2 days and 23 hours was not enough time for the community to come to a decision on how to handle the most important issue that the MGS3 boards will ever face. The vote ran from Tuesday morning to Friday morning (US time) and didn't even break 3 days before the thread was locked. The vote was conducted in the middle of a work week, and if you didn't see it while you were in the middle of your work week then you simply don't get a say on the matter. When this issue was brought to Haus' attention, he replied saying that he has "been contemplating this decision since launch of mgs mc". I have been thinking about this issue since Master Collection came out, and I have been listening to other runners' opinions on the matter, and I still couldn't come to a conclusion before the thread was closed.

Additionally, there are numerous people who didn't even know that the vote was happening before it was closed; Beez only found out about it when he happened to overhear Speedy and I complaining that the vote was closed after less than three days. Likewise, Shard only learned about it just a few minutes ago when he overheard us complaining about the same thing. How many more people didn't even know the vote was happening?

Moreover, this was not a community decision. The decision on what to do with the boards was already made independently, and people were simply asked whether or not they agreed with the changes. Although people were offered the opportunity to suggest other options for how the board should be changed, none of the possible changes that were suggested were talked about in the SRDC Mods channel here in LC, and the board was changed exactly as Haus described the next day. Due to this, there is no reason to believe that any of the suggestions posted were seriously considered.

It is imperative for the health of the board that the boards are reverted to their previous state, runners are given the opportunity to discuss how the board should be changed going forward, and given a generous amount of time to vote on the issues.

What, exactly, I think should be done:

Revert the board exactly to its previous state. This includes removing the new boards.

Create a forum post dedicated to allowing runners to discuss potential board change possibilities. This thread should be open for 1 week before proceeding, and should be left open at least for the duration of the voting stage.

Hold a vote to determine how the board will be changed, with clear and concise multiple choice questions (when applicable) for each issue at hand. This vote should be open for 3 weeks.

Once the vote is concluded, total votes for each given option should be tallied and publicly posted by a moderator, at which point the winning options will be decided by a simple majority, or whichever option has the most votes, whichever is higher.

Execute the changes decided by the community.

As it stands, the poll that decided the ultimate fate of the board was not conducted in a way that gave runners the choice, consideration, information, or time to come to an informed conclusion about what should be done, and I think these changes would resolve that.

Additionally, shortly after writing this, I learned that existing runs on the original MGS3 board, now the HD Edition board, were rejected rather than just deleting the category. This is unacceptable.

Agreed, moved way too fast.

If people want a longer duration of voting, that's understandable. I don't think there's a point to reverting the change unless people vote down what exists right now. That creates more busy work if what exists now is agreed upon. Use archive.org to make a comparison to what existed previously.

I didn't get a chance to vote on the change, but it seems fine.

An unforeseen consequence of this change is I had problems even finding this page for a moment, because all the links in search engines to the leaderboards are broken for now. While this will get fixed with time, it’s making it harder to find at a time when the attention on this game is the highest it’s going to be, probably forever.

I can understand the short voting period when there's runs coming in. The mods probably felt under pressure to enact a change so they can begin verifying. Many votes for decisions have been as long or shorter than this.

I don't think we can have Loadless IGT when there's this many runners against it. We are talking about modifying the game. Most people who voted loadless IGT said they were happy with RTA loadless and still showing the legit scorescreen future proofs the board in case we want to change later. Everyone wins with it, so it's the obvious choice imo. I genuinely do not see a downside.

I'm fine with the overall board changes and think the mods have made the correct decision for the future of this board

Gl in the MC runnerz especially new people picking up this game for the first time. It's a great speedrun!

Ultimately I had no malintentions when I made the decision. Plus the thread was unlocked for yet another 24 hours after I posted my conclusion where I explicitly asked: any other thoughts, like the SS/MS thing.

I had support from many people when it came to the split and I knew that was the first big step forward. Merging everything back won't happen after multiple people have been 100% fine with it AS the games have had already been split just not on their own SRDC game.

The issue that the run history that SRDC provides seems to be broken is unfortunate. I made sure that every PS2 run including the obsolete ones have been posted with their original run date (and so was every run for the 3DS board posted with their original run date). A run that was made 17 years ago indeed was still listed as such. Including all comments that had been attached to runs.

The time method decision for MGS3 MC PC was cast as a leadership decision. People have been pro and con about manipulating IGT and I talked to the other mods and they were in line with let's rather do loadless RTA and not manipulate the internal game data.

We went through all official channels, the SRDC mods for MGS3 had been pinged in MGSR where all mods are located in, bringing Limecity into this has no place. It was posted in their #speedrunning channel to inform there, but ultimately the mods have been pinged in MGSR, not just once but multiple times indeed. The runners with their runner roles in MGSR have been pinged for this thread. Everyone that follows MGS3 gets a notification when a new thread is posted and comments get added to it. So if anything, I think there have been enough chances to find out there was a poll happening.

