Quote: Originally Posted By tzentmeyer on 4/09/2010
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.
If the Commish has the support of the majority of owners (annual election at the all star break) then he/she should be given the power to remove owners at rollover. Since ALL owners in private leagues would have acknowledged this (disclaimer) very few of the requests should take more than 5 minutes and should be "rubberstamped". On those rare exceptions (perhaps A would fall under that category) more time should be taken in polling the leagues participants. If the action was not supported by a majority of owners then WIS should notify the Commish that His/Her position has not been renewed by WIS
(perhaps a commish disclaimer is needed - Commish serves at the approval of WIS management). The league would then be renewed and a new commish selected at the next all star break.
A) discussed above
B) owner signed up as a public world owner (no disclaimer) and can not be removed - next year the commish better pay attention to the extend privacy warning.
C) What Commish should do is talk to this owner privately (trade chat or sitemail) and put them on notice that problems are not acceptable and will lead to rollover non-renewal if they continue. This is not an issue for WIS and they should decline to become involved. Involvement should only occur if the owner then violates the fair play rules (ex:dumps his team on waivers)
D) As described above the 6 owners who want the Commish removed do not have the numbers to remove him at the AllStar league vote. The Commish wins, the detractors shut up or pack their bags and leave. No need for WIS to be involved.
E) Why there is a disclaimer - good bye bad actor
So of the 5 scenarios only one (A) requires WIS's attention.