2020 M&M Election
-
This is my stance, it's prewritten at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SDsnfOu1prAMZx0XbUlyZZprsqLdkV_BMu5ZAs9P0FM/edit?usp=sharing If this post has issues. Huge shoutout to everybody that put in their time to make this post - the longest on the forum as of now - possible.
The purpose of this proposal regarding the FAF Map & Mod Vaults (hereby referred to as “vaults”) is to create a system that serves to better suit the regular FAF user, to reward the effort they put into their contribution, and to avoid removing features and options from the user experience.
Furthermore, this proposal seeks to extend the range of valid contributions to the community, and strike out internal inefficiencies that are causing a large negative impact to you, and the client as a whole.
If you want to see more content in FAF, and that of a higher quality - without losing anything in the process; I would hope that you would support this following proposal.
This proposal eventually expanded out to 7 pages worth of text. I do deeply thank everyone I've bothered over the course of writing it for your input and suggestions. If you’re short on time, I decided to create a TL;DR for you. I would highly encourage you to read over it all before you cast your vote, however.
So, to summarise:1. Do NOT remove the “Most Recent” vault tabs like what is currently planned.
- The whitelist only prevents the need to do busywork.
- Rule offending maps are still on the vault, and the burden of report work is now on the FAF user.
- Seeing your maps on the vault after they’re uploaded is motivation to continue.
- Removing UX options for users for easier administration goes against what keeps FAF alive.
2. Remove rules and inefficiencies that make admin work overly difficult, and take away from your gameplay experience.
- The vaults are fair game due to lacking a system for repeat offenses.
- The vaults are unjust due to your near-inability to appeal instant permanent banning.
- Content authors are just re-uploading content to avoid admin actions.
- The vault rules are unreasonably inaccessible, and poorly presented.
- The 3 Stratum Rule is ineffective and cripples content variety.
- The Meme Maps rule also cripples content variety in order to promote “standard” FAF gameplay.
3. Organize and catalog all of our creative resources.
- This makes it easier to help FAF, and stops material from being created multiple times over.
- Use the wiki and other established tools for this.
3b. Organize and promote what tasks FAF needs people to do.
- Make sure users can easily see what needs to be done.
- Explain the tasks to help onboard contributors to finish them.
- Provide rewards for tasks to incentivise content creation of a good quality.
- Outline constraints to better generate what is needed.
- Provide a worthwhile system to showcase your effort on external employment applications.
4. Remove the map bias from the Councilor role.
Let us begin:
1. THE WHITELIST VAULT
This is the main point: Keep the “most recent” tab of the vaults, while allowing the planned “FAF Author” exclusive tabs to be integrated.
The difference is this: Morax plans to remove the “most recent” tab, and I do not wish for that to happen.The FAF Author vault will be discussed in Item 3.
Removing the “most recent” tab of the vaults removes the need to moderate them. FAF doesn’t need to go and spend their time doing admin work if they just cut that feature out of the client entirely. It’s a cop-out strategy. More below:
The first problem with stopping you from seeing rule-breaking content, is that the rule-breaking content still exists on the vault. Examples of this being a problem are cheat maps.
Consider the following:
I make a clone of “Fields of Isis” and add some player slots, making it a 6v6 map. I also clone the mass near my spawn a thousand times over to give me a significant reclaim advantage, and because I’m hosting my games; I put myself in the same spot every time.Even if you’re lucky enough that the cheat is not well hidden and you manage to spot it: The burden is now on the player to go and gather the evidence and make a report. There is no reason for there to be a vault moderation team if we don’t moderate the vaults, so it’s a gamble on if your report is handled. Whoever does handle it must now sift through all of the other new isis variants to find and hide the map. Even if this is handled in a reasonable time frame, the damage to the regular user is done. If you think it isn’t possible for a map to get away with having extra resources on one side, we only found out Loki (a map with over 50k plays!) was imbalanced a couple of weeks ago. It can happen to you.
In our current system, cloning maps and uploading them again are both A: against the rules of the vault and B: are the easiest to spot and remove. This example could not happen and If it did, the problem does not lie with the vault tab.
