Original Pastebin created by desa3579: https://pastebin.com/Y4m63wMW

Give this a read, lots of people in the community agree lately that there needs to be more done in terms of active moderation on certain boards.

Freely discuss and share your thoughts here, keep it civil <3

This is the part that stuck out to me the most, "I have gotten confirmation that even in the moderators discord none of the 7 (KH1) or 10 (KH2) mods have even mentioned this topic in response to the message."

That's preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty bad. It's probably time for a shakeup with the kh2 mods. I'm sure I'll be accused of bias for saying this, but I think the best candidate to mod kh2 is BigSid. He knows every category inside and out, he probably already watches every run that gets submitted, and there isn't anyone in the community who helps new runners and answers questions as much as he does, not even close. Maybe there used to be, and I'm not insulting anyone who used to be super helpful, I'm just stating the fact that as of right now Sid is probably the best resource for running kh2. So if he wants that responsibility, he's the guy.

Hi, just wanted to mention here after I had in the discord. The mod team are looking at the stuff that Desa posted today and having discussions about it and how to move forward. As Paopu said, feel free to discuss and state your thoughts so we can have a greater understanding of the views of the community.

An update will be posted soon hopefully!

• Jel

1. 1-2 days for a run to be verified is pretty fast imo. I don’t know how it is for the other KH games since I'm not a mod for them, but for me, I try to check speedrun.com for runs every other day. Though I have a pretty packed schedule (I work full time, try to be active on speedrunning, and other daily things I deal with), so verifying runs isn’t the first of my priorities (but hey, I try). For KH2 specifically, because of the splicing incident with Moon last year, runs need to be carefully verified. Expecting runs to be verified immediately is just entitlement. I don't know what's "acceptable" in terms of how fast a mod should verify a run, but if this is the expectation of how fast a run should be verified, then I would say many of us aren’t cut out to be leaderboard mods https://imgur.com/a/Lgxm2GD (this is InsertLogic’s previous WR 2:53:20 Any% Beginner Run)

2. I won’t deny inactivity of other mods verifying runs or just in general, but this isn’t the only responsibility that mods have. Logistics such as updating the ruleset or determining new categories is also done. How often the latter is done or made public is another conversation.

3. Fair point, I don’t agree with keeping people who had huge influence in the community in the past, but aren’t active atm.

4. I don’t necessarily agree with x person can only mod a game they’ve run and are knowledgeable of. For me, I don’t consider myself knowledgeable in KH3 despite doing runs when the game released, but apparently I’m a KH3 mod (which I never asked for btw).

5. I never really liked using Discord as a medium for “lb talk” since I’m sure not everyone checks discord all the time (at least I don’t), and a lot of discussion gets lost as time passes. This results in a lot of miscommunication which leads to situations such as right now. For issues like the timer rule, Saiyanz did make a forum post about it, but I guess the KH2 rules weren’t updated to represent that. I’ll say that’s on us, and I fixed it myself, however, I wish one of the KH2 mods were pinged, DM’s, or even better, made a forum post on the kh2 speedrun forum, rather than straight up saying “that the mods don’t care.” Nothing good comes out of calling out people without approaching the people individually.

6. I was perfectly fine with the merge itself since I suggested this a while back for 2FM, but I do wish there were more people involved in it in the early stages. It definitely seemed like a solo project for Saiyanz, so communication seemed really bleak, but that may because of a difference of time zones for the mods. Though props on him for doing a lot of work on it, and I know a few other mods chipped in to help out in the end process of it.

7. I’m fine with this change, but discussion of changes in general usually die out pretty quickly since not much communication happens.

8. This is dumb and no runner should be obligated to submit their runs. I can see where Desa is coming from, but this has nothing to do with being a leaderboard mod (which this whole pastebin is about) and this is more of a personal issue.

9. Kind of touched on it a little on 5. I’ve verified a few runs without timers, so I didn’t know this wasn’t clear at all since I assumed Saiyanz’s post was sufficient. But I guess the rules not being updated was the issue, and like I said before, I wish the mods were more directly contacted to resolve the issue since I was not aware of it until recently.

