I'm officially requesting that we re-organize all of our LB mods on here. Over the past 8 months I've noticed a growing amount of issues with the LB moderation and I feel like we are in need of a change. Ive taken the time to write out why I feel this way and I've put it on Pastebin https://pastebin.com/cFrsPbQY

I've chosen Pastebin because it's easier than posting it here in the forums where a massive wall of text is hard to read and process.

Please read the entire Pastebin as it's all very important stuff regarding our LBs. I look forward to discussion on this topic and how we can best re-organize the LB mods (I provided 2 options I think are the best in the Pastebin).

Thanks.

EDIT: if this wasn’t clear let me say it explicitly - I don’t have any ill will against the current mods nor do I hate any of them. I love the current mods and all they have done, but there’s is a pattern showing that change is needed. I’m not doing this out of spite or some plot to take over, I’m doing it because I think a change would be good. I don’t want to burn any bridges over this, I just want to make the LBs a better and smoother place as this community continues to grow.

I agree with Timmi. Nothing personal against anyone who has put in work over the years in ensuring that the LBs have been maintained but the severe lack of attention has been given to the LBs as of late. I can understand that people are busy, have other priorities that can take over and/or don't have as much free time to be checking runs. Those are just a couple of examples and if any of those are the case why claim responsibility if you cannot actually complete the task?

Timmi made mention of people attempting to ping the mods from in the community discord, then the person not gaining any response, not even a written acknowledgement and are upset when their requests don't even seem to have been acknowledged. How is this fair? I know that some of the mods are always active in the discord talking/answering questions/trying to help out and might not respond in the channel but take it to their own discord to discuss. It really isn't fair on the people shouting out for these changes expecting a response and it falling on seemingly deaf ears. Why is this the case?

I also don't really like the idea of having a "LB mods only" discord server, makes it seem like a secret cult doing things for "The greater good" but that's another discussion. I also know for a fact that some of the mods are not even fully active or even a member fully of the community discord, and if they are they only join for a short time meaning that most conversations will likely be missed on a regular basis. Why is this the case? If I am wrong I will apologise now, I was misinformed and/or my observations are incorrect there are a lot of names in that long list.

As for which option I believe would work overall and be able to provide the best moderation would be option 2. It would let each game have a point of contact and a voice of knowledge on the other end. It would also prevent mistakes such as the PS2 HDD one if there is a solid knowledge base behind the mods rather than them having just inherited the board from being a mod of another one.

Overall I feel like a change is welcome and might even create a smoother running of the LBs which would benefit the community greatly.

If I am wrong about anything I have said above I'll put my hands up and apologise now, my view is purely from an outside of the LB moderation without any kind of insight with what goes on. Hopefully we can come to some kind of agreement that will work for everyone and we all stay on good terms. :)

I like Option 2 a lot. The respective mods would have the required knowledge to confirm or reject runs without potentially having to put time into looking things up, asking other mods or making comparisons because they (most likely) know the category and possible issues well enough. The runners would know who to contact to get their questions answered for specific games and not run the risk of asking someone who's not well-versed in the game or category.

I also think that mods would be more active on the boards if they only moderated the games that they are interested in and know well and not the whole series. If there's ten other people who can moderate something, and some of them maybe better than oneself, it increases the chances of one thinking "eh, why would I bother? Someone else will do it for sure." That issue would be out of the way then.

I’m glad to see others share my concerns and are looking for a similar change.

While we wait for the mods to address this, I’m gonna post a few comments from the discord that people shared on this topic. I’ve used all of my artistic ability to hide the names/faces of those people who said something in discord but not here (don’t want to bring attention to them if they don’t want it). Sorry for no auto embed, mobile Imgur sucks.

https://m.imgur.com/2JL0AVC

But so far it looks like the option of removing all mods (except for a single series mod to start the process) and rebuilding with Game Specific Mods is the most liked choice right now.

game specific mods makes a lotta sense Example: RebelDragon - BBS titles Ninten - KH2 titles DJ - OG KH titles

it would things VERY neat. Some of the current LB mods that are inactive not for weeks, but for MONTHS!

