Currently there is a rule that states the following:

"Do not nominate beatmaps that you contributed to. This includes any major contribution such as mapping, hitsounding, storyboarding, skinning, or slider velocity editing."

I believe that this is an outdated rule, and want to provide a counterargument as to why BNs should be able to nominate sets they contribute to.

As the game has become increasingly collaborative over the years, it's becoming rarer for mapsets to be made solely by one person. Since BNs are often some of the most capable and active members of the game, especially in smaller modes like taiko and catch, I have found it quite a nuisance that often times I am left with needing to decide if I want to make a difficulty or contribute to a set in some way, or be a nominator for the set. Many times, I have to choose not to contribute to a set due to the lack of nominators who may be interested in the set - in fact, this is happening right now with a mapper whose set I made a difficulty for - and I think this is becoming an unnecessary detriment to the game.

On its face, this rule makes sense: we don't want BNs to be influenced to lower their standards or prioritize certain maps due to their involvement in them. However, I think that this is a naive judgement to make. The possibilities for BNs to be influenced by outside factors that infleunce their objectivity when ranking a set are abundant, and yet we expect them to be completely objective and not affected by them, and have not made rules concerning them. The factors include, but are not limited to:

1. The relationship of the BN to the mapper, e.g. significant other, a close friend, a new mapper, a superior, a famous person; all of these relationships can compromise the objectivity of a BN i.e. "I'll go easier on you because you're my girlfriend/new mapper/famous person, etc."
2. Preference for certain styles, genres, or media; many BNs prefer some artists over others, or some styles of maps or attached media such as shows, movies, or games, and this can also compromise the objectivity necessary required to rank a map if the BN desperately wants any one of these things represented in ranked.
3. Community pressure to rank certain maps in certain ways, e.g. tournament maps, famous maps; often will BNs be pressured to not make significant changes to certain maps if people deem it unnecessary, which can influence a BN to check a map differently than they would otherwise.

If we're expecting BNs to remain neutral and objective throughout the ranking process with these kinds of influences, sometimes several of them at once, I don't see it as unreasonable to expect BNs to check their own contributions with the same level of objectivity. I would make the argument that some of these influences are more effective than a BN simply taking ownership of a portion of the set, and I believe the problems we have seen in the ranking process caused by some of these factors are more concerning than the potential problems that might arise by letting BNs rank their own contributions.

Additionally, we have two BNs checking every set, and a whole community playing qualified maps, so like with every other possible outside influence, it would be balanced out if one BN had some kind of bias when it came to ranking the map. Also, BNs will be held to a standard of not abusing their power by exclusively checking only maps they contribute to, much like how we check to see that BNs aren't allowing other biases to significantly impact their performance.

With these factors in mind, I propose to amend the rule to read as the following:

"No more than one nominating BN is allowed to nominate a set they contributed to. This includes any major contribution such as mapping, hitsounding, storyboarding, skinning, or slider velocity editing."

I know this may seem extreme, given this is a rule we have lived with since the inception of the ranking criteria. But with this change, I believe it will allow BNs some leeway when it comes to choosing between ranking a set and contributing to a set. I truly believe this change will stimulate the mapping ecosystem in a small but noticeable way while not increasing the risk of extra bias in the ranking process more than any of the other listed factors do.

As much as I want to be able to contribute a GD and then nominate the map, I don't see a realistic way to avoid any of the numerous issues that would arise from this

This is interesting. I have some concerns, though:

- In this way, there would be effectively only 1 BN who check the diff(s) mapped by the BN contributed to a set, makes it easier to overlook potential issues in these diffs as everyone can make mistakes in mapping from time to time.

- Nominating sets contributed by themself may be abused as a shortpath to get badges as Centurion/Nomination counts, which is a visibly bigger benefit than what you can get from nominating other people's set out of preferences, so I don't think it's fair to compare these two.

