Hogg
grubbing in the ashes
Something I've been thinking about for a long time: the forums have an integrated forms feature. We use it for things like the end-of-year awards (EDIT: apparently the end-of-year awards forms are a nightmare so let's not use that as an example) and it requires a valid login to participate in the form.
Thread signups are kind of a Thing at this point, but they're messy, they take up tons of forum real estate and in any large tour they quickly get to be a huge pain to scroll through. There's also constantly issues with people who don't want to follow the signup format, especially with anything that requires more input than just saying "in." So what about replacing them with an integrated form, and have the OP link a spreadsheet to the completed entries, so that people can just scroll through who has entered that way? It would mean we could guarantee certain formats were followed, and wouldn't need to constantly bug the always-excellent P Squared for spreadsheets constantly. You'd still be able to see who signed up, etc., by looking at the sheet. And from a hosting perspective, in addition to making things "cleaner," it would also make it way easier to go directly from signups straight into the bracketmaker.
Some points worth considering, though:
1. Likewhoring/hype. People would lose the free likes they sometimes get on their signups posts. Also, it's definitely hype when you see certain names sign up in big tours, especially if unexpected. I don't think this is actually a huge deal - we've just kind of been used to doing things this way for a while, and I think we'd adjust to doing things a different way. I'm sure people will still watch the spreadsheets and excitedly post on smogtours discord or in the Commencement thread/equivalent when hype signups happen.
2. Technical implementation. We'd probably need to develop some form templates that could be easily used for a variety of tournament types, so that we don't have to make things from scratch every time. Also, as of right now, setting up forms requires ACP access, meaning it's something that can only be done by super mod+, and it's a setting that needs to specifically be enabled.
And hey, if this works out... what else can we do? Maybe one day someone much smarter than me can set things up so that we also can report wins via form, and have the results show up in visualized brackets like you see in Challonge. Maybe there can be a master database of all tournaments once we start inputting things in this way, allowing for significantly improved stats collection. A lot of this stuff is pie in the sky at this point, but we've got to start somewhere, right? As fun as thread signups are, I struggle to believe we're properly utilizing all the technical options at our fingertips to make tournaments the best they can possibly be.
Thread signups are kind of a Thing at this point, but they're messy, they take up tons of forum real estate and in any large tour they quickly get to be a huge pain to scroll through. There's also constantly issues with people who don't want to follow the signup format, especially with anything that requires more input than just saying "in." So what about replacing them with an integrated form, and have the OP link a spreadsheet to the completed entries, so that people can just scroll through who has entered that way? It would mean we could guarantee certain formats were followed, and wouldn't need to constantly bug the always-excellent P Squared for spreadsheets constantly. You'd still be able to see who signed up, etc., by looking at the sheet. And from a hosting perspective, in addition to making things "cleaner," it would also make it way easier to go directly from signups straight into the bracketmaker.
Some points worth considering, though:
1. Likewhoring/hype. People would lose the free likes they sometimes get on their signups posts. Also, it's definitely hype when you see certain names sign up in big tours, especially if unexpected. I don't think this is actually a huge deal - we've just kind of been used to doing things this way for a while, and I think we'd adjust to doing things a different way. I'm sure people will still watch the spreadsheets and excitedly post on smogtours discord or in the Commencement thread/equivalent when hype signups happen.
2. Technical implementation. We'd probably need to develop some form templates that could be easily used for a variety of tournament types, so that we don't have to make things from scratch every time. Also, as of right now, setting up forms requires ACP access, meaning it's something that can only be done by super mod+, and it's a setting that needs to specifically be enabled.
And hey, if this works out... what else can we do? Maybe one day someone much smarter than me can set things up so that we also can report wins via form, and have the results show up in visualized brackets like you see in Challonge. Maybe there can be a master database of all tournaments once we start inputting things in this way, allowing for significantly improved stats collection. A lot of this stuff is pie in the sky at this point, but we've got to start somewhere, right? As fun as thread signups are, I struggle to believe we're properly utilizing all the technical options at our fingertips to make tournaments the best they can possibly be.
Last edited: