Good morning Smogtours.
This is something I have believed needed to happen for a long time in one way or another, and I'd laid out some work towards this when I was TD but never managed to finalize this (see this thread or even this thread, or maybe someone will be happy to dig up conversations from channels I no longer have access to).
In light of recent events, I believe this work needs to be brought to completion.
I think the current Tournament Director role is extremely overworked to a point of inefficiency. I have seen this first hand from both sides. I believe relieving responsibilities from the TD team has been an urgent need of the community for years, but it takes a lot of momentum to change the status quo. I suppose there is momentum now, so it's a good time to bring this up again.
I believe there to be a significant difference between Tournament Directing and Tournament Organizing. I do not believe these tasks need to be assigned to the same people. Directing is making decisions about the formats that best serve the community, and Organizing is actually running the tournaments.
Unifying the role causes all sorts of issues - it makes the role way more demanding, which (1) scares otherwise valid candidates away from volunteering for the position, and (2) means that people who are good at only Directing or only Organizing do not end up getting promoted because they are lacking in the other department, which contributes to the lack of resources available to the TD team as a whole.
I also think the "Organizing Mains" get a lot of vitriol from the community. The source of this vitriol is simple - the community does not like when outsiders come in and make decisions for them. I predict these people would get way less hate and be way happier with the position if they were only running tournaments without having this pressure. Not to mention that usually the Organizing Mains aren't very active Policy Review participants, and they are usually not the best candidates for the actual Directing part of the job.
Now incidentally, I believe I have a pretty unique perspective on this. I recently left head TD somewhat suddenly, and wanted to try and make sure the team knew exactly what they needed to do to replace me, so late last August, before leaving, I spent some time writing down every TD duty for the entire team. This can help us break down duties of TDing vs duties of TOing. Obviously some of this is marginally outdated due to changes since the end of August (and there's likely a couple things I forgot about at the time), but the generalities of it hold up.
^ note that this page gets constantly updated as discussions happen in Tournament Policy, and items in this list are getting added and removed as issues are brought up or solved, which is quite a lot of work even if it is not directly visually reflected here
With this in mind; I don't think the TOing part of things needs a reform. I think the current team does a good job. I haven't really heard many big complaints with quality of hosting, and most of the ones that I do hear are usually in the form of "this guy didn't give me an actwin I hate him so much! awful host!" which, yeah, ok buddy. I think the current team is great at TOing and no changes are necessary in that sense.
I do think policy decisions need a reform. They have needed a reform for a long time. I think the Smogtours community as a whole would be shocked to see how little discussion was behind many huge policy decisions that were taken. This is a problem the team suffered during my time, but I think it became most evident any time I searched back through the server for reasoning behind decisions that were taken before I was there. The answer is: stunningly often, one person within the team has a strong opinion, they push for that opinion, everyone else generally shrugs and says "yep that sounds good you take charge of that I'll continue on with my day", which is extremely reasonable given that they are volunteers, but it is not an effective way of making good policy decisions. It never has been, and it continues not to be.
I'm not saying that this always happens to be clear; if the TD team happens to have multiple strongly opinionated people, usually the discussions are very constructive, and the decisions end up good. But this is not reliable whatsoever, and it is strongly not helped by the fact that the "TDs" are actually investing so many energies on TOing instead, which leaves them unavailable to volunteer as much energy to policy discussions as would be necessary.
Quoting Isa from the other thread:
My proposal is simple: split TD team into TO and TD, with the current team defaulting to TOs. That part is working great.
Rebuild the TD team from scratch. The 'how exactly' is something that can be workshopped. Something I believe could work:
That's just an idea though, and I don't want that exact proposal to take away from my main point: TDing and TOing is not the same job. We need to stop asking overworked unpaid volunteers to take on both duties and reform the way we operate this community. The current system is not fair to them, and it results in bad policy decisions way too often. Thanks for reading
This is something I have believed needed to happen for a long time in one way or another, and I'd laid out some work towards this when I was TD but never managed to finalize this (see this thread or even this thread, or maybe someone will be happy to dig up conversations from channels I no longer have access to).
In light of recent events, I believe this work needs to be brought to completion.
I think the current Tournament Director role is extremely overworked to a point of inefficiency. I have seen this first hand from both sides. I believe relieving responsibilities from the TD team has been an urgent need of the community for years, but it takes a lot of momentum to change the status quo. I suppose there is momentum now, so it's a good time to bring this up again.
I believe there to be a significant difference between Tournament Directing and Tournament Organizing. I do not believe these tasks need to be assigned to the same people. Directing is making decisions about the formats that best serve the community, and Organizing is actually running the tournaments.
