Topic, A Letter to Admins

  I sometimes add new officials to games, but I don't think many levels have really caught my eye lately.

I have been thinking about the whole "outdated official" thing, and some games really need it, like Rolling Turtle. Unfortunately I also refuse to remove them for the very same reasons as the one I gave for the other 2 situations.

About the awards, yeah, true. Especially god of jump gear is laughable now, but I feel like those can't really be changed. They just are the way they are and updating them still won't bring them to the point they were before.
I can add new awards as a level 2 admin though, so if a good image and idea is provided I can easily add more that are actually up to date. (Jump Gear M is one of them)


Sorry about missing the intentions of your post, but to be honest, your post was formulated very vaguely.

  I acknowledge your problem. But there are other reasons not doing it than just satisfying former members:

Changing from official to accepted:
- brings score table problems

Updating official levels:
- Every new exploit needs a revision, which means quite some work for admins. This raises the following question/discussion: What exploits needs revision?
(- then I need to do that level again, since if it is changed the scores should be resetted)

Changing awards:
- For you the awards get easier. But for new player it's still difficult to do for example Cloud Dreamer. So such awards could be rewarding starting players. This way there is less of a gap till the next possible award.
- There is also the issue of experience loss with deleting awards. I remember that there were 2 people that made an unpublished game with an award that gave massive amount of xp. I remember that jp had to manually remove the xp.
- I do concur there could be more challenging awards to adress your issue.

Changing packs is not an issue, but if the pack is from a former member, you should see that pack as an archive. However, this does not prevent you from making an extension of that pack with the levels you want to be added. If you want that admins update that pack, you're asking quite some work (especially on the all level packs).

Changing accepted levels:
- I don't see any good reason to do this, since there are quite a lot of bad (in terms of current view) levels (I mean, at least 1000) Updating/changing these is a too big of a task.

Adding officials:
- I agree with you on this one

One additional comment:
For me a level once it is accepted should not be revised except for typos and category changes as it is the task of the admins to make sure the level is worthy to be accepted when evaluating. Even though standards change over time, it was deemed good enough to be accepted at the time. So for me, the level is still acceptable, but maybe should get a lesser rating.

  Whoa, no, it's not just about that level. And I'm a bit insulted that you'd think that I'd make such a forum post just to make a point on a single level, rather than just mention it in the level comments.

I'm talking about adding/changing/removing officials, packs, and awards. There are quite a lot of officials that either no longer fit the current standard for official or even accepted levels and therefore should be removed, or have very serious exploits that turns the level from a 5-minute fun challenge into a 15-second pushover, and therefore should be changed. And then they should make way for the amazing levels that should be official, but never were made so because "there are already too many" or some similar excuse. Similar things go for packs.

There are a few awards that simply don't make sense to keep, or at least keep the way they are. Mostly they are based on things that have become too easy to achieve. While adding new awards is good (and I support it fully), changing awards to fit their original intention should be done. One such instance is Cloud Dreamer, which is now completely pointless due to the exploit. Another is the award for the Impossible Pack, which I feel has become too easy and therefore doesn't live up to its original intention (a tough award for a tough pack).

  I'm pretty sure he's talking about what happened in Bling Bling Elevator

My point on it still stands. Yes, I know some levels have been broken for ages but I don't think we should just start doing changes that will force resetting of scores amongst things. I didn't make the decision on my own, I asked Gecko and Elizea on another one of these cases, but on your accepted level. I'm not sure why you thought we'd allow it for an official level nonetheless.

I understand your point about caring more about the current community than the past community.

But let's face it, this site barely has a community anymore, there's no point to make all these changes on a site that has basically turned into an archive at this point. What you call the current community is but a husk of what this site used to have, just let it rest its elder moments in peace and not in tons of construction work.


I still stand by my point on this, I really don't want to go around changing 7 year old levels.

Elizea has asked me to look at the level though, so I gave him a copy of it.

  If you're talking about reverting official levels to accepted, then there is the additional problem that the scores do not get updated properly. And if you mean something else, please elaborate, since your post is a bit vague about the specifics.

  AK, what you say sound right. But the sense remains obscure to me. What kind of changes do you think are necessary to make this site even better as it is?

  I agree with AK on this statement, but I've only seen one example of this happening.

  I would like to make a statement to the admins that I think barely anyone will agree with, but I'm going to make it because it's what I believe.

Admins of a website, a game, or a community have a responsibility to the current members of that community, and that community alone. I say "current" very specifically because to cater to people that are no longer a part of the community is, to me, foolish and wrong. So to refuse to do something that would benefit the current community just because there's the possibility a former member would come back and complain about it is completely absurd to me. I can't find any logical reason to put the feelings of past members above the wants and/or needs of the current community.

I'm saying this because I feel that very little progress has been made on BonusLevel specifically because many of the admins are afraid of changing things that might cause discomfort to past users - past users who, I believe, have a very little chance of coming back anyway. Even if they did come back, in many cases, the benefit to our current members would far outweigh the possible issues the former members might have with the changes.

In short, if you can change something that would benefit all of the current BonusLevel users, do it, no matter if it may mean former users that come back may have to work a little harder.

Thanks,
AK712