#SLOE: People's Basketball Sim League

To start out I want to say this, I stand by the original points that I both did and did not distribute earlier this week, based on the below, and feel that I had proper justification for what I chose to give and not give. I will also not be revising my points that were given out in the end, or moving forward for this season. It is up to the person receiving the points to decide what to do with it. It is not fair to give points to some, and not others, this season based on my own assessment of what the rules are. So that is why I am writing this today, to hopefully provide more clarity going forward. I also maybe do not need to write this out in such detail, however I took the do not respond approach and that equally did not work, so I am going to just type out some thoughts on everything. It may be a bad idea, but oh well.

Due to recent events with concerns about what truly makes an article an article, I said that I would try to write something out to try to provide more clarity on what I believe should be involved with the job role of media coordinator. First off, I think that what is classified as an article should be a judgment call by whoever is the coordinator, based on the current outlines that are written out. However, others believe that this should be a voted on matter, so I will instead point out what I have done to this point and state what I think should be the outline of what an article should be, if we have to vote to make it happen so be it. If we don’t I will probably make these rules stand, by posting in the same media outlines I personally follow as an amendment for moving forward after this year.

As I previously mentioned in one of the threads that were going around this week, I follow the following post, when I review articles Revamped Media Rules for 2022-2023 Season. Up until this week I thought it was more than explanatory for what was needed for an article. Where, yes word count is a big part of what is made up of the job of crafting an article, but there is also this one other paragraph that I found just as important that maybe has been glossed over with time.

Darth Vegito wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 6:30 pm
Keep this in mind. This is NOT an exact science. But this IS what I will be using as a basis for the points I dole out. I plan on being as fair as I possibly can here. As always though with point giving there is subjectivity. I expect that nearly every article contains some type of research. So most articles will be judged using the word count guideline.

So what I do when reviewing the writing to give points for an article is the following:

1. Read the article: This is in order to make sure that I think it meets the requirements I thought were already present. I am looking for two things in particular:
   1. Is it PBSL related
   2. Is it actually a written out thought and not just words on a computer screen with not concise meaning.
2. Review for Other Content: Is this an article that has graphs attached, a power poll, or something else that generally required more thinking, or applied other areads, then just writing that took up more time and effort? Then I will usually, if there is no past precedent for points (Power rankings, Training Camp results) I will talk to the GM about what I see is fair, what they think is fair, and try to find a middle ground.
3. Word Count: I go to google, type word count, then use that to count the words for points distro
   Post the points in the thread and add to my tracker.

I will now go into detail slightly on each post I reviewed upon returning to Media Coordinator after vactation and why, initially, it did, or did not, get any points. Please do not get offended, it is not meant to do that. I just simply want to point out my thought process.

• Breaking the Game Part One: Media Points: How funny we are starting with this. I was on the fence about even this one to be honest. I felt that it was not an article that really had a lot of meat on it, given that he really is just saying you need to write words to get points… we all know this. But he did provide some insight in what may be the best way to accomplish this in a season in the most efficient manner. I also never write short articles, and after looking at it again feel that based on the length of it, that it did still provide details that I felt could be helpful to someone like the new Magic GM, who has never written an article.
• The Lazy Steward’s Magical Manual: I think we all agree this is an article. It has details, thought, and analysis beyond just putting pen to paper.
  It’s S72: Shoot Your Shot viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14337. Another article that we all can agree on is one. It provides proof that the writer provided some thought when sitting down to write this and is talking about PBSL related things.
• What Do I Want to Talk About: Again, another one that follows same thoughts as above.
• Is Today the Trade Deadline: The first article I had a problem with. Doug just wanted to troll I would imagine and copy and pasted. No analysis or actual thought was put into this writing at all. Yeah, it was funny and made me chuckle for sure, but at the time no points should have been given.
• This Article is About How Good My Last One Was: Upon reviewing this the first time I did get a laugh. I thought it was another situation where Greeple was just having some fun. However, this is wholeheartedly a self nomination for it being a great article. Nothing of substance was really added I thought other then it being 298 words that greeple thought up. I mention below additional thoughts now that I have had time to think about everything.
• Sabbatical: I am sorry Nate, I truly think that this is not an article. This is an announcement and belongs in the Commish’s corner or at the very least in the league council section of the forum. I was on the fence about the last writing you had as well titled State of the Union, where you received points, but you did also provide some thought and analysis of how the rule changes would alter the game. This did not have any of that. It was just you stating your upcoming time off and how it would change the schedule. Now if you are looking to get points as part of your duties as Commisioner, that is a completely different topic that should be considered outside of this means I believe.