My further points about this topic follow:
Uploading and seeing your map on the vault is gratification. I can state this even after uploading 30+ maps to the vault; seeing your maps in the list and watching them climb in play count is one of the only rewards that map-makers - and by extension modders - get on the client.
Removing motivations and rewards for contributors to make life easier for the administration goes against what keeps FAF alive. The statistics for map play count are being used to justify the removal of the tab, but I personally don’t think we have a real right to decide how many plays are good enough for an author. If an author sees their content get even 1 extra play, and decides that’s enough to create another work? FAF only serves to profit from that.
We also - as an aside - remove options for the player when distributing maps to other players. Relying on auto-download would have been devastating to FAF during the period when said auto-download was broken, and many users have expressed their discontent over the interface for the vault search systems. Allowing maps to be located with no extra UX “steps” covers an inconceivably vast array of use cases for how players use the vaults to distribute their content to one-another. It’s not something worth throwing away to escape administration responsibility.
Speaking of:
2. VAULT ADMINISTRATION, AND THE 3 STRATUM RULE/MEME MAPS RULE
The current system is damaging the community to fix issues that the vault admin team have created for themselves.
I will first outline the current administration process so you can understand how desperately it needs reformation.
And then I will discuss the removal of rules that are inherently elitist in nature and remove your gameplay variety.First: When you upload a map to the vault that is rule breaking. It’s eventually hidden.
So you just upload it again, and it’s back. You can repeat this process ad eternum.The only way you get banned is to intentionally step into vision of the M&M staff and annoy them enough so they ban you from uploading. This ban will be permanent. If you avoid this step, the vault is free game for you.
Appealing your permanent ban is tough, because the staff or the admins do not know why you’re banned.
Outside of one particular case, your ban reason is not properly recorded or maintained in any location that staff can find.Map Authors already know this strategy. When the vault team found someone dedicated enough to start hiding maps on masse (hello Farmsletje), FAF started to see an increase of maps uploaded to the vault in return. Authors are just re-uploading their hidden maps to evade FAF’s administration process.
Here’s a graph to back this statement up, it shows maps uploaded per day, big thanks to Exotic_Retard for sharing this with me.
In the FAF admin log, Farms went and removed a lot of old maps first, before moving onto the current uploads. This is shown by the authors of such content being an “unknown” because they’re so old. Names of authors start appearing around the 18th of the 3rd. I marked that date with a black arrow for you.
You can verify that in the admin log here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15Q3FJ9QN8nc51ytTDJK61brrUtqd3L3efq58GFJaclU/edit#gid=0
Why are people circumventing the rules? For starters, it’s easier to do and nets you no consequence, but another important point is that our rule documentation has some major accessibility issues. If said rules were on the forum proper or another website, users from other languages can automatically translate them from a web browser. It’s far harder if the rules are on a google document, and impossible to do if you’re using images with text in them. The current rules are using both of those. And so I ask you: Вы вообще можете прочитать наши правила? If you don’t know what the rules are and thus don’t know why your map was hidden, it’s easy to perceive the hiding as a bug, or as an unjust removal.
As an aside: If we had happened to go down the route of using more text in imagery and other methods that are less accessible, FAF could run the risk of legal actions as covered under some national disabilities acts. This is something I feel FAF needs to be conscious of moving forward.
On to the second part;
Here is what we’re removing that nets such an increase in people circumventing the rules:
Here is a graph I made in the admin log some time ago. It shows all the reasons for removal in a bar graph.
It does illustrate my key point, that being we’ve hid over 1100 maps for the “3 Stratum Rule.” This is the vault team’s way of gatekeeping content that FAF deems low effort.
What’s “low effort?” We don’t know. Just adding the required textures is very easy, so they added a clause to make sure you paint those textures onto the map “in detail.” except that it's highly dependent on what staff member sees your content first, and a lot of the staff are people that the userbase would not deem qualified to judge. It’s far too ambiguous for FAF to regulate, and should not be a rule.
I’m of the opinion that content that you inherently don’t care about will not pass the gate no matter how many textures you have, and this is showing in the map vault now. Maps are still low effort, and are just at varying levels of how close they tried to skip around the rules to allow it on the vault. Either it isn’t enough and it’s hidden (just re-upload it again!) or it is good enough and you stay on. Except it isn’t any better than having no textures on your map at all.
