Quote: Originally posted by iain on 4/09/2010Giving the commissioner more discretionary leeway (not less) would be a good thing, IMHO.However, this could only be done in a private world, and with some kind of commissioner approval process that is linked to your renewal to keep from indiscriminate bootings.Too few approvals with renewal, and a commissioner can be impeached, as it were.Simple, I'd say.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Quote: Originally posted by iain on 4/09/2010Giving the commissioner more discretionary leeway (not less) would be a good thing, IMHO.However, this could only be done in a private world, and with some kind of commissioner approval process that is linked to your renewal to keep from indiscriminate bootings.Too few approvals with renewal, and a commissioner can be impeached, as it were.Simple, I'd say.

No impeachments.

It seems to me that a concensus is beginning to build around the notion of allowing the Commish arbitrary authority over returning owners, while formalizing the Commish removal process and setting up a once-a-season approval process for existing Commishs.

I'd be interested in knowing whether this is something tz sees as solving CS' issues when a booted owner complains.

To make things clear in any anti-tanking league, is this not an acceptable clear-cut rule to have?:

"All owners found attempting to gain draft positioning by playing their Major League players at a sub-standard level will be subject for removal. Pitching fatigued pitchers, fielding well-below average defensive players, and fielding players with well-below acceptable Major League ratings over the course of X amount of games are all examples of playing at a sub-standard level."

Quote: Originally Posted By MikeT23 on 4/09/2010Any commish who fears that he'll be removed as commish probably shouldn't be commish. He lacks the internet balls to do what has to be done

We already established in HJ that iain is ballless.

Quote: Originally posted by tzentmeyer on 4/09/2010Guys,

We thought we were releasing guidelines yesterday that would help the HBD tanking situation. We wanted to make things less vague and more concrete.

And to be clear, we are far more interested in protecting and helping our veteran, loyal users than the small percentage that either choose to tank their ML team or quit playing.

So..let's work this out together.

Our goal is to have some set guidelines so there's less subjectivity when deciding whether an owner should be replaced or not. On the other hand, we have to be careful because it's not good business practice for us to boot an owner from a world in which he's been playing for several seasons (private or public).

And we want private worlds to be able to control who gets in their world. The tricky thing is when they want to prevent a user who had a team in the world from staying in the world.

Help us out. What do you suggest?

Thanks

Treat it like a theme league in SimLeague Baseball, where there are all kinds of owners -- mostly good and some bad. Theme League rules beyond the Fair Play Guidelines must be laid out in the league description (not in the forum, where posts can be edited after the fact). If an owner violates those league rules, support has a clear reason to enforce penalties (forfeits, removal, reversal of trades, etc.). If the rules are not clearly laid out, the commissioner learns a lesson and makes the rules more clear before the next season of the league.

The same would work here.
• Before a season begins, any private-league rules must be posted in an uneditable format (whether a disclaimer, a locked thread, or some other place where they can be seen but not changed once finalized).
• If the rules are violated during a season, warn the owner and provide a chance to rectify the situation as best he can. If the owner makes a good-faith effort to adhere to the rules and fix the damage, he can return. If he ignores the warning, he can be removed without the league worrying that WIS will restore him to the league.
• Any change to the rules from season to season should require approval from the league's returning owners (majority or two-thirds majority).
• Unless specifically noted, private-league rules would be in addition to the minimal Fair Play Guidelines, not replace them.

MikeT, I realize that not every situation can be covered with specific rules. But wouldn't it be a reasonable tradeoff to lose the ability to boot an owner such as the 65-game winner while making it easier to remove obvious tankers who don't pretend to care about the rules? A commish could still try to remove an owner who found a loophole, but then the burden of proof would be on the commish to convince support of the case. And at worst, the rules could be amended to prevent a repeat.

I can understand why everyone is so hung up on the whole abusive comish thing. After all it happens all the time. I mean people are constantly complaining about how they had to remove their comish because he gave away a great owners team to his little sister so she would do his homework all month.

Now excuse me while I go out in my front yard and shoot off some firecrackers to scare away the herds of wild elephants. Hey don't laugh I have been doing it for years and not once has a wild herd of elephants shown up here in Clifton Springs NY

fire crackers are delicious

MMMMM yes they are

4/9/2010 1:18 PM Customer Support
Thanks for the note. The new guidelines will be used for situations where owners are deliberately not fielding a 'Competitive Team'. If you are asking to have an owner removed from a league, or replaced as a team owner, he'll have to be in violation of one of those stated guidelines. They are clear and easy to understand. If he is not in violation of one of those guidelines there will be not need to submit a recommendation.
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I can not friggin believe this hasn't been resolved you. JUST LET PRIVATE WORLDS POLICE THEMSELVES! How hard is that? Stop interfering. When you interfere, public worlds happen.

