Monstrata wrote:

This counter-proposal requires the elected QAT leaders to actually care and manage every administrative aspect, which can be a difficult task.

Really big issue that I really doubt can be adequately addressed with non-standard communities. By that I mean, complete freedom of leadership in these smaller communities will result in certain opinions and views being dominated. There are not enough people in leadership positions to give a fair assessment of scenarios imo... not when there are what, 2 active QAT's?

Monstrata wrote:

Another thing... a lot of the "pros" are stuff you already do anyways, no? Like mediate your own vetoes, managing mapping/modding criterias... Some of the things, like managing your own BN intake/applications will be solved with Mao's proposal anyways.

I feel like this proposal just cements leadership positions for non-standard QAT's, and doesn't leave a lot of room for differing opinions if QAT's are given so much more weight (than they already have now) in comparison to the BN's.

Raiden wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

MBomb wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

there's no systemic demarcation between BNs of any given mode and making them adhere to different usage principles is shonky at best (aka: regular bns would be able to dw, other-mode ones would still have the button, but be expressly instructed not to use it, you can imagine the risk factor there...)

with all due respect to this point, a bn could easily face swift punishment for this, and any issues caused by the usage of it would be very short lasting, to the point of being nowhere near worth abusing, especially with maps having the same time until rank after a dq.

i think the chances of this being abused are just as low as someone spam popping (or even spam nominating) maps, which has happened so few times, at least within my time in the osu community, that it's a near negligible risk.

you're right, they *could*, but it's still a big introduction of systemic bloat for not a lot of actual gain all up. i can't really stress enough how closed-off retaining the current system would make the various other gamemodes - they're already really shuttered from the broad scope of their relatively small communities for the most part.

half of the beef of the new proposal we've floated is to open them up as much as possible, and i've slowly warmed up to the Loctav approach of treating all gamemodes under the same blanket over the years.

I simply cannot see how this logic works. People come and go all the time. How would you know that the modes would become "more open" by forcefully implanting a change that is not needed based on a series of issues another game mode has? Because it would make everything follow the osu!standard formula? If anything, that would maybe encourage one day players, but scare staying players away. Those players who wish to get to the mapping/modding scene require a stable environment they can grow in, and not to be forced out of it as soon as the next X mode encounters a major trouble that forces a rework again.

Ephemeral wrote:

they'd become more open from the sheer fact that applications would be:

a) always open
b) only minimally influenced by the 'ruling circle' opinions on their personal worth (this is a HUGE issue with non-standard gamemode QAT at the moment and is one of the big reasons for the rework, funnily enough)
c) actually promoting an atmosphere of common discourse among a gamemode instead of blind deference to those "at the top"

stability is great, i agree. the BN have been extremely stable for the most part. the BN in particular have largely outperformed expectation in regards to keeping things well-oiled and moving, so we need more of them, and less of the rest. we want to empower people who want to get involved at the "depth" that they feel comfortable at, so that people don't think their opinions aren't worth anything just because they're not orange or whatever.

allowing the other gamemodes to cloister off into a defunct system that actively promotes leaving people in positions of power for years at a stretch is not the way i think anyone wants to see things proceed.

you might note this is a particularly scathing rebuke of this proposal, and this is largely because much of the sickness in the previous system manifested itself predominately in the other gamemodes. others outside the QAT were not privy to this - i was. standard dodged a bullet because it held the proportionally largest distribution of people which diluted much of the grossness down significantly. it is my hope that expanding the number of people involved in the other gamemodes will do the same there, too.

-Kazu- wrote:

So the thing goes like this: Don't give the dq button to BN (most people is against that anyway)

Ephemeral wrote:

they'd become more open from the sheer fact that applications would be:

a) always open
b) only minimally influenced by the 'ruling circle' opinions on their personal worth (this is a HUGE issue with non-standard gamemode QAT at the moment and is one of the big reasons for the rework, funnily enough)
c) actually promoting an atmosphere of common discourse among a gamemode instead of blind deference to those "at the top"

Raiden wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

they'd become more open from the sheer fact that applications would be:

a) always open
b) only minimally influenced by the 'ruling circle' opinions on their personal worth (this is a HUGE issue with non-standard gamemode QAT at the moment and is one of the big reasons for the rework, funnily enough)
c) actually promoting an atmosphere of common discourse among a gamemode instead of blind deference to those "at the top"

stability is great, i agree. the BN have been extremely stable for the most part. the BN in particular have largely outperformed expectation in regards to keeping things well-oiled and moving, so we need more of them, and less of the rest. we want to empower people who want to get involved at the "depth" that they feel comfortable at, so that people don't think their opinions aren't worth anything just because they're not orange or whatever.

