response to desa's pastebin

In response to: https://pastebin.com/Y4m63wMW

-INTRO-
Quick intro, if you are reading this without knowing who I am, I'm gamebrain1 (Game Brain) and I'm a mod for BBS and 0.2 (so a lot of the things I say will be based from that viewpoint). Kinda writing this as I go, so I'll try to respond to everything desa said point by point.

1. 2-3 Days for a verification is fine imo. "A week is stretching it" can be true, especially for games with a larger mod team, but at the end of the day, people have lives so every know and then I do think it's acceptable for a run to take a bit longer if people have stuff going on. That said, if there's actual problems with consistent verification delays, that should probably be looked into. But do note, that in many other boards 2-3 days is considered the minimum, not the maximum. I know it's not ideal to do this through comparison but still. In game like 0.2 I can't remember the last time a run took more than a day or two to get verified. For KH1 and KH2 I don't really have much to say, not a field I spend time in.

2. Draz should be excluded from this for obvious reasons. I don't know how you can expect someone who is "in the hospital" as desa himself acknowledges, to be active. I believe she should have not been brought up in the first place. Personally, I find myself logging in to srcom more than twice I day, but I also moderate a plethora of games (outside KH). Honestly, once again going back to the idea that people can have stuff going on in their lives, not logging on for a day or two can happen. Especially in games with larger mod teams I'd see it as less of a problem. I also believe that in itself slight inactivity is not a problem. However, I can see the argument, that with everything else, it all adds up, and sadly I can't really say anything to that.

3. Legacy mods are fine imo, it's a title of honor. I can respect people who have contributed a lot to the series especially when leaderboards first started becoming a thing. I don't think this actively hurts the boards in any way (regardless of what I might think of each of these people individually). One thing that could be addressed, is series modding though. This is nothing personal towards Toji, it would apply to any other series mod, I don't think this title of honor should be in the form of a series mod, effectively because, there have been no contributions by these mods to newer games. Again, using Toji as an example, right now Toji can view the audit log in 0.2 while I can't.... To be fair I find that kind of absurd. I do however think this stems down to the fact that the only supermods in kh games are series mods, which does work in a weird way. To clarify, I would be perfectly fine if the "legacy mods" listed remain as mods, but it should be in the games they contributed to. It's great to honor people who helped start all of this, and I think the best way to do so would be in the games where they put all of their passion into.

4. Kind of addressed this above, but yes, mods should stick to the games they are knowledgeable about. Not going to throw out a name on this one, but I asked a mod something at one point about a kh game, and they told me they weren't aware they even were mod of the game. For me that's a huge red flag. I won't talk about the mods listed individually, but in general, I believe it should be done by a basis of knowledge for each game.

5. I do want to say this, as someone who doesn't speak on the discord unless needed, I don't believe discord should be brought into this discussion, as it is an "unofficial" outlet. This point attempts to address "community activity" as a whole but I think it misses the point. Just because someone doesn't talk on discord a lot doesn't mean they are not an active community member. Personally, if I see something on the forums, I'll attempt to answer asap. If someone asks me a question, or I see they need help, I'll gladly answer/give advice. But I honestly won't go out of my way to hop in random conversations on discord because it's just who I am, I'm not really a social/vocal person. I don't believe, however, that this makes me less "active" per se, because I am always ready to participate when needed and consistently do my job on the lbs. This is clearly self biased so please feel free to call me out on this if you disagree.

6. Big misconception, this was NOT "forced." Saiyanz brought up the idea and the majority of game mods for games where it ended up happening did appear to agree to it. I will definitely agree that Saiyanz was being pushy, as in BBS both me and rebel had to aggressively decline multiple times, but just like we declined for BBS, there were multiple opportunities for other mods to decline as well, but nobody did (whether or not it should have been up to us to make that choice is a different story, but that's not what we are talking about here). Having an idea like this is not inherently bad. While I did disagree with this specific idea, I also acknowledge that ideas like this can potentially improve the boards and make them better. I do also believe though that more discussion was necessary. Nevertheless, I made my stand for the game I'm in charge of, and I do stand by the fact that mods should not interfere with games they don't mod, so I didn't for kh2 and kh1 (I even helped with the merge since help/manpower was needed).