Please also know that this is not out of nowhere, as I hold myself to the same standards.I did not reward myself points for my media tracker post I posted before going on vacation, because it is something that I felt was an announcement and not an article. Two different things, where I am already paid to do this coordinator job, and should not look to double dip (this is part of the responsibility to let others know if there may be a gap in coverage). I only posted in in/off season media since it also contained the point spreadsheet I use to track everyones progress, and thus you can also track your own based on the last time I have reviewed the thread.

Now that I have gotten that out the way, I do also see where some of the writers that I gave zero points out have concerns for why they did not get points. Jon, after reviewing your article again, I understand that it was satirical in nature and that maybe I should have considered giving it points. Given that in the real world we do have things like The Onion and NYPost, among other satirical publications, this should also maybe be an option when it comes to PBSL articles.

So I guess moving forward we need to do one of two things:

We either allow the media coordinator a level of ability to make decisions, much like any other coordinator. For instance, MikeLowry is not being challenged for decisions he makes regarding what the Town Hall questions are or if the answers that are given are relevant enough to allow for that one point. Shouldn’t that be across the board? Or we further detail out what is required of writing media entries. Where it will need to go into detail what things require writings to be articles, and not fall under announcements or general thoughts that do not provide anything.

If it is the first one cool, I was already under the assumption we had this established. If it is number two then I am fine to discuss and detailed some of the thoughts below.

1. The word count stays. It has never been a problem and I think everyone agrees that it works well. The only change I would make is that we add a minimum word count. Where the minimum word count you need to hit is 500 words. I think this will hurt the writing, but in all honesty we probably hit close to 250 words for the Town Hall answers (which also hurt articles). This will also hurt some from the creativity side, where certain articles probably can’t be written any more. Such as the team haiku articles.
2. Create a standard for graphs, charts, or other added items that enhance an article. I think maybe make it to where if you have a spreadsheet attached it should be just one or two extra points no matter the details put in. Then if you have more than one graph or chart it is an additional point. This would work for articles like power rankings. It is also not a fool proof method as anyone that knows how graphs work can probably easily create multiple easily to expand their point getting. That would also mean the TC Results would get closer to four or five points based on how many sheets it had before any words were taken into consideration, instead of the now three for instance.
3. Minimum requirements for content. The articles must be required to have certain things:
   1. PBSL related
   2. Provide analysis or content of some sort.
   3. Can be satire only in nature but would need to be clarified prior to the post that this is satirical. If the article is only satirical in nature, and does not meet rules 3a and rule 3b, must meet a higher word count for points (750 words) since no analysis is being conducted.
   4. Can be written about individual players or teams in a fantasy setting, and follows the same word guidelines if it does not meet rules 3a and 3b.

There are probably other things that I think should be ironed out in this scenario but I am tired of thinking/writing about this so please respectfully let me know what you think, or don't, in the comments. Also if this is something that we can not all come to agreement with, I am happy to relieve this duty to someone else if I am not approaching this correctly or in a manner that keeps the masses happy.

I think a lot of AB's proposals make sense to me, and I think that his judgments on the articles are either spot on or could go either way. As far as league responsibilities, I do think that the position-holder should have a decent level of autonomy as long as their decisions don't trespass on the economy of the league as a whole.

So for example, if media coordinator wanted to raise the media cap to 50 points, that would need a league vote because it effects the entirety of the points economy. If he wants to keep the media cap at 25 points but change the structure of the word count to points, that doesn't change the fabric of the league, just of the media leg of things.

I have long wanted to bring volunteer coordinator back if there's enough interest. We used to have people nominate themselves for positions they wanted to do, and there would be a league vote on who would take the position the next season. That way, if there's a conflict with how someone runs something and a candidate who has a different idea of how to run things that's more in line with the league's wants, it's voted on democratically. The problem is that we don't have a lot of people volunteering to do a lot of these jobs, so there aren't people challenging the incumbent for the spot if the incumbent is making decisions the league doesn't like. However, if someone is running something poorly, but not poorly enough for someone to challenge them for the job, maybe they're doing a sufficient job after all.

I also agree with a lot of ABs thoughts here, but I want to push back on the PBSL relativity point. I don't think all articles should be PBSL related, and granted there's probably only so much you can write about this thing. I think it might benefit from opening up to write about anything people want to write about. We can make a separate thread if that's something people are interested in, but why not let ALL the creative juices flow and not just anchor it back to this league. Let the peoples creativity go! (As I am about to post an article that is non PBSL related, I would like some points for putting some time and effort into something, that people may or may not be interested in.)