Mentoring Refs

This idea was originally proposed by Felly, and I like it so I thought I'd develop it a bit more. First of all, I believe anyone can become a ref. Some mechanics are complicated, sure, but most mistakes are made when people remember things incorrectly. Other than that, most information is all compiled into refpedia, and testing mechanics really isn't too hard.

I think it would be a great idea to have a mentoring system where existing refs can help prospective refs learn the ropes and gradually get into the more complicated mechanics. Like the current mentoring system, there would be mini-goals to achieve and as these goals are attained, there would be rewards.

So to start, just some basic ground rules:

-Before you can become a ref-in-training (I'll refer to them as "RIT"s) you must pass the quiz, and the rule still remains that only Senior/Head Refs may help with that privately.
-RITs can only ref with their mentor or a Senior/Head ref present and reffing alongside them.
-RITs would still have to log battles. There could be a separate section for "Practice Logs".
-Any battle reffed by a RIT would not pay. Since the battles aren't official, participants can use whatever non-hackmons they'd like with whatever moves they can learn.


Now one thing I can see not working for this is that it kind of encourages people to not take the test until they've completed every mini-goal first. We could help this issue by limiting the amount of rewards RITs can receive for completing goals. Additionally, there's the upcoming Challenges system that Soul Master is working on, and that gives incentive to becoming a ref so you can get started on completing those.

Finally, all that's needed is a list of mini-goals. Things like "ref a full set of basics, ref with held items on, ref a 6v6, ref a multi-battle, ref a rotation battle, ref an inverse battle, ref a 6 person FFA" etc. There could also be things like "ref Leech Seed, ref Toxic, ref Sheer Force+Life Orb" and other difficult mechanics people usually get wrong. We could think of these and assign them point values or rewards or whatever.

Thoughts?

 

[[Warning: contains non-sugarcoated critiques and opinions. May contain traces of thinly-veiled complaining.]]

I don't understand the point of introducing goals with rewards and then immediately diminishing those rewards, so far that they aren't worth obtaining. If the reward makes me not want to achieve the goal, why bother with it at all? Unless maybe it's just a cash bonus that you can earn once-- like, "Ref a 6v6" and the first time they do that (alongside their mentor, of course), they get normal pay. But they aren't full-refs, so they don't get paid normally... though I guess the idea is that they're not-real battles, so idk.

I got the feeling that this was just to hold RITs over, until they could be tested. I don't speak for everybody, but are there people who have passed the ref quiz saying, "gee, I really don't want to bother with the ref test"? Or is it people saying, "there's nobody around who's willing to give me a ref test" for a month? Again, I don't have the years and years of experience, but that's what I saw with seppe-- he passed the quiz and then it was just waiting for someone to actually do it.

As an aside, I've also never seen a URPG rotation battle. It's a nice idea to include things like rotation and multis as goals, but from what I've seen, refs just flat out refuse to do any kind of nonstandard battle type... point being, I don't know why a RIT would put themselves through something that, I assume as a non-ref, must be kind of gruelling, when they could just avoid it like real refs do? And like they themselves will, once they graduate from RITs to real refs?

 

This was my idea, so I'm obviously behind it.

I like the idea of including rotation and multi-battles into the goals. I agree with Truly's point of that they're not seen much, but I think the main reason behind that is that there's not really much emphasis on it for the quiz or the test. (At least not that I'm aware of. I barely remember my test, and every test is different.) I can say from experience that these are not like the traditional single battles that you see 99.9% of the time in URPG. I've reffed Inverse, Doubles, Triples, and Rotation, and there's mechanics in these battles that are completely different from your traditional battle. They also tend to be a lot more tedious than your traditional singles battle, so that plus the different mechanics are probably the main factors in why one doesn't see many of these. Sure, all of the information is in the refpedia for you to look at, but it's a lot different reading about it than actually putting it into practice. Trust me, I know. I've been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt. Even if they never use that knowledge, they can still say they put those skills into practice once. Inverse would probably be easier to do if there was an Inverse calc, but that would rely on Monbrey making one; the battles are still possible with the current calc, it just requires a bit more thought and making sure you have the right types in for the effectiveness. (And Arceus forbid we make refs think.) I think there might also be a pay issue with the doubles/triples/maybe rotation battles, but I might just be making stuff up about that now.

Two things I just want to bring up/get clarification on.

