, there should be discussions on how much a BN's vote should weigh vs a NAT's on the grounds of experience and knowledge.

lenpai wrote:

if #2 passes through, there should be discussions on how much a BN's vote should weigh vs a NAT's on the grounds of experience and knowledge.

Agree, I think it's less so grounds of experience and knowledge, I wouldn't say by default that NAT's view of competency should be weighed more than BN. It's more so that NAT votes are based on working with these candidates for 1 month vs BN votes who are guesswork at best and popularity/circlejerk at worst. They are making more informed decisions with more data.

I oppose both proposals for practical purposes. The vast majority of BNs have no information on which to judge NAT motivation or ability, as it is pretty unrelated to BN work (being mostly low visibility administration and getting flamed on Reddit). Indeed the entire BN evaluator/trial NAT system exists because there's not a good way to determine whether a BN would be a good NAT by looking at their modding or longevity or nominations and so on.

I propose that BNs get to opine on prospective NAT candidates in a private, non binding manner (like through a BN site vote) and concerns brought up are taken into consideration in a manner similar to GMTs' votes. If a large amount of BNs have significant reservations about an addition, we can just not add them as having an extremely unpopular addition would be bad optics. Similar situations have already arisen and been dealt with with mania NATs - this just formalizes that process.

Nao Tomori wrote:

I oppose both proposals for practical purposes. The vast majority of BNs have no information on which to judge NAT motivation or ability, as it is pretty unrelated to BN work (being mostly low visibility administration and getting flamed on Reddit). Indeed the entire BN evaluator/trial NAT system exists because there's not a good way to determine whether a BN would be a good NAT by looking at their modding or longevity or nominations and so on.

I propose that BNs get to opine on prospective NAT candidates in a private, non binding manner (like through a BN site vote) and concerns brought up are taken into consideration in a manner similar to GMTs' votes. If a large amount of BNs have significant reservations about an addition, we can just not add them as having an extremely unpopular addition would be bad optics. Similar situations have already arisen and been dealt with with mania NATs - this just formalizes that process.

Your proposal obviously would be great, I had initially assumed the objective of this was to give more autonomy to BNs and take some from NATs to make it fairer, so I thought stuff like these was out of the question.

Your proposal only touches on the later end of the process (choosing NATs from BN evalers). How would you suggest BN evalers be picked? I still think current "pick some RNG the rest" system isn't ideal.

That was indeed the objective. I think the objective is misguided and will lead to poor outcomes for the reasons I stated. The second objective, not on the thread, was to reduce nepotism; I don't really see how letting BNs participate in a popularity contest where they have no basis for voting fixes that.

For selecting BN evaluators, the main issue imo is that there's more interest than available work at any given time (evidenced by the low ratio of selected evalers to interested BNs). I believe there's a few ways to solve this; for example, more strictly limiting evalers' activity and just picking more of them, or having it be a consistent rolling system where instead of large rounds, we always have 3-4 interested BNs floating around that stay in for a month or so and whenever we need a new NAT we present one of them to the BNs for approval.

The other issue not touched on is the general lack of experienced, motivated, and optically acceptable candidates. I think we should spend more time developing potential candidates with feedback on their eval period (if they're interested) to grow the pipeline. This would alleviate a lot of the other concerns such as high turnover, nepotism (i.e. always falling back to known quantities of returning NAT) and basically make it possible to keep bringing in newer blood.

proposal 1 won't really solve the overall feeling of needing to be in a 'clique' in order to have a chance at NAT, although it does help with being allowed to participate in the BN Evaluator program (which is good for the reasons achyoo already outlined)
proposal 2 also won't solve that problem, if anything it just makes it even worse, you'll need to be on perfect terms with basically everyone in the BNG in order to have a chance (alongside the fact that BNs aren't going to be perfectly in-the-know as to what makes a good NAT)

coming from someone that's been actively trying to get into the NAT for years at this point, it feels like both of these proposals are band-aid fixes for a system which is currently constructed around being around (and friends with) the right group of people. adding factors which contribute to that overall feeling of 'cliqueness' seems like it'd make the system way worse compared to what it is currently -- unless i'm interpreting something wrong, at least

couple of other things i noticed scrolling through the thread:

Local Hero wrote:

I can get being against any form of non-merit system but we are working under the assumption that all members of the are acting and performing in good faith. stating that a system can lead to some form of nepotism when a vote amongst the relevant team rather than internally is more transparent and a wider audience for scrutiny feels quite strange to me.

it's nigh impossible to remove biases from any type of voting; the assumption can be that everyone will act in good faith, but this pretty much never happens in practice. yes, opening the voting process to the entire BNG would allow for more transparency, but it doesn't solve the inherent issue of feeling required to befriend and 'please' a certain group of people just to have a chance at getting in.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

can we set some threshold and say all 3 fail so no new NAT is chosen, NAT must pick different people on next round?

i think its obvious someone is a bad choice if most BN says so, lets honor BN's choice in who can become their boss

same thing said above applies to this, as well -- this quite frankly makes it impossible for people who aren't on the greatest of terms with everyone to get in regardless of their ability to do the job. that should be the last thing that happens on something which is trying to be more application-based.

Nao Tomori wrote:

I think we should spend more time developing potential candidates with feedback on their eval period (if they're interested) to grow the pipeline. This would alleviate a lot of the other concerns such as high turnover, nepotism (i.e. always falling back to known quantities of returning NAT) and basically make it possible to keep bringing in newer blood.

100% agree.

Nao Tomori wrote:

That was indeed the objective. I think the objective is misguided and will lead to poor outcomes for the reasons I stated. The second objective, not on the thread, was to reduce nepotism; I don't really see how letting BNs participate in a popularity contest where they have no basis for voting fixes that.

o7 GL in the fight for this

What makes you people believe that the current system isn't also requiring a clique or some kind of population that supports you (an even more tight-knit one even more so)? Right now without the approval of the people in even more elevated position, you can not be a NAT or get even considered for it to come into closer consideration.

Nepotism and bias will always be an issue, your trust in the NAT to make informed decisions is honorable and I can attest that people try their best to be most fair, but it would be naive to assume that it will always be objective. But in any case, a transparent voting for candidates helps a lot to legitimate the NAT or the people considered for it.

Hugged makes a fair point about people having to show some sort of interest, because people need to want it.

I also kind of disagree with Nao Tomori (and I already said that in some meeting internally) that people are unable to do informed decisions. You can make people be able to make informed decisions, if you were willing. Make the information public and people can form their opinions and decide accordingly.

I would love to place some trust into the BNs deciding at any stage and empower them to make informed decisions by providing them all they need. Either suggestion provides a layer of filtering and candidate curation by the existing NAT (which could be seen contrary to the intend of this act), so if you put your trust in the curation process by the NAT, it would kind of exist in either option.