Restructuring FAF / Council of Setons

Given the stupid amount of energy and words wasted by all kinds of people in the PC election thread, i wanted to present a different idea out there. This not just about PC. It could probably replace several councillor positions, maybe even the entire Council of Setons.

The goal of the system is mostly:

• Transparency about who does what in FAF.

Ill call it the "Badge System" or maybe "Roles system" because i have no better word.

• A person can hold more than one badge
• Each badge is linked to exactly ONE kind of responsibility
• We hopefully only ever discuss exactly one badge at a time, if there is an election. No more "discuss these 30 responsibilities that councillor position XYZ comes with" for fucks sake.
• There is a "Main" Badge for every responsibility that only one person can hold, and that person hands out sub-badges of the same type (but not "Main") to anybody they want. Only Main badge is voted onto a person by election.

Example:

• "Main Tournament director" can hand out and remove "tournament director" badges to anybody.
• "Main TMM director" can hand out "TMM director" badges to anybody
• and so on...

Pros:

• Non-insiders can finally see who the fuck is actually doing what.
• We see more people with badges which makes it look like its easier to participate in FAF. right now "PC councillor" is a scary word.
• FTX can still do everything because he can hold literally every "Main" badge in the world.
• The conversion from the old system to the new one doesnt require any kind of power being handed over so we could get it done without too much drama.
• Maybe we can convert the other councillor positions as well because i see no reason to have a mix of old and new system.
• Badge holders can give their badge to somebody else (maybe a bad idea?).

Negs:

• The forum needs to be able to display all badges a person holds.
• We need to implement a system that tracks who has what badge i guess? Otherwise there will be chaos.
• Handing over badges needs to be done though the mentioned system (like a tab in the client)
• We still need to decide which badges are voted/eleted, so i expect that would be a shitshow of a discussion. But for now we could just make all PC related badges votable and assign them to the winner of the PC election.

Its basically Discord roles on steroids but for FAF.

Opinions?

Edit:
There might the some badges for which sub-badges dont make sense, so maybe restrict those.

I see what your saying but i disagree. In regards to making it less scary to apply i think its important that only really experenced and comited people apply. I think this will also serve to further decentralize the leadership which seems good at first but in reality will just cause conflict whenever two badge holders work together.

The current system in intransparent as fuck, and it sure as hell discourages anybody who is new from engaging with it. I don't think the idea of FAF organization being more or less a private club of esteemed personalities is healthy for this community, but thats just my subjective opinion and i don't have studies to prove it.

Edit: By this idea doesn't prevent any esteemed personality to hold as many badges as were bestowed upon them, whether by election or by succession.

This needs an actual list of badges that would exist to see if the idea is feasible. If we were to mainly come up with badges that correlate with council positions then I don't see what this would change.

@blackyps This is pretty much exactly what would happen I’d imagine. Well there would be more main badges than there are positions - how do you even define one responsibility? But there would be a similar number of people holding all the main badges

I think it's kinda useful but then again it's just another word for avatar and or discord role?

The core idea (make it immediately visible who does what) sounds good to me. The issue would be if there are too many badges that eg a person shows up with 10 different roles under their name. As a newcomer to faf (6months) it was not at all clear to me how things work or who does what

Yep I like it especially since councilors like to define their own role. Now that role could be more specific. Also if someone helps out with part of your role they get recognition.

There are some interesting potential merits to this idea regarding improved flexibility, transparency, specialization, reduced barrier-to-entry for high-level-contribution, and more-focused elective participation (where people can vote for the best candidate for each elective role rather than being stuck with a candidate who's great in one role but subpar in another). I think this idea could result in at least a few more badge-holders than current councilors, and I would like to see what potential lists of badges are proposed. In regards to transparency and clarity for what badge does what, it would be simple to have a written list of badges (with brief explanations for each badge) posted somewhere easily accessible to the public..

About Discord:
Discord Roles are tied to Discord user accounts, not FAF accounts. We have no mapping between those two types of accounts.

About displaying:
Optimally each badge would be just an icon (in forum and client), and if the users hovers over it it would show the badge name in a tooltip. But again, this only makes sense if we can sensibly integrate in both the forum and the client. This would be the big blocker.