1) The RIT would actually be doing the reffing, yes? The mentor would be there to calc things too and make sure that everything was happening correctly and whatnot, but the mentor wouldn't actually do much of anything. Basically like the current way we do the mentoring thing where a licensed ref does all of the work, but the RIT is on the sidelines reffing too but not actually speaking up, but with the roles reversed, if that makes sense. Just wanna make sure I follow there.

2) Would it be possible to add goals specific to each person? Like if the person speaks up and says "hey, I'm struggling with reffing X, can we make that one of my goals?" or if a senior/head ref saw that there was a concept on the quiz/previously failed test that the RIT struggled with and hasn't really grasped yet, could those things be added as goals to their list if the RIT wanted them to be? I understand we can't really talk about the quiz or the test, but if there's a concept they're seriously struggling with for whatever reason, I don't see why we couldn't help them with it.

 

Not sure about this one. What we could do is make a large list of goals, have the mentor/mentee choose a set number from that list based on what they need to work on. There should also be some goals that apply to everyone, though.

 

I didn't say the reward diminishes the goal. To put it bluntly, please read what I actually said, instead of arguing something I didn't? One of the reasons I get so angry whenever I try to make a point on AIM is that I have to say everything twice.

What I said, was that you're introducing a reward-- and then immediately scaling back that reward to make it not worth getting. Basically parroting back exactly what you said in your initial post, though I'm reading it again and maybe you meant that a RIT can only be rewarded for some of the goals he achieves? Which is a slightly different problem; it wouldn't encourage people do achieve more than the payable [3 of 5] goals. Except, they do have an incentive to practice, regardless, as it will supposedly help them pass the test.

Look, I'm not saying don't do it, I'm just pointing out potential flaws I see in the proposed system.

I figured people would practice anyway-- just from that sort of nervous energy you get when you first apply/pass your ref quiz, you start to worry about the test, like you would any other upcoming test. And, like any other upcoming test that you want to pass, you study for it. But that's just what I'd do, and what I saw Seppe (the recent example) do. Maybe that's unusual for most people?

I guess for the whole thing, I think rewards that aren't good, or are limited, will not be a good incentive, or at least be a limited one. The incentive is to get practice in, and this sounds more like Stories section; "here's something you're already doing, for your own good. Now we're giving out rewards for it!" There's not a problem with that, necessarily. But if the intent is to incentivize mock-reffing, then it doesn't sound like this will do that.

Of course, I'm not saying the program shouldn't be used, I'm just pointing out potential problems I see.



I cut the part about unusual battle types because I couldn't phrase it in a way that didn't boil down to, "me complaining that nobody is willing to ref multi battles." Despite refs apparently needing to know how.

[EDIT]
Hey, maybe if you add a mentor/goal/RIT incentive for multis/rotations, I'll finally get to do some multis/rotations, even if they aren't official battles. That would be cool.

 

A large list of goals would be fine too! However y'all wanna work that out, I just wanted to suggest it because then that also gives them the opportunity to focus on things they struggle with too that they may not encounter in their mock battles. The extra goals would be tacked onto the ones for everyone though, yeah.

 

Okay I'm sorry but what the actual fuck? Why does everything in URPG as of the last year or two have to be so tightly regulated with so many needless rules. If someone wants to help reffing, let them. Literally everything about this is so against what my image of the URPG is

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, in fact I'm sure many of the people who have been around a while would agree. This is meant to be a fun game, stop the ridiculous control pls.

 

How is it ridiculous control? It's totally optional. It's not even a thing yet, it's just an idea. For goodness sake not everything Staff tries to do is meant to be controlling and authoritative. In fact, the ONLY reason I came up with this was as a compromise for something a non-staff brought up in the first place. I'm trying to take people's ideas to heart rather than just dismiss them all. But of course, all you want to look at are some trivial rules that are only there to prevent abuse (And, btw, if you dont like the rules, you can still practice as normal without the reward system. No one is forcing you to do this mentoring thing.), and you ignore the actual effort I've put into developing ideas that other people had to help make them reality.

You think staff is biased by enstating rules? Well I think you're biased for saying at every turn that the ideas staff has are controlling and fun sucking. I'm very much done with being treated like I don't really care; that all I want to do is control a bunch of online Pokemon fans because I'm on some kind of power trip. The only thing I don't care about is control. I couldn't care less if you do what I say or give me the middle finger. I want to help this community and develop it and I actually care about everyone in it and what they have to say (surprise!). There are some rules to prevent abuse. All I'm trying to do here is help. If you don't like the idea, then say so but don't tell me I'm trying to be controlling when that's the opposite of what I'm trying to do.

