Mike, now that I've spent the better part of day catching up, a few suggestions:
1)
Request that Lycos answer direct questions from members IN PUBLIC. Credit to Geggster, Pippy and Mike. But honestly, the lack of Dave speaking to issues that understandably question his leadership is troubling. It leads to an argument by proxy and people stepping for him etc. It's much simpler if he simply communicated sincerely in response to some huge issues facing NAF rather than cherry-pick NAF threads to respond to and allow the rest of the executive to field questions that are directed to him.
A really good place to start is for Lycos to seriously consider reconciling NAF's mandate. Supporting blood bowl in general does not seem to match what NAF does in practice. The sense I get is that it's primarily dedicated to promoting tabletop resurrection tournies and that's fine. But that's not the same as an umbrella organization interested in all aspects of the game. There's no sense hiding behind unclear goals. After all, tabletop league and online players can already tell that NAF doesn't support them much if at all. What is NAF's strategy to retain members in the absence of block dice?
2)
Archive and shutter the current ranking system. The DB itself is not robust enough to handle problems like variant-rankings. To sort or delete Streetbowl, Beach Bowl, Deathbowl, Spacebowl (I kid on this one, but one day you know it's going to happen
), you need meta-data that accounts for non-standard features. It's also profoundly pointless to have a system based purely on frequency of play as a large component of the scores themselves.
Build a new system based on:
* recording tournament meta-data. It will give us the abilty to filter based on common variations as well as other common rules factors such as custom stars/tables, game effects, pitches, etc. It's a pointless excercise to identify pure strains of Streetbowl let alone Blood Bowl, so just record variations and expose these options as filterable form that the individual users can use to satisfy their preferred criteria.
* make the default ranking based on performance over one calender year. You can still access lifetime stats or stats for a specified time period using filters, but turn the default view into one that reflects current and active players.
* introduce a decay factor on lifetime scores. If you don't play Skaven for 3 years, your lifetime ranking for that race shrinks by a factor of K (5% or even 15 points) until you reach starting ELO. Of course, your highest ever ranking will be recorded as well ("kids, I used to be the #1 Goblin player of all time...").
* integrate tournament management functionality in the backend reporting system. Kill two birds with one stone by making TOs only need to record data once! There's no reason why I can't input round 2's results directly into a web interface and then have the server spit back a round 3 swiss fixture list.
Most TOs reinvent the wheel for their events in order to accommodate concepts that have arbitrary variations (i.e. bonus points of different amounts). That's trivial to deal with if we're account for at the start of a new ranking system. Further, it allows us to record a more comprehensive story of what happened at the tournament (i.e. who scored the most TD, CAS, etc. is an easy tally when you're recording the entire tourny data set anyway).
* Regarding the programming, I know at least one of the NAF coders and he's an extremely competent guy. I sincerely think that he, I or a team of volunteers could collaborate to make the above rebuild happen. The problem though is direction. We're not getting it even we offer our time. You can't keep putting lipstick on a pig and that's about all you can do with the current infrastructure. You need Pippy and/or Lycos to make the call that current code is insufficient and spec out a more robust replacement.
3)
Make the NAF Announcements and Comments forums public. I'm pretty sure I glanced at the NAF site for a few years before someone told me there were hidden, members-only forums! Why? Nothing there is any different in terms of sensitivity than what we're currently discussing on TFF. Unlike a local league, NAF is not a private club. It's membership is largely unaware of official on-goings and hiding them behind an authentication wall is ridiculous. Most members who sign up at a tournament don't even know that they need to make a forum account.
4) If NAF is still interested in growing the game outside of a few tournies, then
for the love of nuffle, throw leagues a bone. My clubmates and I play resurrection tournies a few weekends a year. But we play a minimum of 12 weekends worth of league blood bowl. So much exposure and recruitment to the coaching ranks is done via leagues that it's notable that NAF's only league related support is so underwhelming. If you don't live in a tourny hotbed, local Blood Bowl lives or dies on the strength of your league and that deserves NAF's support if they're truly an organization devoted to the good of the game.
BTW Mike, every time I try to add my league to NAF's site, I get an error.
5)
Clarify NAF's communication with GW. I appreciate Geggster's thoughts, but frankly it's hard to believe that an organization that 1)is not consulted during potential rules issues (Khorne) 2) not allowed to host at WW (NAFC) 3) is not allowed to produce Block dice is still on GW's radar. I understand Geggster believes we should be cautious, but it sounds like GW broke up with NAF and the latter still thinks there's a relationship.
A lot of the consternation over this issue really comes down to members wondering whether NAF even has the will to do anything meaningful without GW's blessing and how long should we expect to wait for a phone call from GW before admitting it's over?
6)
Communication should address concerns. The format and frequency of NAF comms are much improved. JonnyP did a good job to start things and Mike has been really on the ball. The problem though is content. None of the above concerns are well-addressed through official NAF channels. Ironically, it seems like NAF developed a strong comms program right about the time when everything hit the fan and leadership went silent. Volunteer or not, when you're a leader, you can't be silent. You need to lead and you do that by communicating your decisions through the channels available. Consider how even though people didn't like the executive's Khorne roster decision, it was accepted. The same can't be said for the block dice because there is just so much more entangled with this issue. The absence of block dice is bringing questions that strike directly at NAF's very reason to exist. The absence of communication regarding NAF's vision for the future hurts confidence and credibility. What happens when members no longer believe NAF offers any value? An infinite amount of comms channels aren't going to resolve an existential crisis that leadership is mum about.
I got one for attending a tourney (that's ONE ball, not one set), I feel kinda ripped off....oh well at least I have one.