I more or less said a lot of similar stuff to Timmi's pastebin like a year ago or something and got totally passed over for no real reason.

basically I'm saying yes I agree this is the only large game series I've ever seen that moderates itself like this, game specific mods would be a massive improvement. No single mod could possibly be expected to know every single game in the entire series well enough to make informed choices about them, delegate a little to the people who do. That's not even an insult to anyone's dedication, there's so many of these games and the runs are pretty long who the hell has the time to be a KH speedrun omniglot. I had a complete ballache of a time getting a change to the rules that BBS needed purely based on this one-size-fits-all approach that does not actually fit all.

Change in this regard has been desired and actively requested for like, probably well over 2 years now. It's getting kind of loopy seeing this repeat itself every few months.

I prefer Option 2, but I'm gonna give strong lean towards option 1. I've mentioned this to faye several times that I was unhappy with the mod situation. Anyways, for a while now I've wanted to reorganize the mods, even willing to be one so I can help implement things like a category extension board which I have been asking about since 1.5+2.5 HD came out. Even so I like the idea of Game Mods a bit more? In the end I don't care who ends up being a mod as long they talk with us and speak a bit more, because I hate asking for things towards the mods as a whole and getting like nothing other than Faye telling me whether it was even discussed or not. Also yeah if Faye hadn't already left the mods, I'd say she was just fine alongside sonic as she does her job and I tend to find her involved in some things involving the community before I even catch wind.

now to talk amount of mods. I think we should have 3 super mods (game series) to ensure there should always be one of them available. If we were to implement game specific mods along side this then 1-2 Active Runners who volunteer to mod those games, and those Super Mods think they're capable. That way we can have super mods verifying the games that rarely get submissions like GBA Com, Days, Etc. and game specific mods (1-2) Verifying the more often run games like BBS, KH1, and KH2.

That's what I think anyways, also gonna plug that I've asked enough about the category extension board that I gave up after a while and came back to someone asking about it and it seemed like it was a new subject that had never been brought up before to the mods.

Also as a note, there were around 6 mods at AGDQ. (Toji, Dax, bb, Hobz,KHfan, and Faye) I dunno if that changes your views though so I'm just mentioning it.

For the mods at AGDQ thing - when I took count of inactive mods on 1/16 I took into account AGDQ. I wrote down 5 mods who had been inactive for quite some time. 3 of them who were inactive for a long period of time didn’t go to AGDQ. The other 2 were at AGDQ but they were inactive for 15-20 days prior to AGDQ starting. Plus one of those 2 mods hasn’t logged on after AGDQ now either.

So, yeah, I accounted for AGDQ before labeling someone inactive on 1/16 since that’s a time where people aren’t expected to check the site as often as normal.

Hey all, I know I'm not the most active and I'll likely to put up a proper post later tonight I just wanted to address option 2 as the "handheld mod".

The main reason I was against this a year ago when punchy brought up is still the same as it is now. There is simply not enough active runners to cover days and coded (gba com to a lesser extent). Hence I like having people who can cover for those games when I'm on work trips (like now). Also there is the side benefit of me doing stuff like reorganizing the bbs leaderboards but I dont really mind having less responsibility since I'm woefully ilequped for the console kh games.

Also as for com I know I know I reached out to ghost and got nothing back and never chased it up thats my bad and I should do better. It's just hard since com is mine and ghosts baby and I dont really wanna make the change even though I know I really should just to match the rest of the series (Recoded isnt changing though I will fight you all).

Anyway I'll discuss it with mods and do a proper post later since I haven't read any of the replies to this thread and only skimmed through the pastebin

I understand the concern about there not being enough runners to cover the handhelds but I don’t think that’s as large an issue as it seems.

There are plenty of people who know ReCoM and by extension can probably help with CoM. Same goes for ReCoded - there are probably people like Hyper and Jel who know enough about the game to be mods and help with it for when you are away (and Saiyanz for Days). Plus, Sonic is always around as a last resort even though he doesn’t know as much as yourself about those games.

I believe we could make moderation for the handhelds work for when you’re gone for long stretches of time. Plus, those games are notoriously under ran so runs probably won’t be submitted for them very often and that gives us time to iron out the best situations for them.