Painting textures onto the map is done in such a rough and artistic method, and so it is almost impossible to create artificial texture styles in the editor unless you “really” know what you’re doing.
If you want to create for example a city map, or a machine world map that requires a lot of harsh angles and square geometry? You’re forced to create a high level masterpiece to avoid the gatekeeping rule, or you’re just no longer able to make them with the current administration.If you want to create something to play with your friends on a saturday afternoon, and don’t want to to spend a month making a map pretty because that doesnt net you any return, you cannot pass the gatekeeping rule.
And lastly, moving onto the second rule:
If you don’t want to create a map that is not made for the standard FAF ladder/teamgame gameplay, you’re not able to do so because we also do not allow “meme maps'' in the vault. The addition of this rule means that “fun” custom game content that defined other multiplayer games such as Halo and Counter Strike, is not allowed on FAF.Obviously, removing maps that are not made for ranked gameplay only damages the variety that the FAF experience offers, and authors will not change to make maps for game modes they don’t care about. They just leave, and that is the worst scenario to have if you’re in charge of creative content, as the councilor role is.
Now I've explained the process and the flaws in our system. If you vote for this proposal, what changes is this:
-
“Meme” maps, or maps that offer differing gameplay experiences, will be allowed in the vault once again.
-
Maps that don’t have textures, or are impossible to have textures on, will be allowed on the vault again.
If you were banned for either of those rules, your ban will be lifted. -
Add a proper consequence to users that intentionally circumvent the rules.
Create alert systems that properly alert you to infractions without requiring insane admin overhead.
Properly document the rules to help allow for your appeal,
and add a fair, time based system in line with FAF that prevents all bans from being permanent. -
Move the rules to a more accessible location.
remove inherent accessibility issues that prevent users from seeing them.
present them in a more professional manner.
and organise for them to be translated into FAF’s main languages. -
Properly extend these improvements to the mod vault, which is just being moderated ad-hoc at the moment.
3. ENCOURAGE AND REWARD CREATIVE CONTRIBUTION
With my proposal, you have removed the admin inefficiency and are now properly managing content that breaks FAF rules. You did this without crippling features that benefit the FAF user, and have allowed them to play games on modes that are not just our standard ranked systems. So how do you use this role to get MORE quality content than was previously appearing?
This area of the proposal outlines implementing systems that allow the councilor role to demonstrate the potential that is being wasted in an almost criminal fashion.
First of all, and most importantly; this role is supposed to be more than just a “Vault Councilor,” and furthermore, the role is not only supposed to be a “Map Vault Councilor.” because doing so leaves the vast majority of FAF creative contributions out in the cold with no proper project management.
FAF needs someone to do two things:
Create a central, easily accessible bank of contribution related information, and:
Organize what yet needs to be created, and promote it to potentially willing contributors.The M&M Role as it has stood since creation, has been the one role most up to the task of completing these critical objectives. Perhaps due to the name, or pool of willing applicants; the role has been instead relegated to some kind of vault janitor. While I don’t understand why it had become this way, (due to vault admin tools not existing when the role was made) NOT doing the two tasks above has crippled FAF in a truly indescribable fashion.
To better explain this section of the proposal, it will be split into two relative sections:
Why this bank of information is required, and
How I will be able to manage the contributor base to more efficiently produce what is required for FAF.1. Our knowledge bank:
Hundreds of FAF contributors spend their time creating tutorials, guides on how to contribute, and other such educational resources for every aspect of FAF. However: this information isn’t placed in any feasible location so that other users may access it. This means that when another willing contributor decides it’s time to write a guide, they do not know what has already been covered. I try not to imagine how many times FAF has made the same guide over and over again.
With the wiki, blogging tools, the forums, and the various FAF discord servers as an interconnected suite, the councilor role should prevent this issue from occurring time and time again by properly cataloging and presenting what has already been created.
This benefits everyone in the community.
- Veteran contributors are not hounded with questions on how to do things if they’ve already been properly explained.
- New contributors are given the tools they need to meet their goals without wasting their time on trial and error.
