I think it would be a good idea that when any new tournament is beginning (i.e. still in the sign-up phase) that an announcement should be made on the main page. I appreciate that this is done for the annual Smogon Tournament and the Smogon Tours which take place, but I feel general tournaments would get a lot more recognition and gain more popularity if people knew whenever a new tournament was starting. Personally I tend to check out the tournament forum once every two weeks or so only, and today I was disappointed to find out I had missed the signups for the World Cup Tournament for the second year now.
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Alert system when new tournaments are beginning
- Thread starter Jonathan
- Start date
I think this would be a pretty good idea. I currently check the Tournament forum everyday, but for others who are still somewhat knew to Smogon or do not check the Tournament forum, this would definetely be a good idea. I definetely think smaller tournaments deserve more all-around recognition, I believe that we've been overlooking them too much and have been too focused on only the big tournaments (Official Smogon Tournament / Smogon Tour / World Cup Of Pokemon (sort of).
Well, naturally official tournaments are going to get more recognition. That's just how it works.
This would require coordination between a member of the site staff and the tournament organizer since the timing would have to be relatively similar since tournaments tend to fill up quickly. I'm also not convinced that smaller, non-official tournaments need to be announced when they start. I already agreed in another thread that I would make sure that non-official tournament winners were mentioned on the site news updates, but I don't know if its worth mentioning the start of a tournament.
If you really want updates on tournaments couldn't you just use the Subscribe to Forum feature?
edit: This is also a question of "what is newsworthy" essentially lol
This would require coordination between a member of the site staff and the tournament organizer since the timing would have to be relatively similar since tournaments tend to fill up quickly. I'm also not convinced that smaller, non-official tournaments need to be announced when they start. I already agreed in another thread that I would make sure that non-official tournament winners were mentioned on the site news updates, but I don't know if its worth mentioning the start of a tournament.
If you really want updates on tournaments couldn't you just use the Subscribe to Forum feature?
edit: This is also a question of "what is newsworthy" essentially lol
I wasn't aware of the Subscribe to Forum feature before, that definitely helps out. But it's still not the most practical solution as most people already get tons of mail, and having to sift through another email every day for a new tournament doesn't seem like an ideal solution.
Now that I've given the issue some more thought, I can't see why we're not already doing it honestly. It seems rather incomplete that we just announce completed tournaments on the site page. Maybe it's just me but I'm not really interested in the results of a tournament I never even knew was going on in the first place lol. The recognition tournament winners are looking for would be a lot more rewarding I'm sure if more people at Smogon knew about the tournaments in the first place.
As I don't visit the tournament page much, I'll admit I don't know how many tournaments are going on usually, so maybe what I'm proposing is an unreasonable amount of work for the site staff. Do tournament moderators have permission to post on the main site? That would make things easier as they have to approve tournaments in the first place. If not I don't think it would be too hard for them to pass the message along to the site staff, as they seem very active on Smogon.
As to whether this is newsworthy or not, again all I can say is that if it's newsworthy to annouce the winners of tournaments, the same should hold true for the start of tournaments.
Now that I've given the issue some more thought, I can't see why we're not already doing it honestly. It seems rather incomplete that we just announce completed tournaments on the site page. Maybe it's just me but I'm not really interested in the results of a tournament I never even knew was going on in the first place lol. The recognition tournament winners are looking for would be a lot more rewarding I'm sure if more people at Smogon knew about the tournaments in the first place.
As I don't visit the tournament page much, I'll admit I don't know how many tournaments are going on usually, so maybe what I'm proposing is an unreasonable amount of work for the site staff. Do tournament moderators have permission to post on the main site? That would make things easier as they have to approve tournaments in the first place. If not I don't think it would be too hard for them to pass the message along to the site staff, as they seem very active on Smogon.
As to whether this is newsworthy or not, again all I can say is that if it's newsworthy to annouce the winners of tournaments, the same should hold true for the start of tournaments.
If you want to participate in Tournaments, why not just go to the Tournament home page instead of the Smogon home page to start your Smogon reading experience? Having a Site Staffer put something on the main page would only help those who refresh that rather than the Tournament page, really.
Basically this would only make sense if it were "real time" like RSS or something, because otherwise it's simply "I want to be able to know about Tournaments from the main page rather than the Tournament page".
Basically this would only make sense if it were "real time" like RSS or something, because otherwise it's simply "I want to be able to know about Tournaments from the main page rather than the Tournament page".
I don't think I explained myself well enough, or at least my meaning wasn't clear. I wasn't saying this would be a lot of work for the site staff or something (it wouldn't). I'm saying that tournaments tend to fill up quickly, some in less than an hour. We'd have to coordinate the time of posting the sign-up thread with the time of posting with the tournament announcement, otherwise it would just be an after-the-fact announcement which we already have on the Tournaments page. Furthermore, if they weren't online around the time the front news posted it; they would still miss out on the sign-ups.
I personally don't think winners of tournaments are newsworthy anyway, but the community disagrees with me so I go along with it heh.
Now that I thought about it some more, I agree with you Caelum. Some people just aren't active on smogon during the sign-ups of the Tournament and by the time they get on it will already be filled. If they're not on Smogon at all (which is usually the case) so an alert telling them about the tournament will do no good. That, and the fact that it will be too difficult to send an alert of some sort right at the exact moment that the sign-ups begin and then have somebody cancel it at the moment sign-ups are closed.
Oh I see. Yeah the announcement definitely shouldn't become an after-the-fact thing as that would defeat a lot of its purpose. Still though it's reasonable to assume more people would sign up for tournaments if there were announcements on the front page, so we could always just expand the sign-ups to 64 or 128 people if the demand is there (it says in the tournament rules thread that you should try and accommodate as many people you can in tournaments if demand is there). Why not make it that sign-ups for a tournament have to open for at least 24 hours, instead of closing it when a tournament "fills up" ?
