Current Situation.

Nice to see activity.

But the upper levels has failed to meet the overall demand of activity.

Did yous not think of implementing a group that would not be considered as full time refs yet they had enough skill and knowledge to ref forum battles? A flurry of battles and yet only 3-4 active refs. They can't do everything. Good to see that Jack trying to help out though, never thought the old bugger would come out of his grave ;P.

Implement more Ref Testers and make a subgroup of refs who will only ref forum battles. *For Bulba Garden*

Although the battling sections is managing alright the Stories section is just, well I'll let you describe it. I don't think one grade has been posted. Yet URPG has been opened for 48 hours? I know there's a shitload of stories but as always grading is weighed down as of the shit pay and not much satisfaction from doing the job.

I know that you wanted to boost URPG's activity by expanding it to Bulbagarden's but at the moment you do not have enough personnel to manage everything. Without enough personnel people will get bored and restless of having there battles not reffed/ stories not graded.

The Training Committee formed over in PE2K needs to be put into action now, the new flock of refs/graders/rangers/judges should already be in circulation but over the last couple of months only 2 licensed ref has come into circulation. Also out of the current "active ref list" only 10 are actually active.

But I could be wrong, the tests could be too hard for anyone to pass these days. But looking at the bunch of ref testers at the moment I don't think (no offense) they had the skill of "Fenix, Ball, Marth or Mike". So why aren't there more refs in the system? Testers should give the option of giving the 1 week license more than just failing the poor bugger, if they were more than 75% through the test and failed, personally I would of given them the 1 week license, just to see how they go and give them experience. No one is that talented to begin with.

Now to some pros.

The initial activity of BulbaGarden is actually amazing, I think that this activity was never thought to be this much and the resources was under-ordered. The enthusiasm is amazing, and it gives a chance to members who are for whatever reason are banned from pe2k to come back to the URPG.

The amount of new members from Bulbagarden should mean that worthy opponents should be coming your way! XD

Now if you couldn't be shit to read all of the post then the message is:

Implement more Ref Testers and make a subgroup of refs who will only ref forum battles until their skill is up to date

Have the Training Committee increase in members and in efficiency.

and the age old argument of "Graders should get paid more"
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Seriously, people need to stop complaining about how the forum battles are getting neglected and we need more referees. Up to the current date, none of the forum battles are getting ignored, both forums. If any, it is because they have been posted after a referee gets offline. If people actually take a closer look instead of thinking we need more referees all the time, they would notice the forum battles are already nothing like the past. In the past, each battle will take at least a week between each turn is posted, but it is commonly around 1-3 days now. What more do you people want now? :|

Oh, so the common "more ref testers" arguement. Let's face it, how many people are actually up to it at the moment? So you're suggesting that we give 1 week passes, I think the entire URPG would be flooded with 1 week passes. Now what good is that exactly? It would only be cluttered and messy. Haze did told me that he was trying to remove the whole 1 week pass system as well. Also, you mention that you think the current list of ref testers don't have the skill level of those people as such, it is interesting to note that why are there so many people failing the ref tests over and over again. And no, I don't think it is strict. If a referee can't even learn reffing Leech Seed correctly, coupled with so many other minor mistakes, I really don't think he is ready at all.

/imo

 

No the entire URPG would not be flooded with 1 week passes, if they are good enough to go through 75-80% of the test, they are good enough to be given a go. Of course if they can't ref leech seed they should not get a pass but seriously whose going to put leech seed with 1 turn left of their ref test? Wouldn't you at least have it somewhere in the middle/start of the test.

So your saying that the current list of testers have more knowledge than the greats of Ball/Fenix/Marth/Mike? . So many people are failing and failing is because of their own fault of course, they don't have enough knowledge and should be given time to practice if the mistakes they make are on a minor scale (lets say the accuracy of an attack), people make mistakes and learn from them, but they need practice to progress. So I'm suggesting if their "3" mistakes on a test were from minor incidences (accuracy incorrect, speed ect) and they have already progressed through 75-80% of the test, they should be given what I proposed as a forum ref or a 1 week pass.

Trust me, more people than you think. Just having 1 or 2 extra ref testers ups the percentage of refs passing. ATM you have 4 active out of the 5, not bad. But URPG just don't have the ref testers like Ball/Chris who were constantly up for ref testing, they wanted to see people pass. I guess no one can replace them.

Umm, since when was having more referees a bad thing? The more referees the more activity! Yes they need to be decent, but as you can remember no one could ref turns in 30 seconds just after they passed the test.​

 

As an on-and-off grader, I can safely say we get paid plenty. I personally think the wages are quite good ever since they were increased (it's been a while, too). I do wish they came out more often, but that's not keeping me from grading. The only thing that keeps people from grading is the amount of work that goes into it and therefore the fact that it's sometimes hard to fit into a busy day, and there's not a whole lot that can be done about it.

And if you go over to the stories section, you'll notice that there have been grades posted, and there are graders who will keep going until we get through the initial rush. All we need is time to catch up, just like everyone else. @[email protected]

 

I didn't say that we put Leech Seed at the end of ref tests.

No, I don't mean that. And no, we don't do passes based on strikes. Or at least, I used to, due to how I was tested in the past. Mike told me not to do it however. So currently, we judge their pass/fail based on our own judgement. It's alright to give them an one week pass if they make really minor mistakes, but the problem is that they make alot of minor mistakes, coupled with one or two major. That really isn't the way to go for a pass.

Wanting to see people pass, and passing people who make quality referees are two different matters.

 

I really don't think trying to get around skill is a good idea man, crappy refs are not good no matter how many there are.

More ref testers might be needed, but really how many are qualified? How many people have taken the initiative to perhaps make a thread for refs to apply? I don't know...we can't really choose a ref's level of skill at reffing and if there aren't a lot of ref tester level refs what are we gonna do? Have people train them I guess, but I know some people wouldn't really be up for that. :blush: I'm sure there are ref tester level or near-ref tester level refs now anyway, it just hasn't been a big issue. Ataro is a ref tester, I'm sure he tests anyone who wants one in a timely fashion and if they failed well that's their problem, we don't want refs that suck.

I think there should be a training program for people that want to become refs, it's optional of course, but it would help a lot. If lots of people gradually gained the skill to ref then eventually we'd have a lot of refs. Unfortunately we have no such system so people just do whatever, and sometimes whatever isn't enough. We could just have public lessons in the program, people can watch in on battles, people can be ref practice battles. It would need lots of dedication but I believe this one of the best ways to get more refs because if we just stay with out current system we won't be getting tons of refs. We have quite a bit of proof of this, like you said there's only been like two refs made recently. This is especially important for BMG people if they want to become refs, as I think a lot of them are still confused just like anybody would and reffing can be hard sometimes.

The forum battles section is fine actually, but I don't think the problems we might have is immediate. When tons of BMG members start using AIM and there's still the same number of refs as usual that's just not gonna cut it, we'll need more. And it seems just as we get a new one another one stops reffing.

And sorry for saying this even though I'm not a ref lol, I know I've failed the test five times but you know 6th times the charm. I'm smarter then I was when I took my last one, almost a year ago.

I still think the opening time of BMG wasn't the best, people are still in school...why open it now and not just wait a bit for summer? But whatever.

 

I agree that the response probably was huge and unexpected, but I don't think the forum battles have been neglected. If anything, the refs are doing a great job keeping up with it. The only thing I think is that the refs were too eager and the BMGers have seen this sort of ref activity as the 'norm' - having a complete 1v1 reffed in about a day - and so are saying that it's taking a while.

On the subject of Grading, Grader wages are fine so long as you put in the effort in the Grades to get paid well. Churning out Basic Grades, even if you Grade quite a lot, won't get you a huge amount to roll around in. Also, Basic Grades don't give amazing feedback, and people like to take their time with Grades to ensure they're helping the author as much as they can.

I think this is just the novelty of having something new to do. Give it a couple of weeks, and the activity will probably have slowed down by quite a bit. As people have said before, we shouldn't make permanent preparations for a temporary problem. Having lower standards for refs will, in general, decrease the quality of reffing.

 

Prior to reading this topic, I looked through the forum battles for free ones, and was irritated, because they'd all been claimed so quickly that I only had a chance to snag two. It is not a matter of "we do not have enough active referees." It is a matter of "forum battles are not instantaneous space-time-matter transfers." There are three people posting in a single forum battle, all of whom are likely to have several hour time differences and separate schedules of when they are able to access their computer. Timing doesn't always work out. There's a reason AIM battles are encouraged over forum: Forum battles are several day endeavors, while AIM battles are three minute endeavors (unless people are having AIM issues, which is quite often the case--two additional minutes might get tacked on :OO).

We are currently the Committee that has the largest number of active participants, and I have dragged in help from multiple outside sources. We have about ten aspiring referees who are being regularly drilled and given hands-on help from five or so experienced referees. Half of them are ready to take their Ref Test, and the others are being worked with still. Ref Testers are not being too hard on the folks that have failed, and ref testers are not being too lazy with the guys who are taking tests. Time zones, along with the fact that it takes a good hour or so for a lot of the testers to do their stuff, makes acquiring a test harder than it would be if we were, say, automated... Realistically, however, very few of the current referees know their stuff well enough to evaluate newbies with thoroughness.

