Originally Posted by Jace Hall

No games have been removed. If you do not see them can you please identify what you have found to be missing and we will investigate.

Well, like I said in an earlier post, all of the Game and Watch games are gone. When I am on the "World Ranking" page and select "Game and Watch" it shows no games in the category where before it had Ball, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Fire, Mario Bros., and Zelda. Now that doesn't mean personal records are gone, I know since I have scores for both Ball and Zelda and can see them on my profile, but now I can't resubmit new scores to any of the Game and Watch games. Similarly, on "Virtual Boy," V-Tetris and the recently added Mario Clash is gone. All the games in the "Nintendo Wii U" catagory are also gone. On the "3DS Virtual Console" catagory, everything except Tetris has been taken out, and on the "Nintendo 3DS" catagory itself, only New Super Mario Bros 2 and Super Mario 3D Land are there . And I KNOW there were more games in each of those categories.

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All of these updates and Nintendo Switch still isn't tracked lol

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Originally Posted by Desidious

It is because of these weird tracks that were made for Donkey Kong? Why is there a need for quality control like this? Shouldn't we just be able to put the BAD tracks up for non-premium status instead of going through all the games all the members have worked to create and putting them in "questionable" premium status?

To add my input on a bit on this. If part of this upgrade is because of "Bad tracks," and I'm not saying that it is, couldn't new tracks, after being proposed, need to wait a day for their rules to be reviewed by Twin Galaxies before becoming active to keep anyone from proposing a track, and then funding it on their own?

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Yeah, overall terrible move with the premium tracks and awesome to see no community input on the process. Sounds like a very obtuse way to deal with user created tracks (which the community warned you about).

I put a lot of time into funding legit tracks and none of those are going to have any sort of recognition. People put a lot of time submitting to them and they aren't going to get recognition. And there's no way anyone at TG is going to accept a request from me to have a track I made or helped pay for be "premium."

Fracturing an already small community is not the best idea.

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Also wanted to add this for further clarity:

A huge complaint from the community over the last year or so has been that the "quality" of a Twin Galaxies world record was suffering because of the user creation of numerous tracks that many felt weren't "worthy" or "high quality."

In fact on several occasions I have seen some user created tracks referred to as "junk tracks" and etc...

As I mentioned at the time, the way to allow user created tracks (which is important) and also address the concern of track dilution was to incorporate track filtering.

Track filtering has arrived. So let's take a close look at what has happened:

Prior to April 2014, no track was ever directly created and entered into the database by a TG member. All tracks were placed into the database by TG admin only, whether that be a referee or otherwise. Track filtering occurred at that level and there was no way for the userbase to assert any guarantee or control over what got in.

Track "Dilution" was not being continuously raised as a significant issue during that time.

So today, with the new filtering system in place, the default view of the database tracks have returned to the pre-2014 Twin Galaxies database.

All tracks that have TWIN GALAXIES as one of its founders, is considered PREMIUM.

That would be every track that was created prior to April 2014.

Therefore the default view is now back to the "undiluted" state. This should satisfy those community members who have been concerned about the ever growing track base filling up with what they perceive to be tracks unworthy of the TG pedigree.

Ok. So with the default view going "back to basics" so-to-speak, how then does a new track that is created by a user become premium? How does it qualify itself?

1.) Activity. It is very difficult to argue that a new but heavily competed track with 10+ entries is not considered Premium. A track that has that kind of interest and activity literally proves itself worthy by default and its upgrade is more an objective measurement of value.

This measurement actually gives the user base a method of automatically pushing a track into premium status without administrative approval or discretion. This was not possible in previous eras of TG.

2.) Request and Review. Many tracks may never get enough activity to automatically move into premium status on their own - therefore a SUBJECTIVE decision has to be made on whether or not a Track's value may be appropriate for Premium status regardless of activity level.

This means that someone, or a group, has to look at a track and place a personal value judgement on a track.

In our current solution, Twin Galaxies is going to be doing it the same way it did in the pre-2014 eras - which is to have admin review premium track requests and approve/deny them. This will be a subjective admin process and not a community process.

Track founders can simply PM @TWIN GALAXIES with their Premium upgrade requests and rationale and they will be reviewed and considered.

Tracks will not be "voted" on by the community academically to decide Premium status. If the community wants to move a track into Premium status, it can compete on the track and essentially "vote" by putting at least 10 legitimate entries on the leaderboard.

Premium track status is meaningful and should not be easily attained. We are taking this quite seriously. Premium tracks will be submitted to GWR. Premium tracks will become more prominent and potentially have economic benefit tied to them for the creators and participants. Etc.

