Whelp, it's been a wild year and a half since I took over as M&M:
In the past days I learned a lot, got to know people working on projects that will bring some interesting fun to the community, and have given thought on how to handle better presenting that.
First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who have helped me over this time and given me a chance to show what I can do as M&M councilor. It went pretty well: helping hands, a big boost in tutorials and wealth of knowledge, a death threat - pretty exciting stuff.
Plans for the mapping vault are going to be as follows:
WE ARE MOVING TO A WHITELIST VAULT SYSTEM
What this means:
People can still upload to the vault, but there will be no "showroom" when users go to the vault section in the client.
One can still find their map by searching
One can still host their map and others can download it
Why is this happening?
To answer that question, let me explain what the "Most Recent" vault showroom for maps is meant to do: it is a place where mappers can get their content seen and distributed by users of the client service - that's it!
What we found is the following: maps, aside from ladder / remakes of popular ones like canis river, are seeing an average of 10 or less overall plays over the course of a year. That is pretty staggering at how poorly the vault is "helping" people distribute their content.
So why a "whitelist" vault?
After years of talking to community members about "why do you download and play a certain map," it was in general because someone hosted it and they saw it in the game tab; the map was actually quite good and was showcased in the news or by a caster/streamer; and etc
When asked "why not play maps in the vault" the resounding reasoning was "because it's full of (insert random word that means 'garbage')
To me, that reinforces that the vault content is frowned upon and it becomes laborious to have to search through page after page, until something remotely "good" shows up.
The whitelist vault is going to be a system where people demonstrate they can create content that meets the minimum rules of the community; it will not be nearly as strict as the "M&M Top Picks" list, so don't be fearful you cannot get access.
How to be given access to the vault?
Good question, and there will be an application process made. I am thinking a sample of 3 maps uploaded to the vault with replays that the M&M team can review to see it meets the rules.
After that, the author will be given unlimited access, so long as they keep abiding to the rules of the vault.
Final Words
I understand this in general not going to be liked, but I myself am tired of being a "vault policeman," and the community is definitely more engaged in expressing quality annoyances of maps and modifications.
My real passion is to lead by example by making tutorial videos, guides, maps and mods myself along with other M&M folks. It doesn't make sense to me for the council position to feel more like a moderator then a content creator.
If anyone has any strong feelings about this, please state so, and present some damn good evidence if you think what I stated here is not the case.