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Scepheo wrote:
Sure, you could mentally rate everything 1-10, and then decide that everything below 5 is a "no", and everything else a "yes".
That's actually what I do.
Scepheo wrote:
But considering that "meh" means "so-so", is commonly used as "average" and is literally counted as half a "yes" vote, it's perfectly reasonable to say that some range around the middle constitutes a "meh" vote.
To me, "meh = I'm not sure".
Scepheo wrote:
That's not being wishy-washy or not knowing whether you found it entertaining: you can be perfectly decided on the entertainment being average.
Except that's not the question that's asked. You know those polls where they ask you 1 to 5 if you agree or disagree? I generally fill out nearly all such questions as 1 or 5. For most of the questions of that nature, I don't see the in between, at least not the way the question is phrased. To reiterate, I'm not wishy-washy.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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Nach wrote:
To me, "meh = I'm not sure".
The original meanings that I outlined [unwritten] were roughly [after I changed the title from “should this movie be published?” to “did you find it entertaining?”]: — Yes = I liked it! I am glad I got to see it. — No = I didn’t like it at all. Remove it from my sight please. — Meh = Passable entertainment, white noise. I mean, it was okay I suppose in some regards, but had I known exactly in advance what I was in for, I would have preferred to see something else, and this is not because I don’t like the game or care about it, it’s just the movie was quite ”meh”.
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Bisqwit wrote:
I mean, it was okay I suppose in some regards, but had I known exactly in advance what I was in for, I would have preferred to see something else, and this is not because I don’t like the game or care about it, it’s just the movie was quite ”meh”.
This description is what I think of when I think wishy-washy.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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Guys you see? One of the problems with polls is that anyone can have some special personal vision of what their votes mean, and it's impossible to enforce any defined vision, regardless of how far personal vision is from what we actually ask. On the other side, we don't depend on polls in anything important, so I wouldn't mind any loose interpretation. Polls are just not damaging until someone decides to overreact, which can have any reason really; sometimes even contradicting circumstances cause the same overreaction from the same person.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
Silent votes are always disregarded. Because really, they don't prove anything at all.
Admittedly a silent No vote doesn't mean anything unless it's for reasons already stated in a particular thread. The volume of votes is generally representative of the interest in a particular run. It's especially useful when it's a surprising run whether it be because of the strategies used or because it's great TASing material of a game that isn't considered top tier in terms of popularity.
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I think the situation is similar to election polling. For someone who understands statistics, there's some noise with respect to the methodology used and, because of that the result should not be taken extremely seriously. However, in the real world people do take it seriously, that's why it is usually a crime to conduct electoral polling without registering with the authorities. It's simple to make a poll to favor a candidate, even if you don't rig the poll. You can interview a biased sample, that you know is more likely to vote for the person. You can run many polls and only publish the one where the candidate you favor has more answers, etc. But, seriously, either abolish anonymous voting or simply don't put the poll at all. In the original thread (which had some parts grued with a nonsensical title implying that you cannot detect manipulation using statistics), people drew parallels between TASing and arts. Well, art critics do sign their reviews, and they eventually get sued or fired if they write inappropriate stuff.
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Nach wrote:
You know those polls where they ask you 1 to 5 if you agree or disagree? I generally fill out nearly all such questions as 1 or 5. For most of the questions of that nature, I don't see the in between, at least not the way the question is phrased. To reiterate, I'm not wishy-washy.
"I have exactly zero nuanced opinions" != "I am not wishy-washy"
DrD2k9
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To preface: I don't have a preference on how the site deals with polls. So hypothetically, if the staff decided changes to the polls were necessary; which of these would be more accepted by the community, completely eliminating polls or just eliminating the 'meh' option?
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Scepheo wrote:
Nach wrote:
You know those polls where they ask you 1 to 5 if you agree or disagree? I generally fill out nearly all such questions as 1 or 5. For most of the questions of that nature, I don't see the in between, at least not the way the question is phrased. To reiterate, I'm not wishy-washy.