allowing the other gamemodes to cloister off into a defunct system that actively promotes leaving people in positions of power for years at a stretch is not the way i think anyone wants to see things proceed.

you might note this is a particularly scathing rebuke of this proposal, and this is largely because much of the sickness in the previous system manifested itself predominately in the other gamemodes. others outside the QAT were not privy to this - i was. standard dodged a bullet because it held the proportionally largest distribution of people which diluted much of the grossness down significantly. it is my hope that expanding the number of people involved in the other gamemodes will do the same there, too.

About a), I can't say much. Agree nor disagree, as I don't have the empirical proof that this would work better than standarized timely applications.
I'm sorry but can you elaborate further on "b)"? I don't seem to be able to grasp what all of that means, unless this is a subtle way of implying that we don't care about work but only about our personal grudges.
Also, what does "promoting an atmosphere of common discourse" mean other than completely abolishing any existing quality standard (which is most likely what you wrote but trying to taint it in a bad light), which is what caused osu!standard to need this rework? The deference is not blind when those at the so-called top have rightfully earned their "top" title through long years of effort.

Maintenance of current system is your main priority, but this proposal puts way too much focus onto giving current QAT leadership complete control over everything. In practice this is already very much a thing, from talking to various people in old Taiko community.

"allowing the other gamemodes to cloister off into a defunct system that actively promotes leaving people in positions of power for years at a stretch is not the way i think anyone wants to see things proceed." Have you asked anyone here though? Having people for years in a position of power does not exclude other people joining in said positions of power if they do good enough.

Only the people at the "top" will be able to decide when someone is "good enough" to join a position of power under this proposal. You can see how this is a big issue.

On the last paragraph, it's been difficult for me to understand due to me not being a native speaker, but what I get from it is that you think our modes are actually WORSE than standard because of standard's bigger community dilluting down the "grossness". That's new. I never heard anything from you about this, which makes arguing kind of pointless here, especially if you already convinced yourself that you know what's the best for the other modes.

It's quite true though. Lack of leadership positions in minigame modes results in more constrained viewpoints. There are at most 3 people whose opinions and views are taken into consideration. For example, I don't know if Nardo still does this, or if the old japanese Taiko community just dissipated, but there used to be huge contention (not on forums of course) over how Nardo was checking spread issues and putting too much focus onto stuff like that. However, there was no way to "oppose" this. But this is from discord messages and community, etc... Gladly people in Taiko prefer to just suck it up and fix things instead of arguing, but this just illustrate potential problems in the future. What if another group of Taiko mappers emerges and has differing views to the current leadership position, but vehemently maintain that their method is sound?

Basically, with Mao's system, BN's are given more power to dictate these scenarios, and QAT's no longer concern themselves with this, and are instead concerned with administrative issues and "keeping the system working". Which is what you want right? A preservation of how these modes are currrently operating.

Monstrata wrote:

Raiden wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

they'd become more open from the sheer fact that applications would be:

a) always open
b) only minimally influenced by the 'ruling circle' opinions on their personal worth (this is a HUGE issue with non-standard gamemode QAT at the moment and is one of the big reasons for the rework, funnily enough)
c) actually promoting an atmosphere of common discourse among a gamemode instead of blind deference to those "at the top"

stability is great, i agree. the BN have been extremely stable for the most part. the BN in particular have largely outperformed expectation in regards to keeping things well-oiled and moving, so we need more of them, and less of the rest. we want to empower people who want to get involved at the "depth" that they feel comfortable at, so that people don't think their opinions aren't worth anything just because they're not orange or whatever.

allowing the other gamemodes to cloister off into a defunct system that actively promotes leaving people in positions of power for years at a stretch is not the way i think anyone wants to see things proceed.

you might note this is a particularly scathing rebuke of this proposal, and this is largely because much of the sickness in the previous system manifested itself predominately in the other gamemodes. others outside the QAT were not privy to this - i was. standard dodged a bullet because it held the proportionally largest distribution of people which diluted much of the grossness down significantly. it is my hope that expanding the number of people involved in the other gamemodes will do the same there, too.

