Proposal Use forms for tournament signups

[Hogg]

Something I've been thinking about for a long time: the forums have an integrated forms feature. We use it for things like the end-of-year awards (EDIT: apparently the end-of-year awards forms are a nightmare so let's not use that as an example) and it requires a valid login to participate in the form.

Thread signups are kind of a Thing at this point, but they're messy, they take up tons of forum real estate and in any large tour they quickly get to be a huge pain to scroll through. There's also constantly issues with people who don't want to follow the signup format, especially with anything that requires more input than just saying "in." So what about replacing them with an integrated form, and have the OP link a spreadsheet to the completed entries, so that people can just scroll through who has entered that way? It would mean we could guarantee certain formats were followed, and wouldn't need to constantly bug the always-excellent P Squared for spreadsheets constantly. You'd still be able to see who signed up, etc., by looking at the sheet. And from a hosting perspective, in addition to making things "cleaner," it would also make it way easier to go directly from signups straight into the bracketmaker.

Some points worth considering, though:

1. Likewhoring/hype. People would lose the free likes they sometimes get on their signups posts. Also, it's definitely hype when you see certain names sign up in big tours, especially if unexpected. I don't think this is actually a huge deal - we've just kind of been used to doing things this way for a while, and I think we'd adjust to doing things a different way. I'm sure people will still watch the spreadsheets and excitedly post on smogtours discord or in the Commencement thread/equivalent when hype signups happen.

2. Technical implementation. We'd probably need to develop some form templates that could be easily used for a variety of tournament types, so that we don't have to make things from scratch every time. Also, as of right now, setting up forms requires ACP access, meaning it's something that can only be done by super mod+, and it's a setting that needs to specifically be enabled.

And hey, if this works out... what else can we do? Maybe one day someone much smarter than me can set things up so that we also can report wins via form, and have the results show up in visualized brackets like you see in Challonge. Maybe there can be a master database of all tournaments once we start inputting things in this way, allowing for significantly improved stats collection. A lot of this stuff is pie in the sky at this point, but we've got to start somewhere, right? As fun as thread signups are, I struggle to believe we're properly utilizing all the technical options at our fingertips to make tournaments the best they can possibly be.

 

[Kalalokki]

Forms do allow for their content to be posted as a post afaik, so you wouldn't have to lose out on that likewhoring/hype part if XenForo saved the form data somewhere else as well as posting it in a thread. You could also specify forms to always be formatted correctly, if you only give certain options available for choosing when signing up. The Dutch Plumberjack is the form master through XenForo so I'll refer to them for more technical details if they'd like to elaborate.

 

[Diophantine]

It would make the manager's job easier when looking at who signed up and considering new players.

1. Likewhoring/hype. People would lose the free likes they sometimes get on their signups posts.

Anyone likewhoring on Smogon needs to get a life and depriving them of their embarrassing cries for attention is nothing but a positive.

Also, it's definitely hype when you see certain names sign up in big tours, especially if unexpected.

Make the responses public so people still get to see them. Sure they won't get the notification (unless you want to implement it this way?), but they can still check it up whenever they want.

2. Technical implementation. We'd probably need to develop some form templates that could be easily used for a variety of tournament types, so that we don't have to make things from scratch every time. Also, as of right now, setting up forms requires ACP access, meaning it's something that can only be done by super mod+, and it's a setting that needs to specifically be enabled.

I don't know that much about technical stuff but that doesn't really sound too difficult to implement. Surely just a form that inputs to a spreadsheet username, tiers signed up for, any potential inactivity periods, or whatever other pieces of information is enough? I hosted a discord tournament 2 years ago and this was very helpful for everyone involved.

 

[Quite Quiet]

You can set a form to post in an existing thread, but you need to create a separate form for each signup thread and the thread has to exist before the form is created. It's not a very customizable format in its current state, which is why I've personally been objecting to moving towards a solution involving the forms.

The end-of-the-year awards form has no ties whatsoever to XenForo's form system. As the current maintainer, the solution used for that form is hilariously stupid workaround and barely even functions properly half the time. It requires constant upkeep and testing prior to each years awards just to make sure it functions properly. It also requires updating each year to not conflict with any previous form, which requires a Site Staff badge (same issue as the acp here). I would never trust this to be used on any larger scale than its current use.

 

[Lumari]

QQ pretty much sniped me; it's indeed possible to set up a form and have it post into an existing thread, which would definitely help with having all signups formatted properly, but short of that sort of cleanliness most of the benefits end there. Separate forms per thread / signups thread having to exist before the form is set up are manageable though, it's easy enough to e.g. update the played formats question from SPL -> neo-Snake, and for the second concern the form can just be left dormant until the new signups go live, at which time it can quickly be updated with the new thread id.

I'd hard advise against using it on any larger scale than like, trophy team tours though, access to the form extension is very restricted (for good reason), so releasing new signups would require one of very few people to update with the new thread, and if this is used for concurrent tours (like subforum PLs) then there's no avoiding the separate form per tour issue. Also what QQ said @ Smog awards form.

It might be possible to have an automatically updated spreadsheet, not 100% familiar enough with xf's backend to comment on that, so don't quote me on any of this, but as far as that's concerned using a form feels kind of irrelevant when it has to read from the database. The form extension has to post "somewhere", could be any of a new thread / existing thread / forum PM but not directly to a spreadsheet, so with that in mind I'm not sure I'm seeing the value of doing away with the signup threads.