To me, people are running the game now, they're posting runs now. Letting that energy go to waste would be far more unfortunate in my opinion. So making changes quickly, moving forward is of higher priority. Ultimately this thread was started as "well didn't get to have my vote on the matter" and that is true. But when conversations have happened in public spaces beforehand where these ideas have found acceptance and agreements, the thread was running long enough. My Co-Mods also were fine with the findings, as I lined out my plan in the mod chat a day before I finally made the public SRDC thread post with the same content. There was also no negative feedback or voicing that the thread should run longer.

The game split is here to stay. Everything else we can further develop as we go.

The day after starting this thread, I polled runners on their opinions of how this board decision was handled, and runners overwhelmingly disapproved. I made a post in the announcements channel in Lime City, to which everyone was allowed to react with their votes. After an @everyone, dozens of runners responded and overwhelmingly agreed that the allotted time was not enough. Runners have had 11 days at this point to vote in the poll.

Here are the responses. Keep in mind that I was the one who posted all of the initial reactions, so the counts below only include my reactions when they are intended to count as a vote.

Were you aware that this vote was being conducted before it ended on November 10th?

13 responded 'Yes', 33 responded 'No', 0 responded 'No Opinion'

Would you have participated in the vote if you knew about it before it ended?

20 responded 'Yes', 18 responded 'No', 6 responded 'No Opinion'

Do you find the duration of the voting period (2 days, 22 hours, and 49 minutes) acceptable for a vote of this significance?

2 responded 'Yes', 41 responded 'No', 2 responded 'No Opinion'

I find it completely unacceptable that the moderation team is willing to look dead in the face at 41 runners who disagree with how the change was handled and not recognize their mistake. This mistake can be easily solved and all parties made happy by simply following the suggestions outlined in this post. Everyone will be happy, runners will feel included, and runners can submit their runs to a board in its optimal state.

Instead, a huge number of people are unhappy that their voices weren't allowed to be heard, and the moderation team is refusing to make this right. How is this acceptable?

How is this acceptable?

Because at the end of the day these mods don’t care and just want power. Hau5 takes 5 breaks a month from all the SRDC stuff yet is a mod on MULTIPLE games. Guys, we don’t need the same faces for every game. Some variety would be appreciated. Stop being egoists and either listen to the people you supposedly represent or be mods of a DEAD board. Have fun verifying runs from the same three people when everybody realizes this mod team doesn’t give AF.

And how dare Hau5 say “bringing Limecity into this has no place” when he POSTED THE THREAD IN LIMECITY, he just REFUSED to ping people there. The majority of good, popular runners were banned and discarded from MGSR by the likes of Plywood and others for reasons that even today fall flat on their face. Do I need to pull up the PDF where they claimed I was banned for my behavior in OTHER communities? Meanwhile Roy (a prominent figure in MGSR) has a Twitter bio that literally reads: “all mind turds are my own.” Rules for me, not for thee, eh?

Disgusting behavior from Hau5 and from the other mods for not stepping in and getting involved. If you’re not ready for these types of threads, you shouldn’t be mod, go be VERIFIER.

I've listened and taken to heart what everyone has been saying.

When it comes to Mods and Runners, communication is key and this something we failed at.

There have been mistakes we have made as moderators, and we are sorry to those who are unhappy with the board changes.

The influx of runs and potential new runners were so abundant, and we were excited to see the MGS3 leaderboards finally popping off for the first time in a very very long time. It seemed like everyone who was actively participating in the discussion were fully with a game change idea, so we decided to expedite a decision.

It's been about 3 weeks since the boards have been put up and there have been so many people submitting runs. The activity is something I've dreamed about for this game ever since I started running in 2021. It is a shame that some people are not happy with the decision that we made, and I apologize if you think I ignored your complaints/did not take your ideas to heart, because it is something I definitely did. At the end of the day, the boards are more active than it's ever been and halting this would ruin the experience for newer runners and for those that have been eager to submit their runs. I truly appreciate Major's post, and I know he is someone who cares dearly for the past present and future of this game. His ideas are something I can completely understand and it's out of concern for those who did not participate in the thread.

Moving forward, we will not be reverting the boards back to the previous state, but we will do better to ensure that everyone's voices will be heard for future decisions. MGS3 runs have changed my life and I only want what is best for this community of runners.

This thread will be locked, but if you have any complaints or ideas for future changes, you can directly DM me on SRDC or Discord. I will take every single idea and thought into consideration.

I thank you so much for reading and I hope to see everyone continue running MGS3!