About a), I can't say much. Agree nor disagree, as I don't have the empirical proof that this would work better than standarized timely applications.
I'm sorry but can you elaborate further on "b)"? I don't seem to be able to grasp what all of that means, unless this is a subtle way of implying that we don't care about work but only about our personal grudges.
Also, what does "promoting an atmosphere of common discourse" mean other than completely abolishing any existing quality standard (which is most likely what you wrote but trying to taint it in a bad light), which is what caused osu!standard to need this rework? The deference is not blind when those at the so-called top have rightfully earned their "top" title through long years of effort.

Maintenance of current system is your main priority, but this proposal puts way too much focus onto giving current QAT leadership complete control over everything. In practice this is already very much a thing, from talking to various people in old Taiko community.

Again, QAT leadership's job is to bridge the communication between higher-ups and the QAT. "From talking to old Taiko community" you can extract as much biased information as you want, that does not make it necessarily true. In their time it may have been like that, but things have surely changed. I don't know if for the better or for the worse. We don't have nearly as much authority as the old QAT used to have back in 2014-2015.

"allowing the other gamemodes to cloister off into a defunct system that actively promotes leaving people in positions of power for years at a stretch is not the way i think anyone wants to see things proceed." Have you asked anyone here though? Having people for years in a position of power does not exclude other people joining in said positions of power if they do good enough.

Only the people at the "top" will be able to decide when someone is "good enough" to join a position of power under this proposal. You can see how this is a big issue.

While I personally do not find this an issue, since we have not had any problem with this method of selection, there could always be alternate ways of choosing those on the top. Yes, even a popularity vote would be valid, if you stretch me enough.

On the last paragraph, it's been difficult for me to understand due to me not being a native speaker, but what I get from it is that you think our modes are actually WORSE than standard because of standard's bigger community dilluting down the "grossness". That's new. I never heard anything from you about this, which makes arguing kind of pointless here, especially if you already convinced yourself that you know what's the best for the other modes.

It's quite true though. Lack of leadership positions in minigame modes results in more constrained viewpoints. There are at most 3 people whose opinions and views are taken into consideration. For example, I don't know if Nardo still does this, or if the old japanese Taiko community just dissipated, but there used to be huge contention (not on forums of course) over how Nardo was checking spread issues and putting too much focus onto stuff like that. However, there was no way to "oppose" this. But this is from discord messages and community, etc... Gladly people in Taiko prefer to just suck it up and fix things instead of arguing, but this just illustrate potential problems in the future. What if another group of Taiko mappers emerges and has differing views to the current leadership position, but vehemently maintain that their method is sound?

Basically, with Mao's system, BN's are given more power to dictate these scenarios, and QAT's no longer concern themselves with this, and are instead concerned with administrative issues and "keeping the system working". Which is what you want right? A preservation of how these modes are currrently operating.

That simply does not happen anymore. First of all, the QAT does not have an inch of the authority they used to have in 2014-2015. Secondly, spread regulations, while having always been a very strict element of the taiko mapping/modding scene, have certainly softened due to the community's large input. If that said group of new taiko mappers reason well enough that their viewpoint is sound, there would be legit zero issue on letting them keeping that method. I insist, the leadership does not correspond to an opinion dictatorship; only to answer to higher ups in the name of the mode.

And lastly, BNs already have the power to dictate the scenario by sheer nomination power. The QAT in our modes have not expressed a desire to exclusively keep themselves occupied on administrative tasks, which makes the last point kind of unnecessary.

Counter-Proposal wrote:

Pros:
- We are no longer held back by other modes in special cases that would require explicit participation of other mode QAT members.
Which special cases ? What in the new proposal assumes that a mode will be "held back" by another ?

- We are able to run, with our own timer, every administrative process such as BN applications and probation reviews, veto mediations, etc.
The new proposal hopes to make BN applications always open, which creates a situation where active members can always apply so there is never a period of time that lacks of active BNs, what can possibily be better ? The new proposal forces 2 people to agree over applying a veto, which is better (as in less subjective) than only one. All other BNs then have to vote to mediate the veto, which is better (as in less subjective) than just a few people (as in current QATs) who were given this role through a non-transparent system. What better veto system do you propose ?

