Looking at the first thread for this, it might be a bit clear or get muddled, so I wanted to make these clearer, as well as allow a point of discussion in case people disagree. I'll leave the first post clear of my thoughts so this can be edited as need be.

1. Box art should be the first NA release box art unless it never had US release.

2 ) No background images or changes to the general look of speedrun.com.

3. Categories should be complete. Any% is usually not a category for SMT - ending and difficulty should be preferred over vague terms.

4. Any category without a run should be marked as misc if not outright deleted.

5. Games should not be created until there is a completed run. (Older boards may have been created before this rule was in place)

When I made these, here were my reasonings. If there are any problems or talking points on any of these, let me know.

1. [box art] This gives the most consistent look to the series, while keeping the games as recognizable as possible. US release is generally the one that people will recognize looking at this as an English speaking site. USA release is also usually the first English release, since Atlus has no European publishing arm. Where this isn't applicable, obviously, the JP box art is more than fine.

2. [backgrounds/color] This is admittedly something that people probably may disagree with. Here is my reasoning. First, I think that the website looks very clean as it is, and adding or changing it clashes with the basic design philosophy of a website. Second, adding a large picture has issues when loaded on mobile phones (admittedly an area that the website lacks in), as well as different screen resolutions. While 1080p is "standard", browser window sizes change, many laptops still only have 1336x786 screens, and 4K is not necessarily uncommon. Third, there's no way to standardize this across games, nor a way to definitively say which picture should be used. Lastly, on anything but the fastest fiber connection, there's that slow line going in the background as the page loads. It's not major, but I'd like for somebody's first impression of the leaderboard if they stumble upon it to not wonder about the design of the page. That said, I'm open to opinions on this, if anybody disagrees.

3. [categories] I think this is pretty self explanatory? I'm part of the group that doesn't like stuff like "Hard%", so again, there's maybe some bias here, but stating the difficulty and ending is imo the best option. That said, this does come down somewhat to what the runners of the game decide - this was written for stuff like Persona 3 FES where the categories were initially "The Journey" and "The Answer", the former of which was not a complete category.

4. I don't like seeing a ton of empty leaderboards, since they distract from runs that have been completed. At the end of the day, when people search "_ speedrun" and go to the leaderboard page, they should see a list of completed PBs, rather than do digging or wonder why the categories are there in the first place if nobody runs them. I know that the site says empty, but using the misc tab to hide them takes things one step further. I personally am not sure that theoretical categories need to be created at all, but that's the fairest compromise between the ideologies I can think of. If a run is done of a new category and the runner isn't a mod, it can be submitted with a comment detailing the new category, and the mod can take care of the rest.

5. This falls under similar jurisdictions as number 4, so everything there still applies. As an additional component however, I don't like it when boards have mods that either don't run the game or have approval from the runners themselves - this usually just muddies up the leaderboard situation. If the runners themselves don't want to maintain the leaderboards, that's fine, but usually, having a community work together to moderate the games the run is the best option. On completion, just request the game and submit the run. If you don't want to moderate the game, let me or somebody know.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. I am open if anybody or a specific games community wants to deviate and talks about it, either here or elsewhere, but I'd really prefer that we all stick to the same look and feel.

Guess I'll say something about categories.

I agree that stuff like "hard%" are bad and should just be "hard mode" or something similar. Any% on the other hand should be a thing. If you're beating the game as fast as possible without restrictions, like P4G very easy bad end, then just call it any%. There is literally no reason to not call it that and any% is very widely known term in speedrunning.

And when you call something any%, make sure that it actually IS any%. You look at the P1 board you have any% snow queen which has both bad end and true end. I wouldn't put true end under any%. NEVER. While technically not wrong since you do beat the game BUT you are adding restrictions, which any% should never have. Like having a Snow Queen main category with any% and true end would be much better imo (assuming bad end is what you get when you speed through the game).

Should say I agree with category name specifying difficulty and ending when out of any% zone. This may have been pointless rambling but whatever.

Right, I agree on the any% thing - the only reason I brought it up there was that it doesn't feel all that applicable for a lot of games (DDS being the main exception I can think of). I'd still prefer Very Easy Bad End for P4G instead of any%, but I won't debate it if the runner wants to call it any% since I'm probably never going to actually do that run.

Good point though on P1, I'll message and ask about that. I'm not going to overly press it though, since I'm not nearly as familiar with the game.