As we get closer and closer to rolling out the new submission and adjudication system, our collective Twin Galaxies thoughts begin to formulate an official decision regarding the allowance of individuals to submit score performances that are not for public view.
Should private submissions be allowed?
This is a topic that has been hotly discussed on many different sites/threads with lots of opinions offered - however there has never been an official Twin Galaxies thread created to serve as the formal and permanent public record of the pro/con argument. So here it is.
It is important to know that the arguments for or against private performance submission that are written in this thread will be the only ones that will be given consideration in the final Twin Galaxies policy decision making on this matter. So if you have written elsewhere on this subject and not on TG, your voice unfortunately cannot be heard.
For the people who are reading this thread who are not aware of the full scope of the issue, here it is described:
Generally speaking, there were some key disadvantages to having single individuals solely determine the validity of a performance -
- A lack of transparency into the evaluation process which immediately created the ability for anyone who has submitted a score performance to accuse shenanigans if their score wasn't accepted, whether justified or not. This occasionally produced unhealthy drama and politics around the score submission process.
- Singular human bias potentially having an influence on performance interpretation.
- An inability to scale the adjudication capacity rapidly to meet growing incoming score submission demand.
The new era of Twin Galaxies seeks to address the above issues by moving toward a qualified public/peer/community algorithm/equation adjudication system that is completely transparent in function and practice.
All performances will be made public and be preserved for future reference and access, along with the particular discussion surrounding each adjudication so that the hows/whys of a validation decision can always be understood.
While there are many advantages to the new upcoming system there are also some disadvantages when you compare it to the older era's historical practice of using a referee.
One of those disadvantages is that the new system requires that all performances be public.
So what is the potential problem with that you may ask…?
The issue is that there are many top players who have invested a lot of time and energy into to discovering, learning, and mastering tricks/techniques/patterns that help them achieve winning scores and they do not want others to see their gameplay and simply be able to copy them.
The feeling is that they put in all the work to make the discovery that gives them the advantage, and therefore they deserve to reap the rewards for that time investment.
Freely giving their secrets away is not something that is of interest to them.
So here is the challenge -
The new system is all about transparency, public record, disclosure, and public discussion, all adding up to credible and documented scores being placed into the Twin Galaxies database after an adjudication. People who achieve within this construct are celebrated and rewarded by everyone and everyone can see the achievement with their own eyes.
Adding the ability to submit a private performance, only to be reviewed by a private group or individual who then determine the validity of the performance would need to be a separate system. This private performance would not be made pubic ever, and there would be no posting of the adjudication discussion or publicly transparent record available for the future. Yet, the player who submitted privately would want the same recognition, celebration and rewards that someone would receive had they submitted publicly.
A private system would however, protect a player's secrets.
While TG could build an auxiliary private system the best that it can, it would have to be very similar to the older referee methods that previous eras of Twin Galaxies used to adjudicate scores - which means there is a potential to introduce previous era disadvantages.
So, what do you think TG should do? Where do you stand on this issue? We want to hear from you.
One additional question we would like to introduce is whether or not you would consider a private score on the same level as a public score? If TG had two separate adjudication systems operating, one for the community/heavily scrutinized score performance adjudication, and one for private, where essentially a "trusted ref" views a performance and says it's valid, would you consider the scores of equal value?
In any case, this is the thread to once and for all be heard. Twin Galaxies will use this thread as an important reference before making a decision on this matter!