To get an initial list of responsibilities i need an overview about all current responsibilities of basically any contributors, including ones that currently are outside of councillor responsibilities. And it would probably be good to take some inspiration from the Discord roles too. Anyway need some time for this, but to flesh the idea out some more here is the direction it could take:

Below, when i say "FAF" i mean all things concerning FAF infrastructure and client, when i say game i mean the game itself.

• Organizer Community Tournaments
• Organizer Official Tournaments (basically LOTS, not sure if we need 2 separate badges here)
• Tournament PR (things like makeing TD casting happen on Twitch, getting casters onboard)
• News & Announcements (populate news, maybe post important news to reddit/steam)
• Content Creation: Casts
• Content Creation: Livestreams
• Content Creation: Creative (Trailers, Interviews, Memes ffs)
• Map Pools Director OR TMM Director
• Map Vault Director
• Mod Vault Director
• Trainer Coordinator
• Technical Help FAF (not only tech support, but also how to install/join/get FAF guides etc.)
• Technical Help Game
• Game Rules Help (would know for example what ingame things are currently classified as exploit and answer questions around that area)
• Community Help (basically the kind of nice guy i talke about in the election thread)
• International Community Help (integrate the russians somehow probably?)
• Community Feedback (could be part of Community Help instead, not sure)
• Social Media Accounts Admin
• FAF Admin
• FAF Developer
• Game Developer
• Game Balancing (not sure if balance should be split of from Game Developer)
• Coop/Mission Developer
• AI Developer
• Mod Developer
• Chat Moderation
• Forum Moderation (not sure how or if to split moderation: are these always the same people anyway?)
  (- Discord Moderation)
• Badges Manager (basically making sure that people who own a badge are actually still active in the community and otherwise remove the badge until somebody wants to own that responsibility or vote, see below)

I have probably missed a bunch. Delegation (sub-badges) don't make sense for all of these, but i see no reason to not leave that up to each respective main badge holder.

About voting:
In fact i would in generally only vote on anything if multiple people want to own the same "Main" badge. This is where im a bit unsure. I think the Badges Manager should organize votes if necessary, but this is a lot of power in a single person. But maybe thats not too different from now anyway.

I get that you want to bring more transparency but:

On the FAF Discord, besides the opt-in roles that people can self-select for themselves to identify what interests they have (being a mapper, modder, interested in tournament pings, etc) we have a giant list of the variety of contributors as well as the Councillor that is responsible for organizing that area of FAF. If you want to join and help out with one of the roles in this segment, then you ping the person mentioned in the channel.

So basically, you have the variety of contributive possibilities laid out in the channel as well as the duties of said position as well as the person to contact to get involved.

Again, I get that you are basically comparing this new system to Discord roles, but I just don't really get the issue of there being a lack of transparency and how these badges would resolve it more than what we already have. I guess it would be present on the forums rather than just on the Discord in your proposal.

Also, how do you divide council roles from badges?

Let's say there is an election for matchmaker badge and PC loses it. Who is that guy supposed to be responding to? Does he just do whatever he wants with no oversight related to other parts of FAF? Can just any generic dude that wants to have the spot run for it? Is this guy just entirely unaware of what goes on between Councillors and does his own deal? Is he now considered a Councillor?

Is it possible for me to be PC while having all my badges elected away so that I have no rights to do anything anymore? Do you have elections for badges as well as council seats?

Personally, it just kind of sounds like the system that generally kind of exists right now. You have a Councillor with final control over a set area of FAF which has the ability to delegate authority to others as necessary. Don't really mind the idea of having badges to make it more known that somebody is considered say a "senior TD" or a "head of matchmaker" or "trainer of trainers" but in the end I don't see how you can make an incision from the Councillor and the badge to elect the latter.

I'm seeing now you just want to replace the whole Council with this, and that just sounds like complete chaos. How many people would now need to be consulted for a variety of adjustments? Like look at your list you posted already, look at how many people I now need to go and talk to in order to do anything related to LotS.

I gotta go talk to the LotS tourney guy, then I gotta go talk to the tourney promotion guy, then I gotta go talk to the matchmaker guy about maps, then I gotta go talk to the community guy to talk about it on FAF, then I gotta go talk to the international community guy to go talk about it in russian discord, then I gotta go talk to the social media guy, then I gotta go talk to the game developer to make sure a patch isn't released right before LotS, and so on and so on.