Personally I've always disliked any "nominate your own map" ideas because there already is a, sometimes frustrating, power imbalance between BNs and regular users. BNs are the ones that hold the keys to ranking other's maps, and in many ways already have more resources than a regular user to rank their own (crudely put, "circlejerk").
This much is unavoidable simply due to providing more tools and privileges to BNs to do their work.

Though from there I feel like also allowing them to nominate their own work is a bridge too far. It will quickly feel blatantly unfair to anyone not in the system.

Ryuusei Aika wrote:

- Nominating sets contributed by themself may be abused as a shortpath to get badges as Centurion/Nomination counts

GDs don't count towards Centurion, no? If so then I would have gotten there like, 20 maps ago. I don't want this to get confused with allowing BNs to nominate THEIR OWN sets, that's would be insane. Just sets they may have a difficulty on or other contributions. It could be easier to argue that contributions such as storyboards, hitsounding, or slider velocities are even less of a factor for a BN to neglect objectivity, and allow those without allowing full out difficulties, but my main complaint is disallowing BN difficulties on sets due to limiting nomination opportunities.

And FWIW, BNs already abuse nomination counts with low star sets, and it's something we've just been fine with forever. Not great, but I think the benefits from allowing GDs and being fine with BNs having this edge would create some positive effects compared to the current methods people use to bloat nom count.

yaspo wrote:

Personally I've always disliked any "nominate your own map" ideas because there already is a, sometimes frustrating, power imbalance between BNs and regular users. BNs are the ones that hold the keys to ranking other's maps, and in many ways already have more resources than a regular user to rank their own (crudely put, "circlejerk").
This much is unavoidable simply due to providing more tools and privileges to BNs to do their work.

Though from there I feel like also allowing them to nominate their own work is a bridge too far. It will quickly feel blatantly unfair to anyone not in the system.

I have to agree with this statement!

That's literally an illegal crime in my eyes! >:[

That'll just make the osu players feel more mad, especially when the osu players hate playing it!

And it's just making the new mappers feel like a tiny little peep that can't do anything in order to try to get it ranked, no matter the quality...




I feel like BN's MUST try to communicate with the newer mappers that have barely gotten any contact with it a lot more!

That'll especially easen up the ones that have a really hard time communicating with users!

Though the problem is, how can this problem be solved? ;_;

lets ignore the fact BN wants to nom their contribution map for a moment.


as mapper, i simply cant identify mistake im not aware is a mistake, thats why we want 2 BN to rank a map.

if you say 1 BN is enough , then we should first allow 1 BN to nom any map

MrMcMikey22 wrote:

And it's just making the new mappers feel like a tiny little peep that can't do anything in order to try to get it ranked, no matter the quality...

I feel like BN's MUST try to communicate with the newer mappers that have barely gotten any contact with it a lot more!

With all due respect, I don't think this concept of BNs having an unfair edge in ranking maps is relevant to the proposal. It's a completely different issue and frankly just a societal one where the simple answer is "if you can't beat them, join them." I joined the BNG so that I could lift up niche and unknown mappers, and I've been successful in doing so, so this whole "BNs ranking maps easier and ignoring other mappers" thing is a bit derogatory to me. This complaint isn't in response to the BN rules or the things BNs are allowed to do that other users aren't (which is just nominating maps), so I don't see why it should be considered above practical arguments for the change. The rules aren't meant for maintaining an even social hierarchy, and frankly, this hierarchy will exist regardless of what rules there are.

BNs have and will continue ranking maps that elicit positive and negative community response, and I would consider people thinking it's unfair for BNs to rank their own GDs the least of my concerns, considering people have emotional reactions to just about everything. If a map is too hard, or too easy, or too long, too short, if someone ranks too many maps, or too much of one artist, not enough of one artist, etc., people will always feel as if something is against them if they want. I think the positive aspects of this change would be worth the possibility of people feeling like BNs are abusing the change, and if they are actually abusing the change in a way that is clearly harming the BNG or mapping scene, then it wouldn't be difficult to impose disciplinary action.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

as mapper, i simply cant identify mistake im not aware is a mistake, thats why we want 2 BN to rank a map.