"I have exactly zero nuanced opinions" != "I am not wishy-washy"
I have many nuances opinions, but they're not being asked for. The question we have asks: "Did you find this movie entertaining?". It doesn't ask: "To what extend did you find this movie entertaining?" or something of that nature. I pick 1 or 5 on the 1 to 5 polls often because the question is phrased in a way where I don't see any option in between. Questions like "Would you ever eat a potato?" If the question isn't asking for nuance, making believe it exists is wishy washy and not approaching life with a firm attitude.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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I don't disagree with the assertion that with the question phrased as it is currently, "meh" is a bit of a weird answer. While it does not exactly answer the question directly as one would expect, it provides a little bit of information that is actually distinct from that of a yes or no vote. If anything I would prefer just simply rephrasing the question or rephrasing "meh". I don't think polls are completely useless either, despite being potentially difficult to interpret. You just need to be able to figure out how the pieces fit together.
p4wn3r wrote:
But, seriously, either abolish anonymous voting or simply don't put the poll at all. In the original thread (which had some parts grued with a nonsensical title implying that you cannot detect manipulation using statistics), people drew parallels between TASing and arts. Well, art critics do sign their reviews, and they eventually get sued or fired if they write inappropriate stuff.
The difference there is... to put it bluntly... those critics are being paid. On sites like Rotten Tomatoes where users can leave ratings, regular users are not required to have their name publicly displayed with their score unless they make a review. In the event that there is actual abuse going on, certain staff members are able to view who made what votes and take action accordingly.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Actually I'm OK with our current voting system. It's definitely useful to a certain degree, and I wouldn't like it to change. I'm just not happy with so many people not voting seriously in this particular case. It happens to be the run I value the most, which happens to be a run that shouldn't be controversial at all. The voting result has made our hard work seems very bad and somehow controversial. I think maybe under circumstances like this, some administrator should come up and say something like: "People, place your votes seriously, and don't let your feelings take over the facts" (except I can't express it well).
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
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HappyLee wrote:
I think maybe under circumstances like this, some administrator should come up and say something like: "People, place your votes seriously, and don't let your feelings take over the facts" (except I can't express it well).
We've said stuff like this more than ones, but it doesn't change anything. Really, don't pay such close attention to the votes. If you have people writing to you how they feel, that's what you should be looking at.
HappyLee wrote:
I'm just not happy with so many people not voting seriously in this particular case.
Don't make assumptions whether they're being serious or not. A rule courtesy of Scott Adams: "Humans decide first, then rationalize their irrational choices with cherry-picked data. You see this all the time with the people who disagree with your brilliance. Just remember that they see the same irrationality in you that you see in them." The problem here is that some people are not voting on the run at all, they're voting on what they liked or disliked about what you had to say regarding SMB and TASing in the past couple of weeks. They'll even make up excuses why they voted the way they did instead of just outright saying "I'm angry at you because I don't like what you've written recently, and penalizing all your SMB submissions because of it." (yet in their own minds not necessarily see it as an excuse, they may 100% believe they don't like the run) I recommend trying to understand why they're upset (even though it may be irrational), and working to make them less upset. Also don't take the negativity you see about your run so seriously, not everyone is being objective at the moment.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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p4wn3r wrote:
It's simple to make a poll to favor a candidate, even if you don't rig the poll. You can interview a biased sample, that you know is more likely to vote for the person. You can run many polls and only publish the one where the candidate you favor has more answers, etc.
That part is interesting. For the votes in submissions here, I mean. Except the last sentence because there is only one poll per submission ^^. When you think about it, the site favors yes votes in general. Why? Simply because most people don't go watch each and every TAS, they choose which ones they want to watch, the ones they are interested in and they are most likely to like, and by extension, to vote yes for.
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HappyLee wrote:
I think maybe under circumstances like this, some administrator should come up and say something like: "People, place your votes seriously, and don't let your feelings take over the facts" (except I can't express it well).
Which circumstances exactly?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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For what it's worth, I always viewed 'Meh' as an option between 'Yes' and 'No'.