Unifying the role causes all sorts of issues - it makes the role way more demanding, which (1) scares otherwise valid candidates away from volunteering for the position, and (2) means that people who are good at only Directing or only Organizing do not end up getting promoted because they are lacking in the other department, which contributes to the lack of resources available to the TD team as a whole.
I also think the "Organizing Mains" get a lot of vitriol from the community. The source of this vitriol is simple - the community does not like when outsiders come in and make decisions for them. I predict these people would get way less hate and be way happier with the position if they were only running tournaments without having this pressure. Not to mention that usually the Organizing Mains aren't very active Policy Review participants, and they are usually not the best candidates for the actual Directing part of the job.
Now incidentally, I believe I have a pretty unique perspective on this. I recently left head TD somewhat suddenly, and wanted to try and make sure the team knew exactly what they needed to do to replace me, so late last August, before leaving, I spent some time writing down every TD duty for the entire team. This can help us break down duties of TDing vs duties of TOing. Obviously some of this is marginally outdated due to changes since the end of August (and there's likely a couple things I forgot about at the time), but the generalities of it hold up.
^ note that this page gets constantly updated as discussions happen in Tournament Policy, and items in this list are getting added and removed as issues are brought up or solved, which is quite a lot of work even if it is not directly visually reflected here
With this in mind; I don't think the TOing part of things needs a reform. I think the current team does a good job. I haven't really heard many big complaints with quality of hosting, and most of the ones that I do hear are usually in the form of "this guy didn't give me an actwin I hate him so much! awful host!" which, yeah, ok buddy. I think the current team is great at TOing and no changes are necessary in that sense.
I do think policy decisions need a reform. They have needed a reform for a long time. I think the Smogtours community as a whole would be shocked to see how little discussion was behind many huge policy decisions that were taken. This is a problem the team suffered during my time, but I think it became most evident any time I searched back through the server for reasoning behind decisions that were taken before I was there. The answer is: stunningly often, one person within the team has a strong opinion, they push for that opinion, everyone else generally shrugs and says "yep that sounds good you take charge of that I'll continue on with my day", which is extremely reasonable given that they are volunteers, but it is not an effective way of making good policy decisions. It never has been, and it continues not to be.
I'm not saying that this always happens to be clear; if the TD team happens to have multiple strongly opinionated people, usually the discussions are very constructive, and the decisions end up good. But this is not reliable whatsoever, and it is strongly not helped by the fact that the "TDs" are actually investing so many energies on TOing instead, which leaves them unavailable to volunteer as much energy to policy discussions as would be necessary.
Quoting Isa from the other thread:
The decision making process displayed here showed to me that there is a clear need for change, but not just at an individual level. Complaints about TD teams being out of touch with the playerbase have always existed on Smogon, perhaps maybe never so loudly as now, but it still points towards a systemic issue that does not begin or end with any one individual. The current system is simply not sustainable. Public outrage might have prevented a poor decision for now, but it comes at a cost - trust between leadership and general public is damaged, and morale is down across the board. Again, this is not a unique occurence, I've been at the other side of this as well.
My proposal is simple: split TD team into TO and TD, with the current team defaulting to TOs. That part is working great.
Rebuild the TD team from scratch. The 'how exactly' is something that can be workshopped. Something I believe could work:
A small permanent council heads the discussions and draws the conclusions, and representatives of all subcommunities make up the rest. About ~5 people making up a head council, then something like (4 CGOU reps, 1 rep for each SCL tier, 1 rep for each oldgen OU) - with many more voices from much different subsections of the community, the chances of every viewpoint being represented in discussions go up significantly, which generally should result in better decisions. With no direct decision making power in the hands of any individual representative, the team can feel a lot more comfortable accepting contributions from otherwise potentially controversial people, and likewise, people who want to contribute to policy making can do so without having the full pressure of a TD position.
Additionally I believe this system would introduce easy ways for both sides to hold each other accountable; the head council would have the ability to remove any problematic representatives and bring in replacements, and the representatives could hold some kind of vote of confidence on members of the head council. Do this, say, once a year, and I believe you can ensure everyone involved in discussions is staying active and doing a good job, or at least enough people to end up with correct decisions.
Additionally I believe this system would introduce easy ways for both sides to hold each other accountable; the head council would have the ability to remove any problematic representatives and bring in replacements, and the representatives could hold some kind of vote of confidence on members of the head council. Do this, say, once a year, and I believe you can ensure everyone involved in discussions is staying active and doing a good job, or at least enough people to end up with correct decisions.
That's just an idea though, and I don't want that exact proposal to take away from my main point: TDing and TOing is not the same job. We need to stop asking overworked unpaid volunteers to take on both duties and reform the way we operate this community. The current system is not fair to them, and it results in bad policy decisions way too often. Thanks for reading