- People looking to help the community do not waste their time repeating pre-established knowledge.
I would like for the wiki to be the start. Discord servers have always been terrible for accessibility, and a wiki is easy to edit, can help display what is still to-do, and doesn't require “inside knowledge” to locate.
But what is still “to-do?
2. Contributor project management.
Here are some random items that FAF requires help to complete, to help illustrate the point:- The forum is going to need a banner image and possibly a graphic on the footer - art assets.
- The Newshub constantly requires someone that can help create thumbnails,
- The Ladder team needs maps for TMM, and
- Nomads, SCTA, and the Ai Development teams will beg you to test their works and provide feedback.
Depending on how far “into the community” you are, you might barely know about two of those items. Just like how you don’t already know what has been done, the community needs someone capable of organizing what actually needs doing.
Feeding more information outward to potential contributors will give them the information they need to jump right into the project, without joining a server at random and flailing about until someone decides to direct them. It gives said contributors an end goal to work towards, and FAF is more easily able to locate contributors to fill niche roles that never get done.Adding to point 2 is a system about presenting what needs to be created to contributors and providing incentives towards their completion. Names for this system could be: FAF Contracting, FAF Bounty Hunters, FAF Bounty Boarding, etc.
Viewing what needs to be created on FAF is essentially looking at a bounty board. This system helps to elaborate on the requirements for each request by laying the information out in something not unlike a design brief.
Have you seen the mapping tournaments I (And FtXCommando) have created? They ask for something, offer a reward, and explain to you the nuances and technical requirements involved. They've been nothing but an absolute success for FAF, and this system aims to bring this method out from purely map creation, to the entirety of FAF proper.
When you see something that piques your interest as a contributor on this client; You’re immediately shown what is needed and if applicable: the reward for doing so. The higher the priority, the bigger the reward, the faster it gets done.
You’re told who to go for more information, who to hand off your work to so it gets integrated, and what to send them. If you’re one of the people who are using your work here to bolster your employment applications, completing these pseudo “design briefs” is a far better case for your professional ability than trying to compile an explanation in the dark.
Will this work for maps and mods as well? Of course. The ladder team is beyond able to articulate what niche maps are needed to fill out the pool, and if you’re starved for motivation, completing one of these basic tasks is an easy way to keep refining your skills.
I mentioned the FAF author vaults would be discussed in this section and it’s because completing tasks like these could net you access to the FAF author vault as a reward. Other rewards for completing this could be avatars, forum decorations if they’re added to the new forum, and other forms of compensation as well. This gives you actual reasons to make maps/mods/other content and to make it of an acceptable standard. We can’t possibly expect you to work for nothing here, and while other councilors might protest that “noone is motivated to do anything,” it is this councilors job to motivate you. I personally don’t believe that your creative contributions to this client should be left out in the cold and have advocated for this stance across multiple other councilor cycles. Maybe it’s time you actually got compensated for the work you put in?
Finally, I want to extend these suggestions to grunt work.
Grunt work can be defined as for example: testing new FAF systems, maps, new mod content, doing janitorial roles like being a vault moderator, etc. No matter how many times we advertise in chat, no one appears to help because they don’t benefit. When we gave users even a small avatar incentive to help test ICE in one instance, participation spiked. I want to continue this trend by including them in this system.So to sum up these three main points, You’re not going to lose the vault tab if you vote for this proposal, you’re instead getting systems that enhance your experience on the platform as a contributor, and you’ll be rewarded for helping FAF grow. You’re also getting a more professional admin system to properly handle the vaults we would be keeping in.
However as a bonus: I wanted to add an extra section at the end to “catch” things I had missed out of the flow of text here.
4. MAP/MOD VAULT PARITY: RE-ALIGNING FOCUS
The past couple of M&M Councilors have been almost entirely map focused. While I'm not the champion of modding some of you might dream for, I believe that mods are just as important to the game as maps, and wanted to use this role to rightfully extend FAF’s improvements to the mostly underdeveloped mod vault.
Such as the following:
- Provide tournaments for specific modding crafts, giving modders a chance to show off their skills.
- Properly articulate the rules for the mod vault because none exist, and implement the admin improvements stated in point 2 to here as well.
