The 2018 Scummies Community Poll

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The 2018 Scummies Community Poll

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Sat Jun 09, 2018 5:58 am

Post by Scummies »

Hear ye, hear ye!


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Following irregularities with this past year's Scummies celebration and awards, the Scummies Steering Committee has been renewed and expanded, and now consists of the List Mods as well as ten members-at-large. The new SSC has been meeting with great vigor, and over the last month has had more discussion than any previous SSC had in the course of an entire year.

The members of the SSC are eager to revitalize and modernize the Scummies, bringing this hallowed institution into a new era. We are largely on the same page, regarding the Scummies as a fixture of MafiaScum culture, an important annual touchstone in which we may honor the most talented among us and celebrate one another's accomplishments. Among the proposals enjoying near-universal agreement is a desire to bring the presentation ceremony back, and revisit the nature of certain awards. We are hard at work hammering out improvements and streamlining the judging process, and hope to announce the first of these changes in the coming weeks.

For now, however, the Committee is interested to hear the ideas and feedback of the members of the larger MafiaScum community, that we might better serve your interests. Please participate in the poll below and provide your ideas on what you would like to see. If you have concerns or comments you wish to keep private, please PM the Scummies account.



A few key provisos:

+ First, this poll and thread is intended to be suggestions only. As the Scummies Steering Committee is advisory to its Chair and the administrators, so too is this request for feedback. We may take into account some, all, or none of the ideas presented here to advocate to the Chair.

+ Second, this thread
is not for discussion.
We are not looking to incite a back-and-forth, nor hear users argue with one another. We want to hear your ideas, not incivility. If this gets out of hand, this thread may be locked and closed.

+ Third, the vast bulk of proposed changes the SSC are working on will not take effect until the 2019 Scummies season. We are nearly half of the way through 2018, and any changes to the current structure will of necessity be minor. Please keep this in mind.

We thank you for your feedback, and trust you, the users, to remain positive in your comments.

The 2018 Scummies Steering Committee
Chairperson: xRECKONERx
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Sat Jun 09, 2018 3:55 pm

Post by Scummies »

To clarify the "big awards vs small or technical awards" questions.

The Scummies are in part modeled after various real-life award shows. These shows have a few major awards, with numerous other, less glamorous awards given for achievement in very specific categories.

Using the Oscars as an example, "big awards" would be Best Picture, Best Actor/Actress, or Best Director. These would be (more or less directly) analogous to Game of the Year, Paragon, Don Corleone, and Modfather. As for technical awards, the Oscars have awards for writing, editing, music and so forth. The moderator category is replete with these, featuring technical achievements in setup/design, writing, and mechanics.

Also, this thread is unlocked for a reason. Feel free to voice your ideas publicly if you like. The admonition in the previous post is mainly to provide a framework for talking about a divisive issue.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Sat Jun 09, 2018 10:15 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

"Have you ever been nominated for an award?" is a mandatory question, but there's no "I don't know" or the like as one of the possible answers, meaning I can't answer this poll truthfully.

Ever since Scummies nominations were moved out from mafiascum.net to an external site, I haven't looked at them. Seeing them on egosearch was the only thing that reminded me of them. (Even as it is, not being able to get a text version of the makes them hard to check.) In general, I'd expect over 90% of Scummies nominees to have no idea that the nomination had been made.

There are several other questions on the poll which require people to be highly engaged with the Scummies to be able to give a useful/truthful answer. As a result, I suspect that this poll, as currently designed, is not going to be particularly helpful at getting information from a broad cross-section of the site population; people will either have to be
very
enfranchised with the Scummies at the moment (which would bias the results in its own way), or else to make some of the answers up. So I'd suggest that you redesign the poll (or at least make the vast majority of questions optional), while it's been up for short enough a time that you don't lose much data, to avoid getting low-quality / unusable results.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:04 am

Post by Pine »

Some of the meta questions we're looking to get data on have specifically to do with "How engaged are people," "How visible are the Scummies," and "How well do people understand the process." You're right, though, having an "I don't know" option would be useful on some of the questions. That was an oversight, as "I don't know" is extremely useful data for answering those meta questions.

The Scummies nomination thread remains a thing, and roughly 2/3 of all submitted nominations (based on quick tabulation from 2017/18) get discussed in the nominations thread.

