Voli wrote:

I've been one of the people rooting for a QAT rework for a long time, the current definition of what the QAT is just misleading since nobody actually checks for quality anymore, which leads to much of the community being confused on what they actually do, hence always the QAT definition memes on almost every controversial map.

The current roster also is way too one-sided as the OP mentioned, map DQ's are pretty much only ever for small unrankable issues anymore and most people there seem to be aboard the subjectivity train.

I also think the QAT shouldn't be an ''one-up'' from the BNG as it currently is, because the duties of the QAT should be different from what BNs do. Imo, they should be seen as separate teams with separate ways of joining them. This kind of hooks into the accessibility point the OP mentions.

This is difficult...I agree that one of the problems with the QAT is that they're not willing to concretely call things problems, but about the BNG having different duties...
The kinds of things QAT should be noticing and acting on, are also things the BNG should be speaking up on. But they don't, in the interests of a smoother nomination process. BNs get used to this tradeoff, and that's why the behavior is carried over into the QAT.

What bothered me ever since I "had to take my leave" from QAT was, as mentioned, how one sided it's become. We'll leave the reason to that open as I'm not going to assume whatsoever at this point. Obviously, when people have different opinions, sooner or later there will be a confrontation between two fronts. Good to see that this is being challenged now, as I personally believe the latest QAT additions haven't done much.

I hope that there will be a better solution towards everyone taking having a ranked map for granted. As time has passed, the meta shifted more and more to "you can say whatever you want, it somewhat makes your map reasonable" which is poison for an environment like here. If this means that QAT is not supposed to be existing like it is right now, then so be it - but at least there is no "fake" qualitypolice around anymore, which does everything, except assuring quality.

The future was meant to be more community driven, and per se that's not a bad thing. Thus I find it a step into the right direction and feel like either there should be actual quality polices, or none at all (apart from moderating misbehaviour, right Irre?). Seeing with how much odd stuff people get through, it's more of a confusion rather than anything else (also taking commissions by Sotarks etc. into account)

It's good that change will happen, but the OP Post doesn't quite say what change is going to happen exactly - so I will keep questioning whether the problem is actually being seen or not, because at times when I saw there's an upcoming change, it got fixed into something worse. (Sorry Eph, there were many instances where we were promised change.... Would be nice if there was more detailed information about what you've planned and what problems there are being tackled.

In my opinion problem of QAT making a bad picture is in those controversial maps that are too different from what you usually see in a beatmap, so most of regular users who interact with it end up not liking it and blaming guys who mapped it/guys who let it through. Things should develop more smoothly, you don't just say community it is good and they will answer with yeah make more of this, unless they can get it with minimum of understanding mapping/modding/whatever it takes to enjoy the beatmap, like it happened with RLC maps or skystar stuff back then.

Maps that from a perspective of people that have no experience look like a 'randomly placed objects' or a 'first time editor map' should not get a ranked status out of nowhere just because they work and have logic if you are engaged in those sort of stuff, and people deciding whether a map is ok to be ranked are indeed engaged in those.

Solution is changing mindset of people that are involved with assurance of quality, you may say it will lead into how strict things in mapping were before but now it is too free for some people, so keeping a balance is what we need.

Or we can make community be more engaged into judging product they play, like having a star rating be not useless and encourage people to vote, instead of whats written under qualified right now ( https://delusional.s-ul.eu/BIFKPr05 ). Yeah it's not ideal but it'll help in special cases when beatmap is just unwanted by 95% with user rating of less than 5 and eventually will lead into hate on people who are responsible for this.

"QAT engagement in "controversial" maps, current QAT are too placid and passive "
It might be just me, but I do remember mentioning this while I was still a member and I always got passive answers from like 50% of them. I mean, sure this is a very sensitive topic and can cause a lot of negative feedbacks but in my opinion, if the team is not ready to face with them then they kinda shouldn't be in the team(?)

Before someone misunderstands this, "controversial" maps are not bad, and they surely have a place in the ranked section but in some cases, there are issues with these maps meanwhile those are being ignored too due being "controversial".

Listed my proposal down below. Please add it to the list.

In all honestly, the OP is open-ended precisely because we are as unsure as to what the best way to proceed is as anyone else. The QAT has shifted in many directions over it's lifetime, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. A major problem now (at least from my perspective, although others have shared similar sentiments) is that the QAT is somewhat insular / stagnant, and we have had difficulties in agreeing to any significant, long-lasting change. I hope that by opening discussion up to the mapping community as a whole (since our roles / actions have an affect on everyone in it to some extent), we can gather some fresh ideas.

Many of the current QAT are in the position not only because they are experienced modders, but because they have (or had) the drive to realize the change they want to see in the game. I believe that osu! is a community where anyone can succeed as long as they have a good, well-thought idea and are prepared to work with the community to shape, improve, and eventually realize it. The paradox of this argument is that QAT is a very public-facing position with significant responsibility attached, and many feel paralyzed by this responsibility when it comes to making tough calls or proposing controversial ideas.

Many people are likely quite content to wait for change to happen and then debate whether it's good or not. However, I believe there is some merit and seeing what ideas and opinions may come of this, whether it be a complete overhaul, a satisfaction with the current way of working, or anything in between. This is not to say everyone in the team needs to be a "firecracker" personality - there should be plenty of space in the team for more reserved personalities too who wish to quietly contribute in their own way - but if rotating members in and out on a cyclical basis helps to bring new ideas, with less fear of backlash, then I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Kurokami wrote:

"QAT engagement in "controversial" maps, current QAT are too placid and passive "
It might be just me, but I do remember mentioning this while I was still a member and I always got passive answers from like 50% of them. I mean, sure this is a very sensitive topic and can cause a lot of negative feedbacks but in my opinion, if the team is not ready to face with them then they kinda shouldn't be in the team(?)

Before someone misunderstands this, "controversial" maps are not bad, and they surely have a place in the ranked section but in some cases, there are issues with these maps meanwhile those are being ignored too due being "controversial".

Well yeah, another topic here is that most of the new QAT's taking their position wrongly. People are just got used to the fact that QAT is like an upgrade to BN status, but you are in a safer position and not obligated to be so active. Being a QAT now is only different from BN in a sense that they can Disqualify things for obvious reasons (if someone reports stuff, or kids on reddit is going reeeeeee mode on some map).

I really miss the old days where people were actually checking things for quality issues.

Now here we are, in the days where "quality" is a meme and everything is subjective, therefore you are "hater" if you raise any concerns to someone's map.

I will go for some opinions by quoting the part of what Ephemeral said.

Ephemeral wrote:

a few core points to (maybe) focus on in your discussions:
* QAT engagement in "controversial" maps, current QAT are too placid and passive --> I definitely agree to this, QAT should leave the wiki and go for judging the maps mostly, or a seperate team should be created in order to create wiki stuff.
* greater accessibility for people to both enter and exit the team --> Define accessibility here. Is it more leniency to get accepted? Is it lowering the requirements or lowering the ability to judge and qualify stuff? If it could stay higher this proposition would not have done in the first place.
* the creation of a more focused role/responsibility for the QAT in the context of checking qualified maps --> I thought we already had QAH (Quality Assurance Helper) for this. To an extent, QAT (or whatever you might wanna call to wiki people) should do the wiki work mostly and QAH should actually judge and have the power of disqualification.

Above all this, I'd like to say stuff that has discussed before. The propositions that have been made to change the system (that I heard so far) are only 2, and I beg of you please do not even consider doing stuff like this. These would be:

1. A bot (an artificial intelligence to be specific) to manage nominations, as in a bot that determines if a map should be nominated
2. Judging by mappers' kudosu count they should have the ability of nominating, and even further count will give the power of disqualifying stuff.

Both of them will do well, if the main consideration is quantity over quality. However, in a community that seeks for quality over quantity these days, I would not recommend even discussing this or attempt to create stuff for it. As Irreversible said:

Irreversible wrote:

It's good that change will happen, but the OP Post doesn't quite say what change is going to happen exactly - so I will keep questioning whether the problem is actually being seen or not, because at times when I saw there's an upcoming change, it got fixed into something worse.

This is something we have to avoid if we want to improve stuff instead of building something worse that exists now.

Above all: This kind of change should be considered for osu! Standard only, as the smaller modes are going on their peak so far. Rotting the other modes down by that change shouldn't be an option, considering there are people who like to play mania, taiko and CTB as well. Having two different systems would not crush the structure, but in this case it may even improve it.

These are all my thoughts on this so far.

hi-mei wrote:

3. Ranking criteria / QAT. The big amount of controversial maps are coming from the issue that these rules are EXTREMELY vague. Like, its so amorphous to the point where you can rank a minute of metronome sounds with 1-2-1-2 jumps on the same notes and literally nobody would do anything to this. I wanted to do this to make a precedent till I realized that there is a good way to solve this.

Set the rules already. There are lots bold concepts in mapping that were developed over a decade: flow, structure, spacing emphasis, visual spacing, volume adjustment, gimmicks, slider art etc. Make all this structured so people would learn from it.

The ranking criteria is supposed to be a set of objective terms that your map must comply to; these are the bare minimum of expectations for the possibility of your map being ranked. Controversial maps don't break any of these rules which means they can have the possibility of being ranked.

If you start adding rules that people find subjective it goes against the point of the ranking criteria. Take visuals for example as you're a fan of clean visuals, they don't break any of these rules objectively. Even overlaps that may be detrimental to readability is a guideline because in lower diffs deciding exactly what detracts from readability is subjective as people have their own definition of what they might consider unreadable. Telling whether two notes are stacked in the timeline and why it should not be allowed is pretty obvious, so that's why it's a rule.

These rules aren't vague, defining what is rankable and not rankable due to personal standards is a vague topic and that's why UC and Hailie maps pass through to ranked.

The mapping meta is always changing and evolving, it's only natural that it's going to change at some point sooner or later. Maybe this is the new meta, maybe something else in 5 months will be? I'm not saying I'm for this new style of mapping, but adding rules for flow, structure, spacing emphasis, visual spacing, volume adjustment, gimmicks, slider art etc. isn't the way to go here because the freedom of these and people coming up with their own ideas for them is what made mapping how it is today.

Alphabet wrote:

The ranking criteria is supposed to be a set of objective terms that your map must comply to; these are the bare minimum of expectations for the possibility of your map being ranked. Controversial maps don't break any of these rules which means they can have the possibility of being ranked.

If you start adding rules that people find subjective it goes against the point of the ranking criteria. Take visuals for example as you're a fan of clean visuals, they don't break any of these rules objectively. Even overlaps that may be detrimental to readability is a guideline because in lower diffs deciding exactly what detracts from readability is subjective as people have their own definition of what they might consider unreadable. Telling whether two notes are stacked in the timeline and why it should not be allowed is pretty obvious, so that's why it's a rule.

These rules aren't vague, defining what is rankable and not rankable due to personal standards is a vague topic and that's why UC and Hailie maps pass through to ranked.