- Give a bit of attention to the mod vault UI. I’m not a fan of how it "uses" the space given.
- You see the space invader esque toast next to your name in the client? That’s generated from your name. It shouldn’t be hard to use that to generate a thumbnail for your mods if you didn't make one. This solves the terrible “half loaded” appearance of the mod vault.
- Asking for dev work is always a no-go in councilor applications but i’m partly responsible for the recent UI changes to the client as well as the incoming TMM system, (hello BlackYps) so I believe that making vault UI changes are possible.
Of course, mod related materials are also part of those due to improve in the systems i’ve outlined in point 3.
That’s all I have for you today.
Personally I think it’s time that FAF got someone to give their contributors the actual project management they need to really drive the project forward, and I think that the “Maps and Mods Councilor” was a role far too limited in scope.
Perhaps as the close of my proposal here, rename this role to the “Creative Councilor” instead?Please leave any questions for me to answer if you have them, pms are always acceptable.
biass. -
I like your vision, but you never really explained what the FAF author vaults are and how they should work.
I think one of the most important issues at the moment is how we can showcase and reward high quality map and mod work while also having minimal effort with curating that list of contributions.
I guess these FAF author vaults are your tool for this? Can you explain what you have in mind with these? -
@BlackYps There is some information on how that would work, end of point 3.
@biass said in 2020 M&M Election:
I mentioned the FAF author vaults would be discussed in this section and it’s because completing tasks like these could net you access to the FAF author vault as a reward. Other rewards for completing this could be avatars, forum decorations if they’re added to the new forum, and other forms of compensation as well. This gives you actual reasons to make maps/mods/other content and to make it of an acceptable standard. We can’t possibly expect you to work for nothing here, and while other councilors might protest that “noone is motivated to do anything,” it is this councilors job to motivate you. I personally don’t believe that your creative contributions to this client should be left out in the cold and have advocated for this stance across multiple other councilor cycles. Maybe it’s time you actually got compensated for the work you put in?
Finally, I want to extend these suggestions to grunt work.
Grunt work can be defined as for example: testing new FAF systems, maps, new mod content, doing janitorial roles like being a vault moderator, etc. No matter how many times we advertise in chat, no one appears to help because they don’t benefit. When we gave users even a small avatar incentive to help test ICE in one instance, participation spiked. I want to continue this trend by including them in this system.@biass said in 2020 M&M Election:
Personally I think it’s time that FAF got someone to give their contributors the actual project management they need to really drive the project forward, and I think that the “Maps and Mods Councilor” was a role far too limited in scope.
Perhaps as the close of my proposal here, rename this role to the “Creative Councilor” instead?I really agree with that last part. Thank you for this post and best of luck.
-
@Stealth9 said in 2020 M&M Election:
@BlackYps There is some information on how that would work, end of point 3.
@biass said in 2020 M&M Election:
I mentioned the FAF author vaults would be discussed in this section and it’s because completing tasks like these could net you access to the FAF author vault as a reward. Other rewards...
Maybe I am blind or too stupid, but this only mentions them and then goes on to other rewards. That's why I asked for an explanation on what the FAF author vaults actually are/do.
-
@BlackYps said in 2020 M&M Election:
That's why I asked for an explanation on what the FAF author vaults actually are/do.
Yes, the FAF author vaults are a concept that is made by Morax. He explains that here.
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/3/m-m-map-vault-plans-for-fall-2020-and-on
I don't have any special additions to what is a simple system. Especially because that relies on the implementation, and the availability of FAF's development resources.Just to re-iterate, Morax wants to add this curated vault and then remove the basic vault. I don't want to remove the basic vault.
@BlackYps said in 2020 M&M Election:
Can you explain what you have in mind with these?
Getting acknowledged as - and staying part of - an "exclusive group" is an incentive. You have a reason to make a good map/mod if you get something out of doing so.
-
I was told this would be a proposal, gentleman post, but instead all you did was claim I'm lazy and discuss my ideas being bad.
You could have been truthful to that and just propose your ideas, but instead you chose the "explain why morax is bad path."
Alright then, time to rewrite my post and show why you are full of it.