You say the poll should be redesigned. Aside from adding "I don't know" options, what substantive changes would make it better?
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:00 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I think "don't know" options are all it really needs. I wasn't really talking about a major redesign, just fixing the shortcomings that are likely to produce bad data.
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:17 am

Post by Alisae »

If you don’t know say neutral.
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:20 am

Post by Alisae »

Also, if you don’t know if you were nominated by something, you either
A. Probably weren’t
B. If you were, then you have no friends to tell you about it.
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:22 am

Post by Alisae »

Like either
A. Figure it out for yourself if you were nommed
B. Ask someone who knows or could look into it.
The nominations threads ARE archived on the scummies wiki pages last time I checked, so its something we can look into extremely easily.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 9:46 am

Post by Nexus »

In post 6, Alisae wrote:Also, if you don’t know if you were nominated by something, you either
A. Probably weren’t
B. If you were, then you have no friends to tell you about it.
In post 7, Alisae wrote:Like either
A. Figure it out for yourself if you were nommed
B. Ask someone who knows or could look into it.
The nominations threads ARE archived on the scummies wiki pages last time I checked, so its something we can look into extremely easily.
This is coming across as needlessly hostile.
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 9:57 am

Post by mastina »

In post 2, callforjudgement wrote:Ever since Scummies nominations were moved out from mafiascum.net to an external site, I haven't looked at them. Seeing them on egosearch was the only thing that reminded me of them. (Even as it is, not being able to get a text version of the makes them hard to check.) In general, I'd expect over 90% of Scummies nominees to have no idea that the nomination had been made.
The nominations being moved to an external site has a bunch of utilities which made the tradeoff overall worth it I'd say (I wouldn't be able to name them all off the top of my head but I'm sure a list of reasons we do it that way now could easily be compiled), but it
was
in fact a tradeoff; some valuable aspects were lost, including (but not limited to):
  • Transparency of the process (seeing nominations in-thread is more visible to scummers than the sometimes-buggy method utilized to display them in the Scummies OP)
  • Ease of the process for the nominator (it's easier to make a nomination on-site than to go off-site)
  • Ease of the process for discussing the nomination
  • Exposure of the nomination
  • Willingness to provide seconds/thirds/nths of a prior nomination (which can expose judges to alternative perspectives that strengthen a nomination)
  • Ease of access to reasons for an anti-nom (you can't anti-nom a nomination you don't know exists in the first place)
Probably more than that, too, but you get the idea.

I'd say the process we have right now is a
reasonable
compromise: we use the form for the official nominations, and can post duplicate versions of the nomination in the thread itself, just with said post being the unofficial version of the official nomination. However, while I would indeed say it's a reasonable compromise, 'reasonable' is definitely not "perfect", nor is it even "as good as we can get". I agree that we could probably tweak the process.

One thing which would be
really
neat but which I acknowledge won't happen because it'd require coding to do and thus is basically out of the question is if the Scummies could have the best of both worlds: record the nominations in much the way they are (be it onsite of offsite), publicly display nominations in much the same way they are...
...But have nominations be in the Scummies thread and through some form of automated parser, recorded without the need for human input into said records.

I'm probably not wording that as well as I could, but I think it conveys the idea which WOULD be awesome if we could actually have it happen:
Nominations would be
recorded
in the same way they currently are, such that judges can access the information in the same way they currently can access the information. (Or even better.) Maybe handled on-site, maybe handled off-site, doesn't matter.
Said nominations would be displayed in the public display much the same way as the current public display function works, where people can see who was nominated, for what award, what game, and by whom. (More or less.)
Yet people could just post their nominations into the scummies thread, for all to see, no need to go off-site and no need for a duplicate nomination, done once and that's it.

But as I said. That sort of functionality--while I imagine is easily
theoretically
possible from a coding standpoint--requires the effort to actually code it which I don't think is something we'd actually have someone do.



A potential
actual
thing we could do is make the nomination form optional rather than mandatory, and to elect a single individual who has access to the nominations (i.e. a member of the SSC*) volunteer to manually parse nominations in the scummies thread that specifically don't already have an accompanying nomination.

