Good ideas

[quantum dot]

Many interesting suggestions and long and detailed posts only indicate the tremendous interest of some some players, for instance tokimi, foo (aka mistake), Xell, kierra, among many others in a better and more active league.

I think many of mistake's ideas are doable and good. Specially concerning activity which seems to be his main concern, and he is pretty right.

I would support many of the proposals I have read so far. In particular

1: inactive teams lose points. How? we should work it out. At the moment GU has not a problem of inactivity, but if it were any I would support this suggestion to be applied on GU too. It is a good point under any perspective. It rewards activity and allows more active teams to climb the ladder.

2: Close the championship two times a year. I like this idea. The we can keep track of the winning teams (winter and summer terms) on a list with the players that formed those teams. After this period the team scores will be reset and all start over.

3: Council members should be active. I vote a big YES. How active? well we can have a global measure like matching 4 matches in a month let's say. I would like those who play the league to admin it.

4: Council membership is not a life long post. According to activity and common sense, council positions should rotate, so that at least half of the council is removed every half a year, just to make it coincide with the term championship. In this way, I would expect to see some continuity (from the half council that stays) and some fresh ideas (from the new ones). This will also aliviate the tiredness of being in a council.

5: I dont like the idea that a team is forced to play any other team. Why? because teams are made by people and people arent always nice to play against. We have to live with this. I play bzflag to relax, have some fun and avoid the stupid TV set at nights. Playing a bunch of stupid nerds who make me get angry with their comments, insults or possible_cheats it gets me no fun. Not anyone can get well along with each other, so it is better to allow people to choose who they play with. But of course, this is just a personal opinion.

6: Definitively ducati servers need more slots

7: Some people are bussy and cant get 30 min match plus 15 min warm up. Why dont we have two types of matches 15 and 30 min long to chose from? I would expect 15min matches to allow to match more in bussy times. I have seen many match offers rejected because of lack of time.

8: The role of the council. I accepted the offer of Chestal to be part of this council because I think that having a REAL refereeing body is good for any competition. In case of any issue or problem, teams leave up to the council the final decision, if a temporary ban is required, if a match should be called off, etc. For those familiar with GU league, we have this system in place there and up to now it has worked very well. Of course you always have those people who are not happy with decisions, but what the heck, we are here for the fun of the majority not only a few.

9: The council was selected with the aim at representing most active teams, so that no two members are from the same team. Even if this implied to take on board a less active player. As a starting point I think this is correct. However, this critieria should be relaxed in future so we favor activity and good behaviour in selecting the council members.

10: Finally, i would like the council just a reflect of the good behaviour in the league, we dont need more rules, just behaviour. I wish the council to be self-organized and dynamic where common sense is the only guidance. I dont like to see the council ruling to the death, but just make decisions when required.

[CannonBallGuy]

Good post qd, I agree with all you said.

[tokimi]

Since, as Admirarch put it, this is the toki, foo, dmp show... seems to be the time to
make an appearance. I am glad to see QD post, since there haven't been many council
members making an appearance as of late (on irc or these public forums).

3: Council members should be active. I vote a big YES. How active? well we can have
a global measure like matching 4 matches in a month let's say. I would like those who
play the league to admin it.

Again, as orange and many others put it, what IS activity! Some very active
people in the league and bz do not get to play but once in a blue moon because of time
constraints. I think making that kind of restriction on members is too strong, and
is a bad idea.

4: Council membership is not a life long post. According to activity and common sense,
council positions should rotate, so that at least half of the council is removed every
half a year, just to make it coincide with the term championship. In this way, I would
expect to see some continuity (from the half council that stays) and some fresh ideas
(from the new ones). This will also alleviate the tiredness of being in a council.

I agree with the rotation, so that when players go inactive for long periods of time,
they are removed from the council. But to force a rotation of the council, even if
those members who would be rotated out are willing and able to perform their duties,
doesn't make sense. Now of course it is necessary to leave room for the removal of
players from the council for just cause. I just do not think this counts as just cause.

I also think that council members should be responsible and intelligent players, not
just members of active teams. Policing the servers (and the league at times)
is already taken care of with the number of admins for ducati. What I think is needed
are intelligent, creative and even-keeled people in the council to maintain order and
keep things fresh in the league. This would be in contrast to the admins policing,
and menotume trying to play catchup with his busy schedule to maintain the stability
of the league.

8: The role of the council. I accepted the offer of Chestal to be part of this council
because I think that having a REAL refereeing body is good for any competition. In case
of any issue or problem, teams leave up to the council the final decision, if a
temporary ban is required, if a match should be called off, etc. For those familiar
with GU league, we have this system in place there and up to now it has worked very
well. Of course you always have those people who are not happy with decisions, but what
the heck, we are here for the fun of the majority not only a few.

Agreed, as soon as any restructuring is taken care of.

9: The council was selected with the aim at representing most active teams, so that
no two members are from the same team. Even if this implied to take on board a less
active player. As a starting point I think this is correct. However, this criteria
should be relaxed in future so we favor activity and good behavior in selecting the
council members.

Partially addresses #4, but again, do we only favor activity and behavior for members?
Again, it seems a bit shallow criteria (see comments on #4).

10: Finally, i would like the council just a reflect of the good behavior in the
league, we don't need more rules, just behavior. I wish the council to be self-
organized and dynamic where common sense is the only guidance. I don't like to see the
council ruling to the death, but just make decisions when required.

Since I am not privvy to the inner dealings with the council, I could not say if the
council is currently "ruling to death". But based on the preliminary work, in which
I took part, I think our attempt at a self constructing system (eg the current
form of the league) has failed, and there is a definite need for more concrete rules.
Also, common sense is a rare commodity, and even more rare in bz imho.

-toki

[mistake]

blue moon

hehe

Again, as orange and many others put it, what IS activity! Some very active people in the league and bz do not get to play but once in a blue moon because of time constraints. I think making that kind of restriction on members is too strong, and is a bad idea.

4: Council membership is not a life long post. According to activity and common sense, council positions should rotate...

9: The council was selected with the aim at representing most active teams, so that no two members are from the same team. Even if this implied to take on board a lessactive player. As a starting point I think this is correct. However, this criteria should be relaxed in future so we favor activity and good behavior in selecting the council members.

Well, basically activity is what we define it to be, but I agree with above points and am moving further away from some statements I made earlier. A mixture of different people on the council is probably best, where we have flexibel criterias. For example I welcome that there is a BZFlag developer on board as well as server owners next to the regular match players. I do also agree with the rotating idea, though I think we can start off and play it by ear.

[Xell]

Thanks qd for structuring this a bit. This sub-forum became pretty confusing during a short time

1: inactive teams lose points. How? we should work it out. At the moment GU has not a problem of inactivity, but if it were any I would support this suggestion to be applied on GU too. It is a good point under any perspective. It rewards activity and allows more active teams to climb the ladder.

But should the activity factor really become greater than the skills factor? It would become bigger this way, because acitivity factor is already integrated in some way. Only active teams can climb up the ladder, while inactive teams can't.
Why not making it just a bit more important than now, for example by adding the current activity of the team to the elo-calculation, after playing a match? (something like new_score=new_score*(activity/10) for example). In my opinion, it's much better to reward activity ( what that system would not do ) instead of punishing inactivity. That could frustrate lots of players who don't have as much time as others have.

2: Close the championship two times a year. I like this idea. The we can keep track of the winning teams (winter and summer terms) on a list with the players that formed those teams. After this period the team scores will be reset and all start over.

Sounds goot to me. That would bring some move into the frozen ranking. But resetting the score every summer/winter seems very short to me, maybe one year could also be okay. Just remember how fast the time is rushing by

4: Council membership is not a life long post. According to activity and common sense,
council positions should rotate, so that at least half of the council is removed every
half a year, just to make it coincide with the term championship. In this way, I would
expect to see some continuity (from the half council that stays) and some fresh ideas
(from the new ones). This will also alleviate the tiredness of being in a council.

I agree with the rotation, so that when players go inactive for long periods of time,
they are removed from the council. But to force a rotation of the council, even if
those members who would be rotated out are willing and able to perform their duties,
doesn't make sense. Now of course it is necessary to leave room for the removal of
players from the council for just cause. I just do not think this counts as just cause.

I also think that council members should be responsible and intelligent players, not
just members of active teams. Policing the servers (and the league at times)
is already taken care of with the number of admins for ducati. What I think is needed
are intelligent, creative and even-keeled people in the council to maintain order and
keep things fresh in the league. This would be in contrast to the admins policing,
and menotume trying to play catchup with his busy schedule to maintain the stability
of the league.

I don't think much rotation would be good within a group which has to decide things together, as a team. Like qd said before, it works pretty good in the GU-league, without any rotation yet. The members just have to be well-chosen. And of course anyone, who didn't show up for a long time, should be removed/replaced.

And i hope all this good ideas here will be put into action sometime

Xell