-
@Morax said in 2020 M&M Election:
I was told this would be a proposal, gentleman post, but instead all you did was claim I'm lazy and discuss my ideas being bad.
You could have been truthful to that and just propose your ideas, but instead you chose the "explain why morax is bad path."
Didn't really feel that way to me when I read his post. So not really sure where this is coming from.
Also I hope this won't become a shitshow of personal attacks, that last sentence doesn't bode well...
-
I would support biass' position here. Its not a perfect solution to the problems but its better than hiding all the maps. It is kinda hands off but whether thats a good thing awaits to be seen.
-
70% of maps are awful and should be purged,dunno why people keep defending them
-
@Vinyl117 said in 2020 M&M Election:
I would support biass' position here. Its not a perfect solution to the problems but its better than hiding all the maps. It is kinda hands off but whether thats a good thing awaits to be seen.
The issue with being hands on with constantly hiding vault content is that it's incredibly draining and time consuming, requires thankless gruntwork, and then doesnt provide any value because the maps just appear again. It's been a couple of councilor cycles already where it's just acted as a janitorial role until they eventually burned out of motivation. The community doesnt gain anything from the role if that happens, because being sick of hiding maps all day impacts your desire to work on other projects.
I want to spend the time working on solutions to the underlying problems rather than continuing to fight a battle that cannot be won.
Of course, not everything i've thought about ended up in the proposal. That's why I suggested that people spam me with questions. Thank you to the people who have done so already; I'm currently unwell and have plenty of time to allocate to answering them.
-
@Resistance Well Yes and No, First off you start purging maps you get a riot. Riots ain't helpful for anybody and not to mention the amount of effort it takes to clean the entire what? 10 Years of Maps on the vault, like that's insane. I support biass because biass will actually do the work and isn't going to bang his head on the wall as he said. He'll come up with good ideas to deal with these existing problems. The last Few M&M Councilors have been banging their heads for a long time so seeing something new is really what we need. I don't think we should have a full-on election because people don't really know what they are voting for, because nobody likes to read the forums or anything.
I know people like to rage and rant about Dual Gap and Astro Crater and I have my times where I do it too but on a serious note, its really not helpful and everyone how does it is literally just banging their head on this 20m thick wall of brick. This community has a massive majority who plays Dual Gap and Astro Crater. What are we going to? Remove 30% of the player base, because we personally don't like a certain map. We should leave our opinions out of this and look straight forward to improving the mapping ability, and etc. We let our opinions get the best of us when we should look at this not from our own perspective but from the perspective of "How we can improve FAF overall?" Removing Maps, Creating Riots, and Hating on a certain group of players who play these maps will not improve FAF, stop saying that it just doesn't. I do believe that listening to the community is a good thing but also a bad thing. There's a whole lot of bad ideas and some good ideas. I believe that Biass will at least ATTEMPT to listen to us even if we have horrific ideas at least he'll listen. I won't ask for anything else.
-
Morax said in 2020 M&M Election:
rewrite my post
Doing this is cheating.
@Resistance said in 2020 M&M Election:
70% of maps are awful and should be purged
In my opinion:
If you're talking about maps that are broken or have some other issues like bad versioning, they'll still be removed because they're still breaking the rules that remain in the system.
If you're talking about maps that are "bad" because of their low quality;
You want users to make "better content" which mostly entails devoting more and more hours into contributing to a client they may or may not be invested in. Doing so is ultimately thankless at this stage and they don't benefit from putting in those hours.
With that in mind, is it really such a mystery why people don't try and make their maps good? It's like when you used to ask devs to program new features for the client and they asked for money or made jokes about wanting a full time salary.
As I stated, It's up to the councilor role to motivate people into making better content. That's what I plan to do with it.
-
Are we still waiting for Moraxs' response/post??
Thanks
-
Yeah, it's pretty ResidentSleeper
-
Morax is this your application? https://forum.faforever.com/topic/3/m-m-map-vault-plans-for-fall-2020-and-on
-
nine2 said in 2020 M&M Election:
Morax is this your application?
That post is not the application.
Let me be very clear here.
We both have platforms written in advance to post here.