I'm a grader, and I get about 20k for an hours'-worth of work. I usually do five hours'-worth of work when I have free time. During the school year, I can only do about 10k hours'-worth of work. If I have a choice between "getting ____ amount of fake money" and "graduating highschool," I'm afraid that I, and the majority of the graders, will choose the latter. And the minority would choose college. Yes, there is clearly an understaffing problem over here at the moment. However, it is inaccurate to argue that there are zero completed grades, because there are closer to five. Our three to four active BMG graders are working quite diligently. >_>; Still not enough, yes, but a new grader has just been promoted--so that's progress. Unfortunately for the training committee, no one actually wants to be a grader.

There is.

 

I'm sure this'll help.

 

Seriously don't say crap if you've been gone for two years. The strike system was removed already. It's up to the ref tester's discretion on whether somebody passes or fails.

I honestly do think the current ref testers have more knowledge than the great Ball/Fenix/Marth. If you remember, Marth was fired as a ref tester. He obviously wasn't that great. Fenix is still a ref tester so that one goes out the window. I don't know if Ball even ref tested in DP, so there goes that person.

Yeah :|

 

I was fired because of the May Norman incident, not because my skills were not good. You still have the choice to re-install me as such, I'd be glad to help.

 

If everyone thinks the BMG is moving too fast right now, IMAGINE what it would be like in the summer with more members? BMGers out number active pe2kers by quite a lot. If we're having trouble keeping up now (such as with grading), I don't want to know what it would be like in the summer when they have more time. D:

 

Indeed. We need to use this time before summer to start getting some BMGers into URPG positions. I already know a few them will easily become refs, graders, judges, or rangers; it's just a matter of encouraging them to apply for a position and helping them pass the tests.

That way, when the summer rolls around, we'll have more members to help out around the community.

 

I don't think I have a say in this but I have an opinion here.
The rush right now is high, in the summer it will be higher, so you will need more people. And right now it looks like as though its all an "outisder's job" since there are no BMGF members who are staff.
Yes agreed, the members need to be encouraged for example go to the Writers Workshop, just talk to a few good writers, ask them if they want to be Graders. And I have holidays so I am free and I see so many people waiting for long times waiting for things to be approved so having BMGF'ers become URPG staff will help A LOT!

Thanks and I hope my post is considered!

 

The issue that Seq and Harry brought up, in addition to the existence of the rush, happens to be what the Training Committee is focusing on at the moment (as opposed to berating the already-established institutions and methods). There's an unofficial newbie-scout thing occurring, which will be posted officially once preparations have been concluded.

 

Well, Bee took half his test and the other half whenever stinky wants to finish it with him. According to him, he's doing good so far. And I also will be taking another member under my wing (a BMG member) that Scourge showed me to on AIM. So I'll test my luck by scouting out a few BMG members that are interested in becoming refs.

 

I didn't say take them out from the grave and re-instate them. I simply undermined the knowledge base of your current bunch to the past bunch ;\.

Even better, its up to you to determine if they are ready or not, you actually don't know how much people would improve over just 1 week of reffing forum battles, getting experience then re-testing them 1 week after to see if their ready or not.(This only applies to people who did reasonably well on ref tests)

Well the same thing would happen that it has happened on PE2K, the scarce resources (graders, refs, judges ect) would be hassled by the unlimited demand of the players, to do their respective "roles". The only way to ease the demand is of course get more resources! People still need to be given the chance to show that they have something in them not just left alone for 2 weeks while they ponder on why they failed tasks (grader test, ref test ect)

I never berated in my OP, I was just giving constructive criticism and some of my ideas, none of you actually had to post here if you didn't want to read my post ;\. As all of my post was just OPINION, I was not having a go at anyone.

Automated tests would not work unless the tests were generated randomly every-time and cheat free.

How would you go in encouraging the members to join/ take the tests? Curiosity asks.

Of course it is, but this activity will continue to rise since something like this will not just be a 1 week off thing.

I never said that you have to give them a 1 week license, if they obviously made alot of mistakes than you tell them to have a try next week, but if their mistakes were only 1-3 minor ones accompanied with 1 major one due to giddiness or ignorance then you will have to see if they have shown enough to earn that 1 week license or maybe even that full license.

Yeah thanks for posting, glad to see that URPG has ninjas like you!

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When have people had to wait to be approved? I know people have to wait sometimes for grades but it's not like they can be instant and sometimes people can't find a ref (but URPG is working on it).

BMG people becoming URPG staff won't change anything, and I don't think we should be pre-dispositioned to allowing any BMGers become URPG staff if they are under qualified either. They'll (I guess we'll since I'm a BMG member too LOL) have to prove themselves.

 

Yes of course! I'm not saying, Just hire them,I'm saying look at them work ask them if they would like to, make them pass the tests and THEN you think about it!

 

No, they won't pass because reffing is difficult and takes a while to learn. Most BMG members can't do it right now.

But anywho, you're welcome to try to pass the test.