The mapping meta is always changing and evolving, it's only natural that it's going to change at some point sooner or later. Maybe this is the new meta, maybe something else in 5 months will be? I'm not saying I'm for this new style of mapping, but adding rules for flow, structure, spacing emphasis, visual spacing, volume adjustment, gimmicks, slider art etc. isn't the way to go here because the freedom of these and people coming up with their own ideas for them is what made mapping how it is today.

The quality comes from combination of things. Thats the point here. Most of these controversial maps are taking the bar to the minimum of almost all the concepts making it unacceptable even to a regular player. Just read the goddamn feedback of regular players. If they are quastioning the quality (not playabilty) you know theres something not okay with the map. Not to mention the mappers are even making jokes from it.

hi-mei wrote:

2. BN / QAT promotions. Its now clear for everyone that the promotions are biased as fuck. Just admit it. Lots and lots of people are being wasted for personal controversies with the ones who "judge" them. We should definitely bring some transparency there. I definitely prefer a blind test over anything else. Why? because its fucking fair. Also, these "rounds" should basically go away already. What the point in working for literally months to get potentially denied? I have went thru this literally 3 times, modded over 100 maps over the 9 months and each time it was some bullshit like "mod more easy maps" "making kick sldiers from double is bad for maps" and so on. I spent literally 3 years on this mapping scene and wrote shit tons of useful stuff. Same for Billy Bill, Rizen, C00L etc. You should start recognizing people's effort.

In regards of transparency, once again:
The entire BN/QAT thing is buried in corruption to the point where you can see how some people are nominating maps in purpose of getting nominations for their maps. Its just not okay. (hello UC btw).

The rules should be set so nobody will complain. Lets just sort things out already.

As a BN, your job is not only to nominate and mod maps well, but also to act as a responsible and mature member of the community, hence why a blind test doesn't work.

Also, tests are the easiest thing to cheat on, far easier than the months of modding required and subjective analysis of mods.

Does the current system lend itself to nepotism? Undoubtedly. The latter system would, however, introduce many incompetent and/or toxic individuals into the BNG who are wholly unfit to be official representatives of the community.

Deca wrote:

As a BN, your job is not only to nominate and mod maps well, but also to act as a responsible and mature member of the community, hence why a blind test doesn't work.

Also, tests are the easiest thing to cheat on, far easier than the months of modding required and subjective analysis of mods.

Does the current system lend itself to nepotism? Undoubtedly. The latter system would, however, introduce many incompetent and/or toxic individuals into the BNG who are wholly unfit to be official representatives of the community.

Its been like 1.5 years since they removed tests. Look at what we are at now.

Also, in regards of

The latter system would, however, introduce many incompetent and/or toxic individuals into the BNG who are wholly unfit to be official representatives of the community.

Lets not forget about these things:
https://puu.sh/CiDgk/ae2097d231.mp4
https://puu.sh/CiDgM/cea09d7d3c.mp4
https://puu.sh/CiDs2/85a36cf510.png

This person is in QAT and he is an official representative of quality in this game. By the way he got into the BN and then into the QAT without any application or what so ever. They just took him because he is their friend. Nothing else. (talking about Yuii here)

Not to mention Sotarks who .. well. There are lots and lots of super bad things he did during this year (including that babymetal incident, insulting streamers, mappers, devs etc). But HEY he is STILL in BN group! What a miracle.

Tests are the only answer to this (in different form than it used to be). Otherwise we gonna struggle in the corruption for decade again.

hi-mei wrote:

By the way he got into the BN and then into the QAT without any application or what so ever. They just took him because he is their friend. Nothing else.

lol ok then good to know I can just skip your post

hi-mei can you like not take stuff out of context and stuff that happenned in the past on an other platform that's not osu to use this against yuii- ? that's not nice move. and what's the point by doing that ?

They just took him because he is their friend. Nothing else.

yea man i'm pretty sure you know everything about yuii- and why he got qat, that's basicly it. but no he got in because he's good decision maker and it helps when you have lots of qat discussion and you need someone like that to make stuff going forward. other than that the guy is also a really great modder that also check qualified maps often. he also did qah work as a probation bn and also even before being bn, and made lots of really valid reports.

please actually think before throwing informations like that to make someone look bad. thank you.

We have seen how he "helps" with decision making. Sure. And yes, I've been talking with Ephe in regards of that case so I kinda know what is what. Yuii has been taken to QAT before anyone else not just by occasion.

Btw, please stop defending your friends just in fear of getting purged off with the rest of your circle of friends. Eventually its gonna happen, if not soon - then in near future.

hi-mei wrote:

Now here we are, in the days where "quality" is a meme and everything is subjective, therefore you are "hater" if you raise any concerns to someone's map.

I agree with that topic. I'd not say back in the time, all maps were perfect cause it's wrong, but I'd say we for sure had less controversial maps. That's cool to push the boundaries indeed, however quality should still be the most important point to take care about, and I think that's what QAT (or however it will be called in the future) are supposed to do.

I'm glad to see things moving in the right path

himei its time to stop attacking people and go back to the actual discussions
if you want to attack sotarks and yuii- do it somewhere else i guess


on topic tho, can there really not be more clarification on what's planned? i read this and i'm confused on what even has to be discussed lol

Hakura wrote:

himei its time to stop attacking people and go back to the actual discussions
if you want to attack sotarks and yuii- do it somewhere else i guess


on topic tho, can there really not be more clarification on what's planned? i read this and i'm confused on what even has to be discussed lol

See? raising concerns is attacking now. Literally an exponantional example here. Any criticism is being considered as attacking.

While I somewhat agree with you, hi-mei, maybe you could have left names out.

hi-mei does have a point though.

Current system does reek of nepotism. Singling out individuals like Yuii and Sotarks is not the right way to go about it though imo. But the old system saw basically only Germans on the QAT (lol) and the system before that with Pasonia only saw Chinese BAT's getting continuously added. You'll always turn a blind eye to your friends, or be more willing to consider their antics as "funny" instead of "disrespectful". And calling your friends out for small stuff will always make you seem like a lame person or someone who can't have any fun. I mean nowadays you see QAT's in a lot of private discords and stuff. It's quite easy to influence them by befriending them etc...

I don't think there is really a solution. In situations like this, it is really the QAT's or higher-ups obligation to address and fix stuff like this, if they want to, or notice them because they are probably the only ones who can operate somewhat impartially. But they have to be willing to seek out behavior like this, and I don't think people like Ephemeral are engaged enough with the community to actually notice this happening, either that or just doesn't think it's an issue. So then there is no solution and we move on.

* QAT engagement in "controversial" maps, current QAT are too placid and passive

Hmm I do feel that this is something people want more of but in the end, it won't come out the way people would hope it would and it just would leave an undesirable outcome for those who are asking for this

What I mean by this that these people who consider maps controversial (such as my own if i need to put in example) not rankable standards, are low quality,etc is what these people are asking for more discussion and possibly keep away from ranking status which i believe is okay to have more of that and actually would be possibly be benefits for both sides in 1 way or another depending on the take.

But

The consequences of doing such a system would also lead to more discussion on stuff that they truly like and deem "the quality of the game" or whatever exaggerating thing i would put when they have the same amount or worst problems than the maps that consider to be "bad quality" with only differences in terms of the map looks in the eyes.

With that said we see that this type of system easily gets those people all rally up either way just as much as the current but possibly worst when they see that the maps they hate get ranked just as easily as before while the maps they like will be stuck in limbo

Even if possible maps they hate will actually get taken action and the maps they like will also gets locks away to balance out the situation will still leave in undesirable feeling to both sides and possibly more for the people who is asking for such a thing since for the most part, they only want it to happen for things they hate.

Personally whatever happen with this, ill take a neutral stance on since i'm not for or against on a system like this whether that will harm me/others alike or not.

----
fyi what i writing down below is trying to take on the perspective of someone who is mainly seeing the outside of things (just to make a point whether that is a valid 1 or not.)

I am aware there is more possibly going on in the inside that i have not seen/ too aware of but as a person who doesn't have the access to the inside this is mainly what most people see and why people consider the qat as a joke more than half the time.

What I mean by this is that for the most part all i really see is that they only take people who is capable of checking unrankables and obvious subjective things people would more or less agree with (low diff, spread issues, etc) and to me honestly sometimes I don't see that much difference between them as a bn and a qat other than the fact they have a red name and have the power to dq maps.

I do feel the need to say that having more people who is capable of others fields that will help the game/improve more than just the average qah check/dq discussion/etc should be more considered and having more options of getting qat without feeling like you need to have qah as a requirement nowadays (with an exception of those like yuii due to him already proven to have experience enough to do the job.)

If they are doing more than just looking at people's qah status already then possibly be more open about it and actually make it more clear that there is more ways to be qualify than people think so more people who is actually possibly qualify in a field in the qat can more aware and be motivated to possibly show that they have potentially a good candidate that otherwise would had been ignored due to how things is currently (like something about this in maybe in the next qat gazette for people who is actually interested in those things)

For ideas what more fields a qat can do aside from what i see majority of the time is something I would have to think of more myself and I don't have much complains on the current rooster since it has a bunch of needed experienced people capable (to me at least) to be that motivated with this part despite all i said.





This is just me giving an opinion and if I didn't make it clear the 1st time, i'm mostly neutral with everything that will happen.

The exams were to some extent a good base to determine whether someone is able to mod or not. Obviously, there should've been ways to figure out better whether someone cheated or not (speaking assessment, etc.).

What has ALWAYS been slept on, and what I always fighted for, was an attitude check. This came about 2 years too late with the tiers (horribly implemented) and came back now, somehow. I was always baffled by how certain QATs were against it, thinking that the exam shows their attitude.. anyways - the problem now is that, from my point of view, many people with a horrible attitude recently joined QAT / BN which results in a devil's spiral: As soon as someone with a corrupted mind joins, they somewhat get power to get other people into QAT, and that's because we are where we are right now. And before you call me out: I'm not anywhere stating that I've been doing better (especially after the "Ugly-Affaire").

tl;dr I hope that the responsible people to choose people with power finally wake up and actually check attitude in a proper manner (how people respond in threads to mods is ALSO one of these points by the way - saying that it makes sense just because that or this person wanted it like that should not belong anywhere close to a position with power...)

even if it is subjective

there is nothing concretely planned other than a grand desire to enact some sweeping change, hence why the announcement mentions that we're looking for proposals and thoughts on how to continue.

it's my hope that by soliciting direct feedback from lots of people instead of just keeping it clustered in-team like previous reworks have been, we might actually find some system that functions as a better compromise than the current one does.

so anything and everything (within reason) is on the table, really. people just need to write it out and get it into this thread so we can start discussing it.

Attitude check is in gray area here. Simply beacuse you can go afk for 3-4 months and come back claiming you have changed all this stuff. Sotarks does that on daily basis:
1. fuck up
2. apologize
3. go afk for some time
4. restore your reputation by doing nothing
5. repeat.

