Referee Motivation: The Big Question

[Snorby]

Sounds good to me!

[Slash]

So, in order to make reffing less like a chore... we just made it an actual chore?

[Mercutio]

Alternate perspective: if you contribute to the community, you get to catch Mewtwo

[Connor]

Okay so this has been left for a while (too long of a while probably) but are there any more opinions wanting to be shared before I actually go talk this over with the others and look to getting something implemented? Last chance saloon here, guys.

Currently I have match up individual bonuses and more frequent Referee Evaluations, off my head, as well as sourcing Legend matches out to non-LO referees (though that's more a culture thing).

[Mercutio]

Don't forget empowering referees (also a culture thing) and making it more acceptable to fire refs who don't ref.

[Emi]

Speaking in the vein of firing refs, because it just occurred to me, why don't we give people incentive to pick up matches? I think that's the majority of our matches in the queue right now, and it's understandable, its a lot of work to pick up a match already in progress. I was thinking something like a small, one-time bonus (so people can't drop the match and pick it up later to get the bonus twice) of like maybe 0.25 SP per Pokemon on one side? Saying we should fire refs is fine but doesn't do much good if people aren't going to pick those matches back up.

Just a thought.

[Mercutio]

Good call.

[Sneaze]

Honestly with the final ref getting to dole out SP how they please, there's really no need for that given that they already usually take a rather huge chunk in almost every situation, especially if they actually keep the bonus since they can then claim the bonus on all the other matchups in the match and not have any form of guilt due to the previous ref getting their SP for that matchup (ex: taking a 3v3 on the third matchup, reffing quickly, and taking 4 SP and giving the previous ref 2 SP).

That said I really do think we need to stop bitching and moaning at refs that take a large chunk of the SP for less work. The fact is they stepped up to the plate and finished the match, which the old ref was incapable of doing, so they can take as much as they damn well please as long as the old ref gets something.

[Snorby]

Originally Posted by Sneaze

Honestly with the final ref getting to dole out SP how they please, there's really no need for that given that they already usually take a rather huge chunk in almost every situation, especially if they actually keep the bonus since they can then claim the bonus on all the other matchups in the match and not have any form of guilt due to the previous ref getting their SP for that matchup (ex: taking a 3v3 on the third matchup, reffing quickly, and taking 4 SP and giving the previous ref 2 SP).

That said I really do think we need to stop bitching and moaning at refs that take a large chunk of the SP for less work. The fact is they stepped up to the plate and finished the match, which the old ref was incapable of doing, so they can take as much as they damn well please as long as the old ref gets something.

All of my this. I don't think it's necessary to entice ref's to take already started matches further- I know if I was able to I'd have cleared the queue of a good chunk of them already.

[Emi]

We say this, yet matches remain left in the queue for weeks on end and its almost better to keep a slow ref than to gamble on finding a new one who will ref somewhat fast. I wouldn't bring this up if we didn't have issues replacing refs.

[Stealthy]

The reason half finished matches aren't getting picked up isn't because people don't want to pick up half finished matches. It's people not picking up matches at all. And because there's a growing trend of finding a ref before you slap up the match, that means a lot of what goes in the ref queue are unfinished matches. Especially with Connor just leaving. And slapping SP gains everywhere isn't going to change the fact that people don't want to pick up matches. Honestly, I figured the tying SP to levels thing should've been a big motivator on its own. Kinda surprised it isn't.

[Miror]

Originally Posted by Stealthy

The reason half finished matches aren't getting picked up isn't because people don't want to pick up half finished matches. It's people not picking up matches at all. And because there's a growing trend of finding a ref before you slap up the match, that means a lot of what goes in the ref queue are unfinished matches. Especially with Connor just leaving. And slapping SP gains everywhere isn't going to change the fact that people don't want to pick up matches. Honestly, I figured the tying SP to levels thing should've been a big motivator on its own. Kinda surprised it isn't.

Pretty much this. Either because of self imposed caps due to not wanting to take on too much or for those of us like me who are constantly at our reffing cap, there's just not many people either eager or able to take additional matches. Plus, it's getting on to the point where we have quite a few people who've left or are on TA due to school or whatnot that's lowered the amount of active refs as a whole.

[Mercutio]

We would have to amend the honour system on how SP is doled out but any incentive is a good incentive.

[Mercutio]

Separately, job sharing. Let's try it. Two people can pick up the same match, must ref an equal amount of the rounds by the end of the match. Because some matches are big and hard and scary.

[Sneaze]

Why in the world would you ever want to have to deal with the mess that is splitting reffing notes between two refs? I mean, in a mentor system of some form it could work to some degree but with two refs of roughly the same skill level it's just a guaranteed way to make sure everything boils down to ugly numbers and math.

[Ironthunder]

Basically, what sneaze said. For equal-ish skill refs, it's a chore and generally a right pain in whichever bodily orifice you'd care to name. For newb refs though, those first couple of matches can be downright terrifying because you're constantly second-guessing yourself, and being able to have a more experienced ref to help out would probably be quite a good idea. There'd probably need to be a bonus SP reward for the senior ref though, because newb refs (like myself, especially when I started reffing) tend to be a handful.

[Mercutio]

I think you forget the miracle that is collaborative work tools.

If you're the kind of person who takes notes, take Google Docs. The word equivalent is excellent, two people can leave notes in the comments bar, do it round by round or in batches. The spreadsheet tool allows you to keep minutely accurate records of what health is gone, what energy is used up, etc. Or if you enjoy being a bad ref and pretending that ASB isn't just numbers in your own head as well as in what you present to battlers, you could just not do that but keep more accurate notes of rough health than the ones you give to your battlers.

Could be easy. Could equally be a mess. The only way it can realistically fail is if two bad refs pair up.

[Emi]

The only issue with this is how are you going to avoid the two refs butting heads on how a round goes? Ref's discretion is wonderful but we don't need refs bickering amongst each other.

[TalkSick]

> job sharing

Sounds good as long as it would be optional, horrible if it would be compulsory. If two trainers want to share their refereeing load, then they should be free to do so.

[Mercutio]

There's a few ways, essentially all boiling down to "unless it is categorically irredeemably wrong, it stands". No different from what should currently be the case.

[Stealthy]

This sounds like a headache. Would maybe help a few refs, primarily the ones who have self-imposed caps due to workload issues, but that's not really solving the motivation problem and not making much progress on the overall ref slowdown. If Slash and Sneaze teamed up on a match, I don't think either one will ref faster knowing that they only had to do every other round.

[Sneaze]

I am in no way implying that ultimately things don't boil down to numbers, by the way. I am just pointing out that there are aome things a lot of refs don't concrete agree on. Type energy, exhaustion and recovery rates, heck even things like raw distance and dodging. Would this be a good way to help concrete that? Possibly, but I'm still not a fan of doing it in any capacity without trying it for a mentor system.

[Mercutio]

Oh I know. You aren't Concept :p

I don't really see why it would be an issue to be honest.

[Snorby]

Honestly I see no reason to not make it an optional thing. All the arguments against it seem to be that it wouldn't be helpful enough, which is more of an argument against making it mandatory, not against making it optional.

Naturally, it wouldn't help if two slow refs pair up. But if you pair somebody like me, who has ALL OF THE FREE TIME and is able to ref pretty reliably, with someone like Roto, who's main concern that keeps him from reffing more is unreliability, then it's a good thing, because it allows Roto to be able to take more matches since he knows he's got a guy to cover for him if he needs it.

Although, I think ref caps would have to be changed somehow (Shared matches count as half a match in regards to the ref cap?) Because honestly leaving it as is would make it have a negative effect on the ASB since it'd basically halve our manpower.