If you have to, then make private worlds post their rules on their blog so they are always there for any owner or potential owner go and see.

This isn't rocket science. I'm starting to doubt that WIS can do anything correctly.

LMAO @ crickett very well put man! :)

Quote: Originally posted by stiller609 on 4/09/2010To make things clear in any anti-tanking league, is this not an acceptable clear-cut rule to have?:

"All owners found attempting to gain draft positioning by playing their Major League players at a sub-standard level will be subject for removal. Pitching fatigued pitchers, fielding well-below average defensive players, and fielding players with well-below acceptable Major League ratings over the course of X amount of games are all examples of playing at a sub-standard level."

I'd say this is anything but clear-cut.
- Your sub-standard could be my barely adequate
- Is 70% a fatigued pitcher? 85%? 30%? If the commish rules that my 60% SP is too fatigued but allows someone else to use a SP at 63%, I might have a beef.
- Is a 63-60-68-70 SS well below acceptable ML ratings?
To be clear-cut, such a rule would have to have number attached to it: "Fielding players whose four main defensive ratings are all 50% or less of the ML average for five straight games or longer" etc.

Lots of good comments so far.

And so you guys know, there are 150+ worlds. We receive 25+ tickets per week where one owner or another is asking us to ban another owner from a world. As it is, each ticket takes about 30 minutes to address by the time the back and forth has concluded. I think it's safe to assume both you (the HBD community) and I (WIS) would much rather have us spend our time on development and improving the game and bringing more new users to the game.

The original intent of private worlds included giving the commish full power to restrict access to the world each season. That worked for quite a while. It has recently started breaking down.

I'd like to throw out some actual examples we've had to see if that changes any opinions or generates any more ideas.

A) Veteran commish wants one or multiple owners out of the world. Each owner has been in it for 3+ seasons. Owners have not come anywhere near the tanking guideline of .250 winning percentage. Closer to .450. The owners haven't caused major problems via posts, chats, etc. Owner wants them out because he feels they just aren't good enough for the world. How can we justify not letting 3 owners who have spent time and money on the teams for 3+ seasons back for another season?

B) Private world goes public to fill a few spots. Owner joins when it's public. End of season, reverts to private. Owner doesn't want the owner back the next season. No good reason provided.

C) Middle of season, private world. User has team with fatigued relief pitchers and pretty mediocre offense/defense. Commish wants them out because they aren't investing the same time commitment as he/she. Not violating any stated rules anywhere, just want them out.

D) Spat in a private world. 6+ owners threaten to quit if commish isn't removed. 6+ owners threaten to quit if commish is removed. Source of debate is personal/attitude, not team play.

E) Owner joins private world. Private world has special rules. Owner doesn't meet special rules. We remove. Owner comes back asking what rules were violated. While the world may have special rules, it's not part of Terms of Service.

These are just a few of the examples.

Most of you are rationale individuals and enjoy playing a game and treat each other with respect and do things the right way. But there are many people playing and we have to be prepared for the extremes which occur far more frequently than we'd like.

Quote: Originally Posted By MikeT23 on 4/09/2010Any commish who fears that he'll be removed as commish probably shouldn't be commish. He lacks the internet balls to do what has to be done

I wasn't thinking a guy should be afraid, it's a "will of the people" thing. If the ownership in your world doesn't like how you're running things, you're gone.

However, if they like how you do it, you can run it how you please.... which is how they please, in essence.

Quote: Originally posted by hopkinsheel on 4/09/2010
If you have to, then make private worlds post their rules on their blog so they are always there for any owner or potential owner go and see.

The problem is, the rules were not really codified until after the situation with smoelheim flared up.

In previous seasons, it was pretty much up to Mike's discretion to ask owners of losing teams to step it up or risk removal. No one, to my knowledge, was ever booted for failure to compete, but the implied rule was that you had to meet the commissioner's standard or else.

And apparently 26 of us knew and agreed with that implied rule. One guy didn't, and he's holding the rest of us hostage with WiS' implied backing.