Just look back at the time he got restricted - he told the player to kys, said that hes happy about an artist's death, kept on insluting people not liking his maps. Then he kept silent for some time and people said theres no actual thing to hold him off BN. Now it repeats, and will repeat again and again.



Nonetheless, I feel like we should just change the entire concept of how it works, I have some thoughts in my mind that might work on a long run. Tho should discuss that in private with other people before releasing.

People are speaking about controversial maps and the QAT's failure in handling them appropriately. Can we identify the maps and what was controversial about them so we have something to go off of? There can be controversy in context of abusing the star rating or pp, but there can also be controversy in context of mapping and design choices or some other context. Labeling them all under one term "controversial" does not paint the full picture.

abraker wrote:

People are speaking about controversial maps and the QAT's failure in handling them appropriately. Can we identify the maps and what was controversial about them so we have something to go off of? There can be controversy in context of abusing the star rating or pp, but there can also be controversy in context of mapping and design choices or some other context. Labeling them all under one term "controversial" does not paint the full picture.

Well I once tried to analyze myself not liking these "freestyle" maps that been infesting the game for past 2 years.
Lets take an example off this Itari Ten map by Hailie, its like an ultimate apotheosis of what been happening on the scene for quite a while.


So lets start off basic mapping concepts that has been developed over the last decade:
0. rhythm (cuz ure playing a map based on a song xd)
1. flow (obviously u shud move the cursor right)
2. emphasis (u shud distinguish the loud/quiet sounds)
3. structure (to bring the visual apsect into the game, which can help in reading, recognizing the rhythm, spacing and so on)

So these are the most basic and obvious concepts that has been there for literally a decade. In past years there also appeared rhythm filtering, gimmicks, aesthetics, anti-flow/emphasis and other more advanced stuff.

So back to Itari Ten: technically speaking, it almost entirely ignores the one of most basic concepts - which is structure. Also, the emphasis (spacing/hitsounding/volume) is completely unbalanced, a lot of the sounds has way larger distance than they should have (loud sounds - big distance, quite - low distance - the most obvious definition for spacing emphasis). Then we got the rhythm, which is uncanny to the point where you simply dont know which layer of the music you are playing (esp with combination of low end hitsounding and volume control).

So I just pointed out the most basic and understandable stuff without going in-depth of mapping theory.

The issue there is that, nobody bothered to explain these concepts in RC. Its just a huge blank area which nobody takes care of. As I said above - lack of rules. Therefore you can continuously argue around it and not find a ground because you think that way, and the mapper think the other way. Even if the community is outcrying, the mapper is in a safe, especially having these sweet friends in BN who can renominate by a click of 2 fingers.

Just look at these discussions - (uc, hailie, halfslashed and so on) feels like they are just exhausting the modders which try to criticize them, so they would leave their "piece of art" in calm. There are literally walls of text being wasted into nothingness, people just give up on arguing because its like talking with a wall.

What most of these so-called "freestyle" mappers dont understand the most, is that if there is a HUGE fucking outcry in the community, which comes from both player/mapper base, that means they fucked up somewhere. And they should stop for a moment and think about it, ask for opinions and so on. I had the same issue, but I was smart enough to disqualify my map each time there were a concerns raised, because I genuinely felt like I am not the best one and people might be right. Thats how I completely removed 2 of my 200+ hours of effort maps because I failed. But here we have people not trying to change their minds, they just want to rank their maps, make people get the PP or just to fulfill their ego's needs. And the current state of RC allows them to do so.

the controversy is and always will be that people have dissonant values on what is important in a map. there just aren't a lot of maps that everyone agrees on are amazing or terrible. we can see this time and time again, i dont want to say it is like double standards because it isn't, but everyone has completely conflicting opinions on what is acceptable or not.

every time qats go and start nuking things, which is what this proposal aims for them to do again basically, they end up nuking something that the community at large thinks is good and then peppy comes and slaps them. like asymmetry for example, or what would probably have happened if atomosphere was stopped, or calling, or etc. etc. etc. everyone ideally wants qats to "enforce quality" or whatever (unless youre monstrata or uc) but only their personal definition of quality...

as a result qats get flamed no matter what they do, either for killing "good" maps, or letting "bad" maps pass, or not doing anything (like they don't do anything right now unless people really start yelling like crazy). and all of this random rework BS won't change how the community usually rejects things they do not initially like and then refuses to try and understand or compromise with which leads to a lot of arguments and toxicity

[]

more rules or whatever wont do anything about this issue because the issue is fundamentally that everyone thinks differently, and forcing some set of rules based on whoever is qat at the time does not do anything useful lol. you can't make a rule like "your map must use neat visual spacing" for example, or "loud sounds need to have higher spacing" because they are restrictive and only cater to one viewpoint on mapping...

you dont point fingers here unless clarifying what is it about.


however, you have said basically the same as I did above, which leads us to the point of ... yeah. where are the rules.

How can you write and enforce rules that properly enforce/explain how much structure a map should have, or at what point does the lack of structure is an issue, or even what kind of structure is acceptable, cuz FYI there's more than just visual structure. It's an extremely abstract concept.

You complain about vague rules, but then you're asking for extra rules to be added that would be so unbelievably vague. If you feel like rules need changing, go in the RC section and write a proposal, because I genuinely cannot imagine how such a rule could be written out or make any sense.