Having read the pastebin in the opening post, I do very much agree with Timmi's views on that change is needed. I feel that the speedrunning community should have 2 mods per section of the series. For example, looking at the PS2 era we could have a dedicated mod and a back up mod, similar to what Draz and Timmi made points about. Additionally I feel that there should be one global mod for the entire KH LB to help communicate through with the others, maybe not be one who verifies runs but helps identify issues since the major issue it feels to be is a lack of communication.

The areas I could (potentially) see splits for mod sections would be: PS2 Classic PS3 and PS4 Remixes Handheld 0.2 and III (perhaps in preparation for the future since it may be likely to see these get significant runs for just 2 games)

As for myself as a LB mod, I feel i'm extremely inactive on this site and am not really around much atm for personal reasons, so I'd be a bad choice, but if you want me to in the future when I'm more active, I could help Draz out and keep up to date on handheld stuff.

Apologies if the stuff i said doesnt make sense, kinda rushed it

I just want to share my opinion real quick on this matter. First up I really appreciate Timmi standing up and sharing these issues with the community. I feel like these issues have been mostly known but personally I felt alone in my thinking and didn't see it as a worthy argument.

I fully agree with the idea of having leaderboard specific mods and to not add more unnecessary text to this page I support what jel stated in terms of dividing the mods based on game types. I feel this in turn would lead to a much cleaner distinction and have mods specialized at what they need to do. At the same time though I understand Draz's concerns and I think this should be looked into.

A major topic that people have been sharing thoughts on is the amount of mods, not their separation. I find it impractical to set a predetermined flat amount of mods for all games instead of just including as many mods as necessary. KH2 does not need the same amount of mods as JP Days or PSP BbS and I think in regards to a predetermined amount it would be best to let community decide how many, and who, the mods should be for each game (of course people like Sonic can supermod entire series).

Specifically towards handhelds now, this is going to be much more opinion based, I think situation should end up being something like Draz being supermoded for them as well as Jel being mod of them and then like maybe have people like DJ mod the JP BbS boards and me the normal one(?). I don't really know right now and this is prob not the place to discuss more than this. I just think Draz is a pretty good mod for handhelds and has done a fantastic job up to now with any issue that has been presented so I kinda wanted to quickly address that since the last few posts have been leaning more on the handheld side.

Overall, I believe it is important to take actions that will benefit the community and its growth. If that means a sense of mod separation to have individualized mods that will help each game flourish, then that should be the way we go.

Edit: For some reason my post looks weird after I published it. No idea what is going on and if this is just on my end.

Edit 2: I understand why Draz does not want the separation and I acknowledge that as a legit problem. But also a problem for 3 games shouldn't affect whole series.

I'm gonna go ahead and step down because I've been thinking about doing it for the past year anyways, for various reasons. I do want to leave you with some passing thoughts though, because I feel (once again) that there are a LOT of misconceptions being thrown around. I will be generalizing points made by others and responding to them, so note that I am not directly quoting here.

--

• "Most of the mods rarely log in to SRDC."

I'd be curious to know where this data is coming from, because I personally always have a SRDC tab open (pinned in my browser) and logged in. The only times it's not logged in are days where my computer is off completely (which is pretty much only if I'm out of town for things like AGDQ). This doesn't fit the data Timmi was collecting, so I question the validity of the data (on the server-end, not on the collection end). It's possible something about not logging out for extended periods can perhaps break the "last logged in" data.

• "Many requests such as category extensions are ignored."

We actually don't ignore any of these requests. Usually what happens is someone starts a discussion in the mod discord and mods give their thoughts. Almost always, these thoughts are concluded with "but I'm open to what the community wants." Here are some recent examples: Also, for category extensions specifically, we looked at what category extensions are and how they work on SRDC. Extensions are specifically tied to a game, not only a series. So to move mini-games to a category extension (and/or to add other categories), we'd have to create a category extension board for every single KH game that we track minigames for. That would include splitting mini-games by game versions (something we've been against historically since there aren't usually differences across versions) and just a shit-load of work in general to change a system that's already working. Even then, we were absolutely open to creating extensions for any games that had arbitrary categories that would see multiple runners and some longevity. We simply didn't want to make categories that nobody would run since that kind of defeats the purpose of a leaderboard (why have a board for comparison if there's nobody to compare to). That's also a lot of stuff to update if we ever make a minor rule change across the series/game, although that's not a point that was ever brought up in discussion (just something I thought of now).

