Since the beginning of TASVideos, many submissions were accepted and published, only to later have that publication questioned as it did not or no longer meet the standards of the site. Seeing how this problem just occurred again a few weeks ago with [3722] NES City Connection "warpless" by link_7777 & EZGames69 in 04:35.60, I think it's about time something should be done to fix this long-lasting problem.
Here are a few examples of how such situations happened in the past that I can think of on the top of my head:
- Single level TAS published, then afterwards no longer considered up to standard as it did not reach the game's ending. (e.g., F-Zero)
- Glitched TAS published, then afterwards determined invalid due to the glitch not existing on real hardware. (e.g., Chrono Trigger)
- TAS published, then afterwards revealed to not have met the criteria for beating the game. (e.g., City Connection)
The way these publications have been handled in the past were to leave them as-is, and obsolete them as soon as a replacement movie existed. For example, here is ars4326's explanation as to how he had to deal with such a situation with Final Fantasy VI following an ending softlock debate which changed the standard for game completion: Post #415341
The issue with this approach is that errors or changes in standards remain as-is on the site and never acknowledged publicly, sometimes years after the issue was noticed. Even when the movie does eventually get obsoleted, it still remains available, and cannot be used reliably as an historical archive of TAS progression.
There have been propositions in the past to unpublish such movies, but for some reason that never happened as far as I know, and I cannot find any explanation as to why on these forums, so I can only speculate.
In any case, one alternative could be to announce on now-considered-invalid publications something like "WARNING: This movie is no longer considered to meet TASVideos's standards as it violates the following movie rule: XYZ". To ensure such publications does not cause issues in the future, I would move them to a new "bad movie" tier, and make sure they no longer hide valid movies they originally obsoleted.
What to do with them is a valid question, but can you start with listing the pros and cons that you have in mind, that make it clear to you that we ought to do something about this?
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.
For one reason or another, the site has an extremely hard "we never unpublish a published TAS" rule. I'm not aware of any exception ever having been made to this (except, perhaps, some case where the author himself wanted the TAS to be removed. I remember cases where an author didn't want a submission published, and thus it wasn't, but I don't remember now if a publication has ever been removed afterwards due to the author asking.)
Perhaps this rule could be made just a tad bit less strict, and allow for clear past mistakes to be corrected. In other words, if a TAS was published in the distant past that would never be accepted today because it blatantly doesn't fulfill the requirements (eg. not actually completing the game, or abusing emulator-specific errors that make it work only in the emulator), and the case is crystal-clear, it could be retroactively unpublished (and perhaps its status to be restored as a submission, and marked as rejected).
(Of course hopefully this wouldn't create a precedent where a future change in rules would cause half of currently-published TASes to become unpublished.)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
SmashManiac wrote:
There have been propositions in the past to unpublish such movies, but for some reason that never happened as far as I know, and I cannot find any explanation as to why on these forums, so I can only speculate.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
(Of course hopefully this wouldn't create a precedent where a future change in rules would cause half of currently-published TASes to become unpublished.)
This is precisely why I wouldn't want this.
You nay not know something is an emulator bug until after you made it for instance. Not a fan of outright removal.
[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
You nay not know something is an emulator bug until after you made it for instance. Not a fan of outright removal.
It would be a bit embarrassing to have runs that rely on faulty emulation. But I suppose these cases can be dealt with a big warning in the description of the TAS.
You nay not know something is an emulator bug until after you made it for instance. Not a fan of outright removal.
It would be a bit embarrassing to have runs that rely on faulty emulation. But I suppose these cases can be dealt with a big warning in the description of the TAS.
Put a big /!\ Warning tag next to them I'd say. Let people know the movies are not up to standard without just making 'em disappear.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6341
Location: The land down under.
Simple solution.
Obsolete it.
They stay for Historical purposes just improve on it and be done with it.
Oh while I'm here.
Do you remember the story of The Combatribes?
Did that ever get Unpublished during a time where Vault didn't exist? No.
It later got improved on 12 years later. Look, History.
Oh no, single level TAS that still exist.
Improve on it by doing the game that invalidates the single level and obsoletes it.
cough
MSX & SG1000 Galaga would also fall into the land of being invalid TASes but no one is bothering in improving either of those.
cough
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6341
Location: The land down under.