The discussion here is about the changes to the QAT, not changes to the RC, if you feel those are needed there's a whole subforum for proposals

If no individual can reliably judge a controversial map and the QAT are indecisive, then the only logical thing to do is gather feedback on a wider spectrum. I propose a last line of defense for the map, a decision to be invoked in agreement by both the QAT and the mapper, and can be invoked only once. Allow the map to sit in qualified for a longer period of time to gain player and only player feedback. This means prohibiting anyone with BN or QAT role from voting since they gave their opinions in modding discussion and that reached a standstill. Within the longer span of time the map sits in qualified, the map must reach a certain number of votes and certain number % in favor. The mapper can go around to spread the awareness of the map if the mapper feels like it will not get enough votes within the time span. To simplify the decision, players would be able to vote with only "yes" or "no". If the map doesn't satisfy the voting requirement to be ranked, then the mapper must adhere to what the modders/BN are saying or it will not be ranked.

@celerih
I didnt ask to add rules in regards of mapping concepts, I did say that we need rules in regards of regulating controversial maps. It may or may not include clarifying what is what in mapping.

But more importantly we need regulations to take place when its needed, because we always end up with no regulations and the maps are sneaking to the ranked section, which affects new mappers and they repeat the same stuff, then it affects the larger picture and so on. Domino effect.

the staff wants proposals so i think something like this could work

QAT dealing with controversial maps:
what we know so far is that many qat members often are not willing to make final decisions on discussions because they don't want to be flamed by the people on the losing side. but the community blames the qat for allowing controversial maps to reach ranked. so it's one side blaming the other mostly.
so we should aim to give the community's opinion more relevance on controversial topics. for example deciding if certain maps belongs in ranked section based on the rating, or at least take the map rating more in consideration for the final decision
beatmaps cosidered controversial must to force to vote after playing the map, and replace the current rating to upvote and downvote.

QAT management:
deciding if applicants are capable of being part of the BN could be made a priority and the requirements for staying on the BN should be made as low as possible. there are many talented people out there that did well/could do well on the group but simply couldn't keep up with the activity requirement, made a few mistakes or other reasons. the community will keep growing so the group should keep as much of it's members as possible. talented people should not be discarded because they can't meet activity requirements, if you give them the freedom to work on their own pace they will usually perform as well as the more active members and they will not resign the role if they know they are still welcome with lower activity. ofc the less active members shoudn't be elegible for QAT promotion, the 2+ years contribution badge or anything like that. if someone has been inactive for a long time he could just have his nominatior privileges revoked, if he wishes to return to activity he can just contact the QAT to allow him to nominate again(also it seems like it's how it works for people with osu!dev role, they keep the role even after years inactive just don't have the dev privileges allowed...)

Qualified period:
qualified period should be shortened for maps that are easier to judge (for example a map with a short song with a simple spread should be qualified normally or faster if no issues are found, while a longer map with a lot of difficulties should take several days more than a normal qualification) and if a map is considered controversial for whatever reason, it should stay on qualified section for indefinitive ammount of time instead of getting ranked by default (unless an unrankable issue was found, so the disqualify should be done imediately), this can also be used in case minor issues are found on any map, just don't let the map get ranked by default if the mapper is not around to respond to concerns, keep it qualified instead until the mapper is able to address issues.

tldr:
*give community's opinion more relevance on controversial maps so they can no longer blame only the qat for what reaches ranked section.
*don't make qat rush to decide if a map should be dq'ed imediately or just reach ranked.
*reduce the management work by mostly focusing on who joins BN, mainly kick BN's with a bad attitude, give inactive bn's the possibility to return when they want.

There are actually important things that should be discussed regarding the QAT/BNG but I'm getting to see a lot of this discussion going towards "QATs are letting Hailie/UC ranking their maps" and I'm pretty sure that's not the most relevant topic to be adressed guys :/

Neto, these cases are the most egregious and exponential consequences of whats wrong with the system now.

https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/p/6909423

wrote a blurb because having 15 different conversations about different posts and different people's ideas is rather disorganized xP. feel free to take stuff from there, and reject some stuff too.

pimp wrote:

and if a map is considered controversial for whatever reason, it should stay on qualified section for indefinitive ammount of time instead of getting ranked by default (unless an unrankable issue was found, so the disqualify should be done imediately), this can also be used in case minor issues are found on any map, just don't let the map get ranked by default if the mapper is not around to respond to concerns, keep it qualified instead until the mapper is able to address issues.

Consider some issues will be unresolved indefinitely and perhaps it's the mapper's goal to keep the issues resolved indefinitely to at least retain some sort of status for the map. In other words, keeping a map qualified indefinitely will make the qualified section equivalent to loved. If consensus can't be reached within a reasonable amount of time, I suggest it go to loved instead of being kept in qualified.

I tried reading as much as I could from the above posts, but seeing the hour it's kinda tough so I'll just list all the things I have in my head right now (and hopefully I'll re-organize my thoughts if necessary later on)


Let me start by saying this: the Q from QAT has been missing as of late (couple years?), and that's my main concern here. Before you start going on a tangent about it tho, let me clarify...
As everyone would agree, quality IS subjective and no one can do anything about it. And when you can't define that subjectivity through "objective metrics", you make it yourself. At least that's what I believe.
I honeslty had my fill of people saying and doing certain things just because they want to be "edgy" or simply piss off others on purpose (me included, someone could say) just because you can do whatever you want in the current ranking system (you just need two BNs to get your stuff ranked, amirite boiiis??). This is the result of, and please don't take it bad, bad leadership imo... or rather, non-existing leadership.
While being in the wrong is not the best of feelings, not knowing whether I am or not in the wrong is far more annoying I believe. Not having someone put down their foot and decide what's "good" is what brought us to the current situation and that's also why everyone with a little of influence in the community is trying to make their own values be the universal ones for everyone, hence why we get to the point where A doesn't stand B's mapping, B doesn't stand C's mapping and so on so forth...

