I'd like to present our first of likely many major proposals, based on
ikuyo's "TASVideos must die" manifesto. If you haven't read that thread yet, please do so!
Three years ago, we
held a long discussion about our old Vault system, where we had originally intended to expand it past any% and 100% runs, but we ended up
completely revamping the old tiered system of publications as a result.
One of the major things that prompted the tier revamp was the staff, particularly the Judges, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the process of judging a run's entertainment value. Prior to the revamp, we had effectively divided the entire site into "runs deemed worth watching" and "runs nobody should watch because they're boring", which by itself wasn't a good look, but combined with the fact that it complicated judging, especially for runs that received little to no feedback to begin with, it meant we could only ever come off as a bunch of elitists that judged peoples' efforts based on nothing more than the games they chose, and we would punish them for it. This sentiment was growing across the community as well: People didn't really want there to be a clear entertainment divide anymore.
Not long after the tier revamp,
we started drafting what would become known as Playground, which aimed to catch any and every quality run that didn't qualify under the new Standard/Alternative system. If a run didn't qualify as a Standard category, and wasn't deemed entertaining enough to become an Alternative category, it would instead go to Playground, where it would still have a notable place on the site, but it wouldn't undergo the usual publication process.
Now, tell me if that system sounds familiar. If you're thinking "Wait, didn't you all just re-introduce the entertainment divide?", you're correct! We absolutely hecked it! We were so cauight up in the idea of PG needing to be its own thing that we completely overlooked the fact that all we really did was shift the goalposts again, I believe. Entertainment used to determine if the run was published at all, then it was used to determine whether your run was categorized as watchable or not, and now it's still used to determine whether or not your creativity is watchable or not. Sure, we made improvements to the older systems, but they're clearly not working, as there have still been problems with even the current system.
So how do we fix that, exactly? The answer is simple: Instead of shifting the goalposts, we take them away entirely.
We're proposing the elimination of entertainment as a judgement metric by combining Playground into Alternative.
A brief explanation for how we want this to work: Any run that is currently in Playground or that could go to Playground, i.e a wide majority of non-standard categories, would instead be published to Alternative regardless of audience feedback or perceived entertainment level. There are still some types of runs that would remain in the current Playground, mainly individual level (IL) runs and runs that we cannot sync and thus cannot publish, but in the future we will eventually be able to account for those runs on the site in some way. In other words, there will still be some curation, but only on technical levels and only out of current necessity.
Now, if you've read ikuyo's thread, you might be wondering how publishing more runs is going to help us keep up with the growing submission influx. Judging is definitely going to be easier, as we no longer need to wait for feedback that might never come and determine whether or not it's "good enough", but the publishing team is going to have to keep up with more runs. We have a solution for that as well, and it might sound a little insane given our 20 year history: Deferring encodes. That is, runs will still get
a publication entry, but they may not immediately get an official encode on the YouTube channel. There will most likely be a temporary encode from the author or another user in its place until the publication/encoding team is able to get around to creating an official one. This likely won't be noticeable in lower traffic times, as all accepted runs will be getting encoded and published as normal. In high traffic times, this means the Publishers will simply shift focus to standard categories, as they're much more frequently submitted, but that focus will not prevent any Alternative run from being published and showcased on the site itself.
One hidden, but INCREDIBLY MAJOR benefit to adopting this system is that we barely have to add any new site infrastructure for it. Playground implementation was scarce for as long as it was because we never had a concrete, agreed-upon plan for how to implement it. Combining it with Alternative, however, means that we can just use the current publication system, which already has pretty much everything anyone could want out of a showcase system. One thing we would definitely add though is a couple of front page modules dedicated to the expanded Alternative class: We're thinking of having the most recently published Alt runs and a set of random runs, much in the same way we have a box for random Star movies.
All that being said, however, we want to know what you think about this proposal. Does it work as is? Does anything need to be changed? Are there any further suggestions on what we can do or how we can organize things? For a quick summary/recap:
- Entertainment will no longer be used as a judgement metric across the entire site
- Current and future Playground runs and branches will be merged into Alternative
- The combined category will continue to be known as Alternative
- Playground will still exist as a way to catch runs that still do not qualify, though this will be for technical reasons
- Alternative runs may not immediately receive encodes, but they will be published nonetheless, likely with temp encodes
One thing I'd like to ask is to not discuss
what categories go where, yet, i.e questions like "How are you going to handle ILs?". That is absolutely a discussion we will have in the future (especially ILs, I really want ILs, I really want Trackmania ILs please holy hell watch some Trackmania TASes if you haven't already they are incredible), but for now I'd like to specifically keep this discussion focused on the actual merging of Playground into Alternative. There will be other plans, other proposals, other things we're going to do, but right now this is not only a pretty big oversight that needs fixing, but an oversight that we can fix pretty much the moment it's agreed upon.
I haven't had a lot of free time lately (and I'm deeply sorry about that), but I'll try and check in on this thread as often as I can. Other staff will definitely be around, though.
