Proposal Draft League and the Mid-Week Activity Win

[Rissoux]

Greetings,​

I've been getting a better feel for Smogon standards concerning activity claims and what constitutes an appropriate activity win request, but want to open a dialogue for a better sense of coordination between the Smogon standard (fairly well documented) and the Draft League standard (less documented, and more of a gentleman's agreement).

There has been a situation arise from our summer seasonal tournament in which the following information can be discerned:

• Player 1 and player 2 schedule on player 2's wall. They agree to 4 pm on Wednesday, citing player 1's availability of any day barring Tuesday and Friday.
• At 4 PM on Wednesday, player 1 posts a reply to the scheduling thread stating that they're online and available, gets no immediate response.
• Within the hour, player 1 replies back to the message thread informing their opponent that something came up (medical emergency) and that is why they missed the time. At which point player 1 inquires about a subsequent time to reschedule the match for.
• Player 2 refuses the rescheduling attempts, citing enough evidence to claim an activity win.

Player 2 is, by my estimation, permitted an activity win based on all the precedence I've seen thus far on the site, but I'd like to annotate a few things and make a final proposal/recommendation:

• Currently, the activity win rules do not have allowances for emergencies; medical or otherwise. I think we can all agree that there are a multitude of important reasons individuals should be prioritizing their real life situation over a scheduled Pokémon battle. The last thing I want is someone worrying about their Smogon obligations while dealing with an emergency situation which is what we're encouraging when offering nothing but rigidity in regards to scheduling rules.
• For every Draft League function I've ever ran, I've encouraged people to schedule and play as early on in the week as possible so that there's plenty of "fall-back" time in case something happens. Sunday games are notorious for being the default scheduling choice, and while it's definitely a viable day for which games can occur, I'd argue that there is also an administrative benefit to ensuring as many matches occur before the deadline as possible (usually Sunday). The more matches that happen prior to Sunday, the less strain is put onto tournament admins for updating threads/documents and preparing the next round brackets.
• Due to the standard lengths of tournaments (anywhere from 1-3 months or more), it stands to reason that an increased level of leniency towards the later rounds of the tournaments would be in the interest of those that have put a cumulatively increased amount of time and effort into their tournament performance. No one I've spoken to thinks advancing to a late round or even winning a championship off of forfeit fishing is a sportsmanlike way to conclude an event, and furthermore it's a potential disservice to everyone else who competed in the event to have the culminating event be decided by something such as a real life emergency. I would pose that it is unreasonable and an unhealthy standard to provide the current amount of leeway in regards to scheduling adjustments.

While I understand and empathize with the school of thought regarding the valuation of your opponent's time, and want to do everything in my power to protect it as a sub-forum leader and Senior Staff, I also have to understand that things come up that supersede Smogon obligations. I think we are completely capable of accommodating individuals in our tournaments with limited rescheduling capacity on a case by case basis, vetted through tournament hosts, CL's, and if needed through TD's (though I imagine this would be far too tedious to be effective). It does not strike me as fitting within the competitive vision for the tournaments by allowing people to claim activity wins on Wednesday on a given week when they've previously stated they have a remaining half of the week of applicable availability.

Understanding that preliminary availability does not always hold true throughout the rest of the week, there is still a mechanism by which extensions are generally offered through to the Tuesday of next week that can be easily requisitioned. I believe that players enter tournaments to play games, and currently the rules are so rigid that it enables players to advance by not playing them too easily. I trust tournament hosts and the TD team to vet these rare re-scheduling requests in the same way I trust other Smogon staff to handle security and privacy matters; because there is a network of accountability set up to ensure that the privileges are not abused and they're valid, not routine, and in the best interest of the competitive spirit of the tournaments.

Proposal:
I am recommending changes to the way that Draft League conducts our tournaments in anticipation of our potentially ribbon'ed circuit next year. The following recommendation could be applied to other sub-forums, but I am not knowledgeable enough on the encompassing competitive environment to confidently speak on everyone else's behalf. It would make sense for other sub-forums to also be afforded some agency to decide how to best incorporate specific activity win implementation, if the need arises for it. In order to alleviate the burden on Tournament Directors, Tournament hosts should be afforded the opportunity (or sub-forum CL if the "rank" is insufficient) to validate claims pertinent to rescheduling attempts and assess them as required to facilitate the most competitive environment within their tournaments. If this requires a new policy be generated at the TD level in regards to exactly how this new system would look, I'd gladly help with it if necessary though I am not a TD obviously. That there is not currently an apparatus to account for competitors having genuine reasons for missing scheduled match times should be remedied at once.​

While I understand this issue has been beat to death, it is my perspective that the rules are not always set in stone and I am looking forward to some kind of resolution. I am eager to work with the TDs "to get to yes". Have a great day, and thanks for reading my novel!

 

[Wigglytuff]

In order to alleviate the burden on Tournament Directors, Tournament hosts should be afforded the opportunity (or sub-forum CL if the "rank" is insufficient) to validate claims pertinent to rescheduling attempts and assess them as required to facilitate the most competitive environment within their tournaments.

How would a host/CL/TD/anyone "validate" and "assess" medical emergencies (as was the example you used)? Doctor note? Pictures of injury?

Nobody likes giving act wins on a Tuesday, but the alternative of requiring people to reveal personal information about themselves is worse, and just taking people at their word is woat. Realistically, how would you know the difference between someone that missed the time because they witnessed a car crash and were asked to stick around to provide information for insurance claims and someone that missed the time because they were pulled over for speeding? Would you consider the former to be a "legitimate" reason to miss the time and the latter not? And even regardless of which it is, is that even fair to the opponent that was kept waiting?

 

[Rissoux]

How would a host/CL/TD/anyone "validate" and "assess" medical emergencies (as was the example you used)? Doctor note? Pictures of injury?

Nobody likes giving act wins on a Tuesday, but the alternative of requiring people to reveal personal information about themselves is worse, and just taking people at their word is woat. Realistically, how would you know the difference between someone that missed the time because they witnessed a car crash and were asked to stick around to provide information for insurance claims and someone that missed the time because they were pulled over for speeding? Would you consider the former to be a "legitimate" reason to miss the time and the latter not? And even regardless of which it is, is that even fair to the opponent that was kept waiting?

Wigglytuff,
Thanks for your questions. So far as validation of a medical emergency, it would be inappropriate to make sharing of PII standard practice (incentivizing people to share legal names, DOB, etc) so the onus for creating a compelling argument would be squarely on the individual wanting to be granted an extension. It’d likely be an uphill burden to fulfill, but it should be because it should be a rare event.
There’s a lot of ambiguity around the exact events that would be granted an extension, but getting bogged down by ensuring every possible instance is annotated and logged **before** tournament hosts have the ability to grant extension request reviews is impractical. I think what’s getting lost in translation is that I am not advocating for more lenient activity win guidelines, I’m asking for more fidelity to be afforded to requisite individuals to field these requests instead of a near blanket approach of “no extensions” which seems to be the case currently, to me. There has to be a middle ground here and I’m trying to find it. I hope I answered your questions.

 

[pulsar512b]

I do not think draft should be any differently treated than regular. There is no reason other than tradition and we should keep rulings the same across the site.

You can look at https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/reasonable-time-to-ask-for-a-reschedule.3725832/ for a thread that touches somewhat on this. In essence, if you no-show your opponent is entitled to a ffw.

If you don’t show up to a game without warning of any sort, the opponent may reschedule but if they don’t want to, tough luck. The thread debates how late you should be able to tell someone you can’t make the time and not take a ffl if opp can’t