Thats why you can hold multiple badges, if you can make the point that it would be effective for one person to hold multiple of these. At the the end of the day, one thing does not change: FAF is driven by consensus between long time contributors. The system above is just meant to make the official side of it a lot more flexbile, transparent, and unbundles the councillor positions.

Edit:
Just using Discord roles would be nice but as i said, we dont have an acount mapping.

Right, but these badges are elected not allotted? Perfect recipe for total contributive chaos when you have the LotS tourney guy and the tourney promotion guy potentially entirely disagreeing about what is good for LotS and now they gotta go get the social media and community ambassador badge guys involved and debate who has the rights to do what.

I was imagining that some badges could be elected and some could be allotted with this system.

Also, perhaps a list like this might be more manageable:

Tournaments Organizer
Tournaments PR (things like making TD casting happen on Twitch, getting casters onboard)
News & Announcements (populate news, maybe post important news to reddit/steam)
Content Creation Manager (Casts, Livestreams, Trailers, Interviews, Memes)
Competitive Map Pools Director
Matchmaker Director (in charge of matchmaker things other than determining what maps go in the more competitively focused map pools)
Map Vault Director
Mod Vault Director
Trainer Coordinator
Technical Help FAF (not only tech support, but also how to install/join/get FAF guides etc.)
New Player Coordinator (focus on helping noobs and improving the overall FAF experience for new players)
Community Help (basically the kind of nice guy talked about in the election thread)
International Community Coordinator (would try to bridge the language barriers, integrate more translated content, etc)
Community Feedback Coordinator
Social Media Accounts Admin
Balance Team Leader
Coop/Mission Manager
AI Manager
Discord Moderation Leader
Client Moderation Leader
Forum/Misc Moderation Leader
Head Developer
Mapgen Manager
Badges Manager (basically making sure that people who own a badge are actually still active in the community and otherwise remove the badge until somebody wants to own that responsibility or vote)

If some badges are allotted then Councillors still exist and I don't understand what the point of having elected badges is.

Like what's an elected and what is an allotted badge here? Do you have a PC that is responsible for matchmaker that just loses the right to manage that and now the dude that manages matchmaker is left to do whatever outside of the rest of the player ecosystem represented by the PC role? Is this guy just left out of any council discussions on how operations are being done on FAF?

How about having elected community ambassadors that just flat out refuse to allow promotion of something they dislike in their area? Can they do that? What divides the responsibility of the promotion guys from these guys?

@ftxcommando
Katharsas proposed this badge idea, so perhaps he has more fleshed answers for you. However, I would think that determining which badges are elected and which are allotted is something that could be discussed. If nothing else, I would think that badges that are within the domains of positions that are currently elected could be elected badges, and badges that are within the domains of positions that are currently unelected could be allotted. However, that is just a default concept that could be changed.

I'd imagine that badges would come with their relevant powers and responsibilities, so the system would make sense. There would be a greater number of distinct roles (as opposed to a smaller number of composite roles) as well as more elected badges than there are elected council positions. So:
"There are some interesting potential merits to this idea regarding improved flexibility, transparency, specialization, reduced barrier-to-entry for high-level-contribution, and more-focused elective participation (where people can vote for the best candidate for each elective role rather than being stuck with a candidate who's great in one role but subpar in another)."

I'd just like a list of what dudes are supposed to be voted on because I see like 2 badges here I'd want to be elected in some general vote tbh

Like literally half these positions are just knowing who people are and asking them to go do something, why do they even exist? You need a guy responsible for casters JUST for tournaments and a guy responsible for casts IN GENERAL? What is an AI Manager even supposed to do? The AI devs tend to just operate on their own projects and consult with one another about developments they made. What are half these roles supposed to do, seriously.

I gave a default suggestion above regarding what positions could be elected vs allotted...
The above list was just a potential concept for what badges there could be. Frankly, I'd like to see other people's ideas for potential lists of badges. However, each of the badges would obviously have a clear purpose... ie: I imagined an AI manager would be in charge of managing which AI's are integrated into FAF, potential integrated changes to them and closely related matters. I would also once again like to point out that individuals could hold multiple badges, and the above lists are just potential example lists for this badges concept.