Problems with the Queues

[Ircher]

I mean, May is final times and w/ the number of college students here, the forum tends to slow at this pt of the year.

[Ircher]

I think one major trend I've been seeing here lately is that a problem has to be brought up to the attention of the administration and other staff before anything actually happens for the better. Like for the scummies for instance; I highly doubt they would have gone to the trouble they ended up doing until Radiant made their thread.

[Ircher]

I think one thing that needs to be done for all queues(other than newbie or normal) is that
1. games are supposed to be balanced( unless they are themed games with a warning upon signups)
2. all games should be reviewed by at least one suitable person who accepted the version as good
3. moderators AND reviewers get punished for games that objectively did not meet their promises or were unannouncedly imbalanced.

No, this is a bad suggestion.

1) Not all games are meant to be balanced. I can agree though that a public warning is probably a good thing though.
2) The Large Theme Queue already does this, but the number of reviewers that actually consider balance to a large extent probably isn't many. The Normal Queue also mandates balance and normalcy checks, which is good.
3) This is the part of the suggestion that is bad; how would you define "objectively did not meet their promises?" Have you balanced role madness games before? Have you balanced special mechanics before? Have you balanced bastard games before? Have you balanced large games before? Have you ever balanced a very swingy game before?

Have you ever played a swingy game before?

Neither reviewers nor the moderators should be punished for having an unbalanced game, at least not on the moderation/administration side of things; players can punish the moderator or reviewer by not signing up for games by that mod or not signing up for games reviewed by that reviewer. Reviewers work on a volunteer basis, and as it is, there are not that many reviewers (especially good ones). If you make it where the reviewer can be punished for "doing a bad job" (which is really hard to define objectively, especially if the decision is in the hands of the players), potential reviewers are going to be less inclined to try for that very reason.

[Ircher]

I think the number of active players in the player base was the primary issue. I never participated in the Blitz Queue trial, but I think the logic was that due to the speed of the Blitz Queue, it was taking a large number of players away from the other queues, and that was considered an issue.

[Ircher]

make all public mechanics normal, merge the open and normal queues

Meh, I think the newbie queue and open queue attract the same kind of players whereas the normal queue attracts different kinds of players. Besides, even public mechanics aside, some games run in the open queue probably do not follow the Normal Guidelines, so.....

That said, combining the Newbie and Open Queue may not be a good idea because of the purpose of the newbie queue, but I still think that would be a better change than combining the normal and open queues.

[Ircher]

Isn't part of the problem that we have too many queues as-is, and there is not enough moderators (and players) around in general? Making new queues will compound that problem.

[Ircher]

I think the delay in getting permission to start is because of two things: 1) The listmod needs to verify the player list and 2) I don't think some of the listmods update the queue as much on the weekends, which I think is understandable.

[Ircher]

More marathon weekends? Sounds great to me!

That's a very good analysis churros.