- We can apply our own criteria in every aspect of the mapping and modding community (e.g. make our own activity requirements).
What criteria should be different from one mode to another, apart from ranking criteria (which i assume will still be splited as a generalization is not stated in the new proposal) ? I don't see a reason to have a specific activity requirement per mode, for example.

- Each of the members will be taken care of more intensively because of the presence of QAT leaders for each individual mode. The QAT leaders who took care of the entirety of the 4 modes caused some of the modes to fall short when it came to noticing whether something serious was happening or not, and having a QAT leader in each mode would certainly prevent that.
The new proposal promises a montlhy checkup on every BN to see if they keep doing their job well, how do you make it more "intense" with your system ?

Nofool wrote:

Counter-Proposal wrote:

Pros:
- We are no longer held back by other modes in special cases that would require explicit participation of other mode QAT members.
Which special cases ? What in the new proposal assumes that a mode will be "held back" by another ?
1. Voting on a Beatmap Nominator's dismissal, probation reviews, etc. So far, they required the entire QAT to vote, and you could be waiting days for them to vote.
2. Beatmap Nominator Applications. Although this would become irrelevant if they are open the entire time with the other proposal, assumed they are permitted to coexist.

- We are able to run, with our own timer, every administrative process such as BN applications and probation reviews, veto mediations, etc.
The new proposal hopes to make BN applications always open, which creates a situation where active members can always apply so there is never a period of time that lacks of active BNs, what can possibily be better ? The new proposal forces 2 people to agree over applying a veto, which is better (as in less subjective) than only one. All other BNs then have to vote to mediate the veto, which is better (as in less subjective) than just a few people (as in current QATs) who were given this role through a non-transparent system. What better veto system do you propose ?
As stated in the proposal, we would run our own. If standard's proposal worked well enough we could implant it to our own mode, this is not a rigid proposal.

- We can apply our own criteria in every aspect of the mapping and modding community (e.g. make our own activity requirements).
What criteria should be different from one mode to another, apart from ranking criteria (which i assume will still be splited as a generalization is not stated in the new proposal) ? I don't see a reason to have a specific activity requirement per mode, for example.
"Criteria" here implies a general, "joker" word. And I don't see why activity requirements should be the same for all modes? Every mode has its own intricancies and we would empirically find what's optimal for each and every mode. E.g. modding an osu!catch set may be more difficult than a taiko set, therefore making activity requirements lighter for catch.

- Each of the members will be taken care of more intensively because of the presence of QAT leaders for each individual mode. The QAT leaders who took care of the entirety of the 4 modes caused some of the modes to fall short when it came to noticing whether something serious was happening or not, and having a QAT leader in each mode would certainly prevent that.
The new proposal promises a montlhy checkup on every BN to see if they keep doing their job well, how do you make it more "intense" with your system ?

One of the proposed methods in the proposal is to enforce minimum QA work by every QAT if necessary, added to the already present QAH. Not only that, but our proposal also makes it clear that every QAT member will be closely reviewed by the QAT leader who will have the administrative power to contact higher ups, should one of the QAT members sway away from their duties or misbehave in some way. The rest of the QAT team would do their usual monthly activity check on the BNG, just like it has been happening till now. That's not a change on the other proposal nor on ours.

Without these answers i don't see how your counter-proposal, which doesn't seem very different from the actual system, is better than the other proposal. Your main issue seems to be about how the generalization badly affect non-std modes, yet it isn't stated that the new "management team" won't be "splited" to make mode-speficic decision-making.

Raiden's proposal wrote:

Dissonance in hybrid set management. Since every mode would work differently, there may be disagreements in the handling of a set, especially if it comes to the point that the osu!standard QAT completely dissolves and we do not.

Kibbleru wrote:

I mean.. sure but to implement this you actually need the devs to add even more usergroups lol..

Peppy's busy with lazer, so i don't really see him coding in even more usergroups for different game modes.

Ephemeral wrote:

not to mention the level of oversight required to ensure that minigame leadership circles didn't just become a closed-off cabal of community regulars

Ephemeral wrote:

(aka: regular bns would be able to dw, other-mode ones would still have the button, but be expressly instructed not to use it, you can imagine the risk factor there...)

