Forum

by **Bones2484** on Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:42 pm

We had some good ideas in the other thread and it's time to split that discussion off into a new thread to get it better focused.

There is some concern about "flooding" the Create/Join forum with numerous tournaments which makes it harder for players to find tournaments they want to play in, and harder for new organizers to have their tournaments found.

Some of the options that were thrown out to help combat this include:
- Limiting the amount of new tournaments that can be made by one organizer (yet they can run as many as they want, provided all are being statused)
- Creating sub-forums based on the type of tournament (ie: 1v1, Free-for-all, Team, Other)
- Using "tags" in tournament names to distinguish what type of tournament is being created

I've been asked to make sure that this discussion stays on topic and focused. Let's please refrain from trolling or flaming. Remember, this discussion is to help the tournament community as a whole. So please let us know your thoughts in a civil and coherent manner.

by **Bones2484** on Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:47 pm

Personally, I am in favor of the sub-forum idea.

While I do think limiting the amount of tournaments a TO can have waiting for players is a good idea, it's obvious that many people have a concern about placing limitations on people who want to have fun serving the community... which is a perfectly reasonable concern. I only would hope that TO's refrain from making more and more tournaments if they are responsible themselves for delaying the progress of a tournament that they are already running.

As for the sub-forums, I think it would help organize the forum into areas that would make it very easy to locate a tournament that sounds good to each and every user. It would be best to keep it as simple as possible so we don't have a forum entitled "3v3-Manual-No Cards-Foggy-Sequential".

Someone suggested just having tags for "1v1", "Free-for-all", "Team", and "Other". Which I think would be perfect.

Usually when I head to the Create/Join forum I have something in mind that I want to look for. If I'm in the mood for a quick 1v1 tournament I'd know exactly where to go in this case.

If the sub-forum can be used in conjunction with title tags, then I'd be even more in favor. But obviously that would come down to whether people use them or not. It would make it easy on tournament players to go into the "Team" forum and see something like this in the title: "Tournament Super Fun! (3v3, Foggy)"... and you wouldn't be surprised to see a 3v3 foggy style tournament inside.

by **Dako** on Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:40 pm

Seems like there are not much of FFA tourney - why not merge them with Other?

I like an idea if sub-forums that will be a great addition to CC.
Singles
Team
Other

We can always change it later if we see some problems separating them or handling them.

by **mgconstruction** on Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:52 pm

I agree with this as a said in the other thread. Sub forums would be a great idea.

by **Night Strike** on Fri Jan 08, 2010 11:59 pm

Where would you put them? You could structure them as sub-forums of the Create/Join A Tournament Forum, but then you'd be using sub-forums of sub-forums as main forums, which just gets confusing.

by **denominator** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:01 am

Okay, lots going on here. Keep in mind that I am a tourney player only, and have never actually organized a tournament.

First of all, I think that organizers should only be allowed to have one tournament in the Create/Join a tournament forum at a time (special exceptions detailed below). This ensures that there won't be a flood of "the same" type of tournaments at the same time, as well as guaranteeing that all tournament organizers will be more committed to each tournament.

*Special exceptions being for franchises where there are multiple tournaments feeding into a larger one. This must be given out by TDs.

Secondly, I am not in favour of sub forums. For people like me, who join tournaments of all kinds, this just gets awkward and I fear tourneys will get lost in some forums without as much traffic (teams will get far less traffic than singles, for example). I would rather see some sort of format put in place for the title, just to the extent that you have to have one of a selection of tags in [] brackets (1v1, quads, singles, etc...) and the number of entrants in () brackets (19/25, etc....).

This would also be a good time to implement a "form" for tournaments, but again I am not in favour. I think the rules should say "you must have the following info in your first post: XXX, YYY, ZZZ, etc." Leave it up to the TO how to organize it.

That's my thoughts. It was hard to keep it neutral and not bring in examples.

by **SuicidalSnowman** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:16 am

I think we, as TO's, should start titling our topics in a sort of standard way.

For example, we could say "Taking Signs Ups! 5man/auto/seq/chain/fog/ass/esc" and give people a better idea.

But I do sort of like the idea of better organizing, or having a better way to set them off. When you open the forum, just seeing "Snowman's Crazy Madness Tournament!" you have no idea what you are getting.

As for one tournament at a time, I think, at least for new TO's, this should be mandatory. You should have to successfully finish one before starting more.

But as I have said in some other threads, I also worry about bending the rules for some well established TOs, because then who keeps this in check. Right now the tournament rules are easy to understand and non-discriminatory in any way.

by **Kinnison** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:33 am

Subforums would be a bit of a problem, as NightStrike noted. But it might be tolerable. What do you do to organizers who create threads in the main area? or the wrong area?
(oh, and I'd have broken it down into: 1v1, Singles, Teams, Other/Combinations ... most leagues and ladders would belong in the last category, even though many are 1v1 based)

Tags would be nice, but I don't see making the hurdle any higher for first-time tournament organizers, making them figure out what mandatory label their tournament falls into.

And one tournament in signups at a time seems harsh to those who DO run the short quick-fill tournaments.

The event that precipitated this was an unusual concentration of threads by 2 TOs... even though they've been making them for a while, for THAT MANY to congregate at once seems to have been unprecedented. So thinking about ways to deal with it is fine, in case it should happen again. But I'm not sure any drastic action needs to be taken at this time.

Some TOs can run a bunch of tourneys at once and never drop a game... some can't finish one. That's why we have the warning system now in place. The real concern is having first-time TOs get lost in the shuffle, or LARGE tournaments have difficulty filling for the same reason.