There have been many requests for the Challenge System to be implemented and activated - and we are working on that - however, before we focus on taking undesirable things OUT of the database, we have to place solid controls on what is going IN. Otherwise the effort is pointless.

As per @lexmark we are also going to be creating and adding a World Records Premium count statistic that only includes World Records held on Premium tracks.

Again, members are free to create whatever tracks they would like to compete on, as this filtering changes none of that. All the data will always be present and preserved. Premium filtering is just one way of looking at the data. There eventually will be other ways of looking at it too.

Happy to answer any questions.

-jace

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Originally Posted by Patrick Fenton

Well, like I said in an earlier post, all of the Game and Watch games are gone. When I am on the "World Ranking" page and select "Game and Watch" it shows no games in the category where before it had Ball, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Fire, Mario Bros., and Zelda. Now that doesn't mean personal records are gone, I know since I have scores for both Ball and Zelda and can see them on my profile, but now I can't resubmit new scores to any of the Game and Watch games. Similarly, on "Virtual Boy," V-Tetris and the recently added Mario Clash is gone. All the games in the "Nintendo Wii U" catagory are also gone. On the "3DS Virtual Console" catagory, everything except Tetris has been taken out, and on the "Nintendo 3DS" catagory itself, only New Super Mario Bros 2 and Super Mario 3D Land are there . And I KNOW there were more games in each of those categories.

Yes this is an error and we will fix this.

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Ok, So how many more people need to submit a DK Jr Feish Face score for it to become a premium track? Let's make this happen.

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Originally Posted by Jace Hall

Tracks will not be "voted" on by the community academically to decide Premium status. If the community wants to move a track into Premium status, it can compete on the track and essentially "vote" by putting at least 10 legitimate entries on the leaderboard.

Premium track status is meaningful and should not be easily attained. We are taking this quite seriously. Premium tracks will be submitted to GWR. Premium tracks will become more prominent and potentially have economic benefit tied to them for the creators and participants. Etc.

-jace

Here's the thing though. How lenient will you be with "meaningful" tracks? My NBA 2K17 track for xbox one is a nice track by my standards. But, I in my time here, have seen one person submit an attempt on a "NBA 2K" game even though there are several tracks across different platforms. What this is doing is telling everybody who has tried to grow certain categories by creating tracks that all of their hard work (voting on submissions, attempting, researching, creating) is worthless. Why should I submit a track knowing it's more than likely not ever going to be considered premium or "Guinness" worthy? There is no motivation to grow here. You're trying to make it better for GWR and I understand that. In the process however you are disrespecting everybody who has made "Twin Galaxies" what it is. This site is an absolute joke. You do not listen to your community. You just kind of make a decision and go, Yeah, that's what we're rolling with.

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Originally Posted by TaylorG

Here's the thing though. How lenient will you be with "meaningful" tracks? My NBA 2K17 track for xbox one is a nice track by my standards. But, I in my time here, have seen one person submit an attempt on a "NBA 2K" game even though there are several tracks across different platforms. What this is doing is telling everybody who has tried to grow certain categories by creating tracks that all of their hard work (voting on submissions, attempting, researching, creating) is worthless. Why should I submit a track knowing it's more than likely not ever going to be considered premium or "Guinness" worthy? There is no motivation to grow here. You're trying to make it better for GWR and I understand that. In the process however you are disrespecting everybody who has made "Twin Galaxies" what it is. This site is an absolute joke. You do not listen to your community. You just kind of make a decision and go, Yeah, that's what we're rolling with.

S*** posted this on my brother's account. He left himself logged in on the family computer. Disregard this. This is TRISTEN GEREN typing. I'll log into my account now.

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[QUOTE=sdwyer138;bt5347]Ok, So how many more people need to submit a DK Jr Feish Face score for it to become a premium track? Let's make this happen.[/QUOTE]


Ill be first to admit it should never happen

nor should those garbage tracks made by many like first pipe and attract mode and no camera req



BUT Archon should

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Originally Posted by TaylorG

S*** posted this on my brother's account. He left himself logged in on the family computer. Disregard this. This is TRISTEN GEREN typing. I'll log into my account now.

Okay. Now that I've figured out how to log into my own account, which is still a mess as I cannot log in through Facebook which is what I usually do so I use the "remember my login" feature which causes trouble when two people have an account on the same computer. This is still ridiculous.

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Many points made 10 subs should not just make a track genuine any fool can submit 20 people on some dumb track that is an easy game, and it does not make it premium by any means

Example Halloween 2600 is bigger and harder than Street Racer

RS Boxing is bigger than Donkey Kong Feish Face lol

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Way to cater to the vocal minority cry babies.