10. I agree on this. This is definitely the biggest catalyst on everything and it goes hand in hand with communication with the community and amongst the mod team itself. Amongst the lb mods, stuff like the KH2 CE, I wasn’t really on board about, but the lb page was made without proper discussion. In addition, stuff like “what determines if a category is added to these boards?” were never discussed enough or at all, so whenever someone discusses a potential new category, there’s always a grey area on this since the former was never discussed coherently. For my personal opinion, I don’t like creating new categories out of individual people’s interest. I’m open to new categories, but only if there is FOR SURE going to be multiple runners and some longevity. The KH1CE board definitely has some runs in it, but it’s depressing at the same time seeing all those “empty” tabs on it and it makes me wonder why were these created in the first place.

11. This could happen to anyone. I see no reason to individually call out Sonic on this. Remember the whole speedrun.com site was affected, not just the KH lb’s. It’s unfortunate that this happened, but fortunately the admins of the website were able to resolve the issue quickly.

I have a lot more to say (and I probably forgot to mention other things), but for the sake of time, these are my initial thoughts. To me, this whole situation seems like a redux of what happened during the last reformation of the lb mods. The people (including myself) that stepped in at that time temporarily solved the issue, but it ended up going full circle in the end (and here we are). Because of this, I’ll be stepping down as a KH2 leaderboard mod since obviously I feel like I won’t meet the criteria the community has of the leaderboard mods, and IRL for me has been busy for me lately (and will be busier later in the year) so I guess this is good timing for me to do this since I’ve been thinking about it for awhile anyways.

There’s definitely change that is needed for our community, and if people want to step up, I wish them the best of luck and hopefully the issues presented can be resolved.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond Crispy. One of your primary responses to Desa is "you should have contacted the person x directly" but from everything I've seen/read today it sounds like whenever he TRIES to talk to the mods about something, he is either ignored or gets weak non-answers or a "we'll look into it" or "we're discussing it" or something like that. At a certain point, calling people out is really the only option because nothing was getting done for the months Desa spent trying to "do it the right way." If he had brought one of those issues to you in private, you would have (totally honestly and with good intentions) said you'd talk about it with the other mods, and then it would have died when they didn't respond in discord.

Responding to Jel, "The mod team are looking at the stuff that Desa posted today and having discussions about it and how to move forward." Did they completely miss the entire thing about TRANSPARENCY? Why can't they have discussions on these forums like the rest of us? Why don't they respond publicly?

@KBM, we are responding publicly as well as in private. The thing is some of these issues aren't as simple as "yeah that's my fault." I could literally paste my entire comment word for word from the mod discord if you'd like, but ultimately there's a lot of discussion amongst us as well because moderation isn't as simple as "Cool, submitted video? I'm verifying it" and a lot of us have personal lives which make it hard to be constantly present. At the moment, only six mods have actually gone point through point addressing each thing raised by Desa as Crispy did above. But we're trying to communicate while also not leaving you guys with a whole lot of no-context information on what's been discussed in the past. Also, a lot of the discussion happens in the discord, not the forums - whether that's for better or for worse is up to the individual, as, for instance, I spend more time on discord, but Crispy spends more time on the forums.

I feel bad for Crispy's step down. However, I agree with KBM. Being unbiased, BigSid119 is very educated on the game and it's categories and would be a perfect mod. He is knowledgeable, reasonable and will put the community before himself. I believe he is a mod that can really benefit the KH2 community. If Sid doesn't wish to become a mod then i'll be more than happy to step up and become mod. I will NOT use my times as my main talking point and i'll be more than happy to learn miscellaneous categorises i'm not familiar with to become more educated. With that being said, I am fully aware of the process and will accept any fair decision that is made.

I hope this process isn't rushed, we obviously need to come to a strong conclusion and commit to it, but that means for the best I don't want a solution to be rushed in half a day. If so, what if most people were upset with it, miscommunication issues happened again, and it had to be looked into once more? I know it's frustrating currently to wait for some of our PB's to be verified, but I'd prefer for this to be handled with care but still decisiveness. It's personally fine to me that mods are saying they're currently looking into it because it takes some time, we clearly do not want to be waiting for weeks but I'm praying this isn't going to be sloppily put together to calm down current discussion about it and to just get it out of the way. By the way, I mentioned that because in the discord it was said a solution/proposal would be shown in around 12 hours or something, maybe I misunderstood. Also I don't see any bias in pointing out people who currently know a lot about the game, do more than one category and have shown interest in it. People need to be heard so we don't miss out on those who really want to be involved. Even if it's suggesting someone else, etc.