What I mean by this is.
If someone submits just the form, that's valid.
If someone submits the form and also posts a nomination in-thread, the member of the SSC doesn't input the in-thread nomination into the form because they know it was already inputted into the form.
If someone doesn't submit the form but does post a nomination in-thread, the member of the SSC that volunteered* for the task inputs the in-thread nomination into the form as to make sure it is counted.

This would keep the form as the official method, but allow for people to more freely and easily post their nominations.

It'd still be an imperfect method filled with flaws (I honestly don't see any perfect option; even my hypothetical proposed parser/automated method would itself be imperfect), but it might alleviate some of this. Worth bringing up as an option at the very least.

*And by 'member of the SSC that volunteered', I mean "In all probability, this is a task that I could and would handle"; what I mean by this is, getting a volunteer isn't a problem with this proposal since you have at least one in the form of me since I believe I could handle it.
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Sun Jun 10, 2018 12:08 pm

Post by Alisae »

In post 8, Nexus wrote:
In post 6, Alisae wrote:Also, if you don’t know if you were nominated by something, you either
A. Probably weren’t
B. If you were, then you have no friends to tell you about it.
In post 7, Alisae wrote:Like either
A. Figure it out for yourself if you were nommed
B. Ask someone who knows or could look into it.
The nominations threads ARE archived on the scummies wiki pages last time I checked, so its something we can look into extremely easily.
This is coming across as needlessly hostile.
it's unintentional
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Mon Jun 11, 2018 4:06 am

Post by Psyche »

In post 9, mastina wrote:
In post 2, callforjudgement wrote:Ever since Scummies nominations were moved out from mafiascum.net to an external site, I haven't looked at them. Seeing them on egosearch was the only thing that reminded me of them. (Even as it is, not being able to get a text version of the makes them hard to check.) In general, I'd expect over 90% of Scummies nominees to have no idea that the nomination had been made.
The nominations being moved to an external site has a bunch of utilities which made the tradeoff overall worth it I'd say (I wouldn't be able to name them all off the top of my head but I'm sure a list of reasons we do it that way now could easily be compiled), but it
was
in fact a tradeoff; some valuable aspects were lost, including (but not limited to):
  • Transparency of the process (seeing nominations in-thread is more visible to scummers than the sometimes-buggy method utilized to display them in the Scummies OP)
  • Ease of the process for the nominator (it's easier to make a nomination on-site than to go off-site)
  • Ease of the process for discussing the nomination
  • Exposure of the nomination
  • Willingness to provide seconds/thirds/nths of a prior nomination (which can expose judges to alternative perspectives that strengthen a nomination)
  • Ease of access to reasons for an anti-nom (you can't anti-nom a nomination you don't know exists in the first place)
Probably more than that, too, but you get the idea.

I'd say the process we have right now is a
reasonable
compromise: we use the form for the official nominations, and can post duplicate versions of the nomination in the thread itself, just with said post being the unofficial version of the official nomination. However, while I would indeed say it's a reasonable compromise, 'reasonable' is definitely not "perfect", nor is it even "as good as we can get". I agree that we could probably tweak the process.

One thing which would be
really
neat but which I acknowledge won't happen because it'd require coding to do and thus is basically out of the question is if the Scummies could have the best of both worlds: record the nominations in much the way they are (be it onsite of offsite), publicly display nominations in much the same way they are...
...But have nominations be in the Scummies thread and through some form of automated parser, recorded without the need for human input into said records.

I'm probably not wording that as well as I could, but I think it conveys the idea which WOULD be awesome if we could actually have it happen:
Nominations would be
recorded
in the same way they currently are, such that judges can access the information in the same way they currently can access the information. (Or even better.) Maybe handled on-site, maybe handled off-site, doesn't matter.
Said nominations would be displayed in the public display much the same way as the current public display function works, where people can see who was nominated, for what award, what game, and by whom. (More or less.)
Yet people could just post their nominations into the scummies thread, for all to see, no need to go off-site and no need for a duplicate nomination, done once and that's it.

But as I said. That sort of functionality--while I imagine is easily
theoretically
possible from a coding standpoint--requires the effort to actually code it which I don't think is something we'd actually have someone do.