From the perspective of the symmetric formula, as its center that is where it belongs to, yes. [quote klmz] The page only explains how the voting data are being used to calculate a "support" score, whose purpose hasn't earned consensus among the staff members. It doesn't explain what every voting option is intended for. It won't help with the fact that the term "Meh" means "I don't care" in daily language contradicts the usage for a "Mediocre" option, and I am pretty sure that there have been existing "Meh" votes used according to their literal meaning. [/quote] Part of my point is that whatever actual meaning the ''meh'' is meant to have, I think this should coincide and be reflected in the formula's shape and behavior (and at that point it'd switch over to the question which of the 2 things to possibly adapt to the other, which might be part of what the topic of this thread is about). [quote Scepheo] Entertainment isn't a binary thing. Sure, you could mentally rate everything 1-10, and then decide that everything below 5 is a "no", and everything else a "yes". [/quote] I think that is what movie rating is for (regarding the 2 components, technical quality and entertainment), which however only might make sense to have people rating on these aspects for movies that are accepted to begin with (as opposed to movies that don't even make it there and then rating their entertainment and technical quality). [quote Scepheo] But considering that "meh" means "so-so", is commonly used as "average" and is literally counted as half a "yes" vote, it's perfectly reasonable to say that some range around the middle constitutes a "meh" vote. [/quote] I'm just double-checking here, but I hope you're aware of what I was explaining in my 2 earlier posts in this (new) thread. Namely that yes, ''meh'' means 1/2 of a yes vote, but it also means 1/2 of a ''no'' vote in regards of this concept of ''support''. The coefficient of the ''meh'' part in the denominator of that ''support'' formula is 1, and this weight distributes as (1/2)*0 + (1/2)*1 in the numerator, where 1 represents ''yes'' and 0 represents ''no''. Something like [quote no one] 2 * ''meh'' = 1 * ''yes'' [/quote] is generally not true (with respect to the provided ''support'' formula). And in the usual case (hereby I assume that the usual case is one in which there's more ''yes'' votes than ''no'' votes, which I think is the case, but might take a long time to check), a ''meh'' vote would come closer to a weak form of a ''no'' vote than a ''yes'' vote. And for different example situations one could calculate how many ''meh'' votes you'd need to make them have (close to) the effect of 1 ''no'' vote (or ''yes'' vote but this can only be the case if there's more ''no'' votes than ''yes'' votes). (Note that I'm not putting quotation marks around the word support because of not agreeing to it or anything, but just to indicate my slighty unsureness of its intended, exact meaning or what aspects it is meant to encompass, to leave others their freedom in thinking of it in what they feel fits for it. So when I write ''support'' I mean the general concept or range of what a given picked concrete idea of support can or might mean.)
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
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So just from the few comments since my earlier question, it seems that voting has its place, but the options we offer don't exactly match the question proposed. How would everyone feel about clarifying the poll question regarding entertainment to "How entertaining did you find the movie?" and then have a rating system of 1-3. The 3 options could be: 1 - Not entertaining at all 2 - Somewhat Entertaining 3 - Very Entertaining This would hopefully eliminate/minimize people taking the 'Yes/No' options to mean whether or not a run should be published to begin with. If those three options aren't varied enough...it could be spread to 5 options--Nach, please pardon the irony of this suggestion considering your earlier comments on 1-5 polls questions--with the options being 1 - Not entertaining at all 2 - Somewhat Entertaining 3 - Average Entertainment value 4 - Above average Entertainment Value 5 - Very Entertaining or 1 - "Please someone, pour acid into my eyes." 2 - "Watching paint dry is more fun." 3 - "That was a neat." 4 - "I was so rapt by this that I forgot to breathe." 5 - "This is the (one of) the greatest TAS I've seen in my entire life!"
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Maybe just 1-4 instead of 1-5, that way you can't vote with a neutral opinion.
