Ladle 30 31 and 32 Rules and timing discussion

[kyle]

I agree on all points with flex. Yet I have difficulties with the last point.

Good and objective moderators are hard to find. The votes will probably be based on personal issues with the candidate. When the team had some (minor) difficulties with the candidate in the past, it means he/she automatically can't mod. I think it would be better to assign candidates with a 75% majority of yes votes. Or you could simply not place them in the server where the team with 'issues' is playing.

I agree with what you said in addition to what flex said,

Globad administrator votings could be done at the same time as the ladle votings?

I think for this vote, that should be started soon, we should just vote to approve the idea or not, if approved we'll have a vote for them before the 31st ladle, this gives server admins extra time to get settings updated. the first session of then will only last for ladles 31 and 32, then we'll have the vote for the new ones with our quarterly voting.
I'd also like to have voting threads be finalized a week before ladles. I know this one may be a little late, but roughly a week before is nice.

[compguygene]

There are a few things that I think could be implemented in the Ladle series that will be implemented in the TR2NOrigins tournaments. One caveat, the heart of us being able to run tournaments quickly, and effectively will be the tournament management system that is still being finished. PPHBBRivals is being debugged and modified to work with our content management system.
We have added a few auth levels, tournament manager and player manager to make it easier to distribute proper auth levels to the appropriate servers. All official tournaments will have tournament managers, similar to the idea of global moderators.
Currently, leaders meet in the official TR2NOrigins teamspeak, and teams are managed that way. Also, there are channels that each team can use. When I begin to organize European tournaments, and truly world-wide ones, I am going to use a 64-person last man standing server that will function as a huge chat room for people to meet up and and be sent to various servers.
To describe how the tournament management system will work, here is a summary of what I know from its current state of development. Of course, any of this is subject to change by the time we actually release it. You register a "clan" to participate in a team-oriented tournament. A "clan" in this context is not a clan like Crazy-Tronners, but a team, like Crazy-Tronners-A. The person that registers a "clan" is the one who manages its players. Said person would send invitations to other members of the forum who, upon acceptance become a member of the "clan". So, registration is rather self-organized. The tournament management system takes in results from Tournament Managers, and can be setup to manage leagues and/or management of brackets and results. Also, the tournament winners will receive badges, and be listed in the hall of fame for their accomplishment.
Obviously, Armagetron would greatly benefit from a tournament management system . I hope that some of you decide to get together and do as we ar doing, or something entirely better or different.

[Flex]

The votes will probably be based on personal issues with the candidate. When the team had some (minor) difficulties with the candidate in the past, it means he/she automatically can't mod. I think it would be better to assign candidates with a 75% majority of yes votes. Or you could simply not place them in the server where the team with 'issues' is playing.

I understand that and that's exactly why it's good. If they have personal issues, then they shouldn't be placed in an environment that something can go wrong. It should be a no-screw up zone and that's where the strickness comes into play. It's up to the team votes to either forget the past or feel that they're not over it and don't trust the authority which they have a right to do so.

Personally I would only vote on Z-Man, kyle and myself, so far. Why myself? Because I trust myself to do a good job and I've done it plenty of times without an issue, but if a team does not wish me to have global mods, then that rules me out instantly and they are happy and so the system works and I won't be ungrateful about it. I'd be surprised if Z-Man was voted out, then I think the system doesn't work and maybe we should adapt to the method of at least 90% yes votes. Until then, I'm all for this system.

[Olive]

There is a point at which teams should get over themselves and agree with the rest (75% or whatever majority chosen). As far as I know, everyone has personal preferences, these however, should not refrain more than capable administrators from admining.

[compguygene]

I don't see how global admins could play.

[sinewav]

Flex's idea is very good IMO. I have a few quick questions though.

1. While 4 global moderators (henceforth GA's) seems enough to handle the opening round (when they are needed the most), what is the minimum number of GA's we need?
   
   GA's are essentially volunteers. Should we assume that they nominate themselves on the wiki prior to quarterly voting? Does each nominee need additional sponsors? Who can sponsor a nominee?
   
   It seems to me a player should not be GA in the same Ladle, unless their team is eliminated. But the opening rounds are where GA's are needed most. Do you think there are enough, non-player volunteers to fill this role?