See the issue you have is you're straight up stating to force someone.
I brought up that it took 12 years to obsolete a TAS that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
Wait or do it yourself.
It's the key.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
If such movies are hidden by being obsoleted by Grue (see Moth's link), then they aren't annoying anyone. Which means they will never be properly improved. Never sounds a bit less optimistic than after 15 years, doesn't it?
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.
Imagine we agreed to have a workflow for marking invalid movies. In order to determine their validity, we have to check them against all the existing rules. Basically, we have to rejudge them.
Now imagine having to rejudge everything after every rule change.
Now imagine that every day some dedicated person suggests old movies for rejudgment that they see as "probably not valid anymore check please".
Do we really have so many spare judges that have nothing else to do than checking every retroactive rule break 24/7?
To quote IRC:
16:43 <feos> now imagine someone ragequits over that post
16:45 <adelikat> speaking of ragequit, imagine if you unpublish someone's movie based on a rule change after the fact
16:45 <feos> oh yeah
16:45 -*- feos looks at circus charlie
16:46 <feos> but really
16:46 <feos> figuring our circus charlie publication is invalid involved fucking disasm
16:47 <feos> by all means let us start doing disasm just to make sure that no, some 15 year old movie is actually fine, we were mistaken by suspecting it
And I'm not even talking about all the unvaultable branches that were published because they got great votes, but then rating humiliated them. Rejudge from scratch just to say "sorry, we think this movie is invalid because the audience tricked us with their borderline feedback apparently".
All sorts of insanity, when it comes to actually unpublishing things.
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.
I think the idea was to unpublish the few TASes that might still exist that are clearly and blatantly against the rules (such as not completing the game, or is known to be using faulty emulation). I have no idea if there exist any such TASes that are in a published (non-obsolete) state.
What to do with them is a valid question, but can you start with listing the pros and cons that you have in mind, that make it clear to you that we ought to do something about this?
Sure thing!
Pros of flagging publications not up to standard:
- The publication history remains intact.
- The information in the publication is no longer deceptive.
- Past mistakes are better documented for everyone.
- TASers would be encouraged to fix flagged non-obsoleted movies.
Cons of flagging publications not up to standard:
- The feature has to be implemented.
- A judge must review manually claims for non-standard flagging.
- There needs to be a good definition of what should be flagged and what should not. For example, timing emulator inaccuracies that does not affect the game's logic might not be worth flagging.
- There is potential abuse for people submitting false claims.
Maybe this is not the best solution, but it's the best one I can think of.
Mothrayas wrote:
SmashManiac wrote:
There have been propositions in the past to unpublish such movies, but for some reason that never happened as far as I know, and I cannot find any explanation as to why on these forums, so I can only speculate.
No wonder I could not find it with such a title. Thanks!
Spikestuff wrote:
Simple solution.
Obsolete it.
That doesn't fix the issue of incorrect information being published on the site in the meantime. Plus, sometimes the issue affect movies that are already obsoleted.
feos wrote:
Imagine we agreed to have a workflow for marking invalid movies. In order to determine their validity, we have to check them against all the existing rules. Basically, we have to rejudge them.
I agree that it would be insane to do that. I was thinking more in the lines of flagging a publication with a warning only when someone reports an issue that is confirmed valid by a judge, maybe through a dedicated forum or something like that.
Warp wrote:
I have no idea if there exist any such TASes that are in a published (non-obsolete) state.
Yes there is; see the City Connection movie I gave as an example in my first post which does not complete the game as defined per the rules.
I was thinking more in the lines of flagging a publication with a warning only when someone reports an issue that is confirmed valid by a judge, maybe through a dedicated forum or something like that.
This is still exactly what I argued against: it requires explicit rejudging, and it can result in reports flood. The only practical benefit I see is encouraging TASers to obsolete such movies. But I would say the cost is way to high.
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.
Could we start a forum topic for games perceived as sub-par?
Members could recommend publications that they feel don't meet the current minimal requirements.
This would not require re-judging, but would still provide a starting point for those who want to work on getting the sub-par runs obsoleted.
If a judge/mod/staff member agreed on a particular game/publication recommendation; that game could then be appended to a list in the initial post to maintain a quasi-record of sub-par games. As these sub-par publications become obsoleted, they get removed from the list.