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Actually, now that I think of it, considering that the rating of technical quality and entertainment (as a separated option from voting, and in a more differentiated, with many in between steps from 0 to 10 fine-tuned manner) exists, one might want to change the question ''Vote: Did you find this movie entertaining? (Vote after watching!)'' to ''Vote: Do you think this movie should be accepted? (Vote after watching!)''. And if it had been this question, then I think in HappyLee's & Mars608's (sorry for initially forgetting you there, but I guess people mostly referred to it as HappyLee's TAS) case, the voting process might have been more towards what HappyLee anticipated, while there'd after a potential acceptance of the movie still be the option for the voters (and others) remaining to go and rate the movie according to their personal view, with respect to technical quality and entertainment. By asking if someone found the movie entertaining, one gets an overlap with what the votings (might) stand for (or might be interpreted as) with what the rating system as separate option already covers, while leaving out any question on the technical quality of a movie in the question ''Did you find this movie should be accepted?'' (and at most have it intrinsically/implicitly be part of the question). At least, when I read the voting question, I see it as ''Vote: Do you think this movie should be accepted? (Vote after watching!)''.
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
Memory
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"Do you think this movie should be accepted?" is absolutely NOT the point of the poll. That is the judge's role to decide, not so much the average viewer. We use how entertaining a movie is to decide what tier to accept to, and that is typically ascertained by asking the audience. A movie might not be acceptable for other reasons beyond entertainment.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Nach wrote:
The problem here is that some people are not voting on the run at all, they're voting on what they liked or disliked about what you had to say regarding SMB and TASing in the past couple of weeks. They'll even make up excuses why they voted the way they did instead of just outright saying "I'm angry at you because I don't like what you've written recently, and penalizing all your SMB submissions because of it." (yet in their own minds not necessarily see it as an excuse, they may 100% believe they don't like the run)
That's exactly what people were saying at the thread at the time, and instead of addressing the issue, all responses were like "yeah, the poll is like that. it's not appropriate of you to complain about that. stop calling out the voters." The situation is extremely easy to solve. When HappyLee canceled the submission, say something like "it has reached us that the submitter canceled the submission in protest regarding the validity of the No/Meh votes. Given that this submission has received an unusual amount of negative votes, we decided to investigate. Upon consultation with the No voters, we received the response that they would have preferred a more minimalistic approach to the levels than the ones provided here. Although troubling, we did not find any conclusive evidence of voting guideline violation. We ask that the users vote based on the merits of the movie and not on previous events and ask the submitter to reconsider the cancellation in view of these facts.", and that's it, no drama, no bans. Instead, we get lots of philosophical arguments about art and professionalism, arguing about arguing, and talks about statistics (which, I would let you know, is used everywhere to detect anomalies to spot fake data, in elections and scientific publications) which lead nowhere at all.
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[quote Memory] "Do you think this movie should be accepted?" is absolutely NOT the point of the poll. [/quote] Well, on the other hand side, by TASVideos' explanation on this page ( http://tasvideos.org/Subs-521up.html ), the voting (also) stands for the community's ''support'', and hence, if this implies a discrepancy (tier estimation versus acceptance), I would suggest to make the target of what this concrete support on that page means clear, i.e. to make clear that this means not the support for the TAS in general in whatever broad range one could think of when reading 'support', but for support of solely it's entertainment aspect (for the purpose of the tier aspect). Edit: If the voting aims at the purpose of getting feedback on the tier under which a TAS should be accepted (or not), then I expect this to be explained on 1 (or more) of the many forum guideline pages, and it might be helpful to make it more clear that it is for this purpose (among other purposes which are suggested by TASVideos to exist, as follows). ( http://tasvideos.org/VotingGuidelines.html ) [quote TASVideos] This page gives guidelines on how to effectively rate movies and vote on submissions. The guidelines are intended to maximize effectiveness of one's vote and to (with submissions) maximize the help towards a judge's decisions. [/quote] It says ''decisions'' when it comes to submissions (not necessarily already accepted ones), so I am inclined to think this is meant to point at more than a decision on 1 aspect for a given TAS, but multiple instead. In this case, which all is it (and in particular which decision questions are explicitly not meant to be part of this)? 2nd edit: [quote TASVideos] Post constructive criticism. If you think something is improvable, suggest it or ask why the author did/didn't do what they did. [/quote] This statement regarding the improvability (for which it is more clear what it means when it comes to the technical quality rather than subjective entertainment) makes me think that also the technical quality of a movie is part of what the question encompasses which I'd also deem to be a parameter relevant to the question on if a movie should be accepted. [quote Memory] A movie might not be acceptable for other reasons beyond entertainment. [/quote] I don't see how this would collide with my suggestion regarding a change of the wording of the voting question. 3rd edit: [quote Memory] We use how entertaining a movie is to decide what tier to accept to [/quote] The potentially especially for this implemented, separated rating system might very well aswell cover this question (tier for a movie) and help for this decision (and might even be more precise in this matter, I would think).