A potential
actual
thing we could do is make the nomination form optional rather than mandatory, and to elect a single individual who has access to the nominations (i.e. a member of the SSC*) volunteer to manually parse nominations in the scummies thread that specifically don't already have an accompanying nomination.

What I mean by this is.
If someone submits just the form, that's valid.
If someone submits the form and also posts a nomination in-thread, the member of the SSC doesn't input the in-thread nomination into the form because they know it was already inputted into the form.
If someone doesn't submit the form but does post a nomination in-thread, the member of the SSC that volunteered* for the task inputs the in-thread nomination into the form as to make sure it is counted.

This would keep the form as the official method, but allow for people to more freely and easily post their nominations.

It'd still be an imperfect method filled with flaws (I honestly don't see any perfect option; even my hypothetical proposed parser/automated method would itself be imperfect), but it might alleviate some of this. Worth bringing up as an option at the very least.

*And by 'member of the SSC that volunteered', I mean "In all probability, this is a task that I could and would handle"; what I mean by this is, getting a volunteer isn't a problem with this proposal since you have at least one in the form of me since I believe I could handle it.
ere are some things I could volunteer to do for you guys:
- I can very quickly code something really similar to my personality profiler notebook many of you SSC types have used that simultaneously stores SSC noms in whatever spreadsheet you guys are using and posts them to the Nominations thread with proper formatting by the nomming user in one clean submit.

- I can quickly code something really similar to my personality profiler notebook many of you SSC types have used that scrapes the posts in the Nomination thread matches the required nomination formatting and puts them into the spreadsheet you guys use

- I can code something else. All of this stuff is easy to do and I have the time to do it. I can make something that's easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to share that also does everything you need it to. Just let me know! Seriously!

The profiler I'm talking about is linked to in my sig if you don't know what I'm talking about. The kind of thing discussed in your post would be easier to implement than that. I can get it to you by the end of the day. Just send me some official indication to do it.

And seriously if there's anything else around the site that might benefit from a similar tool, let me know! My Modbot thread has been all about making these kinds of tools super easy to generate.
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Mon Jun 11, 2018 4:16 am

Post by Psyche »

I want to say again that I think you guys do too many things behind closed doors. It's inefficient (this problem with nominations that Mastina wallposted about could've been handled ages ago if discussion were open enough), it creates the appearance that you're slow and unresponsive, and it detracts from proper recognition of the hard work you do. I get that judging needs to occur privately, but so much of what you guys do shouldn't be.
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:20 pm

Post by xRECKONERx »

there's value to having less cooks in the kitchen tbh

and we literally accepted every person who applied to be in the SSC this year so like, everyone who showed interest in doing work is already in the conversation
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:02 am

Post by Psyche »

i disagree but anyway yeah let me code ur shit
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:39 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

@psyche if you want to write a scraper for us we would be down

i like the idea of returning the nomination thread to a discussion thread; it just became a pain to sift through and grab new nominations manually
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:53 am

Post by Psyche »

wheee
yes ok i’ll send you a pm soon with some initial plans
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 3:00 am

Post by zoraster »

Discussion thread scraping would be nice as engagement with the scummies is increased. It was a pain to do manually, but mostly it was that no matter who we brought in, the scummies thread eventually grew out of date -- often by months. An automatic scraper and poster would make that problem go away.

The biggest thing that the nomination form does outside keeping the nominations up to date in real time is that it makes sure that information that helps judges a lot is provided. The nominations with links to the game, descriptions for why, etc. are all provided in an easy to read way for judges. And at least when I did my judging, I use the nominations as my starting point. In the past, people would nominate games without links to the game, without describing why they are nominating, etc. If we can figure out a way to make sure that people still provide this information and the scraper picks up on it, all the better.

I certainly didn't create my form and the accompanying byzantine spreadsheet because it's the theoretical best way to go about it.
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Post Post #18 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 7:13 am

Post by Psyche »

i can add functionality to the scraper that notifies people either in thread or via pm that they need to do the whole form
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Post Post #19 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 7:13 am

Post by Psyche »

ugh i can't edit posts im taking this talk to the other thread
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Post Post #20 (ISO) » Thu Jun 21, 2018 12:48 pm

Post by mastina »

Shouldn't this thread be in MD anyway?
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