BY THE WAY, this game is supposed to be fun for me, too, you know. Everything I do here is optional. These kinds of reactions to really innocuous things don't make me want to stick around in the community at all. Sorry.

 

Oh boy, so many posts in a Trainer's Court thread since I last logged on, my favourite thing ever!

I'd like to clarify something about these rules:

When this thread was original posted/discussed, part of the idea was to pay the RIT and the people who participated in the unofficial battle a fixed amount, therefore since it would be providing income it needed to be logged, like everything else in the URPG already is. Since the ref was unqualified, a Senior ref would need to supervise to ensure the battle was correct and therefore could pay.

But, although I understand the intent behind it, I pretty much immediately shut that part of the idea down. There is absolutely no way I'm going to allow a system where unofficial URPG battles reffed by unqualified URPG referees pay money. It undermines the entirety of the URPG battling system and progression through it, and the URPG referee "employment" system.

So, given that there is no income system from unofficial/RIT battles, the rules that would require such strict monitoring and logging may not be required.

---

As for my thoughts on the actual idea, I like the concept behind some form of rewards/incentives for people training for professions. However the current idea to reward RITs for reffing really doesn't make much sense to me because they shouldn't be reffing yet. It relies on unofficial battles for which the participants have no real incentive, and as I mentioned above, a monetary incentive can't be provided for.

On top of that, being a ref is still the most profitable profession, even with the reduced activity levels we often see. If you're an active ref you can earn a lot of cash and we're now suggesting we give you more just to become one. I feel like Curators and Judges need incentives, not referees.

If an idea like this was to be implemented, it really should be for all professions, but they'll all have the same problem - you shouldnt ref/grade/range/judge/curate until you've passed the respective test. So how can we reward you for doing something you can't officially be doing yet?

tl;dr I actually do like this idea but the practical implementation seems really bad

 

I feel like this quote, despite not specifically mentioning referees, is relevant to this discussion, and I can personally sympathize with the argument here

Although I definitely appreciate the desire to help those who haven't taken the referee test yet (being a ref-in-training myself and all), I can also see the appeal in not having an over-encumbrance of unnecessary rules.

Perhaps a formal system for training referees isn't actually necessary. I know from personal experience that the actual refs are almost always willing to answer any question I might have, only not doing so when they're busy/offline. I've also been graciously offered to sidealong ref (where I am given the stats of the battle to follow along) or just sit and use the calc in a Public sends match.

So, even without a ref mentorship system, I've never lacked for assistance. Granted, I had to go out and take the initiative to ask for help, but I did receive said help, and I'm grateful for it. And, damn, am I looking forward to making some serious bank. Experienced refs always seem to be willing to help me, and those looking to become refs should always be able to find help. I think it works out fine right now.

Disclaimer: Seppe is a newb. As such, you are strongly advised to take anything he says with a grain of salt.

Link to original post by Smiles HERE

EDIT: It has also occurred to me that adding "Become a Referee" or "Become a Grader" to the current Mentee's list of goals in the Mentorship Program might help in incentivizing new URPG 'professionals', although this would probably require mentors to hold the profession of the subject they want to teach. idk

 

for curator and judge incentives award pokemon at certain milestones

eg.
simple @ 10 curations/judgings
Medium @ 25 curations/judgings
Hard @ 40 curations/judgings

and so on, obviously exact numbers could be worked.

 

I'm gonna go ahead and back off from this idea. It's given me a lot more of a headache than I thought, and it looks like there wasn't as much demand for it as it looked like there was (at least to me) in the thread fawkes posted. I only really posted this to form a compromise with something I thought people wanted, but I guess people don't want it so bad. It's not like our current system where people who passed the quiz just practice whenever they feel like is bad anyway. If someone else wants to think of a different compromise or fix this idea somehow, feel free but I can't be asked to continue it.

 

I know Swifty said he was backing off from this, but I have an idea to throw onto the table that's relevant and also carries off of Seppe's post (and Smiles' too, but that was referenced in Seppe's post). I'm not going to take charge of this since I'm helping with the Challenges, and I don't want to have too much on my plate at once, but I'll just throw the idea out there & we can do with it as we will.