As for splitting 0.2 categories by console, we heard that request as well. We ultimately decided against it because PS4 Pro was added as a separate platform by SRDC. This means that people can already use the built-in Filter function to compare PS4 times w/o PS4 Pro times and vice-versa. This is how we should have handled the HD KH games too -- combined all final mix versions and simply used the Filter function to compare. Not using the Filter function leads to headaches like having people submit a run under the PS4 category with a platform of PS3 (a very common occurrence and one that's easy to miss during verification). I warned about this possibility back before we made platform-specific subcategories for the HD games, but we decided to go with what the community made clear they wanted instead of following the convention of the website (again, we don't just ignore community requests).

• "Communication from the mods to the community is very poor."

This one's probably true. This is on all of us. But it's also hard to want to communicate with people who make pre-judgments without basis. For me, personally, I am the mod that's not in the KH Discord server that Timmi mentioned. I was actually originally in the Discord starting from day 1, however, it was made clear that several individuals there had a problem with me for some reason. Every reason I've heard has been rooted in a false assumption, but even when that was explained, they still talked shit about me behind my back. Example (one of many; name removed): Clearly misconception was cleared up (they go on to apologize profusely later on in the convo). Months later, in reference to me:

So rather than stay where I'm not wanted, I left the server and just relied on other mods to relay information for me. It's clear that information was not always properly relayed, but that's on me for not following up.

• "Most mods don't make changes."

A lot of the mods that used to verify/reject runs and make changes all the time (myself included) stopped doing so because of the overwhelming public backlash they were receiving for changes or rejections (the above DM comments started after a tweet basically saying "fuck the mods"). It really sucks when you care about a community so much and just want the best for it but just get shit on every time you try to improve something or uphold rules. Even people with really thick skin get worn down eventually (my personal verification rate likely follows an inverse trend with the timing of anti-mod tweets/discussions). This bullet point isn't so much explaining inactivity (because we should still actively make changes) but more just a forewarning for whoever takes up the reigns next and a request that people basically stop being assholes.

--

So there ya go. Once again, several misconceptions brought up thinking we're against change and ignore/hate the community. I don't agree with this method of trying to change the mods, but I've been wanting to leave for a while anyways, so why not now.

Edit(s): formatting

EDIT: Hobz posted his novel right before I posted mine. Whoops. I’ll address one of his points in another below this one.

Long post incoming after some reflection and feedback on my OP.

For a while now people (both mods and regular community members) have expressed a dislike to treating the mods as a single entity instead of calling out individual actions. After some reflection on my initial post and discussion with others, I feel like some of that accountability is in order. I initially didn’t want to name names to avoid what would seem like a personal attack, however, in the effort of more transparency on where these problems lie, I’m going to name names now (especially now as the mods in full hopefully address this soon).

Sonic - don’t need to say anything here, great moderator who clearly people want to stay on

Faye - former moderator, but a great one. She helped whenever she could and pushed for changes before. Myself and I’m sure others would love her back for DDD or more.

Draz - another great mod who helped when she could, although slightly inactive because of real life. However it’s obvious most people want her to stay on for the handhelds.

Toji - without him the community wouldn’t be here, but it’s long been known he was only added because he created the initial google doc. He hasn’t really done anything for the LBs and last year he caused a lot of problems by ignoring rules and admitting to intentionally trying to irritate community members. He’s been crucial to the community, but his time as a mod has passed.

Hobz - a long time mod who was instrumental in getting the boards set up here. However, he’s incredibly inactive on the KH LBs. He’s incredibly active with various other communities and speedrunning related things, but aside from checking the forums, he doesn’t do much for the LBs.

Saiyanz - a popular runner and great guy, but he has faded from the community a lot. He’s not very active in general and he mods a lot of games, so his priorities may no longer lie with the KH LBs. I know he wants to return to the games, but he has long since stopped verifying runs and paying attention to these boards.