Nepuri wrote:

When a new mapper looks into this entire ranking thing and has to wrap his head around the QAT, BNG1, BNG2, probation BNG1 and probation BNG2, the MT and all that wazoop i just find that to be way too intransparent to outside people to even understand the system

Nepuri wrote:

PS; I find it unrealistic that the devs and all the other internal staff will bother enough for such a workaround by having to continue support for the old qat and bng purely logistically speaking

Ephemeral wrote:

you might note this is a particularly scathing rebuke of this proposal, and this is largely because much of the sickness in the previous system manifested itself predominately in the other gamemodes.

Raiden wrote:

Having people for years in a position of power does not exclude other people joining in said positions of power if they do good enough.

Ephemeral wrote:

concrete examples:

Ascendance being stonewalled for the better part of several years due to broad, very personal concerns about his suitability that culminated in a QAT handling the applications being conclusively proven to interfere with them in an effort to prevent his addition - a situation that required my direct intervention no less than three times

the taiko QAT repeatedly resisting direct instructions from the QAT leadership to appoint more of them into their midst because they felt that their highly limited, closeted circle was "sufficient" (it wasnt)

Ephemeral wrote:

we're not having an entirely separate [...] structure to house three gamemodes to sate the desire for relevancy and prestige of a handful of people. all gamemodes MUST be treated equally in this regard.

Raiden wrote:

You have now just cut off the last bit of the rope that held us together. You have now just flat out accused us of simply wanting this proposal in order to maintain a position of power -basically called us power-hungry dictators-, which is not only a blatant lie, but also contains the aggravant of coming from someone on the higher ups. You have just now undermined YEARS of effort done in hopes of bettering and maintaining a game mode's environment stable and healthy, in the matter of seconds. You have just now ASSUMED that we, in our "thirst for power", ignored our peers or belittled them, and that the QAT somehow held insane amounts of power in the minigames.

MBomb wrote:

It's kinda worrying to see this sort of response from a community manager I agree, but especially when I know the case for ctb is taken highly out of context. Whilst ascendance is a great friend of mine now, his attitude during the time he was being "stonewalled" from the bng had the potential to be a huge issue, and even caused issues for the start of his return to the bng. You can say it was a dictatorship, but that's just simply not true when the reasons for not letting someone return should be the knowledge there has been no change since the reason they were kicked.

Myxomatosis wrote:

My perspective is the perspective of mostly an outsider regarding the other modes, but I always thought the situation was questionable when I still was part of the QAT. Ever since the system where QATs had full power over the qualified beatmaps was abandoned, I felt that the leadership of the different gamemodes barely worked together and the quality standards, management etc of each mode has drifted away from each other more and more. I think this is a bad thing and a lot of changes and improvements to the mapping and modding system could go by a lot more smoother if the different gamemodes wouldn't already each do their thing.

To give a personal example, I've been ranking my first taiko mapset in years last month and the situation in taiko seems a lot different from standard. Of course one major difference is the size of the team - it's just natural the BN of taiko is smaller than standard's BN team because the gamemode has fewer players, mappers and modders. However, there were other differences which I really couldn't get behind. Like why the guideline part of the taiko ranking criteria seems to be enforced in such an uncritical and unthoughtful way, with the people enforcing it seemingly for the sake of it, instead of actually thinking about what improvements or damage it would provide to a map. Or why I get told by BNs to change something in my map, then when I discuss with them it turns out they don't actually think the change would improve the map (if anything arguably make it worse) but they mentioned it for the sole reason of "There have been maps disqualified for this in the past".

This is of course just an example, but I could give more examples of differing approaches to quality assurance and other topics from the time when I was still QAT. I don't understand why stuff like this would be managed any differently across multiple gamemodes. The only meaningful difference between the gamemodes should be the size of the teams. But in reality, there are other differences and (like the one I just mentioned) not all of them are "worse" in standard than on taiko or the other modes, like you constantly wanna put it.



Your goal with this proposal seems to be to manage the other gamemodes in an even more different way than standard (since right now, all gamemodes technically run under the same system, and even here the differences exist). Why not allow to bring them back together? I don't see why taiko or catch or mania should enforce quality in a different way. If anything from the other proposal clashes with the smaller team sizes in other modes (for example, the majority vote thing in the BN), then that's a valid issue to bring up. If anything from the other proposal clashes with your ideals of how quality assurance should be handled, then bring it up, but in that case it won't just be relevant to one gamemode or three gamemodes, it would most likely be relevant to all gamemodes. Otherwise I don't see the need for handling everything in a different way.