In response to MrSergio: Yes, if one feels a lack for a leader, make it. We are a group of users that can do anything what doesn't break community rules, so we are free to open up a
<insert external organization program/site here> channel and make own organization, completely independent on staff members. The organization makes everything simple - you can make separate department for metadata, skinning/storyboarding, checking rankability of issues etc. That would make everything absolutely comfortable. Currently, not many things work organized way. Maybe some threads in Beatmap Management do, but well, how often does anyone ask here actually? #nominators channel is nothing doing excellent job here, sometimes, people actually ask for help, but mostly, it's dead or there's just spam of irrelevant things. It's like #osu for nominators, kind of. The same applies to #modhelp, which is #osu for mappers/modders. I mostly don't see any sensible discussion in these channels. We have a "modding association" channel on discord, but that's for staff, nominators, mappers etc. There's one #nominators channel and that one basically works the same way as the one in osu!. If we wanted organization, we should do it absolutely separate from outer world and only accessible to members of BNG. I'm not going to list how the group should be organized unless someone wants me to, but I think it's clear what departments the channel would need. I could even make it, but not unless people actually want it. Having it for about 3 people would be useless. So yes, I agree organization would be cool and we could have a sort of "leader", internally.
However, that's just the response to MrSergio and my opinion on the organization.
tl;dr forums are slow, chat is dead and isn't organized. Separate Discord/anything else with good organization options for nominators only would work much better than any organization we currently have.Next, my opinion on how should BNs work from my point of view. Listed things are sorted by priority, every point is important to me, but the higher the point is, the higher its priority is:
- Check qualified maps and report them if they are wrong from any aspect. This might look like I want BN to replace QAT, but not really. QAT already doesn't have to check every single map thoroughly and it's a responsibility of community. BNs are also a part of community and even they are responsible for checking and reporting qualified beatmaps. As you can notice, the thread that is made for reporting beatmaps is not so often used by regular users, but mostly by BNs. Keeping it at responsibility of community is risky and BNs should actively participate in this thread. By doing that, we assure that the quality of the beatmap is sufficient according to our mapping standards. "assuring quality", might look exactly like replacement of the QAT as it's "quality assurance team", however now it works like a middleman between complaining modders and maps who can clarify that what you say makes sense and is reasonable enough for a disqualification. Keeping the quality standard in place is more important than increasing those standards rapidly. Our goal is the highest quality possible, but we also need some flow of beatmaps into ranked section, somewhat a compromise between high quality and amount of ranked (not qualified) beatmaps. That doesn't mean quality should lower and we should qualify more, but that we should have some standard below which we won't allow the maps to pass and we should be checking all qualified beatmaps according to that. We don't need the style of beatmaps to exactly fit our imaginations, but every BN should have a list of issues in his head which are not acceptable for him and should mention them in any situation. He will only help mapper in case it's DQed and will assure that the map is good according to the standard.
- Mod beatmaps and be very constructive. Explain a lot, even if it would cover few papers. Modding beatmaps is not necessarily the way to increase the quality standard, but for sure will spread it. Respectively, it will spread your idea of quality standard between mappers and will approximately provide information about what you consider acceptable. If every single BN made 5 mods per month, yearly, we'd cover 3900 mods, for each month, that's 325 mods. That number is fairly nice, because somone would get some idea of what we expect - 325 times. Those people who got their map modded will for sure agree with some ideas and as I said, if you are very constructive and explain a lot, the mapper will be able to know WHY it is an issue and not only that he'll avoid it in future, but he'll also mention similar things when modding other people's maps. More mods we make, more people will know what is acceptable for qualification and will use it in their mods - great explanation is the key to spread ideas. Providing mods that fix few things that are explained in such way so the mapper will mention them his mods is more useful than providing mods that fix the map to complete perfection without proper explanation - mapper won't know why he does the changes and won't use it in modding, because he doesn't know the reason himself and cannot explain it. Talking about numbers, if that would be 3900 mods per year, we can realize that mod might have for example just 4 types of issues, that would cover 15600 explanations per year, from BNs. We as BNs, despite having only the bubble and heart icon for usage, are considered as higher members of community in terms of modding, so it's likely people will spread our ideas, opinions and explanations. Be sure to think about how much we actually help by spreading our requirements.
