Dude stop making threads complaining about osz2 ok, learn to play with BG's.

I doubt anything is going change

inb4 BATs go "We aren't modding machines"

I'll take this as being directly addressed to me, and will clear up a few things:

* There are not limited "places" on the BAT. Old inactive members are not stopping others from joining.
* If you want someone to manage teams, then please help me find someone. I am yet to find anyone I would be happy in giving the role. We have tried this several times and it hasn't worked. I agree there aren't enough leaders, though; if I don't do something, nothing happens. Apart from a few people on the team — who are mostly helping just keep things running as they are — the amount of effort being put into making osu! better is in my eyes dismal (please, no-one take this as offense). I have super-high expectations for which generally only I meet myself, and I don't have enough time to keep up with these expectations. Unfortunately most people will not offer this kind of support for free, because due to their abilities they focus such effort on jobs which pay money for what they do. This is just how things go.

it WAS, but at the same time, it was addressed to everybody. I could have just PM'd you if it was meant for you only. One person can't fix a community.

1. I understand what you mean by this, but inactive BATs should be in the alumni or some other group for several reasons. If there were a leader to suddenly emerge, it would be harder to keep track and manage the team. Also, it's confusing for members who don't know the community front and back (new members, those who don't use IRC or the forums often, etc) when trying to find a BAT or a MAT to assist them.

2. Have you tried asking the teams yourself? If there is absolutely nobody willing to step up (that you find fit), maybe the teams need reorganizing. Maybe you should become a little more involved temporarily until things get going.

People are busy, yes; however, that doesn't mean they have to be completely inactive.

I ask regularly. The problem is that there are few people with the time, motivation, ability and level-headedness required to take on meaningful roles. I am already shifting my time significantly at the moment to give osu! more focus, at the expense of my life. Hopefully you will begin to see more movement soon (come join us on the test server to see what's going on).

I can count on one hand the people I would nominate as being able to make this game magnitudes more awesome, and i can count by shaking my head how many of those have the time and/or motivation to do so :p.

It's disheartening to know that you are actively seeking out people ;_; the best case scenario was that you were simply not aware of the problem this is becoming

The only thing I can suggest now is that more BATs/MATs are added. (since there was such an amazing spike of activity (modding/ranking etc) the last time it happened)

also, speaking of the test server, it still says I'm not supporter: http://ha.ppy.sh/ss/167

I plan on implementing my master plan to change the whole approval system after I'm finished tidying up other stuff.

Talking about organizing BATs. Its just me or it is really funny how green and orange BATs are different groups (by color and description), what leads you to think they have two separated objective (in case, oranges for maps, green for community) but actually it makes no difference at all? In my opinion would be better make it just one group OR (and i prefer this option) make this segregation works.

Their roles do not differ, just the areas they focus on. There's a reason they both have the same team name.

Yeah, but there are some cases where i agree the person is a hell good BAT choice when it comes to modding, but not to the other case. And vice-versa. Im not saying it must change, only that its something that you (by you i mean staff) should look at, and if its better to keep that way, then its ok ^^

I would say, if they do not have a specific reason to not be modding maps every week, then they should cease to be BATs. If they want to keep their rank, then they need to put effort into fitting that role.

The BATs don't do anything, because we don't officially expect them to do anything. The public does, the rules, and management do not.

I don't want to speak for every BAT here but modding has gotten to the point of impossible, most mods we do give out are turned down and sadly it has come to the point where "WE" find that acceptable for example. NTR's justice breaker map he was so sure he was in the right on his unrankable sliders that he even went as far as to tell me to say "I was sorry and rank his map". This problem is going on far to much, mappers want mods but they don't want to really change anything, they take mods from BATs as suggestions that should not happen. BATs mods are things you must fix unless the bat says otherwise in the post. You forget we BATs are part of the community to!

Keeping things short because I got a linear algebra test to study for >.<

Adding more BATs won't solve anything really, its been suggested sooooo many times. Its like an endless cycle that keeps going round and round, same problems occur again. To me the community itself needs a tune up. When I mod and see other people's mods (this includes EVERYONE. Normal modders, MATs/BATs), sometimes the attitude of the mappers sickens me. Denying things that makes perfect sense for the stupidest reason! Hell sometimes there isn't a reason. This ticks me off the most and for that reason I've been thinking for just giving up. I've been modding less and less, why bother when people just shoot you down. That's how I think the higher ups feel.

Also the whole ranking system right now pisses me off. Seeing a BAT or someone that's friends with a BAT get a map ranked within a week but seeing the same song by a less known mapper sit in pending for god knows how long.