---------------------------

Second point I wanted to make is about the lack of information going around in the community.
It's almost hilarious how we've passed ten years since this game has started circulating and wherever I look around I see, sorry again for the strong words, ignorant mappers and modders who give their own interpretations to what is what, without actually having studied them (so to speak) or tried understanding what others mean by those same words.
Now, don't get me wrong, different interpretations are the best thing that could happen in a creative environment like this, but the problem lies in the fundations.
Guides and tips of every sort are lying around the forum (please notice: they have some logic that explains why X is good and why Y is not for certain situatiosn), someone even took their time to list most of them in some threads, and yet people nowadays watch a couple of videos on YouTube and believe they know it all just because they can easily emulate a couple of random jumps they saw on a ranked map a week ago... Is that quality?
I may sound like a broken disk for those who know my theories, but you need some logic to what you do: it has happened way too often that I ask "how come this pattern is like this?" to mappers and they either avoid the question or simply never actually answer because, let's be honest, the actual answer is that they didn't think twice about it.
On a side note, the only beam of hope I had (the mentorship) quickly became what I feared, but that's for another topic.
Again, might not be the most refined way to put it, but that's the gist of it.

--------------------

Last point worth mentioning, which is not even that long, is: ranking is a privilege, not a right.
This might come off strange for newer mappers, but I'd like to remind you that "ranked" is the section considered as """official""" by the game, hence why we have leaderboards on those maps.
The thought of having every and each map respecting the Ranking Criteria in such section just doesn't make sense to me when there's clearly an over-abundance of looking-alike maps (which are not that good to begin with by my standards, but let's skip this part)




To sum it up and actually suggest solutions to all of this...
Being the lack of education on the mapper's/modder's side and lack of leadership on the QAT's side the core issues, I'd rather prefer seeing a) a stronger decision making for the QAT about what is good and what is bad and b) actually make a reference, subjective as it may be, for all the people who want to approach mapping and modding altogether.

Not so long ago, while still in the mentorship program, I thought of writing a small "book" myself where I could put together all my thoughts and ideas about mapping in a simple and organized manner, so as to make new mappers see the logic behind what I do and want to see done. Of course, such book WAS going to be subjective and I don't think that's a problem.
What IS a problem, instead, is that there are too few people that could be able to do such a thing: explain their own logic. As I said, it's hard to come across someone who clearly justifies what they did in their map, even less put it down neatly into an organized book. (still not impossible to do though, right?)

Imo the current system is not at fault. The fault is with the current mentality about mapping altogether and no one trying to stir it into the right direction.
If a change has to happen, I'd rather have the old one where a MAT nominates and a BAT qualifies something instead: it's tedious, it's slow and it's difficult to get through, but at least the obstacles could discourage those who just want to rank a bunch of boring maps, hopefully, as well as give more time to opinions to arise where we need them (pretty sure this was brought up somewhere recently but can't remember).
Of course, all of this implies that the "BAT" (aka QAT) is actually made of people with similar ideologies when it comes to mapping: having too many heads (opinions) around is what I call anarchy, if you allow me...

Just nominate a damn dictator already please

In case I wasn't clear above, my suggestion is to have a few people part of the QAT, deciding what gets through, and a bunch of people in the BNG who just "highlight" stuff they wanna see in ranked.
I personally see no need for so much new content anyway and it wouldn't hurt quality overall for sure.
Just make whoever can meet the bare minimum requirements joing the BNG and be really strict with whoever gets into QAT, that's all.

EDIT: Or just read MrTriangle's essay up there, it's prolly better than my half-assed, half-asleep ideas.

Going to post some of my ideas here.

About the current system, there are some problems regarding QAT and their responsibility and public image:

1. According to the changes in the past years, QAT has actually evolved to some roles that regularly do things in addition to just quality assurance with responsibilities raised to a more higher perspective.

2. Current system now places or regards nominations and nomination resets (disqualifications, specifically) with inequity – QAT (higher level in the system) has a privilege to disqualify a map while BN (lower level) could only nominate map. From the mappers’ stance, such natural discrimination (sorry I use this word) is one of the sources of bad image or hatred toward QAT and makes the QAT vulnerable to attacks. Honestly, bad image and disqualification right come together - whoever has the right to disqualify maps will be more or less hated anyway, as people tend to "love" those who nominate their maps and hate those who disqualify them, naturally. That might be why the QATs are growing to be more placid and passive especially when it comes to controversial maps - they will easily get attacked if they are not placid and passive!

So, some of my raw ideas would be:

1. The nomination and nomination reset should be done by the same group of people to avoid inequity and asymmetric information. This could be done by placing both nominations and nomination resets in the same level – When it comes to beatmap nomination and nomination resets, QAT and BN own the same power. Or rather, there’re no QATs or BNs when it comes to stuffs related to beatmap nominations - they are same.

The way to get a beatmap qualified should remain the same. (Some ideas of changing the current disqualification system to vote-for-approval (specifically for the "one beatmap could only get ranked with approval from a small group of people" system) is NOT a very good idea in my perspective. People will complain about how hard it is already to get their map ranked tbh.) Instead of forcing people to check qualified maps, beatmap nominators are still free to choose what maps they would like to check. Similarly, instead of a fixed number, the number of nominators to let a map pass or fail the qualified section should be dynamic since to force five or seven beatmap nominators checking one NH spread map is a waste of resource and man power.