Biz - we all know who he is, but he is never around. He’s notorious for not logging into the site for months (4-8) at a time. I don’t know if his number of verified runs ever really got passed 2 dozen. He has a busy real life and is dedicated to streaming, so he just lacks the time to be an LB mod effectively.

KHfan - the mod who verified the PS2 HDD run. Yes, I know this was a mistake, but like my OP said, it was a big one. I’m not gonna reiterate that here.

Ninten - a great runner and guy, but another mod who disappears a lot. He’s verified a couple runs I can remember, but often leaves the site for a month or so. Is semi active on discord, but that also varies. Also the mod who defended the PS2 HDD run being verified by saying he would have verified it too and admitted to not closely watching runs to check for inconsistencies when they are longer. This is not a good stance to take as an LB mod.

Dax - great guy, but is very busy in other communities. He’s a great friend and member of the community, but doesn’t do much for the LBs. Similar to Ninten he has verified a few runs, but is mostly inactive on these boards. Tends to leave the site for multiple weeks.

BB - another runner we all know, but he’s one of the mos inactive LB mods we have. I don’t know if he’s ever verified a run, he left the site for over a year before and has currently been gone for over a month. He’s said himself he’s not 100% focused on speedrunning and that’s more than okay because he’s loving what he’s doing. But without that focus, you can’t be a mod.

That should cover everyone. Again, I can’t stress enough that I’m not trying to burn bridges and I still want to remain on good terms with everyone (I hold no ill will towards any mod). But I feel like genuine accountability for mistakes and inactivity is required here. The mods are not a single entity, they are individuals who make individual mistakes. Hopefully now all is transparent from where I sit and we can move forward with some changes soon since it’s clear a lot of the community would like something fresh for these boards.

For the inactivity thing @JHobz mentioned - I got that data by going to each mod’s profile and looking at their “Last Online” in their Info section. This data is updated (to my knowledge from what I’ve seen, it may not be the exact case) when a user performs an action on the site, even if it’s just browsing pages.

People like yourself who always have a tab open, show as “Last online” usually within the last hour or two. But for other mods, that shows as multiple weeks or a month or more meaning that they didn’t perform an action on the site in that long. That’s how I got the data. I saw cases where 4-5 mods had that “Last Online” as a month or more ago at some points so that’s where my statement came from. It was a little generalized so hopefully that clears it up.

As for your points about requests being ignored, it wasn’t so much that I thought a deaf ear was being turned per se, but more that whatever discussion was had never got back to the community or the person requesting it. An example is 0.2 - the mods decision and reasoning not to split the categories was never made public; the community never knew this. This is where the impression of being ignored came from. I’m not gonna guess as to where this communication broke down and was lost, but it got lost somewhere.

As you step down, I want to again thank you for everything you did to get the boards here. You and I haven’t always seen eye to eye or been on the best terms, but you’ve done a lot for this community and we owe that to you.

So, can we select candidates to see who would fit best in each of the KH series? Starting from the most common to the least common platform.

Personally i would like take to roll on the PS2 KH1 ports and i guess the vanilla port of BBS. I confidently feel i can handle the responsibility as a moderator. In addition: re routed, made notes, and made instruction tutorials on how each category works and what differences there are.

Investing time and my own funds! into learning what each platform does. i do not mind watching one's video and help runners for those games.

Also, I dont think you have to be an "active runner" to become a mod, but a person who is well knowledge about that specific game would be best imo.

Please take me off as leaderboard mod.

For the record, I have verified a handful of runs, but I rarely have time to do runs nowadays, let alone verify runs.

I wanted to be a mod in the first place to add a different opinion into the mix, but it felt like every idea I threw out there or side I took was immediately shot down. Maybe I just have bad opinions, totally possible, but it felt like I wasn't making a difference so naturally, I cared very little about being a mod. Doesn't excuse the laziness, but I thought I'd make that clear.