The idea is basically similar to what we have now, mentorship for a profession. However, this thread specifically focused on mentoring people to become refs originally. Since that idea isn't getting much reception (which is okay, that happens, but we don't need to be rude arses when we don't like an idea either), let's expand it to mentoring for all professions, not just refs. There would still be goals for RITs, but there would also be goals for aspiring graders, rangers, curators, and judges. It seems like that would gather more interest based on other posts in this thread. I can understand where Smiles is coming from with her point of becoming a better X before becoming a *profession*, but I feel like there still may be that hesitation in regards to actually going towards that profession. It's not to say the current system is bad, but there are professions, like Judging and Curating, that are seriously lacking, and having qualified people in those sections could help push things along. Also, having a URPG job is generally strongly recommended (or at least very heavily encouraged) to new players to help them earn money and whatnot, and I think there may be that hesitation if they're good at X and don't feel like they need the mentoring program led by Smiles, but they don't really feel like they'll be good at *profession*.

I'm not going to throw out specific goals for each section since I'm not really 100% sure on what to put out there for specific goals for each section, even for the ones I'm a part of like park and stories. Those could definitely be discussed.

This wouldn't pay for anyone involved since no one but the mentor is licensed, and the mentor already gets paid by actually doing their profession. Their reward would be having the confidence to actually take their test and (hopefully!) pass it so that they can start earning money.

I think there does need to be a universal set of guidelines though to prevent people from constantly staying with this mentorship program forever and just never taking the test, or if we decide to offer incentives, the guidelines would also prevent people from abusing the system to get those incentives. Note that these are guidelines to keep people from potentially abusing the system by constantly completing mini-goals until they're all done or whatever abuse could be found in this. Think of them as rules if you must, but I'm abstaining from that term since it's apparently causing a bit of an issue and making things seem "too controlling." Like Swifty said, if anyone doesn't like these guidelines (which aren't even finalized, by the way), then no one is forcing you to participate in this system and you can help someone without this system.

• Mentors would need to have a license in the profession they're mentoring people in. This means that someone who only has a ref license can't mentor people who are looking to be a grader in training.
• Mentors would need to have their license for 2 months before they can mentor people. We can change this number as desired, but 2 months is what we use for refs before they can ref their first FFA, so I feel like that's a good number to use here. It basically allows us to see that they really know what they're doing before they start mentoring people, much like we make refs wait 2 months before they ref an FFA so that we can make sure they know what they're doing.
• There would need to be some sort of thread where mentees could post stuff for their mentor to see. For refs, this isn't really as much of a necessity since they can mentor over AIM/Skype and if it's a forum battle, they could just look at the thread. The same applies to judging. For rangers, this could be sample park runs with their mentor/another member with their mentor supervising. For art and stories, this could be curating/grading already curated/graded pieces and posting those in a thread and tagging their mentor in the post for them to look it over.
• Mentees that want to participate in this program would need to pass their desired profession's quiz before they can apply to be a part of this program. For graders and curators, since only the test exists for those, anyone that wanted to be mentored in grading or curating would need to submit 3 pieces into that section and have them graded/curated before they can apply. (If there is a genuine struggle with all three pieces being graded/curated in a timely manner, then if at least one is graded/curated, it'll be fine since they have that idea of seeing one.)

Ideas for ways this could work is that refs could ref mock battles with their mentors watching on AIM/Skype, or they could ref mock battles on the forums. If their mentor isn't on AIM/Skype but they really want to ref a mock battle, they could just do it anyways and c/p the information to a thread on the forums for their mentor to review. Since they're mock battles, the battlers can use any Pokemon they want with any abilities or moves that they can legally learn. The same could also apply for judges. For graders, this could be grading already existing stories on the URPG that have already been graded, or if the grader mentor sees an acceptable non-URPG story that could be graded, they could do that as well. The same could also apply for art. Finding off-URPG work for stories to capture Pokemon may be harder than it would be for art, but hey, props to y'all if you find that for stories. For rangers, this could just be doing mock runs with another member. Some of this probably coincides with my third bullet point above, but I figured I'd put the ideas of how this could work here so that people would have an idea of how it could work for each of the professions.