FtX was already given both of those to read over and approve.
FtX had approved both of the documents before making the thread.
These are the terms that we had both agreed upon.If Morax has:
- Waited for me to post first,
- And then rewrote his platform in an attempt to hardcounter mine.
Then he has cheated on this election process.
I don't care about needing to back up the statements i've made. I'm confident that I can do that.
I only care about a fair election process. This method of counterplay is inherently cheating the system and doesn't count as fair process.
-
Deal is off the table with the pre written proposals.
You screwed up and you know it. Blocking me on discord to disallow resolving matters privately proved to me you're not really willing to work things out.
I was never told you were going to post up, and ftx screwed up by not taking our proposals and sharing.
-
Just to keep honest, I wrote this up, so you will see something similar when I can actually finish it off:
Morax’s Maps & Modifications Councilor Application for 2020
FAF Community,
If you have not heard, it was requested that the vote for M&M councilor take place now. I have been the M&M councilor for the past years and for those who have not been here since the start, and are looking for some background, here is my original application back in late April / early May of 2019: https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17394&hilit=morax+councilor&start=50
The only reason I can think of why the election did not take place at the annual mark is due to the pandemic disrupting schedule, my lease ended and bought a home (was busy moving), and maybe because of a lack of interest in others having the vote? Regardless, it is taking place now.
For the most part, I am unchanged in most of my views, except in that I believe one major issue is at hand: the management of the vault showrooms. This includes both the mapping and modification ones, so pay attention to what I would like to do going forward:
Vault Management for Maps
Facts ( numbers are from Downlord Client as of 09/01/2020
There are 248 pages of maps in the vault at the moment of writing
This amounts to approximately 20 (number of maps shown on each page) by 98 pages for a total of 4,900+ uploads.
The first map uploads were not possible until 2.5 years into the existence of FAF (typical “Soon [
]” slow development capability!)Part of the responsibility of the FAF map and mod council is to decide how the community sees and has access to contributions from map and modification authors, and it is hardly ever a fun process: there are plenty of people that have no regard for others, they take others’ work without permission (call it their own), and in general a lot of quite unfinished work goes in.
Let us start by taking a look at the latter vault page:
https://i.imgur.com/fGwpUGD.png
Now let us look at the listings on what is currently page 1 in the client:
https://i.imgur.com/nNkweWj.png
In my observation, the average quality has not really improved by much, and therefore that is a problem. Per many requests, authors that spend a greater deal of time making something more interesting see their content “buried” by new uploads, and spare their creation ending up in the ladder pool, or advertised by the promotions council, they average # plays is abysmal: a low 10 or less. That is, not really, helping anyone get their work out to the community.To help demo maps that really show off what the game can do, we created the “M&M Top Picks” showroom that permanently keeps content created by authors who pour their heart into creations:
https://i.imgur.com/u89yg4Z.png
You can read about why it was made here to better understand its history: https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17820
Still, this did not really do much, and a lot of the community has still voiced - in my research - disdain for the level of content one finds in the vault. I don’t have good data here on this as it never was something I did, so your vote for myself or whomever runs against me will have to be based on whether you agree with me or not.
Long story short, I gave up on managing the vault recently after others did as well. With so little people managing FAF, it became apparent it is not the best focus; yet, we still do want to try and boost the quality of the additions. There are good maps and mods in the vaults, but one has to sift through pages upon pages to really find anything.
That is why, I would like to present the following idea to FAF:
First, see my original post here - https://forum.faforever.com/topic/3/m-m-map-vault-plans-for-fall-2020-and-on
Whitelist Vault System 2020 (and on) for Forged Alliance Forever:
The main showroom, what is known as “Most Recent” will become a whitelist showroomwhere authors are given permission, and unlimited access will be given.
CARE must be taken to keep to the vault rules and regulations as a author can be removed for multiple violations
One can become a whitelist author by applying for it, and show a few maps, with demos, to the M&M team to show they can at least grasp the basic rules.
Authors who ARE NOT on the whitelist STILL can upload to the vault!
