Team England Charter Proposals *VOTING ENDED — SEE RESULTS*

[Pipey]

Results:

Document A
Yes 31 (91.2%)
No 3 (8.8%)

Document B
Yes 12 (36.4%)
No 21 (63.6%)


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Over the last year or so the Team England Committee has been discussing a way forward to propose a new Charter.

To this end we would like to present two separate documents to the English community. We will ask you to read the documents then make two separate votes to accept or reject each one.

The voting period will be from Sunday November 3rd until Sunday November 17th. You will be asked to make two separate votes at the same time.

The two documents are linked below:
Document A: Team England Basic Structures
Document B: Team England Selection Process

Document A sets out the basic mechanics of Team England over the four-year Eurobowl cycle: when key events happen, individual roles and responsibilities, who can get involved, how voting works and how the Charter will be reviewed going forward.

Document B presents a new selection method for Team England. This covers both selection for the English Eurobowl team and the English EurOpen team.

Each document would replace the corresponding sections of the 2009 Charter as follows:
A replaces sections 2.2-2.5, 2.7, 3 and 4
B replaces sections 1, 2.1, 2.6 and 2.8

The changes would come into effect immediately, however the selection changes in Document B would not apply until May 2020 i.e. for the qualification period ahead of Malta 2021. Regardless of the outcome of these votes, the Eurobowl captain for Poland 2020 will select his/her team using the current system.

It should be noted that the committee were unanimous in their decision to put Document A to community vote. The decision to present Document B was by a majority, with three in favour and two against.

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The two votes will be as follows:
Vote A: to accept Document A – YES or NO
Vote B: to accept Document B – YES or NO

In each case a total YES vote of greater than 50% will be required to bring about change from the existing Charter. If the total YES vote is 50% or less then there will be no change.

If one or both of the two documents are accepted then the Charter will be rewritten accordingly, either partially or in its entirety. If neither document is accepted, we will continue with the 2009 Charter in full.

Please post if you would like to discuss anything about the documents or ask any questions about the process.

Both documents have as part of their appendix a Summary of Proposed Changes section which may be useful alongside the full detail.

Thanks
-The Team England Committee
(Leipziger, Lycos, Mubo, Pipey, Speedingbullet)

[Pipey]

Vote by sending a private message on TFF to Sann0638. Send a single PM containing your choices for the two votes: Vote A and Vote B. Please identify yourself with your NAF name.

-Proxy votes are not allowed
-You must be an English NAF member who has played a tournament in the last 12 months in order to vote
-The committee and current captain are eligible to vote
-Please use the below text template for your PM


Vote for Team England Structure (A) and Selection (B)
My NAF name =
Vote A = [YES or NO]
Vote B = [YES or NO]

Voting commences on November 3rd and ends on November 17th.

[Purplegoo]

Thanks, chaps, for putting this together. Lots to absorb, and I want to think about it for a while before participating in the discussion to follow. Two things jump out immediately, however:

- I think calling the present charter the 2009 Charter is misleading. It is, effectively Trigger’s mop, as we have discussed here before. I would suggest it be called ‘Current Charter’.

- How have we come to the decision that some things deserve a two thirds majority for change and others above 50/50? This might be a silly question, but I’m not immediately seeing it?

Thanks again for the effort.

[Joemanji]

Will have a think and post later. But whilst we are raising small points, I didn't see mention of what would happen if an existing committee member was voted in as captain? Does the committee run with four members for that year? Does the previous captain stay on? Do we vote in a fifth member for a single year term?

[besters]

As with others, I have only quickly read through the proposals and will read again. But my first question would be why use the glicko rankings rather than the elo rankings?

This doesn't mean I have made any judgement on the documents, but would like clarification. I know I don't understand the glicko movements anywhere near as well as those for the elo rankings and what I see as discrepancies has lead me to have a certain mistrust of the glicko rankings and I don't use them for reference. Having said that, they seem to be remarkably consistent from year to year in the tables shown, wouldn't an elo ranking base produce a similar result?

[PeteW]

Huge amount of work here - well done chaps!

One suggestion :
At the moment, the entire committee steps down in 4 years, as a bunch. This is quite a change. Another suggesting might be for one to step down each year to preserve continuity. They would have to take a year off before standing again. The current committee would have to decide by lot now who is stepping down over the next few years.

One question :
Why does the captain have to have been specifically outside the UK as part of Team England? I think this restriction only rules me out! (Not that I feel persecuted or anything...! )

I like the use of the guided selection, and think it will help people understand the process.

Good work committee!

[nazgob]

I'm enjoying this, and pleasantly surprised that in higher up the rankings than I expected.

Thanks for putting this together!

There may be questions.