My response:

https://pastebin.com/vCTHq6Jy

Just want to say that I agree with the overall conclusion that gamebrain posted. The communication and transparency is something we appear to agree on that is of concern, so that is something imo that we should prioritise dealing with.

As for a minor update, just wanted to say that neraigo has quit as a lb mod so with crispy and neraigo leaving, kh2 will need to be addressed.

Anyway, I'll be posting my thoughts and potential suggestions tomorrow morning.

People know how I feel on this topic so I’m not going to beat a dead horse that I laid out a year ago.

Instead, I’ll point out a couple things I disagree with in Desa’s pastebin:

1. 1-2 days is NOT unacceptable and many game would kill to have that level of response. KH games are long-ish, they take time to verify and assuming the mods are doing their due diligence and actually watching runs, then verification can take time. Anything up to a week is fine, more than that, and a gentle reminder might be in order unlesss it’s a really long run.

2. Nobody is under any obligation to submit to the LBs, if someone doesn’t want their run on the LB, that’s their choice. Additionally, mods shouldn’t submit runs on behalf of anyone. I don’t submit to various LBs including KH for a variety of reasons, and I’d be pretty pissed if someone added my runs without my permission. However, this topic has been hotly debated on this site and people will never fully agree with it. It’s a topic that everyone has a side on.

3. A brief comment on Gamebrain’s response: no, legacy mods are not fine. Mod is not a title of honor, it’s a job. If you don’t do your job, you lose your job. Granted, this is a job for your spare time, so if people need time away to handle IRL, that’s fine and happens. But at the same time, you need to occasionally do something, you can’t just do nothing for years and expect to still be a mod. There’s no shame in stepping down if someone doesn’t have time, but you cant just leave inactive mods all over the place. It creates clutter and makes no sense.

That’s all I really have to say. I either don’t have an opinion on the other stuff or I’ve said my feelings on it before.

I love this community, watching it grow from a couple dozen people in a Tesmspeak to where it is now was incredible and it’s amazing to see the progress in the games and the community through marathons, GDQ, and milestone runs. I’ve been vocal and passionate about speaking up about these things in the past because I see the stuff that people have issues with and I want to see the best for this community and these LBs.

I still believe this community is going through growing pains with this kinda stuff, and I hope that we can iron it out and make everything as good as we all want it to be.

As a side note, as the one who addressed this topic a year ago, I can say it’s definitely better now than before, even if there are still problems. We have some dedicated mods who always strive to do what they can for the LBs. Saiyanz has always tried to enhance the boards and the community, and Gamebrain, Rebel and Jel have done excellent work since coming on board. And there are older mods like Sonic and Draz who have always done great (if I didn’t mention your name, I don’t think you’ve done bad, I just named the first few that popped in my head. Others have done amazing work too). So, like I said, we still have stuff to iron out but we’re getting there.

I don't see 1-2 days as unacceptable myself either. A week is pushing it unless it's some kinda plat run imo. People do have things going on IRL but it shouldn't take over a week to verify something, and some mods havent signed in for months apparently due to desa's paste.

I know I'm very new and my opinion may not hold any weight in this but I agree that legacy mods shouldn't be a thing. You should still have interest in verifying runs and contributing, I agree with Timmiluvs that it's a job and you should earn it. Some people enjoy watching runs and would really like the chance to be moderating and contributing, so if legacy mods take up that space that doesn't make much sense to me. This whole discussion about is about activity, inactivity, verification, etc.

Also idk why this is a thing but people should not have to submit if they don't want to.

That's where I stand

Hi, releasing this to the public in here now. This is a suggestion I put forward towards the mods for how to move forward. Any opinions and suggestions would be great. I believe that other methods are being looked at but ofc would love to hear feedback so we can gauge the community's feeling on this.

https://pastebin.com/kprrNFEq

One brief thing about Series mods because this was a critical piece to my proposal a year ago and I think there was some confusion on what I meant. I want to reiterate it and try to maybe clarify how I see it.