A person who hosts their uploaded map can expect players that join to be able to see information and download the map
There is no blocking of content: anything will be allowed, regardless of whether it follows the rules (maybe spare egregiously broken ones, hacked)M&M team can work on other valuable pieces of content like tutorials, video reviews, learning new things themselves, and best of all: be a lot less stressed by people.
Will the author permission system be as strict as the M&M top picks list? Not even close… I simply want to dodge having entirely low-effort maps go into the vault and have to spend so much time chasing people around.
For reference (and this is not complete), here is a running list of authors I believe should be a part of the whitelist vault without question, starting Day 1:
Farmsletje
Mozart
biass
FTXCommando
Petric
svenni_badbwoi
Robustness
lilsidlil
Size
borgcubejanitor
MadMax
Jip
speed2
Exotic_Retard
keyser
Chosen
Saske_Kaske
Mikkz
This_Guy
CurrySmuggler
Box-
Lionhardt
Blodir
Tokyto_
Blue_Owl
CookieNoob
Krapougnak
Molotov
Marlo
lextoc
DesertWolf216
Raymorend
F-Odin
Sandokan
SoviertPride
Arhurt
MichaelRosen
Plasma_Wolf
Gingerbreadman
AchievedCheetah8
barmaleushko
StrangePotion
seero
Winged_Mind
Ajack
DeathWolf99
deGRONDDateNoob
MadCat
iBeaver
TheBestUsername
Hell
eptaceps
Snoop
Kiliax
Hellgich
Freedom
BRNKOINSANITY
Picco
silly_noob
Degulum
TheBlackWolf
EvanGalea
SiwaonaDaphnewen
Pl4t_
GrunttiNoob
seraw
Chipi
H-Master
Capricious
Wifi_
Montana
Warner-Valholl
Evildrew
Nequilich
Hawkei
ika_m
Bodabubdub
AwareIt is my hope that, if you take a look at the maps created by those people above, you will see it is not overly strict, nor condemning.
Other Thoughts:
It really blew my mind away how much time was spent being a “vault policeman” over other things as the FAF M&M councilor. I do realize, as I am getting more and more busy with work, that is more difficult to produce content and run the council. But I will remind people that, as a FAF council member, you only need to commit to a minimum time a week, which is believe it or not, 2 hours.
My goal with this proposal and application, is to get some headway on the project, and begin working on more advanced content assistance. The community does not have a lot of modifications nor authors, so that needs attention next. We work at the availability of software development time, so things are planned and often not executed for months, maybe a year or more.
If anyone has any questions about other matters not discussed here, or in my original application, feel free to inquire and I will respond in this post.
Morax
-
That isn't really my "official" reply to biass since he decided to basically take my idea and one up it... This is a complete mess since no one said "okay go post" and you put me on the clock when I'm not really available to finalize my post.
That's a real fair election in that no one said when we would do what.
I find it absurd to be reading "Morax is delaying" when both of you messed up:
Yup... https://imgur.com/gallery/dEeko3u
I'm not trying to start a war and cast stones at biass, but I'm also not going to let him ridicule my ideas and then get hasty with me. I took a long time to write my first m&m application for 2019 to now, and it made for a much clearer, and more in depth review of want I want to say.
-
@Morax said in 2020 M&M Election:
Deal is off the table with the pre written proposals.
You do not decide how this election works. You cannot change the plan at random to suit your needs and expect to get away with it.
@Morax said in 2020 M&M Election:
Blocking me on discord to disallow resolving matters privately proved to me you're not really willing to work things out.
You've spent the past couple of weeks, since the start of this scenario, flooding my private messages with abuse and vitriol. There is no attempts to resolve matters. You've been attempting to make it seem like I didn't have a chance, and trying to scare me away by threating to "expose" my "bs." This is not acceptable for a councilor or even for an adult. As I said to you when I finally - after weeks of getting pm'd with unsavory comments almost every single day - I don't have to deal with your abuse.
@Morax said in 2020 M&M Election:
I was never told you were going to post up, and ftx screwed up by not taking our proposals and sharing.
FtX messed up by not taking the finished proposals that you already sent to him, and agreed that it was finished by sending it to him and saying it was and posting them both at the same time.
I don't care if you post your thing and then reply to mine (as you post your proposal while I write this) but don't cheat.