I think BNs are capable of checking their own maps for mistakes. I mean, they're just maps after all, if anything, BN GDs are easier to check than normal maps since we're supposed to be more experienced. I can't follow the idea of "if you make a map, you won't notice issues in it," unless they're subjective issues with map content, which I think one BN is completely capable of checking. But for the sake of unrankables and general BN checks, I don't think it would be an issue.

this sounds pretty unfair towards other mappers i think

popular mappers will consistently ask their bn friends for gds + nom which will mean that bns don't need to open their queues since they already have enough maps to nom which will make it impossible (not really, but hard enough to get demotivated and drop mapping) to rank maps for mappers overall and especially for those who have 0 rankeds due to lack of connections

really dislike this idea

upd: speaking of your latest response, not everyone is like you. mapping and modding is hard and takes a looot of time to understand at least basics, so most of new mappers will most likely drop the idea of making maps. i mean, people have real life, not everyone is ready to sacrifice 1000+ hours to get good in both mapping and modding, have mercy on non bn people lol

Daycore wrote:

this sounds pretty unfair towards other mappers i think

popular mappers will consistently ask their bn friends for gds + nom which will mean that bns don't need to open their queues since they already have enough maps to nom which will make it impossible (not really, but hard enough to get demotivated and drop mapping) to rank maps for mappers overall and especially for those who have 0 rankeds

really dislike this idea

Me too!

It really is unfair that the BN's would always deny the ones that have rarely or never interacted with the bns before regardless of how good and rank-worthy the map ACTUALLY is!

Going to preface by saying that I, personally, am against of the idea. Yaspo's thoughts could very well be of my own, so I'll simply echo what they said. I do not have the insight needed to speak of the less populated modes however.

As you said something similar has been proposed multiple times before. Let it be Nao's idea, or somewhat more recently with mania trying to make an exception for hitsounders given the already lenient rules over hitsounds in our mode. In all cases these ideas were shot down.

I believe the game's stance over this matter is quite clear-cut as well, as explained back then by Ephemeral. I do not think such stance has changed, nor that it will change. In retrospective, I personally would probably end up asking the same questions that were asked in that paragraph.

With this I do not want to discredit BNs or show any kind distrust. But this just adds a pile of new problems, both optics and trust wise.
- How can we be sure BNs remain impartial on sets they had no contributions in Vs. those they had?
- There's going to be an implicit conflict of interest. The previous model had no "stakes", whereas this change would add one. GDers should be treated just like one's own maps, even if there isn't a medal at stake.
- There is already quite a few concerns over the potential for BNs to grow a circlejerk.
- This could become one of the main incentives people would be willing to join the BN group for. And in my opinion, shifting a vocational group into one moved by one's own motives is prompt to grow a certain degree of selfishness between its participants. Sooner or later.

In short, I believe this perspective from the point of view you provided is fair. But putting this degree of trust on the group as a whole is wishful thinking. This would just make the disparity between the BN group and overall mapping community bigger than it already is when it comes to opportunities to rank maps.

So for now my stance remains as firm as the game's stance aforementioned. I believe BNs have an implicit advantage by forming part of the group and being able to form these many connections, both in and out of the group.

As much as I’d like free noms on my own stuff I don’t see this working out well

New mappers already have a hard time finding BNs. Giving BNs this option would create a significant bias to nominate their own work rather than outreach into the community for maps. People who are already known to BNs will have their sets nominated even more as well since they’re more likely to have a BN contributing to it. There’s very little breathing room if you’re just starting out which is something we should try to improve imo

The mapping scene is already very biased, and I can only see it getting worse with this proposal

I suggest you don't neglect the hurdles other experience just so you can pave away the roadbumps you yourself encounter. A lot of complaints can be irrational and just annoying to deal with, but that doesn't mean that we can't pause to inspect their validity and find some truth.
Otherwise there'd never have been a "new mapper mug event" (events in the likes of which we should do more of)

but ig that gets pretty meta and offtopic

more ontopic, could you further elaborate on "the positive aspects of this change"?, from the initial post I only summarized
- less limitations for BNs in smaller gamemodes
- similarly, less limitations for mappers in asking who to nom/gd
- from there, occasional potential for unorthodox mapping to progress more smoothly

from there I'd assume it's just a size issue or a lack of diverse understanding across bns, which are both things that technically could be approached through education
mania managed to garner impressive growth and hopefully tackle these issues that way; why isn't this possible for taiko as well?