How about combining the solutions: have 2 sub-forums in the Create/Join Area. Don't let threads be created there, some mod or TD would need to move them there.

One for people who have NEVER organized a tournament before. Not 'tried and abandonded', or 'first one is still running'... One for genuine new Tourney Organizers. It should be fairly simple to generate a list of who has had Tournament Privileges before...

One other for tournaments that some difficulty is expected in getting them to fill. Probably large tournaments... or maybe just the complex/longer ones. I'm not sure WHAT should go in there right now, honestly...

This could be a way to flag the two tourney types that there seems to be the most concern over having them 'get lost'.

Opinions?

by **denominator** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 2:43 am

Kinnison wrote:Subforums would be a bit of a problem, as NightStrike noted. But it might be tolerable. What do you do to organizers who create threads in the main area? or the wrong area?
(oh, and I'd have broken it down into: 1v1, Singles, Teams, Other/Combinations ... most leagues and ladders would belong in the last category, even though many are 1v1 based)

Agreed. That would be a moderating nightmare, and we'd end up with ghost threads all over the place in all the subforums as tournaments move to their proper place.

The other way to avoid that is to make it so that threads have to be approved by a moderator before being posted. This should be possible as this is a phpBB based site.

Kinnison wrote:And one tournament in signups at a time seems harsh to those who DO run the short quick-fill tournaments.

In theory, they should fill even faster than they currently do. There will still be no limit on the number of tournaments anyone can have ongoing, just how many can be started at once (I agree 1 is fairly harsh, 2 is certainly doable).

Kinnison wrote:How about combining the solutions: have 2 sub-forums in the Create/Join Area. Don't let threads be created there, some mod or TD would need to move them there.

One for people who have NEVER organized a tournament before. Not 'tried and abandonded', or 'first one is still running'... One for genuine new Tourney Organizers. It should be fairly simple to generate a list of who has had Tournament Privileges before...

I'm not a fan of this. I suspect that it will make it very, very difficult to fill tournaments run by new organizers. Why would I want to join a tourney from an untried individual when I could easily just join one from someone who's proven themselves? This already exists, but segregating the two simply compounds the problem.

by **Kinnison** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 3:17 am

denominator wrote:
Kinnison wrote:How about combining the solutions: have 2 sub-forums in the Create/Join Area. Don't let threads be created there, some mod or TD would need to move them there.

One for people who have NEVER organized a tournament before. Not 'tried and abandonded', or 'first one is still running'... One for genuine new Tourney Organizers. It should be fairly simple to generate a list of who has had Tournament Privileges before...

I'm not a fan of this. I suspect that it will make it very, very difficult to fill tournaments run by new organizers. Why would I want to join a tourney from an untried individual when I could easily just join one from someone who's proven themselves? This already exists, but segregating the two simply compounds the problem.

Hmmm. I hadn't thought of it that way. I was thinking the TOs would play in the new folks tournaments... both from a mentor standpoint, and for ideas... you never know what a new viewpoint will bring.

But you have a point.

by **Dako** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 8:02 am

Night Strike wrote:Where would you put them? You could structure them as sub-forums of the Create/Join A Tournament Forum, but then you'd be using sub-forums of sub-forums as main forums, which just gets confusing.

Don't list them on the front page - only have them as sub-forums of Join/Create. And also, as people said, create mod policy that only approved thread are visible - move them to proper forums and see how nice and shine new layout will be.

Also, this might require more people to handle - but it just means one more guy in the gold ranks to help you out

.

by **barterer2002** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 10:52 am

Dako wrote:Seems like there are not much of FFA tourney - why not merge them with Other?

I like an idea if sub-forums that will be a great addition to CC.
Singles
Team
Other

We can always change it later if we see some problems separating them or handling them.

See part of my thing here Dako would be that I think that 1v1 and should be different. There is a plethoria of 1v1 tourneys up consistently and I think they should be split out from the 4 player 5 player etc type of tournaments. Actually what I really want to split out are the 1v1 bracket style tournaments. These are popular and should be continued but they can clearly overwhelm the forum while other 1v1 formats such as Bring it On! or Risk would go over in the singles forum.

by **barterer2002** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 10:57 am

As far as the tags go there are two ways this could be handled.

1). The TO has to use his description (title) space to make the description which generally means that there won't be as much room for a title. I'm not as in favor of this.

2). new tech created by someone who knows what they're doing (not me) to give TOs a few choices to click on (much like the ratings system) like 1v1, singles, doubles, triples, quads, mixed effort, esc, flat, no card, nuclear, manual, automatic etc and then these tags can display directly below the title page. This would mean we could have fewer tournaments per page but the description on them would be much better.

by **HighlanderAttack** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 11:07 am

The thing I would like to see is once you have read about a tourney, you have the ability to make it read so you don't have to go back into it.

I know it turns grey after you read it but that is only until someone posts in it again.

That is all I have to say and I am done with this topic.

by **Jace22** on Sat Jan 09, 2010 11:38 am

I agree that tags seem like a good idea, lets players know the general type of tournament they are getting into without having to read the more specific description. However I don't know how this could be accomplished. Maybe like Bart said and add the tag beneath the tournament, making less tournaments per page. Another suggestion for after privs are given out could be the ability to mass produce games so it is easier and less time-consuming to produce games for the bigger tournaments. This isn't my suggestion, just something I've seen around the forums