This adds minimal workload for judges/staff yet would still hopefully spur action on new TASes of those games.
The only thing it doesn't provide is an indicator on the publication page for current runs of sub-par quality.
This would not require re-judging
If a judge/mod/staff member agreed on a particular game/publication recommendation
Is it really so hard to see? Without staff member approval, this is just feelings of whoever is suggesting invalid publications. With approval, this is a re-judgment. Because how can a staff member approve this without re-evaluating everything? And potential infinite suggestion spam hasn't been worked around either.
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.
Here are a few examples of how such situations happened in the past that I can think of on the top of my head:
I don't know how many submissions are we talking about, but since we have a discussion and trying to apply a strategy...
1. What is the site's stance about this? I mean there were already exceptions mentioned in the rules like Rygar holding buttons after TAS finished, and it's a lot easier to do then recheck every submission (similar to what you wrote: write it as an exception, never allow it for future uses, encourage TASers to obsolete it)
2. Any estimation of the amount of pubs/subs need to be rechecked? (retroactively ~6044 subs...)
3. Rechecking (as in "helping to verify the submission comply with tasvideos rules") requires knowledge of both history (former debates of the submission, how things were handled) and the game (board/sport game? dos/windows? doom? any%? 91%? warpless with warps?? taekwando kamehame iniyuchi?), so this is definitely a harder approach...
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6341
Location: The land down under.
SmashManiac wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Simple solution.
Obsolete it.
That doesn't fix the issue of incorrect information being published on the site in the meantime. Plus, sometimes the issue affect movies that are already obsoleted.
See, I'm failing to see an issue with the first point... Especially when the largest joke was given as an example which wasn't commented on by you.
As for the latter. Not really it doesn't. Unless you want to talk about incorrect obsoletion like how Pokemon Yellow obsoletes Green and not Red/Blue (or anything Saturn made).
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
This would not require re-judging
If a judge/mod/staff member agreed on a particular game/publication recommendation
Is it really so hard to see? Without staff member approval, this is just feelings of whoever is suggesting invalid publications. With approval, this is a re-judgment. Because how can a staff member approve this without re-evaluating everything? And potential infinite suggestion spam hasn't been worked around either.
I see your points.
But wouldn't the topic even without a staff-monitored list be beneficial? Even if it was only suggestions from other members, it'd still be a starting point.
I may be ignorant on this concept, but I don't foresee a ton of spam on suggestions.
If someone feels a particular game doesn't follow the rules, they are free to suggest it. Then it'd be up to whoever wants to redo the run to try to update the run.
Nothing would be needed from site staff on the front-end.
Then the impetus on staff/judges to re-judge the original would only be after a new run which attempts to obsolete the old one is submitted. Further, this re-evaluation of the original would only truly be necessary if the new submission was longer than the current publication (as a shorter run could just be judges by modern rule standards). The burden of submitting one such longer run would be on the author; to note in the submission comments why they feel their longer run is more up to par with site rules than the current publication. With this approach, the only additional work for judges/staff is on the back-end of a submission when the judging for a workbench item takes place.
I just feel that any collection/list (however it's generated) of sub-par games is a better launching point than not having a list at all.
I see your points.
But wouldn't the topic even without a staff-monitored list be beneficial? Even if it was only suggestions from other members, it'd still be a starting point.
I may be ignorant on this concept, but I don't foresee a ton of spam on suggestions.
If someone feels a particular game doesn't follow the rules, they are free to suggest it. Then it'd be up to whoever wants to redo the run to try to update the run.
Nothing would be needed from site staff on the front-end.
Then the impetus on staff/judges to re-judge the original would only be after a new run which attempts to obsolete the old one is submitted. Further, this re-evaluation of the original would only truly be necessary if the new submission was longer than the current publication (as a shorter run could just be judges by modern rule standards). The burden of submitting one such longer run would be on the author; to note in the submission comments why they feel their longer run is more up to par with site rules than the current publication. With this approach, the only additional work for judges/staff is on the back-end of a submission when the judging for a workbench item takes place.
I just feel that any collection/list (however it's generated) of sub-par games is a better launching point than not having a list at all.
No one and nothing has ever prevented any of that. I don't know why such a thread or a wiki page is still not there.
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.
