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Mapping and modding systems are constantly improving. The Mapping and modding timeline aims to document the biggest system changes and to serve as a reference tool when users are incorporating new changes.
2007-10-29:: Forum thread icons were standardised for the ranking process.
A
star
(
) icon marked good maps that need more work.
A
bubble
(
) icon marked beatmaps considered for ranking.
A
heart
(
) icon marked ranked beatmaps. These could only be placed after a beatmap was
bubbled, ensuring two nominations per beatmap.
A
nuke
(
) icon marked beatmaps that could not be ranked under any circumstances.
200 beatmaps were ranked in 2007.
2008-03-11: Graveyard beatmap category was implemented to house inactive beatmaps.
2008-07-31: Approved beatmap category was implemented to provide leaderboards to beatmaps inappropriate for ranking.
690 beatmaps were ranked in 2008.
2009-11-10: Pasonia was appointed as BAT manager after
Ivalset stepped down.
2009-12-27: The
Mapping Assistance Team (
MAT) launched.
MAT members could mark beatmaps with
proto-bubbles which indicated quality beatmaps that BAT members should review.
MAT members had a purple title on the forums.
The MAT was initially titled the "intermediate modding team" consisting of established modders who weren't ready to enter the BAT yet.
The MAT's goals were to reduce BAT workload, identify maps that were slipping between the cracks in the ranking cycle, and increase quality control, both of which were pressing issues at the time. In hindsight, none of its goals were fully realised.
1400 beatmaps were ranked in 2009.
2010-08-27: ztrot was appointed as MAT leader after
Ephemeral stepped down.
2010-10-03: MAT were granted permission to nominate beatmaps for ranking with normal
bubble
(
) icons, as opposed to proto-bubbles.
Proto-bubbles were ignored by most BAT members, so the MAT had no purpose without this change.
This gave MAT considerably more influence in the ranking process.
2010-10-10: MAT members were no longer allowed to nominate or vote on new additions to their team.
Having gained bubbling permissions, it was assumed that the MAT would vote for personal gain, so this was prevented before damage could be done.
The BAT gained full responsibility for MAT additions.
2010-12-31: Derekku was appointed as BAT leader after
Pasonia stepped down.
1864 beatmaps were ranked in 2010.
2011-03-09: MAT members were granted permission to bubble
Approval beatmaps.
2011-08-23: "Beatmap Approval Team" was renamed to "Beatmap Appreciation Team".
The purpose of the new name was to unite users involved in beatmap approval and users involved general moderation (essentially the
Global Moderation Team) under the same name, which "Beatmap Approval Team" did not effectively represent.
1368 beatmaps were ranked in 2011. This was the first decline after 4 years of consecutive growth.
2012-07-22: The first iteration of
Performance Points known as
ppv1 was established, replacing total ranked score leaderboards.
2012-08-21: Approved beatmaps began rewarding Ranked score.
1460 beatmaps were ranked in 2012.
2013-03-20: The BAT was split into the BAT and
Global Moderation Team (
GMT).
Many members of the BAT were on board solely for moderation duties, so this clarified the roles of modding and moderating members.
Members of the new GMT were previously known as "Green BAT".
2013-04-23: The MAT was dismantled.
All MAT members were added to the BAT.
This change was made because the line between MAT and BAT had become too thin. A MAT member was effectively a BAT member who couldn't rank beatmaps, which did not align with the initial goals of the MAT as a new user group.
The BAT was also fairly inactive at this time, so a large influx of new members solved this problem.
2013-08-01: Beatmap unranking policy was implemented, allowing BAT members to unrank a beatmap within 1 week of ranking.
This change was a test for the later implemented
Qualified category.
2013-08-02: The first osu!taiko BAT were added, signifying a separation of game mode permissions in the group.
2013-12-12: Beatmaps with two nominations began being promoted to the
Qualified category instead of Ranked.
1327 beatmaps were ranked in 2013.
2014-08-21: The
Quality Assurance Team (
QAT) splits off from the current BAT.
The BAT (often called newBAT at this time) nominated beatmaps for rank.
The QAT ensured qualified beatmaps were of sufficient quality. Beatmaps that did not meet quality standards were disqualified.
This essentially reversed the merging of the BAT and MAT last year.
The split was implemented as part of a manual trial for
modding v2 attempting to automate BAT promotion and retirement.