Hope you're happy now..

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Originally Posted by ssdninja

All of these updates and Nintendo Switch still isn't tracked lol

How do you know? Maybe it is tracked but its just invisible ;)

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Jace, very often updates virtually destroy the site. I know there are always small bugs, but here there are some pretty glaring bug that are discovered with in minutes simply by logging on. I know you're funding this yourself so its not your fault you cant afford quality testers ahead of time, but may i suggest the free help of the community? What about before an update you first give access to the test site so that community members can find these issues before they wreck the live site.

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[QUOTE=Snowflake;bt5355]Jace, very often updates virtually destroy the site. I know there are always small bugs, but here there are some pretty glaring bug that are discovered with in minutes simply by logging on. I know you're funding this yourself so its not your fault you cant afford quality testers ahead of time, but may i suggest the free help of the community? What about before an update you first give access to the test site so that community members can find these issues before they wreck the live site.[/QUOTE]


To say the least

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Originally Posted by TaylorG

Here's the thing though. How lenient will you be with "meaningful" tracks? My NBA 2K17 track for xbox one is a nice track by my standards. But, I in my time here, have seen one person submit an attempt on a "NBA 2K" game even though there are several tracks across different platforms. What this is doing is telling everybody who has tried to grow certain categories by creating tracks that all of their hard work (voting on submissions, attempting, researching, creating) is worthless. Why should I submit a track knowing it's more than likely not ever going to be considered premium or "Guinness" worthy? There is no motivation to grow here. You're trying to make it better for GWR and I understand that. In the process however you are disrespecting everybody who has made "Twin Galaxies" what it is. This site is an absolute joke. You do not listen to your community. You just kind of make a decision and go, Yeah, that's what we're rolling with.

The track filtering is exactly the result of listening to the community.

There has been an ongoing, perpetually voiced community concern that since anyone can make a track, track dilution is degrading the database.

There is a viewpoint that many user created tracks are self-serving and solely created to give that one person a "Guinness World Record" and that ruins and demeans other people's efforts.

There has been community concern that some people simple create tracks AFTER they played their game, and then match their track rules to the game they just played and then submit so they have a world record.

Without any kind of filtering or limitation, these community concerns were very valid.

There was constant call for something to review and control all the incoming tracks and make sure that they are valued to the database.

The problem is that it is a subjective decision. Who is to say what one person likes and thinks is important is somehow better than what someone else likes? That is difficult.

However, after careful review and consideration, it has been decided that Twin Galaxies must be the entity that decides and reviews these things (as it always has in the past.)

With that being said, things are not the same as the past.

In the past, NOTHING went into the database without TG review.

With the new system, members can still create tracks and compete on them, and also those tracks can automatically become premium on their own.

However, in order for a new track to simply come into existence and suddenly be considered Premium, it must get reviewed and approved. There is literally no other way to do it. Something must approve it.

So in answer to your question, it's not about how "lenient" TG will be on this. The goal is not to be arbitrarily difficult. The goal is to review all the incoming tracks and make sure that the rules are clear enough and that the track is non-duplicative, and that the track has a clear value add to the community and database.

Certainly, logical new tracks on new platforms make sense and will be supported. Most Premium track requests are likely to be granted in general. It just a process of review.

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Originally Posted by Patrick Fenton

To add my input on a bit on this. If part of this upgrade is because of "Bad tracks," and I'm not saying that it is, couldn't new tracks, after being proposed, need to wait a day for their rules to be reviewed by Twin Galaxies before becoming active to keep anyone from proposing a track, and then funding it on their own?

No, because this would prevent people from being able to create any track they want to compete on.

This is not about limiting the creation of tracks. This is just about the filtering and grouping of the tracks that are created.

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Originally Posted by Jace Hall

Track "Dilution" was not being continuously raised as a significant issue during that time.


-jace

I don't think this is true. Track dilution has been an ongoing issue at TG since the first day I joined. In fact one of the biggest issues was when a ref would add a new game with a bunch of tracks and then pad their WR count by submitting scores to all of them. This is hardly a new issue but I do admit that it's been taken to entirely new level now that everyone can do this.

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Originally Posted by D.B. Cooper

I don't think this is true. Track dilution has been an ongoing issue at TG since the first day I joined. In fact one of the biggest issues was when a ref would add a new game with a bunch of tracks and then pad their WR count by submitting scores to all of them. This is hardly a new issue but I do admit that it's been taken to entirely new level now that everyone can do this.

Ah I see. Well I'm not surprised that the community would react badly to that. Refs should not have been able to compete on the scoreboard in my opinion... but thats a different matter entirely...

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