I think kyle is right in saying we don't have enough time to elect volunteers for this Ladle. We should definitely promote this idea for the next Ladle though. This will give everyone time to get familiar with the election procedure and what the role of a GA is.

...but to ensure that the teams voting are legitimate teams, they should only be able to vote if they've been in the past 2 previous Ladles

I don't agree. There are a lot of veteran players who play sporadically, and some really great teams only form for a single Ladle (you know, the last time we saw the name KoD was in L-19. You wouldn't want KoD to vote this time if they signed up?). Also, I think one reason this voting is successful is because it fits the needs of the current player environment. We don't have to fight about a rule "just because it's always been that way". We can change it, now. Besides, there are so many "legitimate" teams already that fraud would be pretty tough to accomplish. I feel comfortable saying "if something was askew, it would be pretty obvious."

[kyle]

even though you'd trust me flex, I'm not really reliable enough to be one. my Sundays are most always full. and the few i'm free on i'd like to be playing.

[owned]

...but to ensure that the teams voting are legitimate teams, they should only be able to vote if they've been in the past 2 previous Ladles

I don't agree. There are a lot of veteran players who play sporadically, and some really great teams only form for a single Ladle (you know, the last time we saw the name KoD was in L-19. You wouldn't want KoD to vote this time if they signed up?). Also, I think one reason this voting is successful is because it fits the needs of the current player environment. We don't have to fight about a rule "just because it's always been that way". We can change it, now. Besides, there are so many "legitimate" teams already that fraud would be pretty tough to accomplish. I feel comfortable saying "if something was askew, it would be pretty obvious."

For this reason, I would change it to: if 50% or more of the players have played in at least one ladle. However, there is the problem with alternate names...

[kyle]

so, so far we have 50%, 75%, 90% an 100%, I don't think we need anymore choices, so how about we add this idea as a yes/no, and then have a question for the percentage of the vote required to get to be able to moderate the ladle and use the 50%, 75%, 90% an 100% as the options.

[kyle]

me and sinewav have also updated a new guidelines page, to vote on. the previous one can be found here.

[sinewav]

Also, the current voting thread relating to topics in this thread is here.

Please continue using this thread to discuss policy regarding Global Admins only.

[Hoax]

I don't think I've ever had any problems in regards to needing a moderator in the ladle before, there's always been someone in the server to do it. (It being anything that needs to be done I guess, match starting, silencing oblivious specs etc.)

We (the Ladle community) voted to have Global Admins in October last year. However, no one was elected, and fortunately we haven't needed one. But it appears there is still a strong sentiment towards having them, so we probably won't repeal the vote.

Where's this strong sentiment coming from?
Since this isn't happening for the next ladle (right?), this global moderator rule definitely needs a better mandate than the vote that was made last October.

By having global admins does that mean that team leaders can't be trusted? I thought that's why team leaders GID's were added to the ladle so that they were given the appropriate power to make everything run smoothly.

[Flex]

We can sit here all day answering minor questions and clearing up every little detail or we could not ask such trivial questions that suddenly pop in our heads and move this along much much faster. By settling on what we need and how to best imply it, then to improve it even more once it's in place. I'm not talking about constructive discussions that actually improve things, but things like where the strongest sentiment is coming from, ect.

Z-Man has been global administrating/moderating for the past Ladles as far back as I can barely remember. The difference is that now we're seeing the benefit in this and making it official in a sense. Similar to the transition of giving Team Leader rights in a separate configuration (Global ID's) that improved things a lot. Honestly, if you can't remember not having problems, then I think you're not remembering hard enough.

I think this is far too complicated for one quick transition. So I thought we should start the list off with just Z-Man and later add more at each quarterly vote? So I checked the authorities list and it seems that he was already set as an admin last Ladle, "USER_LEVEL Z-Man@forums 1".

[sinewav]

So I thought we should start the list off with just Z-Man and later add more at each quarterly vote?

I'll support that. For the next Ladle (31), do we want to include a space for Global Admins to sign up (maybe between teams and servers)? We can vote on the applicants the week before. I still think the GA's should not be Ladle participants, but we'll see how things go.

And should we briefly outline the GA's responsibilities (starting a match, silencing spammers...)?

[Olive]

Maybe it's nice if Z-man joined the discussion, and decide himself whether he wants to be assigned as admin or not, as he seems to be the most preferred admin.