- Nominate beatmaps. Interestingly 3rd in terms of priority. The reason behind this is that keeping the standard high and spreading ideas about what is issue is more powerful than nominating beatmaps on daily basis. If this was our biggest priority, standards would fall deep down - in result, people would use ranked maps with lower quality standard as an argument for their map being mapped in such way, typically "Why is my map wrong if XY could do it on his map which was ranked recently?". I am aware this happens and will happen in future, but if nominating was the top priority, without any standards, we would have to deal with enormous number of people who would do this. We need to assure that every map is as high quality as possible so that qualities of ranked beatmaps don't differ insanely. We need to make sure we are fair to everyone, that's reason why the 2 above points should have higher priority than nominating itself. These three points together lead to overall increase of quality standards. Our goal isn't to rapidly increase standard quality or to keep increasing the standards more and more - that is wrong. We sure want a high quality standard, but that should stop at the point when we'd like to change map according to our own style or when we'd have unreasonable explanations just for sake of things being perfect. Increasing quality infinitely would result in people modding 1px stuff, blankets etc. We just want to make sure that issues we can explain clearly are being addressed and that we don't "kill the mapper spirit", we want to keep subjective stuff to mapper and only to the mapper. If we want to mention something very subjective, we'll simply ask him if he doesn't like it more this way. We cannot just get to the point when we deny things that weren't fixed, but were explained properly or even to the point where we don't accept things that we didn't even explain. The only change to "standards" should be regarding issues that are explained reasonably and sensibly.
- Discuss with other nominators about issues/questionable things in beatmaps. Very important. We should work individually when it comes to ideas and acceptance, but if we are unsure about anything, it's best if there are as many people as possible to give their feedback and discuss if certain thing is an issue or isn't. BNs often contact QATs with "is it okay?", while they have opportunity to get 65 opinions (BN count) from people in the same group. I include even mode-specific BNs, because every single person in the group is able to judge every mod. Being inexperienced doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot think about something being fine or not - worst scenario, you'll just say something others disagree with, but you can still have up to 65 opinions within the group. As I mentioned in response to MrSergio, making some Discord/Slack/etc. channel for nominators only with a "Is this issue" department" would certainly give you a big amount of serious answers and opinions. In current #nominators chat, it doesn't work that much as serious things are mixed up with random things people send here and organization would help a lot. Beatmap Management forum covers it a bit, but the response time is high, hence nobody is using either of these actively.
- Helping mappers. This includes answering their questions about modding/ranking process, giving opinions about maps while being very constructive again. You want to teach the mapper to not repeat the same mistakes and you want to encourage them to do everything properly. This is not the highest priority, because any of above helps mappers too. We don't need to coach mappers, but we should encourage them to bring the map to the statement where we already want to mod their map or even nominate it. Simple, but reasonable suggestions and advices will help him improve, you can even show him examples. One day, he might come back with a better map that you'll want to mod, which will explain very concrete issues in the map and eventually, if he understood everything well and you explained everything in-depth, you might be able to nominate the map. In any case, you will make sure that you made someone improve in what he wants to do. Giving basic advices to someone shouldn't take you more than 20 minutes and it doesn't hurt either, mod post might take longer, but in result might be much more constructive, helpful and can teach the mapper to do things better and to mod what you mentioned in future.
- Participate in mapping-related discussions. This isn't really obligatory, but if there is a proposal for a change, you should think about it from many perspectives and say your opinion about the thing. Most of community can handle it, but even you as one single person can make an argument that could mean a significant change in mapping or modding. More opinions we have to certain problem, the better - as long as you make sure your argument is reasonable and wasn't counter-argumented by other argument. Then you'll be useful.
Before anyone assuming that bad organization and stuff around it is mistake of staff or Loctav, be aware that NO and don't blame anyone but yourself. You're doing it wrong. Managers gave us a little power we can deal with and gave us #nominators channel. It was and is completely up to us to make
internal organization, not upon any staff. We could've progressed a lot more if we did that. It's not about waiting for anyone to do it, it's about doing it right now.
Edit: Regarding the organization stuff, only talking about it is not going to help anyone. Rather than that, I created a Discord server and made a little organization in it. The reason is simple - before we try it, we aren't going to know how BNG is going to work if it is organized and quick when it comes to response. Everyone interested should PM me or contact on Discord Wafu#7264, I'll invite you. Maybe it's going to work a bit more organized, maybe it's going to die after a week, but giving it a chance won't harm anyone. Thanks for the idea MrSergio. I also had idea that we'll vote our leaders here, so in the end, we would have all three things we need - organization, fast communication and leaders.