7. No opinion on the timing itself, I do agree that discussion like this should be addressed in a timely manner, and for the games I mod they are. Sorry, this is out of my field.

8. You don't need a leaderboard to speedrun. That's a phrase I've stood by for a long time. You can't force someone to submit their time if they don't want to. I think this is a debate where neither side is correct. On one hand, ye, you technically should be showcasing the best time. On the other, if a runner who is very aware these boards exist doesn't want to submit their time, who are you to force them to? Won't say much more on this one.

9. refer to #7, I don't think a pastebin like this is the proper place to address game specific issues

10. I mean, I think my opinion on this is pretty clear (desa rightfully uses that pastebin I made when I was mad a few months ago). Going to throw in my personal take here, in all games I mod I believe in pure transparency when it comes to leaderboard decisions (exception is banning, which mods themselves can decided for if someone cheats/splices). For BBS there hasn't been anything like this that popped up since I began modding, but a recent example would be the 0.2 ps4/pro change. It's exactly the way I believe changes should be made. Forum post -> discussion on forums and even discord for a week or two -> decision based on the opinion of the majority (especially if top runners are backing it). I know this is much harder to do when there are disputes but at the end of the day, that's what polls are for. A bunch of decisions for kh games exclusively take place on the mod discord, and I do think that is a problem. I'm aware this probably doesn't look good to my fellow mods reading this but it is what it is. As a mod, I believe you are meant to represent the runners of the game (in a way) and work towards maintaining the lb and making it as great as you can. I don't think you should have complete authority over decisions (as a side note here I also don't think series mods should have more authority over individual game than game mods but that's a discussion for another time). At the end of the day, I think as a whole, kh mods do a terrible job of being transparent (and did even worse before the mod changes), and this is a problem I had noticed ever since I had joined the community. One of the reasons I applied to mod BBS and 0.2 is because I hoped to make active change, and improve the respective lbs for the better. While once again, I speak from on obviously biased perspective, clearly some problems such as lack of transparency are still there.

11. When you know there has been a data hack, you should changed your password. However this has nothing to do with how good of a mod sonic is and is thus unrelated to the discussion and a personal attack. It could literally happen to anyone.

-OTHER THOUGHTS-
Just want to touch up on a few things. First of all, in the remainder of the pastebin, there is a clear stab towards certain mods. I'll start by saying that Saiyanz might appear inactive a lot of the time, but if anything, the merge demonstrates how hard working he is, and how committed he is to improving the series. Whether the idea itself was good or not in practice is another story, but people with that conviction are exactly the people I would want to have as series mods. Sonic is also presented as inactive but as I said, I think a big part about being a good mod is knowledge of the games, and I doubt there are many people with more knowledge about the series than sonic and he is always there to help people who need it. Addressing the KH2 thing, I was modded to help with the merge, only that. I actually should have been unmodded, but I'm not yet, so I'm purposefully not doing anything since as I said, it's technically not my assigned game. I agree the better communication is necessary, as brought up before with the 0.2 split, I think something like that is a good step in the right direction in terms of how communication should be handled.

-CONCLUSION-
Don't really have anything else to say. When someone brings up serious concerns like this, I always see value in carefully analyzing them to better improve the situation. That said I feel some points are much more important than others, and its very easy to get caught in a wrong mindset by giving significance to some insignificant things. Main takeaways for me are to further improve communication, there's not really much more that can be done for transparency for the games I mod, and also maybe try to be more active on discord. that last one gets a question mark. I will throw this one last thing, I'm always open to constructive criticism so if someone wants to say something directly to me, please by all means feel free to do so, I would appreciate it.

(P.S. sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes)