Rule Change || 2012 Edition

In the 'Have Your Say' thread you raised an issue with the veto along with some particularly......interesting solutions. They provided us with a good laugh *coughs* sorry, a good jumping off point for our actual solution. You've already seen that we've specifically made a rule that the entry list coming to moderators can not have any country info, that we opened up the veto system to give you a peak inside so you can understand what actually goes on and this is the third and probably most significant change of all. It's also a change that has no real effect on you.

From the 45th contest (My 30th as a mod making me equal with Tirren as most contests as a BJSC Mod I'm already ahead on time :w00t:) the following will take official effect:

"In the event of suspicion being raised during the veto process about a moderator entry, that moderator will inform the rest of the mod team it is theirs and they will not be able to cast a vote on whether to veto it or not. The vetoing of the suspect mod entry with then require a majority verdict from the remaining 3 moderators and at least one member of the GM/Admin team who participates in BJSC (i.e. Dandy, RFC and Jester) so that at least 4 and up to 6 people will be involved in the scrutiny of that moderators entry."

"In the event of a tie break that can not be resolved (i.e. one side can not acquire a defector from the other) the GM/Admin team have kindly agreed to step in and help us reach a majority verdict. Tie break tracks will be subject to veto from 5-7 people."

We thank you kindly for your suggestions and comments in that thread which will remain open if you wish to continue to praise us and/or raise suggestions.

As for the Jury/Panel/Respected Member idea, I thought it'd be best to explain why we decided against the idea in the end. Primarily because it was quite a popular one and so you know that we actually took the idea seriously and gave it great thought regardless of any posts we personally made in that thread in response to it.

We were concerned at first about the practicality of the idea and a loss of some anonymity to the confirmation process, something I personally feel has contributed a fair bit to the contests revival. It was decided that a panel overseeing all veto's effectively made us redundant and we felt that the process was best kept in house and in our hands as we know and trust that we have the best interests of the contest at the forefront of our mind when making these decisions. That's not to say that nobody else would have the contests best interests at heart, it's just that as moderators it's part of our role and it's something I very specifically look for in the new mods we've brought in since the veto. We knew that as moderators we could be trusted to take these decisions but a panel would be more open to attack and suspicion than we moderators are. We found that this didn't sit well with us, nor did the feeling that the panel would make the hard work we put into the veto every month irrelevant.

As we went to rule out the idea all together the focus of the jury idea in the thread shifted its focus more to our entries than our decisions. This, of course, required a whole different conversation. After some outrage at what we perceived to be a feeling that the moderators abused the veto system, we really looked into how practical the idea of having our entries vetoed by a panel/jury actually was. Concerns were raised over who would make up this panel at first, then at what those left out would say. This then lead to the conclusion that it would probably have to have some form of rotational element to it to ensure that everyone got a fair shake of the stick and to avoid any toys being thrown from prams. Someone mentioned a somewhat doomsday scenario as to the make up of the panel which quite frankly scared the shit out of all of us. We decided against the idea after one of us (I think it was either Martin or Cal, it was a while ago) raised the idea of using the GM/Admin team instead of a Jury/Panel/Respected Member. We were unanimous that this was the most practical solution to the issue, especially as the GM/Admin team were happy to do so and partially because they have given us their opinions of the entry list in the past anyway. In the end we felt that this was the solution in the best interest of the contest and that it would actually improve the veto whilst not making any big changes to it.

I noted above that this will all officially take effect from XLV but we actually implemented all of these changes on a trail basis for XLIVe because this was a Mod run contest so we could have a bit of a play around before announcing it to make sure it actually worked.

Like I said much further up the dissertation we do welcome all feedback and suggestions. If you wish to give it anonymously that's cool, just PM us instead!

Have a great weekend!