Something on the side:
I see osu! as a business cycle. Right now its in a rescission (not a depression, things are super extreamly bad) and hopefully it will get out of the soon.

Every day I'm shuffling.

I understand ztrot. I agree with you. The opinion of the BAT deserves some respect. Modders deserve respect in general, but few actually give proper respect to the mapper.

If you find yourself making valid points, you can always hold off from staring it. That's what I've started doing. If I feel there are issues that affect playability, I will not star until those issues are addressed either by decent reasoning to keep it, or by changing that which I think is important to be changed. Stars are more precious than ever before, and so mappers need to work with me when I find problems in their maps.

It takes me about one hour to mod a mapset.
In this time, I could:
code a couple small features or bugfixes.
map one easy difficulty or a decent sized chunk of a harder difficulty.
make similar progress on a personal project.
EV 2 pokemons.

If I have reason to believe the mapper is going to say, "lolno," to my mod, why would I spend that time on it instead of doing one of the other things?

Most long-time modders share this sentiment. The community hasn't always been like this, but it's been a runaway process since the whole "mapper's spirit" sentiment showed up. Good will between mappers and modders is where progress needs to be made most badly.

i wish i could share a portion of my free time with inactive MAT/BAT members

I'm quickly gonna throw in my two cents here, feel free to totally disregard this as I am not a modder because modding bores me.
I think the MATs and BATs ought to be stricter and stop letting borderline stuff past the radar. I'm not aiming towards anyone in particular, but if maps are unranked, it's basically for that very reason, isn't it?
In my opinion we need to make crystal clear what is okay and what is not and have the mapper change it, and if said mapper refuses, just leave the map alone or nuke it for extreme cases. I think this leniency is what caused mappers to try more and more rule-defying techniques and we should try and stop that trend ASAP (ztrot's example is a very good one and just goes to show how rules just aren't respected anymore. Even by people part of the official Mapping Assistance Team!)

So basically, I'm wishing for stricter standards here along with zero tolerance when something comes even close to conflicting with a rule. Enforcing the New Rules would also be vital. Will it make the game any less fun? I don't think so. Fun maps that abide by the rules 100% get ranked on a daily basis. Breaking/bending rules doesn't make a map more fun to play, and we need to inform mappers that before questioning rules they should abide by them and see if their maps suffer from said rules. I'm willing to bet that in 99.9% of the cases they don't.

So yeah, you guys are the one in charge and it's time to prove it. If someone doesn't want to play according to the rules, you tell them that either the map gets fixed, or it's off to the graveyard with it.
That's how I see things anyway. I can see this solution taking care of the "community problem" if such a thing exists.

MATs and BATs clamping down on errors would be a good way to quell mapper ignorance and prevent very silly things from being attempted. Of course, mappers being more co-operative or thoughtful when responding to mod posts would endear them to potential modders, but at the same time, mappers need to be able to stand their ground on how they've done things--if they change everything that is suggested just because it's been suggested, then their map becomes extremely inconsistent and possibly even broken. In this case, the mapper should explain why they've retained a feature. If they can't understand why something's been suggested, then it should be discussed with the modder.

Sometimes, I'll follow up a mod, whether it's somebody modding my map or me modding theirs, with a PM to talk about what wasn't changed. It's hard to explain exactly what should be done and why in a single post, so clarifying specific points by discussing them can make their reasoning much more obvious. I think that there does need to be more communication between mappers and modders at times, because when an impasse is reached, a map's progress will stall indefinitely. Even half an hour of discussing a map and changing a mere few things can improve it significantly.

DEEDIT: To tie this post up a bit better, if both modders and mappers are as open to suggestions as possible, then mappers would be more likely to obey modders, which would make people more likely to mod. Furthermore, I don't like the trend of trying to keep bubbles to a minimum, because this seems to make BATs pick reasons to pop them and it makes MATs refuse to bubble potentially rankable maps. In turn, this means that BATs don't see good maps and then the maps don't get any attention at all.

Perhaps that needs to be stated in various FAQs about ranking something like "Modding takes time, please respect modder's time by seriously considering make the changes proposed. Modders should also be clear in marking needed changes from just suggestions."

But that requires people to read FAQs.

If a (legit) mod is ignored for the most part or entirely, then in reality it's just like the map hasn't been modded at all since no fixes were brought. Which could allow the MATs to ask more mods applied to the map before they mod it themselves and, if the map allows it, bubble it.
Some maps barely even require mods these days because they come out as really clear and very well-made, not like a first draft like some others do, but there's always room for improvement. I think forcing the mappers to get mods and to apply them before calling the MATs is a good solution.