[Purplegoo]

Having slept on it and had a more careful read, here are my thoughts. Generally, I think it's worth repeating that both of these documents are well considered / written, and that I think it's worth us going through this process, considering we have a new home / committee. So good job, guys!

I think I'll vote for Doc. A. There are some omissions / inconsistencies that I think I'd prefer tidying up (see above posts), but all in all, nothing too controversial there (I almost wanted more change!). I am going to vote against Doc. B. Although it's the best version of qualification I've ever seen (so, kudos on that), it is still qualification. And I don't believe that works for us; not for our community, not us as individuals and not our captain / team. Some extended waffle on that below, although easy to ignore if preferred. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the debate.

Qualification pros:

- We (the English) tie ourselves up in knots about inclusivity and outreach, and always have. A system based (in part) on numbers allows us to stop worrying about it as much, because it inherently feels more inclusive and is undeniably transparent compared to an entirely subjective selection.

- Objective performance based ladders are tangible things, although the basis for this objectivity can be challenged (as per all Blood Bowl number or rankings systems).

- There is less of a requirement or pressure for the skipper to ‘know the scene’ (could also be a con, I suppose, depending on your viewpoint).


Cons:

- Although better than the rest of them, even this system encourages coaches to attend all tournaments with top races to score points. I’ve read enough TFF in my time to know that showing up to every event with Undead is not going to overly endear the people that want to qualify to the more variety focused in our community. It might even force rulespacks further down the tiering route to compensate for this impact, which we probably don’t need.

- This effective restriction of racial picks is also less fun for the people that want to qualify. Why would I waste one of my 10 outings per year on my freshly painted Nurgle or completing the 26 when I really want to represent England? It would always be in the back of every interested mind, hanging over you.

- You will probably end up with 10-15 brilliant players who have harnessed top races all year, and have precious little information about any of the fringe races, which are just as important for a winning TE. Perhaps even leading to more subjectivity in selection than we currently have, because it could increase guesswork (if you are one of those that think 'Dave is a good Chaos coach', rather than 'Dave is a good coach').

- Gaming of the system. It’s always possible to game these systems, and you’re effectively encouraging it here. If I wanted to win the Golden Gauntlet, for instance, I know how I’d do it and my behaviour would change massively. No different here; with time, money and the will, you can effectively game it and up your points.

- As part of the above point, this system drives the wrong behaviours re: selecting of tournaments. The system encourages coaches that wish to qualify to win games, not to go and seek out more testing events at home or abroad. I know as a subjective selection captain how to weight a 3/2/1 at Rugbowl or Monkeybowl against a 5/0/1 in [insert place here that I mean as a generalisation to make a point but might upset someone where I don’t mean to]. Sure, Glicko knows this better than ELO and the impact of my choice wouldn't be as stark, but it doesn’t know as well as a good captain.

- The pressure for the skipper to effectively pick the top 8 in the system is immense. Even if he knows his wildcard pick should be #14 for excellent reasons, now you are framing the argument excellently for coach #8 to be super-annoyed. And why not? You have introduced numbers, for the captain to then ignore those numbers is going to cause controversy, even if he's right.

- The ‘fixing’ of a non-broken system. Our results at Eurobowl are out of this world. In my ten years of being interested in TE, there has been controversy / discussion / crossed words over 2 / 56 selected TE spots, and even in these cases (where Geoff wasn’t picked, to be clear of the instances I’m talking about), the ‘con’ side of the argument was perfectly well defined and well-meant, even if you didn’t share the opinion of the captain at the time. I think with distance, this has been agreed by all parties, although apologies if not, I’m not trying to open old wounds. Even if the decisions were total bollocks, 2 / 56 is an OK hit rate. That number can only increase if you give people a structure to excel in and then tell the captain he doesn't have to pick them.

- No-one is asking for qualification. I honestly believe this conversation would never have come up if not for the move to TFF and a ‘let’s have all of your feedback’ thread, precipitated by Geoff not being picked for Cardiff (this is not a criticism and I support the move to TFF, but this is objectively what happened. Geoff knows all too well I was behind his initiative, even if I had my concerns about one person unilaterally making the decision). ‘Give me all of your feedback’ is always going to generate all of the feedback, I feel as if the selection of this topic has not been based on a historical groundswell of support for the motion and more of a reaction to a snapshot of opinion that was a bit artificial at the time.

Anyhoo – that’s me. I’m voting no, qualification is a big issue for me. If this gets through, I’m either going to have to consider modifying my behaviour to try ensure I qualify (have less fun year round) or have less of a shot of playing for (a likely less successful) TE. Neither option sounds great.

[Wulfyn]

Thanks to everyone in the committee for the huge amount of hard work that has gone into these documents. I think they set an excellent direction for TE that will be more inclusive for the wider community, which is exactly what we were aiming for!