KH should have 1-2 series mods at most and no more. I think the role of a series mod has been confused as the community has grown. For large series like Zelda for example, a Series mod only exists for the purpose of adding games to the series and setting up the beginnings of a moderation team on new games. That’s it. They should have no other role than that and they should only be mod on games they actually plan on moderating.

What KH needs is more Super Mods. Super Mods on games have the ability to add new mods (which is their only ability over regular mods). Right now, I think the only super mods are the series mods which is why they exist on every game. This is backwards. The series mods should be appointing a couple super mods on each game so they can handle the moderation team on the game going forward. That’s what KH needs more of. For a long time the series mods were the only ones who had this power, and I think dividing up this power got confused in my original proposal of this and led to where we are now. It should be up to the Super Mods on the games to build their mod team and it’s who runners should go to with questions or concerns.

Additionally, these super mods on the games could appoint Verifiers if they need help with an influx of runs. For example, if KH2 gets slammed with runs and some of the mods are away from the site for something, the super mod could temporarily appoint Verifiers. They would help verify the backlog of runs, and then they could be removed once things slow down.

I think that’s where we need to get to - series mods do absolutely nothing if there isn’t a new game coming out. Instead, they let the mod teams on the games do their own thing led by whatever Super Mods the game has. Right now it’s like we’re trying to go to game specific mods because it makes sense, but we still have this dependency on the series mods existing everywhere. I think we need to break that dependency to really be able to set up the games correctly for moderation.

Yeah looking back at what I wrote, I feel that Super Mods are a good idea, as per the example of the Zelda community. Perhaps having one Super Mod per game and then sufficient mods to support them. As for Series Mods if you were to say 2, then maybe have it for one being over the console games and one over the handhelds as so to have diversity among the moderation. I agree on your idea that super mods count appoint verifiers for help i necessary.

Do you have any other thoughts on that idea Timmi?

I think dividing up the series mods that way is a good idea since they can step in to help on the games they’re knowledgeable about. As for one super mod per game, I think that’s good for the smaller games in the series, but I see no harm in have an additional one for some of the bigger games in the series (1, 2 maybe BBS and now 3). Having two super mods on those games just kinda covers the game in case an influx of runs happen and the one super mod is away for some reason. But honestly, either way, 1 or 2 would probably be fine since it’s kinda preference in what we think is necessary.

Additionally, if we find just having 1 super mod per game leads to issues, we can always another or the one super mod can add another. Is kinda like a “try it out and get a feel for it” thing. We can see what works and what doesn’t work, and adjust from there.

Just to say I discussed this super mod idea at length yesterday already and I'm ironing out a general proposal of changes for the leaderboards as we speak it is just taking a bit longer because hey Draz can't last 2 weeks without being in the hospital. My only criticism with the supermod idea is if the supermod goes inactive then we're back at square one which is why I think having 2 series mods be a supermod in some games as a reasonable compromise. For example I can supermod all the handhelds and randomrunner123 can supermod kh1/2/3.

Timmy I have to say, I agree with most of your statement in reply to Desa's pastebin, however, I just wish to point one thing out that a lot of people are misinterpreting. For 1) you said that "1-2 days is NOT unacceptable and many game would kill to have that level of response" but, Desa never said that 1-2 days for verification was unacceptable and actually said "Whenever verification works well in KH (for example on the games I mentioned before like BBS) it takes up to 2 days to get your run verified or rejected." basically meaning, when people are doing their job and/or aren't busy it will get done within 2 says. He finished that statement with "Up to a week is already pushing it in my opinion and that only for longer categories like a Platinum RTA." in reference to SRs message saying it will take 2-3 weeks to verify runs, which I agree with because 1 week is a really long time for a 1-2 hour task (Category is obviously important as stated by Desa, and changes the times)

It is upsetting that people are taking this point the wrong way and not to discredit your points Timmy, but it needed addressing as most people have misinterpreted it like you have.

For anybody who wonderes what's going on right now, we discussed a lot and we think that we found a very good solution to all of this and we will announce as soon as we are ready with the little details that are left. Personally I think the idea is really good and it could work if we take the right directions and steps. We are excited and can't wait to show you guys our plan.

I'm excited to see the new plan, I agree with Draz about 2 supermods for a game being a better idea. I really like the separate discord idea in Jel's paste and so far, I feel it could help current mods to stay more active by having an entire server dedicated to their game, discussing more, not ignoring pings etc.