For the new system: By default, there needs to be two approval votes from the nominators for one map to be qualified and then ranked (1st and 2nd nomination), just like what we have now. But if other nominators have additional concerns, they are free to join the voting (approval or disapproval) as well as participate the discussion on the qualified map. During the discussion (timeframe of qualified), the nominators are free to change their side (with some cooldown time of course).

I could understand, for the controversial maps, it would be an endless discussion. But in the system the map will finally reach a verdict stage when no consensus could be made before the deadline (7 days for a qualified map): the map will be ranked if the amount of BNs who voted approval is higher than disapproval. [This process could surely be improved with more discussion of course, this is just a raw idea.]

But whatever it could be, my core idea is to "return" the right of disqualification to BN. It is also a kind of community-driven idea since BNs are selected more directly from the community, though relatively. This could avoid QATs to be targeted and attacked all the time.

2. Then what will current QAT do?

As I said above, the current QAT has more responsibilities that are in a macro viewpoint. They will stay in the team but the orientation of the team will change: QAT's main responsibility could be raised to other high-level beatmap related topics like beatmap moderation, beatmap nominator evaluation (behavior and proficiency), initiatives in ranking criteria amendments, beatmap contest and tournaments organization, modding association, mentorship, spotlight and project of love, QAT gazette and interview, or even osu!weekly. I strongly believe there are a great deal of such works in need of hands (SOME of these projects are abandoned already because lack of hands) and there should be a team organizing all these and future amazing activities possible related to beatnaos. The QAT would naturally be suitable for these beatmap-related projects for their proficiency in mapping and modding.

In this way, the QAT would be renamed to something else. They will still be able to participate in the beatmap nominations but their power will be restricted to the BN-level as described above.

3. About beatmap nominator selections:
A combination of both tests and general check of QAT could act as a middle ground of the current debate over this topic. Some people argue that pure tests cannot reflect the modding proficiency while the others argue that only by check from QATs will end up in nepotism. So why not combine them together?

For more transparency, some statistics could be made public (test results and people who applied, accepted or rejected into the BNG) but this could be discussed too.

Questions:
1. "This system still does not state how the QATs are elected!"
Actually, this is an endless question since there will always be some people picking the others unless you apply a president-election-like method here. But, with the proposed system, when QAT are restricted to BN-level in beatmap nomination, this should not be a problem any longer. Since they will perform in a higher level, which aligns with GMT more, their selection will be handled similar like GMTs instead though they will still be promoted from existing BNs.

2. "What if a map with clear unrankable issues but it has a higher amount of approval vote than disapproval from BNs?" This should not be a severe issue since when the map attracts attentions and generates discussions, unrankable issues will most likely to be identified. This could also be more or less addressed by a new AI-mod.

3. "Are 7 days enough for discussion on controversial beatmaps?" Of course the timeframe required could be discussed. It could even be dynamic and elongated when necessary.

These are still my own primary and raw ideas so there could of course be more improvements and even reworks. So would greatly appreciate incoming opinions and comments.

it's sad to see how much this thread (or more specific people discussing here) has derailed into the want to set up rules to prevent specific types from maps reaching the ranked section. do you not see that this is not the point of this proposal. the proposal's goal isn't to disallow all controversial maps from getting ranked, it's about having more clear standards applied to them from the qat side. and we're talking about aspects of mapping here that can't and should never be put into rules on the ranking criteria cause the amount of edge cases probably overweights the amount of cases where it should apply, for each one.

if whatever happens results in a certain way of mapping being completely banned from ranked, it would be a huge step backwards. there are players and mappers for each type of map who enjoy them a lot, and yes, this amount is obviously still smaller for the maps you guys are discussing about compared to stuff like wub maps for example, but it exists. not only do players exist who enjoy uc/hailie/etc maps, there are also people who enjoy them a lot more than most other maps for reasons of song expression and how they feel when played (me included). you are always pointing towards user rating and pretending nobody likes these maps, when in reality a user rating of 6-7 (which most of these maps have) still implies a large amount of players liking them. we all know that most players who vote on these maps give either 0 or 10 stars, atleast a lot of those who hate it vote 0 so in order to get the user ratings to a reasonable level there are a lot of 10 star votes or high votes in general. it does not make sense to ban a certain type of map completely and call it a day, it's not the point of quality assurance and it won't happen, considering there are too many reasonable people in the bn and qat who wouldn't let something like that happen.

instead, what we need is more differentiation within certain categories of maps. in the case of controversial maps like hailie's recent map, the main problem here is that most people active in the mapping community have a really black-or-white opinion on it from the get go (either negative or positive) without really looking more deep into it and trying to judge the actual mapping. if someone's opinion is already set in stone without even looking at the map properly just from looking at the mapper's name, just because their general inacceptance of the way this mapper is mapping, then they won't be able to provide proper criticism. just like someone who is a big fan of this type of mapping is extremely likely to overdefend any criticism the map receives, just because they feel like the minority and having to work against the haters. neither of those people help very much to determine whether or not a map should be acceptable for ranking or not.

so the real goal of any proposal regarding this topic should be to find a way of judging quality on a map-by-map basis and not just being driven by general distaste or support of certain differing mapping fundamentals. the community is so developed at this point that a narrow-minded approach like that just doesn't work out. well, it could work out, but less people would be satisfied with the outcome than there currently are. after all, keep in mind that the ultimate goal should be to make the mapping process and general experience with the game more enjoyable for more people, including players and mappers, which in a community this diverse naturally comes with the personal sacrifice of maps you like not getting ranked, and maps you hate getting ranked sometimes. i'm all for finding a compromise by having stricter quality standards within each categoroy of map, but not just disallowing some completely.