I don't wanna get stuck into some loophole where I can't get a map ranked at all, because of the difficulty constantly rising. ;_;

maybe i have not read it well but the only detriment to the community you stated was that BNs can't contribute to a set? personally i dont really see the worth in a BNs ability to GD, storyboard, whatever at the expense of 1. enforcing any amount of objectivity that BNs should have (i agree with what you stated about alternate factors being more of an influence but i dont believe this means that the sunken cost of those factors justifies getting rid of minor attempts to enforce objectivity) and 2. the simple moral issues of reducing checks on those with power, introducing potential conflicts of interest and fairness towards mappers. Imo saying "people will always react negatively/positively so lets just do things anyway" isn't really a smart way of going about rulemaking, but this is just an issue of if you believe in populism or not.

Although I would much enjoy nominating a map I would've contributed to, there are few reasons why this can't be accepted into the rules (from my point of view).

First of all, it would seem really nepotistic, considering we are as a community trying to avoid this as all costs (ESPECIALLY between the NAT and the communities as per before), and the overall nepotism here would boost it significantly, something we wish to avoid. Along with this, it would also maybe hinder other people from ranking maps, as there is a bridge between nominating people's map for fun, and nominating them out of complete bias (for example, nominating a friends map with your GD), it would restrict so many new mappers into rank, and as a community we should be promoting newer mappers' maps.

Secondly, I don't see a world where you have to mod your own difficulty, things can get very biased. Considering you would be the GD owner, that is going to be horrible when dealing with mods. You can not mod your own map, as you may also think your map is good, and think that it needs zero changes (also explained at Ephemeral's Post (Already Posted by Randome). Other modders/BN's have other ideas about certain patterning styles, and mods also help increase not only our own mapping skill, but also the way we think about our certain patterns, generally why I am against this proposal.

I just think if this was to be accepted, a good majority of the BN's might happen and do this, to abuse not only their activity, but their guest-difficulty ranking status. And also they would too abuse the system in this case, and not promote other maps.

on similar issues (e.g. hybrid changes) I took the stance that nothing should serve to lower the minimum of 2 BNs checking a map, cuz I think that it's already a very low requirement. as some others said, I think you can view this proposal as effectively allowing just 1 BN rank a map, even if the more responsible BNs wouldn't let it play out like that

but I find the 3 bullet points in OP very convincing here -- BNs do heavily base their nominations on outside influences and personal preference, in fact the entire system is designed for that to be the case, so it is somewhat contradictory to look down upon a self-nomination for a "conflict of interest" type of reason

to reference Ephemeral's comments that have been brought up, I agree with him that #1 can be an issue but disagree about #2, so I'm not sure what my opinion of this is overall

For what it's worth I agree with the concept of the proposal, but I think the optics are prohibitively terrible (which is why my original super BN proposal had a ton of stuff to mitigate that). I don't see this happening without similar optics-mitigation aspects. See this thread: community/forums/topics/1541495?n=1

as mapper i like to have suggestion to improve map from BN, i cant do that myself i already map it to best of my ability.

its not about DQ and issues

if i nom a gd i made, thats essentially reduce total BN from 2 to 1, if u rephrase ur solution u will be more likely to be accepted i believe

and reduce total bn to 1 will effective double BN availablity, free them up to help more mappers

new mappers wont get help they need unless its a big change to increase BN availability

The bias of song preference and patterns are less impactful than directly contributing (as defined in the current BN rules) to the mapset. I kinda disagree with this idea, moreover other people already mentioned that mappers can only improve to their extent limit until someone pointed out what else to improve on their map. This is also true to BN contributions.