This page sets out the duties of the various user roles on the site. Users can hold multiple roles. If you are interested in seeing who hold these roles currently, consult the Staff page; for specific site permissions, consult Permissions.
Table of contents
Administrator
The site administrators are responsible for the overall maintenance of the site. They are responsible for ensuring the continued operation of the server and the software - including the site itself, the IRC Channel and its bot.
Administrators also have administrative access to the forums.
Senior staff
The senior staff roles are trusted users responsible for the operation of specific divisions of the site. They hold some administrative responsibilities and are responsible for the oversight of other staff members and contributors.
The senior staff collectively follow the Admin Guidelines.
These roles are typically not on an "ask" basis. They are picked on a need basis from existing staff members who have been helping TASVideos in a positive way for a long time.
Senior staff must be
- Reliable. They are expected to be regular contributors to TASVideos and over a significant period of time.
- Trustworthy. They are given access to a lot of power and sensitive information and must be trusted with this.
- Respected members of the community.
Seniors
The senior role is always assigned in conjunction with the judge role, the publisher role, or the ambassador role and effectively grants them oversight over judges, publishers, or ambassadors as appropriate. They are generally appointed from the ranks of experienced judges/publishers/ambassadors, and themselves have the authority to assign these roles to other users (assuming they have the privilege themselves).
In the case of conflicts between the audience, judges, or publishers, or of conflicting judge opinions, the senior judges/publishers have the final say.
Admin assistant
Admin assistants are responsible for most other aspects of the site that do not relate to the submission and publication process; they maintain the wiki, previous publications, and (in some cases) other aspects of the site database. They are entrusted with the ability to appoint new editors and are responsible for their oversight.
Candidates for admin assistants are experienced wiki editors, and have a broad knowledge of the site and its structure as a whole. Experience in SQL and database management (and possibly phpMyAdmin) is also desirable.
Staff
The site staff are on the forefront of the movie submission and publication process; they collectively handle a submission from when it first appears in the queue to when it appears on the front page.
Judge
Judges are members of the site experienced with the process of creating tool-assisted speedruns that have been entrusted with the responsibility of approving or rejecting movies that have been submitted. Judges are the people who decide which movie content ends up being present on the site.
Judges follow the Judge Guidelines.
Judges need:
- Experience with high-level TASing that involves diversity of skills and games and keen understanding of optimization.
- This is required to be able to spot sub-optimal play, suggest and check for obvious improvements, provide helpful insight on them.
- Since optimality is not an absolute value, TASing experience allows to distinguish between sloppy play and optimal play without demanding unreasonable efforts on making the movies unbeatable.
- Considerable gaming outlook allows to properly handle more games than focusing on just a few games or platforms does.
- Having a good eye on entertainment.
- We rely on the branching system and obsoletions, so it is important to understand what is happening in the game, how entertaining it is to the general audience, how similar different branches are, in order to properly structure obsoletion chains and new branches.
- Being a nice, active, and helpful member of the community.
- This includes being able to friendly communicate with people, ask and answer questions, clarify details, hear opinions out.
- As a team player, a judge should be ready to work together with other staff members, help with the daily grind, make sure their decisions are transparent and agreed upon.
- A whole lot of discussions between TASVideos members happen on the Discord channel, so it is required to be regularly present there.
- A TASVideos homepage will be assigned when a user is promoted to judge if one does not already exist.
- Being comfortable with speaking and reading in English helps to communicate productively and comprehensibly.
- Being ready to set up emulators of variety of systems.
- As the time goes by, more and more systems become TASable. It is important to know how to deal with their emulators, because more and more submissions of their games hit the queue.
- Some emulators have not been designed with user friendliness in mind, and some effort is required to replay movies on them. We do not want such exotic emulators to be neglected by judges.
- Proper understanding of all the rules, guidelines, and approaches that are applied to the movies being judged.
- Nothing in the rules should feel unexpected, unclear, unreasonable to a judge. Judging is not a lottery, it is a trial that should be reproducible regardless of participants. It should only depend on the initial conditions and how those are handled by the rules.
- Sometimes we have to deal with cases that uncover flaws or lack of clarity in the rules themselves. So while the current rules at the time of judgment should generally be enforced, sometimes it is needed to work on improving them prior to or after making the judging decision.
Publisher
Once a run has been accepted, publishers are responsible for assembling the materials necessary for the run to be widely accessible. In particular, they are responsible for approval of the high-quality video files that accompany any new publication; they also select screenshots and write movie descriptions for new movies.
Publishers follow the Publisher Guidelines, and are responsible for ensuring that videos conform to the Encoder Guidelines.
To be appointed a publisher, a user must have
- A thorough understanding of the Encoder Guidelines and familiarity with the Encoding Guide;
- An approved movie logo (Logo approval is at the discretion of the senior publisher or admin-level staff; for approval, a logo must meet requirements listed in the Encoder Guidelines - the logo history has some examples of approved logos);
- The ability to make encodes that meet the Encoder Guidelines and TASVideos quality standards;
- Movies encoded for at least three different platforms recently published[1] on TASVideos (to get an encode published you must get it into a publisher's hands; usually posting a mirror link (frequently on
archive.org[2]) in the submission topic is good enough criteria to achieve this, but not a guarantee if other encoders have also posted their encodes); - The ability to select and compress movie screenshots;
- The ability to write a basic movie description (or recruit assistance from editors to do so);
- The desire and willingness to publish movies at a consistent pace (it is not required to publish a large quantity of publications but they must happen somewhat regularly, i.e. going 6 months without attempting a publication is not acceptable);
- Good relations with the TASVideos community - as staff members, publishers are expected to be well-behaved and significant contributors to the community in general; and
- A TASVideos homepage, which will be assigned when a user is promoted to publisher if one does not already exist.
In essence, a publisher must not only be able to make quality encodes but also put together a quality publication, including a nice screenshot, movie description, and streaming media uploads. The goal here is quality over quantity - the image of TASVideos should be that a new publication is of a certain standard and is presented and promoted well.
Moderator
Moderators are responsible for keeping up moderation on the forums and live chats - keeping order, settling disputes between users, making sure that the site rules are upheld, and penalizing users that are disruptive or otherwise fail to adhere to the rules. They also have elevated wiki access and can delete pages.
Editors
An editor is any site member that has expressed an interest in maintaining the site text; they have the ability to edit the site content.
Editors follow the Editor Guidelines.
Encoders
The encoder role denotes one who has permission to add their own encodes to current and obsolete publications. They are capable of adhering to the Encoder Guidelines without oversight.
To be assigned the encoder role, an encoder must demonstrate to the satisfaction of the site staff (usually the senior publisher) that they are capable of consistently producing encodes that meet the encoding standards (around 3-4 to begin with is usually sufficient). Should an encoder subsequently demonstrate that they can no longer consistently adhere to the guidelines, an admin (again, usually the senior publisher) will remove the role until such a time as they can follow the standards.
See also
[1] In particular, your encode should be the first published primary encode for that movie.
[2] Please only upload an encode to archive.org after the run's accepted; if you're encoding a run before it's accepted, use mediafire or some other temporary file host in the meantime.