Despite attempts at framing disqualifications as a positive change for mapping quality, the community viewed them negatively. This was especially apparent in cases of controversial beatmaps like the
disqualification on Halozy - Genryuu Kaiko
2014-10-15: The
Beatmap Management subforum replaced Trello.
Public accessibility to the BAT increased, which was the goal of modding v2.
Issues related to nominated/qualified beatmaps were posted here, along with any announcements related to mapping/modding systems.
2014-11-14: New BAT promotion was held via public votes among current BAT/QAT.
1381 beatmaps were ranked in 2014.
2015-02-01: Red usernames were removed from BAT and BAT was renamed to
Beatmap Nominators (
BN).
These changes intended to make the BN more closely associated with the average user, which was the goal of moddingv2's community-driven design.
The team was initially renamed to Beatmap Appreciators, however it was quickly renamed to Beatmap Nominators by community suggestion.
Beatmap Nominators generally disagreed with this change and heavily argued against it in
this forum thread.
2015-02-24: New BN applications replace BN voting.
This was done to promote moddingv2's community-driven design and to avoid the nepotism that was involved in public voting.
The only criteria was an applicant's automatically calculated modding activity.
2015-06-04: Realtime Beatmap Nominator Ranking was introduced to automatically assess BN nomination quality/activity.
2015-06-06: QAT disqualifications were anonymised on the forums.
The community referred to the anonymous QAT account as the "QAT bot".
This change encouraged the growing opinion that the QAT was trying to hide from the consequences of their actions, hurting the reputation of disqualifications and the QAT in general.
2015-08-26: Anonymous QAT disqualifications were discontinued.
2015-12-27: BN tests were implemented for BN applications.
1934 beatmaps were ranked in 2015. This was the first year of growth after 4 years of consecutive stagnation.
2016-02-13: Ranking Criteria Council was created to reform the
Ranking Criteria.
Public proposals on the Ranking Criteria subforum were no longer considered.
Taking a stance similar to the
Triumvir Conglomerate, the Ranking Criteria Council involved members to represent major mapping subgroups by region. Each game mode had 1 mapper and 1 player from the Americas, Europe, and Asia, along with 2 members of the QAT.
Each game mode's goal was to create a general/difficulty-specific Ranking Criteria for their respective mode. osu!catch was the only game mode that achieved this goal under this system.
The collective goal of this group was to rewrite all sections of the general Ranking Criteria.
2016-02-24: Mapset and spread restructure was introduced to limit the number of difficulties in each difficulty tier per beatmap.
2016-04-25: The QAT began checking qualified maps for issues
reactively rather than proactively.
Users reported qualified beatmaps to the QAT for disqualification. The QAT checked confirmed or denied reported issues in their respective beatmap forum threads.
This change was made in response to the consistently negative view of disqualifications by the QAT. The QAT mostly distanced itself from Quality Assurance related tasks at this point.
Metadata checks were still done proactively by the QAT, headed by
IamKwaN.
2016-07-20: The
United Beat-Knights of Ranking Criteria (
UBKRC) was created to replace the Ranking Criteria Council.
The UBKRC's goals were the same as the Ranking Criteria Council, but it was more widely accepted because it was open to community influence.
Teams of experts were chosen for each subsection of the Ranking Criteria (e.g. one team of storyboarding experts, another team of skinning experts, etc.).
The UBKRC's name was chosen because it was ridiculously stupid. Its aim was to appear less authoritative than the Ranking Criteria Council.
2016-08-26: The
Code of Conduct was implemented to establish modding behaviour expectations.
2016-10-17: Loved beatmap category was created.
2016-11-01: The
Beatmap Veto system was implemented.
Beatmap Nominators could halt a beatmap in the ranking process for subjective reasons by resetting a nomination. This was done with a
bubble pop
(
) icon.
Vetoes could be overwritten by the nominations of Beatmap Nominators previously uninvolved with the beatmap.
To allow adequate time to veto, consecutive nominations could not be set within 24 hours of each other.
Inconclusive vetoes were mediated by the QAT shortly after this system's implementation.
2016-11-02: Beatmap Nominator files were created to keep tabs on all individual BN members.
These files included modding/nomination activity, disqualifications, and behaviour issues.
Members of the BN with 3 or more "strikes" logged in these files would be removed from the group.
