KH Leaderboard Discussion

Recently, some complaints about the KH Leaderboards were brought up, and I wanted to address some things.
First, I would like to say that I would love the opportunity to be a KH1 Leaderboard mod again, but the complaints of the vocal minority and their ridiculous expectations, without seeing what mods do besides verifying runs, is very discouraging. People from the community expect the mods to do numerous things such as: verifying runs within a couple of days, while some also want every run to be watched before verification in order to ensure a run's legitimacy, keep a close eye on the KH Community discord in order to be ready to answer any and all questions, and so on. So I will address some of the issues stated in a pastebin while covering some of these mod expectations. To note, these expectations are not touched upon in the pastebin, they are simply things I have seen people say a mod should do.

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The pastebin I will be referencing can be found here: https://pastebin.com/Y4m63wMW

Verification of runs: There are two points that need to be touched on here. There first one is that a mod needs to watch all of a run to ensure a run's legitimacy. I believe this is one of the most ridiculous requests you can have for a leaderboard mod. Simply put, the runs are way too long to expect people to sit and watch every run before verifying runs. The other point is that runs should be verified within a couple of days. This one, I believe, needs more defining. What is considered a couple of days to you? Is it as it says, a couple of days meaning two days? If so, I believe this is also a little too much to expect for a mod to do. Leaderboard moderators have their own lives. This can mean their jobs, streams, offline practice, or simply day to day activities they may need to do. Do I believe that runs should be verified in a timely fashion? Of course I do, but I also believe a week is not too much to ask for.

Mod Inactivity: This is a big one. There are a number of mods that have been inactive, and I do believe need to step down at this point. I will not point any names in this pastebin because I believe most people know who they are. I will name some names to defend those that have had their names thrown out as people who are inactive.

The first one, Toji. Is Toji inactive? A times, yes. However, Toji is someone that will talk to many people in the community to get their opinion on things. Every time a decision has happened, Toji has come to me to ask me my thoughts on an issue and what other's have been saying. I think this is very important for a leaderboard mod. Do I wish Toji would be more active? Yes. Is what activity he does little enough to warrant kicking him? Maybe. In fact, probably. But I believe there is quite a bit to be desired in a person like Toji as a leaderboard mod that people can learn from.

Second, Neraigo. He has put in countless hours making documentations for various things with KH2 and KH3. To say he was inactive is a flat out lie. I do not find it possible to look at what he has done and call him inactive. People have called him inactive for not signing into his speedrun.com profile in a month and for not verifying runs. According to people though, there is more to a mod than verifying runs.

Third, Saiyanz: It was touched on that he has done a ton recently with merging the leaderboards, so I will not touch too much on that. Simply, read what a wrote about Neraigo and apply it here.

To sum things up, I believe people put too much stock into verifying runs. They believe that if a mod is not verifying runs, then they are inactive. I find that kind of thinking heinous. There are more things to moderating a leaderboard than just verifying runs.

Community Activity: This one bugs me a bit. First I will simply quote the section from the pastebin I will be referring to: "A lot of the mods (Mainly the innaccurately chosen game moderators and the legacy mods) show no activity in the Community discord or the games they are supposed to moderate. Moderators are supposed to be knowledged about the games they moderate and if they can't help out with questions they should not be moderating these games. This point isn't as strong currently as we have a lot of community members trying to help others as good as they can so it might be that the question is getting answered before they can even read it. I doubt however that this is the case 24/7 as I haven't seen any activity from a lot of the games moderators in the discord in general."
Now they do say that "we have a lot of community members trying to help others as good as they can so it might be that the question is getting answered before they can even read it", this is obvious. I am one that keeps a very close eye on the KH Community discord as I am the one who made it, and I can't even answer questions before someone else has already answered them. Simply put, I do not believe that this needs to be something mods should have to do. Would it be nice if they did answer questions more often? Sure, but I do not believe that it is something to complain over considering everyone's questions are getting answered, and are almost never unanswered for more than a few hours.

Transparency: The big problem with this, I feel, is that people don't have a definition of transparency. What people want; mods to talk to the community about each and every detail before making decisions. What I believe is the definition of transparency; mods simply making a decision, telling the community that they are going to make a decision, while giving well thought out reason as to why the decision is being made, and listening to the community for future decisions. This does not mean that any time a community member wants something, it needs to be done. My reason for believing this is because this community is simply too large to get a consensus of what should be done. It was also noted by someone in the KH community that people would simply vote for whatever the popular people want to do. If this is true, then leaving it up to polls should also be avoided. I believe mods are given their mod powers because they have been proven trustworthy to make decisions for the betterment of the community, and therefore should not need to be questioned before each and every decision, as long as they have well thought out reason as to why they are doing something, this reason is backed by proof, is documented, and is posted on the forums. Currently, KH leaderboard mods have had a problem with even stating that there will be a change and why a change is happening. This I do believe needs to be worked on. Instead of grabbing our pitchforks and demanding people be kicked out, how about we try to make the KH community better by helping make the mods better?

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So now that all of that is out of the way, I think the big thing is to cover what a leaderboard mod's responsibility should be. I will state what I believe a leaderboard mod should do, you are allowed to disagree with me. If you do disagree with me, then let me know what you think they should be, through twitter direct messaging. I will not be responding to replies to the tweet with this pastebin because twitter discussions like that always turn ugly, and it allows people from outside of the community to get involved with something that is none of their business.

Verifying runs: I will not talk about this much here, if you want my stance on this, read the paragraph about that talks about it.

Leaderboard Maintenance: This involves things like the merge that Saiyanz did. Again, obvious things that the average KH runner will not even notice is going on.

Transparency: As stated earlier, I believe that the LB mods need to work on their transparency. For what I believe the definition of transparency means, read the paragraph above that talks about it.

Discussions on rules or new categories: I think this one is pretty self explanatory.

Compile information: This was an issue recently with KH3 in-game timing. I believe that leaderboard mods should compile information and make formal forum post covering details of the current issue.

Making rational decisions and not ones based on personal opinions.

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One thing I have not said yet is do I believe that mods should be removed and new ones added. I do believe that inactive mods should be removed. I also believe that new mods would be a big help for for games like KH1 and KH2. I believe we need more mods for games like KH1, KH2, and KH3 simply because those are the big 3. Those games get more traffic than others, and only having 2 people cover everything for those games is too much. On the other side, a game like re:coded doesn't need the same amount of mods as the other high traffic games.
With this comes another problem that needs to be addressed. Who do we add? I know I would like to be a KH1 mod again, but that is heavily dependent on the community for multiple reasons: Does the community want me? Is the vocal minority going to change in any way, and stop attacking people that are only trying to help?
So let's talk about people to add. How are we going to add them? Should we simply make a form to have people request to be a mod, and let certain people make those decisions? If so, who makes the decisions? I know I would not want certain people making these decisions because they would simply pick their friends, which is obviously wrong. This is something that I do not know, and I would like to discuss it with people. Key word is discuss, not argue. Again, I will state that I will NOT reply to any messages that are a response to the tweet the pastebin will be a part of. If you want to have a discussion, send me a direct message on twitter.