New Forum for League Submissions?

[SEAL]

The title pretty much says it all. It doesn't just have to be battle reports; you'd be able to post anything that you think would be worthy of getting points there, that way it'll be easier for us league heads to find everything. Also, people who don't want to participate in the league can post stuff in the normal sections without having unexpected points awarded to them.

Of course, it might render the normal forums useless, but we could move everything from the league submissions forum over once the season's over.

[isoaker]

I'm open for making a new forum. Any objections?

[martianshark]

It sounds good.

[marauder]

My only problem with this is look at all the different stuff we submit:

War Stories, Interactive Tactical Scenarios, Comics, Mods... and all of those in one forum would just be messy.

We already have subforums for just about all of those subjects, with the exception of battle reports. Maybe we could just have a League subforum for battle reports, battle pictures, and movies?

[wetmonkey442]

I agree with M4.

Also, I am generally opposed to new sections simple because I do not think we have enough content to justify additional splitting. If anything I think consolidation might be appropriate. In biology there is a dichotomy between "lumpers" and "splitters", and when talking about web forums, I'm more of a lumper.

[DX]

I actually think that the league has become a bit too expansive - shouldn't members want to contribute mods, comics, scenarios, etc already? It should also have a more definitive start and end date, seeing as M4 has already been handing out points and nobody else has (and I don't remember which topics have points).

[marauder]

The start date is January 1st for each year. The end date is December 31st. The reason for that is that people were having battles even after the off season began and weren't getting points for it.

The reason we award points for things other than battle reports is because modding, comics, all those things, contribute to making this forum a better place. I am mostly combat oriented - all of you know that - but when we were discussing what to award points for, and we had that topic available for discussion for almost a month, several people pointed out the value of the other subjects and wanted those things to be counted for award. I had no problem with it, iSoaker had no problem with it, Seal and CA99 who I assume are mods or admins had no problem with that; so we let it stand. I can understand your concern for the league being so expansive, but we already moved on from it. If a lot of ppl have issue with it, then I'm sure we can re-examine it, but if not, I think it's best to wait to look at at the end of the year and reexamine it after we've used the system for a year.

We are currently discussing specific end of year awards, which can be more combat focused or whatever it is that you think the League should concentrate on.

I'm dolling out points not because I'm head of the league, but because it needs to be done and no one else is doing it.

[HBWW]

While we do need the League to push the membership to getting stuff done (which, thanks M4 for maintaining), the League could potentially be of better use if we could just find some way of increasing activity from outside the community. Unfortunately, I haven't many ideas of that for now.

The League can also be used to encourage large-scale contributions from forum members, such as entire websites, movies or long, well edited videos, etc. With that said, I'm personally along the League more for helping it than to gain points for it. Will take some time to see what I can contribute to it though.

As for starting a new forum for it, I'd say a single forum wouldn't hurt. However, the topics there are to be solely geared towards the submissions, not content. That is to say, if you have a war report, post it in the appropriate forum for posting war reports, and then have a separate thread in the League forum to count all submissions you make in general for the season. (Example: CA99 - 2012; would show points for my war reports, videos, etc. with links to content, not actual content.)

Just ideas.

[marauder]

^that's a great idea, aside from one problem. A lot of people might show up and contribute work that counts for points, but they don't realize we have the league, or what we are giving out points for. GJIV was awarded 11 points for his Triple Shot Mod, and he had no clue what it was for. So, point is, people won't always know to go to said submission forum to post a link to their battle report or mod.

In that event, we could just make a thread for them, with a link and the points total; but it just seems like extra work. I'm not entirely against the idea, but ppl not knowing and causing extra work for the rest of us, makes me neutral on the subject.

[SEAL]

I like CA99's idea too. Frankly, I don't see how any (at least somwhat) active member could possibly not be aware of the league, seeing as how small this forum and our community is.

I guess we could have a sort of "registration", where once a member (who should probably have at least 20 or so posts.) registers, points will be awarded to him/her whenever he/she does something pointworthy. Good idea?

[marauder]

What's so bad about the current system? Is it so flawed that we have to change it?

[isoaker]

Perhaps a new forum is not needed, rather that point tracking and links to posts from members that have been awarded points should be compiled as a page on the wiki. That way, other members can also see what activity ended up resulting in points being awarded and that this information is accessible from a central place that makes sense.

It does add a little bit of extra work for judged to also have to add in the link on the wiki on top of awarding points, but hopefully this may not be too much of an additional burden.

Thoughts?

[SEAL]

Well the problem I have, is that anybody can get points, even if that person is not an active member or contributor. Also, people should be able to opt out of receiving points.

The other problem is deciding which threads deserve points. I suppose I could just award points (Assuming we're having a judging panel.) to everything that M4 awarded points to, and then decide from there which threads deserve points.

Blegh. I'm having trouble translating my thoughts into writing. It would be a lot easier if we could all talk to each other in person.

[isoaker]

Well the problem I have, is that anybody can get points, even if that person is not an active member or contributor. Also, people should be able to opt out of receiving points.

The other problem is deciding which threads deserve points. I suppose I could just award points (Assuming we're having a judging panel.) to everything that M4 awarded points to, and then decide from there which threads deserve points.

Blegh. I'm having trouble translating my thoughts into writing. It would be a lot easier if we could all talk to each other in person.

I understand your point - what you state is why, when drafting up the iSoaker Water Warfare League, I was a touch more selective on what could/should be counted for points and where submissions needed to go in order to be awarded points. Now, this is not to say that it is the best way to do things, but it sure made it significantly simpler to define, award, and track activities that deserve points.

As WaterWar.net is built to be as inclusive as possible, it is only natural that the WWn League should be open to more activities that promote things for which members can be awarded recognition for. It then ends up being whether everything is open and how to go about tracking things.

These sort of decisions is partly why I'm taking a back-seat to the League this time around.

[HBWW]

Rather than trying to standardize point amounts and put formal rules for them, I think we'd be better off with some sort of voting or judging panel but that does take extra work for not all that much more accuracy of measuring contribution. Unfortunately, this solution can backfire if people judging/voting are also competing for points.

[DX]

Blegh. I'm having trouble translating my thoughts into writing. It would be a lot easier if we could all talk to each other in person.

There is still a Skype room for Water warfare where could message in real time or voice chat. Alternatively, several of us are going to meet up with M4 during his mid-tour leave.

I gave it more thought, and I think a separate League forum can work using a combination of points people have brought up earlier. Basically we have the section where members can register for the league, aka opt in rather than opt out. Thus, only they will be tracked with points. Each member would have their own thread where their contributions are tracked with the point total for each in a list, or it could be kept in one aggregated thread. Their actual contributions would remain in the usual forum sections. Actually, one thread for everyone is probably the easiest format. The problem with tracking that on the wiki is that people are lazy and won't check the wiki. It's harder to ignore when it's on the forum.

[HBWW]

Who still uses the Skype chat room? I left because Skype kept spamming me but unless everyone wants to go to IRC, I don't see a better solution.

[marauder]

I accidentally left the chat room, but I'll accept another invite.

This is kind of annoying to me, because we gave this a month or 2 to gather everyone's ideas, then we put them together, and everyone seemed cool with it, now they're not cool with it. I was fine with iSoaker's old rule set, but people pointed out that other submissions are valuable and should be rewarded as well. Ok, I can get behind that concept too... but now we don't even want a set list of points for anything, we just want to vote on it. But my problem with that is that in order to do that we have to make up a list of who all needs to vote, then we all need to have the time to contribute our opinions, and nothing ever gets scored or finished until that is done. And what happens if we don't agree?

What is the point of the league? This is a question all of you need to answer before we can move forward. Are we trying to create something in the tradition of H2O Commands and iSoaker Rogues? Or are we just doing this to inspire people to contribute more material? Whenever a club or a group is established there needs to be a mission statement. What is our mission statement? I would be perfectly fine with having the league be combat oriented, you know where my interest lies; but I was also cool with the fact that everyone originally basically just wanted this to be a way of inspiring participation from the membership and giving out rewards for valuable submissions. Just, answer the question, "What is the point of the league?" What is our purpose? I don't think most of you know what you want.

I'm standing back from this issue until everyone can make up their mind.

[HBWW]

Alright, well I guess the 100% judging/voting based idea was a terrible one. It could however, be used to supplement a standard table of points but it would be better to be more specific. For example, instead "up to 2 points per video", I would advocate for "up to 2 points per minute of video", with voting/judging being used for the quality of the video. Sure, it's not exactly streamlined, but it measures the submission quality better than just "2 points per video".

With what M4 said about the purpose of the League, I guess I thought too far out and wanted it to help fulfill more functions outside of the community and expand it. Unless someone has ideas for that, it seems unfeasible to do this, and that it's probably better off as a membership activity driver only. (Which, in turn, can still expand the community by encouraging growth from the inside.)

[isoaker]

The WWn League really needs to develop clearer guidelines. I spent a good number of days refining the overview for the iSoaker Water Warfare League (see: iSoaker Water Warfare League Rules for reference.

For better or worse, I opted to exclude other valuable membership contributions for that League (e.g. water blaster reviews, homemade water blaster creation, device creation, etc.) Since we (the community) have long talked about how we spend a lot of time talking, but not as much time actually HAVING water wars, those who do have wars should be rewarded and the League serve as a means to try to promote others to do so as well. Blaster and equipment creation/review/adjustment is great, but if they are not used, that sort of defeats the purpose.

Now, if the WWn League is for promoting all forms of activity at WWn, then it should be inclusive as possible to the wide variety of water war and water blaster activities here including battle reports, blaster reviews, website creation/development, etc. If it is supposed to be more true to the "water warfare" part of its name, more specific types of contributions should be defined for what should or should not be worthy of points.

Once the scope of the WWn League is agreed upon, how a member should submit their activity for point awarding needs to be outlined.

At this point, I really do not recommend any other system than a point award scoring system with a scoring guidelines made as simple and objective as possible. Once you start worrying too much about subjective criteria, scoring will never be completed. In terms of quality of submission, what I'd recommend is that if two or more of the WWn League's judges think the quality of a submission is not quite good enough, the submitted should be informed about what the problem with their submission is and be given a chance to correct it.

All that said, we really need an alignment on what the WWn League is for.