At the end of the day, I feel like this situation could've been handled better. I don't know how much will change now that this deed has been done, but it seems two of our mods have already left. I don't see it taking long before some of the other mods follow suit because when some of them were active as I've heard they were just given constant shit which tends to put a person off from doing the things of which they were shat on for. If I recall Reb left cause he was tired of people being fuckers despite all he'd done. I like the idea of having new mods but I feel like this could've been handled way better. Also if we do replace the mods or add game specific mods what's to say this won't happen again? are we just gonna shit on every kh mod ever until they don't wanna be a mod and quit or keep their mod but don't do anything because they're an anxious wreck like some we have sure are right now? or you have the person that will keep doing the job despite all the shit who suddenly gets praise while deep inside that person prolly wants to quit too. I'm sure there are people in the community who say they wanna be mod but what would make them any different from any of the mods we have now? what would make them better? What are they going to do besides verify runs which sonic already does pretty well? answer forum posts up here? because clearly people don't read the forums or care about the leaderboards enough to make a post here and throw in their two cents unless they already cared about this A, or they were called out by this and witch hunted B.

I guess you could bring up the argument that mods can respond in discord too, but hadn't some of the older ones (I.E. Hobz) Leave already because people treated them like shit for no reason. I feel like what'll happen with new mods is that things will be fine and dandy for a bit yes...EVERYONE WILL BE SOOOOO HAPPY.

Until the next arbitrary thing people decide to shit on the mods for. I like this community just as much the next, I love this community. It's made me who I am now, and it's because of this community that I found the one I love and can call her mine. I'm just tired of the constant shit some people give others for no reason. whether be shitting on the mods or just on other people in general cause you don't like something about that specific person even if it doesn't affect you in any way, shape, or form. This is what's happening with the mods. I'm sure sonic is wreck right now because of this depsite not saying anything about it, he probably just might want to even quit too. then people might give sonic shit for quitting because he was the "good mod" who verified runs. well lemme lay something fresh on y'all. Verifying runs doesn't necessarily make or break a mod. nor does doing things on srcom. Honestly, These days just being active on discord and an active community member who's willing to help new people learn the run is good enough for me. I'd rather have mods who put out tutorials and notes frequently than one who verifies my run within a couple hours of submitting.

I think I'm rambling alot and probaly contradicted myself so damn much I'm sure but I just wanted to put some things out of my mind and decided this should be the place to do it.

I think the mods are fine as is, but I also think change might be coming. so let it come naturally...don't witch hunt them or harass them to quit. They've already gotten enough harassment here for a life time. I'm sure the next generation of mods will too because it's not the mods lemme tell you that. It's also the community's fault for letting it get like this. If more people voiced their opinions or cared enough too then maybe we could make a difference as the mods will listen to the community as a whole but quite frankly people just don't care enough. People would rather just bitch at mods for not doing anything and harass them then put their full opinion on the matter out.

I feel like even I'm a part of this problem, I feel like our community has so much room to grow and so much time to make it happen. Gugh I'm rambling more. I also feel I'm forgetting something which is probably why i'm able to still type despite my jumbled mind mess that is my opinion.

Let the mods their thing, don't harass them. If and when the day comes where we get new mods, treat them right, and voice your damn opinions and make it be heard. I'm ashamed of everyone who's not a mod that looked at this and didn't say a damn thing because y'all are part of the problem that we're having with "Communication"

one last thing.....

SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! The Problem We Have Here...Is that we need to communicate!

and honestly this goes both ways. there are a select few community members and mods who do communicate, but it seems that simply isn't enough, and we all need to communicate properly.

I'm sorry for rambling and not making any sense.

So quite a few mods have left at this point so I doubt there will be any mod side discussion on the topic so screw it i'll try to deal with this.

Most people seem on board with game specific mods with a few of the current mods becoming series mods I personally want to see how many people are even interested in stepping up and of them how many people are actually qualified / well respected enough to actually become one before we make any kind of decision regarding rearranging the mods (Although we will likely need to bring new people in anyway since we've just lost 3 mods)

So fill out this and I'll comb through the list with Sonic or something.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXsJl952SAqletTOema-HauMUgwOD_cLDm4gpok0VUbEUlPw/viewform?usp=sf_link#responses

Xpost from myself in discord:

So I’ve said this to various mods already, but I’m not going to put myself down for anything. Mainly because this was never about me and I don’t want it to seem like it is. I’ll help rebuild the LBs but then I’ll leave it up to the mods who remain (which will probably be Sonic as series mod) and anyone in the community if they want me onboard for anything (whether as a game mod or a series mod or whatever).