Scummies Ideas, Suggestions and Comments Thread

[Amrun]

I would like the best role claim back. It's fun - it's fun to judge, and it's fun to read about it. I have not seen ANY good reason why it should go.

Just because we don't have an award for EVERY area of play is no reason not to have an award for ONE area of play that the userbase likes and appreciates.

[Amrun]

^ Second this entirely.

[Amrun]

I would be okay with something like "Best Single Game Performance" to really highlight someone's roleclaim if they did well, or some kind of "this one awesome event/funny sequence of events" award to make up for it. I do think claiming is too narrow, and if we're going to have an award for claiming, we'd need to take a look at breaking down "good play" into several different minutiae and do a lot of things.

I would probably be okay with this is a compromise. I still prefer the Best Claim scummy to survive, but... If I can't have that, I'll take this.

[Amrun]

My worry is that if it's a direct nomination that we'll really weaken and water down the Paragon and Don Corleone award and vice versa.

Best Claim wouldn't cut into either of those in the same way. Your worry would be moot.

[Amrun]

But I don't agree that any of the things you listed before were problems.

[Amrun]

Yeah, best gambit definitely a bad idea.

[Amrun]

Hm. I'm actually coming around to KK's award. Sort of a 'most memorable moment thing' and judge it based on that? It's really no more subjective than something like 'Most Enjoyable' which is one of the most popular categories.

I do like this.


I also like handing out a Golden Fedora every year.

[Amrun]

I also like handing out a Golden Fedora every year.

Ehhhhno. I feel like doing this would just lessen the "value" of getting a Golden Fedora. If someone does something to earn it, then yes, but let's not just give something out for the sake of giving it out.

Well, I don't mean if no one has earned it...

[Amrun]

mith, Mr. Flay, Kison, for starters.

[Amrun]

They got to be admins for a reason.

I don't suggest JUST giving it to them, but I do think they deserve it, and that's just off-hand. I think others deserve it but would probably need more thought/discussion/research first.

[Amrun]

I don't think you deserve them for being admins. I think you deserve them for dedication to the site.

And you in particular, Mr. Flay, for making really interesting games with new mechanics and not only affecting the site through the administration side (which is very important) but also through the mafia side.

Agar, I think there are enough people who deserve it that we wouldn't run out.

[Amrun]

+5 Kison.

Nominate Kison for Green Fedora

[Amrun]

I don't think you deserve them for being admins. I think you deserve them for dedication to the site.

And you in particular, Mr. Flay, for making really interesting games with new mechanics and not only affecting the site through the administration side (which is very important) but also through the mafia side.

I appreciate your confidence, but my Mafia stuff can be nominated for any number of 'regular' awards. Fedora "stuff" by its very nature tends to be outside the purview of the usual... and in my opinion, the codework of Kison and chamber is the only thing that qualifies of late. It took me an embarassingly long time to step up to what needed done in mith's absence, and almost all of the features recently are theirs. I'm by nature slightly more visible, but...

The codework of Kison is why I mentioned him. You contribute - don't downplay yourself. You contribute in a different way than Kison.

I also thought of chamber. He was in mind when I said people I'd need to research, etc.

KISON Y U MAKE ME LAFF SO HARD AT WORK

Anywho, Golden Fedora: Retirement present / lifetime achievement award seems fitting to me. Like, I can think of a couple non-admins who might be considered for one a couple years down the line if they keep going like they have been, so it's not like it will only go to admins (IMO). However, I do think that your typical Golden Fedora person maybe will have been a listmod or something similar at some point, just because the type of person who's going to contribute enough and be respected enough to get a Golden Fedora is going to be the same type of person who volunteers to do important jobs on-site anyway.

Yeah, quadz is following how I was thinking.

[Amrun]

Well that was sort of the idea, you know, like. We start with the obvious people who deserve it, and that will take up several years, and by the time people like you would be up, it would be several years down the line.

I'm just saying, I thought of you!

[Amrun]

I like the idea. It could encourage more active Dead QTs and that's only a good thing.

[Amrun]

No, I don't think so.

Why not?

[Amrun]

I actually think a move towards objectivity and away from popularity contest would be a great thing for the scummies, but not sure how to accomplish this. So, in short, I agree with TSQ.

[Amrun]

I think it's a lot of work to ask mods to submit every game. I wouldn't mind doing something similar, though. For example, I recently suggested we break down "judging periods" into every three months instead of biannually. What if, when we did those three month blocks of judging, we got a list of all games run during those three months and PMed all the mods, asking them if they felt any of the players or moments in the game were award-worthy?

Three-month blocks is so much easier. I was a scummies judge this year and it was soooooooooo hard to read everything the way it should be read.

[Amrun]

You're not going to find an objective rating system that rates Mafia play.

Sure, you can have objective criteria, and you can consider good play, but the two things are mutually exclusive. Mafia depends too much on the set-up, the teammates and the opponents to objectively separate one player's play from the other players' play. The Elo rating system already has a bunch of problems although this is probably one of the most widely-studied rating systems, and the set-up is always the same, and there are only two players.

In the end, it will always boil down to subjective ratings and awards (or objective ratings and awards that have absolutely nothing to do with actual good Mafia play).

To reduce the nomination problem, I propose introducing "little awards".

After every game, the mod has to reveal all game information. Then, an MVP vote will be held. Every player gets one vote, the mod gets three votes (in small games) or five votes (in large games). If one player gets more than two-thirds of the votes, they'll be named MVP, and automatically be nominated for a Scummy. The MVP awards could be displayed in a microbadge-like fashion in the user box next to posts.

This would solve several problems at once:
- Some mods forget to share game information with the town at the end. Under the new system, this would be mandated by the list mod and lead to a temporary mod blacklisting if not executed.
- The larger possibility of winning an MVP award as opposed to a Scummie is a bigger incentive to actually play well.
- Players would be reminded that there is a Scummies nomination possibility, and be more inclined to nominate.

The site I started on used to have this, and it really motivated players to try hard and rack up MVP awards. Only good play got awarded, so there was really no downside.

This is how we did it:

-The mod either just decided who was MVP and Honorable Mentions, if any.

-The mod let the playerlist decide by itself via votes.

-The mod narrowed it down and let everyone else pick the player.

I have to say that it was a LITTLE more objective, allowing the players themselves to pick, there rather than here because those games averaged fifty players all the way up to 120.

[Amrun]

I've found that with less prestigious awards, underdogs are actually more popular. And then, once they have a lot of those awards - voi la, recognition. Just my personal experience.

[Amrun]

Some years, the 'award' has gone to both the mod and the players (as a good game really is a group effort), but only the mod got the image.

This seems like a pretty fair compromise.

Also like Reck's idea, but on combination with this.