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
Memory
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p4wn3r wrote:
The situation is extremely easy to solve. When HappyLee canceled the submission, say something like "it has reached us that the submitter canceled the submission in protest regarding the validity of the No/Meh votes. Given that this submission has received an unusual amount of negative votes, we decided to investigate. Upon consultation with the No voters, we received the response that they would have preferred a more minimalistic approach to the levels than the ones provided here. Although troubling, we did not find any conclusive evidence of voting guideline violation. We ask that the users vote based on the merits of the movie and not on previous events and ask the submitter to reconsider the cancellation in view of these facts.", and that's it, no drama, no bans.
This to me is the definition of a witch hunt:
Merriam Webster's wrote:
: the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (such as political opponents) with unpopular views
Why specifically the "No/Meh" voters, why not the "Yes" voters? EDIT: AranJaegar: It seems clear to me that it clearly means "support the notion that the movie is entertaining" given that the question asks about entertainment. There is no inherent meaning to "Support" that it automatically refers to acceptance.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Nach wrote:
I recommend trying to understand why they're upset (even though it may be irrational), and working to make them less upset. Also don't take the negativity you see about your run so seriously, not everyone is being objective at the moment.
I know you're right. Thanks for your advice. :)
p4wn3r wrote:
The situation is extremely easy to solve. When HappyLee canceled the submission, say something like "it has reached us that the submitter canceled the submission in protest regarding the validity of the No/Meh votes. Given that this submission has received an unusual amount of negative votes, we decided to investigate. Upon consultation with the No voters, we received the response that they would have preferred a more minimalistic approach to the levels than the ones provided here. Although troubling, we did not find any conclusive evidence of voting guideline violation. We ask that the users vote based on the merits of the movie and not on previous events and ask the submitter to reconsider the cancellation in view of these facts.", and that's it, no drama, no bans.
Yes, I'm pretty sure I would be satisfied with that.
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
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What's with this decision to skip questions from staff about your suggestions to staff, HappyLee?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Memory wrote:
This to me is the definition of a witch hunt:
Merriam Webster's wrote:
: the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (such as political opponents) with unpopular views
Why specifically the "No/Meh" voters, why not the "Yes" voters?
Absolutely not. The difference between an investigation and a witch-hunt is that, in a witch-hunt the crime/violation is imaginary. It's impossible for the accused to be guilty, therefore investigating an imaginary crime is the same as harassment. However, in this case, suppose you open up the "No" votes and it appears that all come from users with the same IP address. That would be conclusive evidence that manipulation took place. Since it is possible for the violation to exist, it's not a witch-hunt. When do you start an investigation? When there's sufficient suspicion that a crime/violation happened. As was pointed out by many in the original thread, submissions such as those are usually uncontroversial, and the number of No/Meh was unusually large. There was nothing unusual with the number of Yes votes. And what happens when an investigation finishes? There are many possible things: 1) You determine the subjects are innocent. In this case, you can decide to dismiss the initial allegation with or without prejudice. Dismissing with prejudice means that the investigator concluded the allegation was filed in bad-faith, so the accuser should be punished. Without prejudice means it could be part of a misunderstanding. 2) It's impossible to determine whether the subject was guilty or not. In this case, no action is taken because of presumption of innocence, and the investigator suggests what changes should be made to determine rigorously in the future. 3) The subject is determined guilty. In this case, the evidence is provided in the final report, which is forwarded to the person who gets to decide the punishment. As I said, it's perfectly possible that an investigation finishes with the party that accused having problems. There's nothing to do with harassment, and in case anyone get investigated eventually, I really suggest collaborating with them instead of calling it a witch-hunt (as Trump likes to do).