Tweaking or Removing Town Hall’s

[AngryBanana]

My suggestion is that Town Hall, in its current format, allows for too many points to be disbursed in too easy of a manner. I propose that we either tweak the rules regarding town hall or remove the point gathering from it all together.

Problem:

The problem with town hall, and I won’t spend too long talking about it, is that it provides too easy of a path to make potentially 15-18 points in a season. All you have to do is give an arbitrary answer, that can be completely incoherent, to a question either once a sim or what has been a theme this season - when the czar is able to post, which can be three at a time sometimes. This, compared to writing an article, allows for GMs to put in very little work to get a pretty decent return on investments.

Tweaking:

I have several methods and recommendation related to tweaking Town Halls. They consist of a few different ideas that could be implemented as a one off, in part, and/or all together.

1. Apply to Media Cap: Since this is basically a media article, similar to the five on five in long form, why not make it count towards the media cap. This would allow for people to make points, but not double dip. Where people who are active on media such as myself or Wig, won’t amass 40 points for doing absolutely nothing related to the actual PBSL game. It makes the most sense to me. It’s media, let’s apply it to the media cap.

2. Make the word count equal to the amount given for media articles: this is another one that makes a bunch of sense to me. Yeah, I get it. You want to be able to get a one off point for your musing on a bs topic. That’s fine. At the same time though, three sentences is not enough. It was not enough in grammar school when we had to give a paragraph answer for homework, it should not be enough here as grown adults, who I would say a portion of claim the part they enjoy the most about PBSL is the writing and creative arts side. I know we are all about activity, but that is not as much of a problem in the current format as it was in the creation draft era. So we should apply some sort of higher standard for what is being written. I’ll admit my own writing is bullshit sometimes on these things because I know I can write whatever and get away with it.

3. Give points for threshold of activity instead of per post: this idea is that we reward activity over time and not per post. Where instead of saying you get a point and you get a point (similar to Oprah with cars… or maybe bees?) you give it for sustained effort. You hit five answers in a year, that’s two points, and so on. Where instead of shelling out points for limited activity, you reward sustained activity on a smaller scale. The idea I initially have is on a five sim basis of 2-3 points per 5 sims.

Retiring:

As previously mentioned, this is basically a 5 on 5 gig. Where I would argue you still need to give more thought to that than this town hall question. I say we bring back the 5 on 5 on a more sustained basis moving forward and go from there if that’s the best way forward. I don’t know, town hall is an ok way to get input from GMs but has it really stirred that much interest? Especially when the coordinator is not even posting consistently every sim? I admittedly did not like it from the begging but I think it’s in its current iteration, too easy of a point grab and not really benefiting the league as it could/should be.


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[Darth Vegito]

I like option #1. Add the TH to the Media Point Caps.

Easy solution, no fuss. It is too many points too easy.

[logpmess]

I like option 1, but I think we can also apply option two with it. Cap it at so many points per town hall, but incentivize more in depth responses with a word count.

So 1 point for answering at all with a max at 4 points if you hit the necessary maximum word count.

[WigNosy]

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

4. Cap points for Town Halls (say, at 5 points per season, that's basically one point per week).

Or, if you don't like that, apply the points toward the media cap.

[Xist2Inspire]

I prefer the "points per total participation" idea, but I'm also down with just applying it to the media cap and calling it there.

I would like to push back a little on the "it's too easy" talk. Maybe it's because I haven't been paying attention, but I'm not seeing a massive influx of unearned points, nor am I seeing enough energy elsewhere to where I think there's some untapped level of engagement out there that we're currently not seeing. I doubt that the GMs who are giving BS answers for a point are suddenly going to do better when the expectations are brought up to article level. They're probably just going to drop off entirely. 5-on-5s are probably still going to be claimed by the same group of active GMs with a few surprise entrants here and there.

I'd really like to get @Mike Lowry's take on this as the coordinator, given that it's seemed to be a bit hard for him to get things out this season.