As a side note, there's been some talk in the past of submitting poetry for Pokemon in stories, and I feel like there's some ideas floating around for art forms that could be submitted, but there's not really anyone skilled enough in those areas to give proper feedback. At the very least, for art, I know there's some lesser seen art forms, like graphic art and models, that curators may be hesitant to curate because they just don't know how to do it. This system could also assist with that if there were people that could do that.

I think this idea has potential, and I think it should happen in some way or form. I feel like there's some interest with it given that Truly asked me about grader/ranger mentoring and it's sounding like people are at least interested from this thread and the forum battles thread. Smiles shot it down for grader/ranger mentoring, and I understand why: the foundational skills should be built upon first before you shoot for the profession, and that's what her mentoring thread is for. However, not everyone may need that mentoring before they shoot for the profession. I'll use myself as an example. If a mentoring for professions system had existed when I first joined URPG, I probably would not have used it for grading at all. I felt like I had a strong enough grasp on English grammar and story writing that I could critique a story without having someone show me the ropes. I submitted a few stories, saw what I needed to do, and passed the test. However, there might be someone that's not like me. They'd have the grasp on English grammar and story writing, but they're hesitant on their ability to critique. This would help them learn to do that so that they could get the profession they want.

Hopefully this all makes sense, but if not, I'll be happy to clarify. I don't really want to take charge of this, but I'll be willing to throw my ideas out there and explain them further and also work with someone else who wants to take charge of this.

 

Maybe start by not having a super inactive member currently in charge of the Art Section (see: Art Event 2014). Also, it's probably not a good idea for staff (Ash and Felly) to give the only person who was during curations a truckload of sass when he only asks for wages that were way overdue.

 

First things first, Winter isn't as inactive as you think she is; she is available on Skype to answer questions or talk or whatever. She is contactable. That said, I don't really agree with the fact that she's super inactive, but I can agree with the fact that I don't feel like one person should manage two URPG sections. I can't really speak of staff discussions on the matter, but we felt like Winter was the most suited person for the job at the time, despite already having the Park under her belt. If you have suggestions for candidates, if you suggest them to a staff member, we can take that into consideration. I can't say we'll do anything with the suggestion other than consider it, but at least you can know that you suggested someone and we thought about it.

Secondly, it is my understanding that your wages weren't paid because your log wasn't updated. If your log isn't updated, you won't get paid until your log is updated, and even then, you wouldn't get paid until the next wages period; as far as I'm aware, that applies to all professions, except Judging since their pay is instant. At any rate, you got your money for your wages, so that problem has been solved. Let's let bygones be bygones and hope it doesn't happen again. I'm also going to take this time to apologize for the sass I may have given you over AIM or wherever it was I gave you sass; to be honest, I don't even remember the incident at hand, but I feel like I may have said something along the lines of "just because someone isn't on AIM doesn't mean they're inactive." Whatever it was I said, it doesn't matter now. It's water under the bridge now. I apologize for the incident, and I'll do my best to not let it happen again. If any bit of this post was sassy or you feel it was in a sassy manner, I apologize for that as well. I'm actually glad that someone's going out there and curating the art, whether it's you or another curator!

Finally, while I understand your concern for what you feel is an inactive Head of Art, this thread really is not the place for that. This thread is meant to focus on mentoring members to take up a profession of their choice so that we can get more people out there curating art or grading stories or whatever. I've already mentioned earlier in my post that you can bring up your concern with that to a staff member if you want and also suggest someone that you may feel is suitable for the job; we're humans, we make mistakes, and maybe we missed someone who truly is suitable for the position besides Winter, and then we could possibly give that Head of Art position to someone more active to push activity into that section as well. I'm not saying we'll actually hand the position off, but at least the name would be out there and in our minds for future discussions if the URPG staff don't feel they're suitable at the present time. I'd also like to note that if you have any issues with a URPG staff member, like myself or Ash, that you talk to another URPG staff member that you don't have a problem with so that the issue can be resolved in a peaceful manner. I can't speak for other staff, but if you have any problems with me, I'm more than willing to talk them over with you so that they can be resolved and so that I can try not to make the same mistake again; I'm only human, I'm going to make mistakes, but it's important that we learn from those mistakes.

 

False. I did make several complaints to staff about the continued bias treatment imparted on me. It continued without missing a beat. Art wages were never systemically handed out in any form of a schedule. And it's not water under the bridge because it pretty
much made me quit urpg.