It would have been nice to have had these documents put forward for debate and feedback prior to a vote. I am on board with the majority of what is in here, but have some concerns around a few details of selection.

I am a huge fan of the glicko rating so am very glad we are moving to that (no surprise as to my bias!). I am a little concerned about there being restrictions on a global basis for a selection which is inherently specific. If people want to powergame their global ranking then expect to see a lot of woodies, undead, and dark elves being taken. This is fine unless we end up with a global ranking top 10 mainly playing teams of which only 3 can be taken to the tournament. I'm far more interested in a good and specialised Norse or Skaven coach breaking into the team than a great all rounder that has never played those races but is the best in a top 10 filled with people who have focused on their rating.

Related to this is the decision to remove stunty teams from the calculation. But shouldn't this be done for any team that is unlikely to be taken to Eurobowl? Should a dalliance with Nurgle or Underworld or Brets factor into who makes the top 10? And shouldn't players maybe be able to declare themselves for the team with just specific races to avoid a situation where meta chasers pad the rankings?

At the moment the message is clear - your best shot at TE is to play the mega races all year. Remember only 2 people who don't make that top 10 can get in the team.

*sniped by goo - this is a low point for me

[lunchmoney]

So a Goblin coach who hits 80+% win rate is out just because Stunty? Speciesism (I know they are races but I don't want to type that ism ).

This is hyperbolic to the extreme, obviously, but as mentioned, if you are removing 3 races you open the door to removing more. Are vampires ever going to be considered for a EB squad? Unlikely, why not remove them too?

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Reading the removal paragraph again, is it aimed at removing what could be seen as easy wins? Ie are matches involving Stunty on either side removed from the equation?

[Wulfyn]

It is hyperbolic to the extreme. So extreme in fact that it entirely invalidates any point you are trying to make.

In any walk of life if you are trying to prove a general point, try to ignore outliers rather than making them the crux of your argument.

[Geggster]

I'd like to add my thanks to the team for putting together these documents. Good work.

Document A all seems very reasonable and I think most would likely agree to some extent.

As far as qualification set out in B, it seems the best way of doing it that I have seen to date. You can point to the April 2018 or April 2019 global rankings provided and say this is a clear system and the captain could choose a representative and fair team based on real data. In fact, very similar to the teams that were selected, actually (other than it's clear that Geoff was very high on both tables).

But this will drive a change in behaviour. We will surely see people toying with tier 1 or 2, take an eye on qualification and resort to tier 0. Faced with an event with lots of good coaches in a small field (let's say Monkeybowl, because you could pick a great England 8 from attendees each year and probably not a half bad Scottish team either), it is clear to me the only choice is go with the very best roster choices (do I fancy taking a whisk to a gun fight?). Otherwise I face several good coaches who may be my direct competitors for top 5/8/10 spaces at a disadvantage. DonVito, for example, will be thinking the same. "Can't take Slampires, because Geggy will be coming at me with Wooddead. Wooddead for me too". The system will encourage all in the trenches and on the cusp (and others off the cusp that just want to see how high up the rankings they can get) to get as competitive as they can. Perhaps that will drive up our standards, of course, and there is a place for that.

Unless we play (very) narrow tier BB events or the rankings we use take into account racial disadvantage (which I don't think they can), then this change we will surely see reduced variance at tournaments, big and small, all year.

I don't think that's healthy for the scene. And given the data provided, I believe the very same coaches will be at the top of the rankings so the selected team will not be discernibly different and just as likely to cause controversy if number 5 isn't selected for a number 13 wildcard.

[speedingbullet]

Thanks to everyone who has posted thoughts and questions so far. Keep them coming please. Responses and thoughts from the committee will follow over the next day or two.

[lunchmoney]

It is hyperbolic to the extreme. So extreme in fact that it entirely invalidates any point you are trying to make.

In any walk of life if you are trying to prove a general point, try to ignore outliers rather than making them the crux of your argument.

I get it, you dont like me or anything I write (at least it seems that way as you never say anything nice in reply to me, just attacks, but that's not the debate here).
Whilst replying to me you have ignored the point I was trying to raise. Are other races to be ignored?

[Barney the Lurker]

Whilst replying to me you have ignored the point I was trying to raise. Are other races to be ignored?

Sorry to butt in, but I think Dan was mainly raising a point about your question as opposed to answering the question itself.

Ultimately, as he isn't on the committee he isn't really in a position to respond. Neither am I, but I will have a pop .

We all know there are better and worse races, and they wanted to cut off some to get a more accurate result, and ensure that you can take stunty without worrying about tanking your ranking. As you say there are other teams that could be discounted, but I think we then start getting into subjective territory whereas the stunty races are a good cut off as we all know their limitations and accept they are under the curve.

Also, and just as an FYI Vampires have been at the Eurobowl before - MissSweden took them in 2012 & 2013