1720 beatmaps were ranked in 2016.
2017-04-06: Beatmap Nominator Tiers were implemented, splitting the BN into two subgroups called "tiers".
Because the QAT was no longer acting as a quality control gate, this system was implemented to improve the quality of beatmaps entering Ranked.
Tiers were decided by a BN test designed around identifying overarching issues in beatmaps. Test results were terrible, revealing that the test's design was flawed.
Contrary to its goals, this system lowered motivation for all tier 1 nominators and overworked the few motivated tier 2 nominators. Mappers had fewer BN resources and the total maps ranked during the tiers period diminished.
No Beatmap Nominators were added to the 2nd tier for the 5 months this system was active, which hugely bottlenecked ranking speeds.
2017-05-22: Beatmap Nominator Discord server was created for BN subdivisions.
Subdivisions were designed as focus groups of randomly selected nominators from both tiers led by a member of the QAT.
Most QAT management shifted to this server despite resistance from osu! higher-ups.
2017-06-02: Marathon beatmaps began to require 2 nominations instead of 3.
2017-09-10: The "
QAT Upheaval" was implemented. This was a series of changes in response to dissatisfaction from the mapping community under leadership by
osu! team higher-ups. Following this change, the QAT began self-leadership without higher-up intervention.
BN Tiers were replaced with
Probationary Beatmap Nominators. Two probationary BN members could not nominate the same beatmap and users could not be in Probation for more than two months at a time.
Beatmap Nominators were given purple titles on the forums.
Okoratu and
JBHyperion were appointed as
QAT leaders by a vote of BN/QAT members. Their responsibility was to work with the osu! team to maintain the mapping and modding communities.
Tenure based Beatmap Nominator and Quality Assurance Team profile badges were created. This and other Beatmap Nominator rewards were planned to re-motivate the currently dissatisfied team.
With less authoritative leadership and more users capable of nominating beatmaps after these changes, mapping standards stopped being strictly controlled. Controversial beatmaps that would have likely not been ranked under the previous system (e.g.
FELT - Rendezvous) reached ranked status.
2017-10-01: BN tests were replaced with the QAT reviewing each BN applicant's anonymised mods.
2017-12-17: Loctav stepped down from involvement in the osu! team, including his heavy participation in the QAT.
1847 beatmaps were ranked in 2017.
2018-03-01: QAT separated its tasks into branches: BN evaluation, disqualifications, metadata, spotlights, blog, Ranking Criteria, and general leadership.
QAT members could be involved in multiple branches.
This aimed to give purpose to some QAT members who felt that they had no specific roles in the mapping/modding community. This feeling was largely relevant because the QAT had little involvement with Quality Assurance anymore.
2018-03-24: Ranking Criteria subforum was re-opened for public proposal discussions and the UBKRC was discontinued.
2018-04-01: The QAT began evaluating BN applications by reviewing non-anonymous mods, as opposed to previously anonymous mods.
This change was made because the QAT believed out of context anonymous mods could not effectively determine a modder's capabilities.
Through this change, the QAT determined that bias could not be avoided when evaluating Beatmap Nominators.
2018-04-22: The QAT held its first meeting on the osu! server in an attempt to increase transparency of QAT affairs and migrate internal discussions away from the BN Discord server.
2018-07-29: New beatmap spread rules were implemented, completely reshaping how many difficulties were created in ranked mapsets going forward.
Prior to this change, any map with a drain time shorter than 5 minutes required a full difficulty spread. After the change, difficulty spread requirements were more lenient for longer beatmaps below 5 minutes of drain time.
2018-12-17: The QAT was declared as having no future in its current state and ideas for reform were encouraged.
2749 beatmaps were ranked in 2018. This year's impressive growth can be largely attributed to the QAT's discontinued Quality Assurance role and higher initiative from Beatmap Nominators.
2019-01-29: A proposal for QAT reform was created as a conglomeration of other users' proposals.
2019-03-01: The
Mappers' Guild transitioned from application-based entry to automatic entry for anyone with 3 ranked maps.
2019-03-13: Rule requiring consecutive nominations to be set at least 24 hours apart from each other was removed.
This rule was a major complaint from mappers and Beatmap Nominators because it felt like it was unnecessarily wasting everyone's time. If an issue was found after the first nomination, the second nominator would often avoid pointing it out to avoid an extra 24 hour wait.
Along with this change, Beatmap Nominators could veto qualified beatmaps. The rule originally existed because Beatmap Nominators needed 24 hours to potentially apply vetoes to maps with one nomination.
2019-05-05: The BN/QAT restructure was finalised.
2019-08-05: Naxess released the
Mapset Verifier tool, automating a significant portion of beatmap checking processes for Beatmap Nominators.
2019-08-06: Beatmap Nominators became able to participate in BN application evaluations.
BN input is visible to the NAT when trying to reach a consensus, though they are rarely used to sway a vote.
The NAT often use BN input to help determine future NAT members.
2019-10-22: Ascendance became a NAT leader after
Mao stepped down.
3217 beatmaps were ranked in 2019.
2020-02-07: The first Elite Nominator profile badges were awarded to recognise continued exceptional performance from members of the BN team.
2020-02-21: NAT leadership as a concept was discontinued as
Ascendance stepped down as NAT leader.
2020-04-11: The Mappers' Report led by
Feerum was created to summarise mapping community events via front page news posts.
2020-11-30: Hybrid beatmaps were reworked to require 2 nominations per game mode.
2020-12-17: Inappropriate content review submission and evaluation were moved from Discord discussions to blind votes via the
Beatmap Nominator website.
3580 beatmaps were ranked in 2020.
2021-04-08: A Ranking Criteria Rule disallowing multiple Qualified beatmaps of the same song was removed.
2021-05-12: The Nomination Assessment Team began a trial for new Beatmap Nominator evaluations.
This trial only included osu! members and concluded in August.
A subset of Beatmap Nominators were given evaluation roles equal to the NAT, allowing them to contribute to and decide the outcomes of BN applications and current BN evaluations.
The first batch of trial members included ~10 users, while the second batch included ~20 users.
2021-05-13: An option to change difficulty owner was added to the Beatmap Discussion page.
2021-09-11: peppy changed Ranking Criteria rule about the Source field.
2021-09-18: After a decade-long hiatus, the osu! community meetings returned in the form of stage voice chats on the osu! Discord. The first primary topic addressed was
concerns with osu!mania's Ranking Criteria, along with other issues like general Ranking Criteria complexity, engaging with newer mappers, and more.
2021-09-24: Quality Assurance checks no longer counted towards Beatmap Nominator activity.
This was implemented because it seemed like some users were using this as a loophole to avoid actively contributing as a Beatmap Nominator.
Prior to this change, every QA check was considered equal to 1/4 of a nomination.
2021-12-14: The burai sliders rule has been loosened per this
proposal.
4500 beatmaps were ranked in 2021.
2022-02-03: Following
this discussion about Beatmap Nominator activity, a bottom line has been added where the warning step would be skipped for activity checks if someone falls below it.
Falling below the 90 day requirements with more than 60 days worth of nominations will result in an activity warning.
Falling below 60 days worth of nominations in a 90 day period will result in a removal when activity is checked.
2022-02-03: osu!staff took Community Contributors nominations from the public for the first time via a form.
2022-02-23: ModScore
activity over the past 3 months is no longer required to apply to the Beatmap Nominators in the osu!taiko, osu!catch, or osu!mania game modes.
2022-03-01: The osu!mania Nomination Assessment Team started adding more Asian members in order to improve the Asian represenation and accessibility to the Beatmap Nominators.
2022-03-01: Based on notable community interest and
a lengthy discussion, the osu!taiko Muzukashii break guideline has been reworked to allow for more freedom by adding a substitute to 3/2 breaks.
2022-03-31: Beatmap Nominator applications for the osu! game mode have closed for the first time, since the adoption of the new application system from the BN/QAT restructure.
2022-04-22: Ranked/Loved guest difficutly maps now appear on userpages, and they have guests retroactively assigned to them, while giving NATs/GMTs the ability to assign them manually on all Ranked/Loved maps.
2022-05-01: Following the recent addition of 4 new NAT members, Beatmap Nominator applications for the osu! game mode have opened again.
2022-05-16: Beatmap Nominators who are performing well will get their future evaluations in intervals of a longer 6 months, where historically the default was everyone being evaluated every 3 months.
2022-05-16: The nomination cap for osu!taiko has been increased from 75 to 100 unique nominations within 90 days.