State of the NAFtion

[Long_Bomb]

Every review of every organisation I have ever been involved with, including military organisations, has always had complaints about the communication. I don't know what any of you do for a living but can I ask how many of you work for an organisation where you are happy with the communication from those higher-up?

I've got to say I am happy to be told two days before the site gets updated on a non-NAF website about good news like this and I wish they could manage this in my real job, but then, they are only full-time, paid employees.

[Lychanthrope]

My wife teaches school and with her previous Superintendent she would find out things by reading the local paper. Staff was always the last to know. I wish I could say that is why he is no longer, there, but sadly no.

[Shteve0]

I think the point most are making on that front is that if you run for a position in an election on the basis that you will deliver certain things, then there is an expectation that once in office you will deliver them, or at least set more realistic expectations for the next election campaign, or the one after that...

Your analogy is skewed, by the way - voters appoint and fund the commitee, so it's a little more like you not providing updates on project status to your manager, or the board not attending shareholder meetings.

I think the point is, there are few volunteer organisations out there with funding on a par with the NAF; but there are so, so many that achieve much, much more with so much less by way of resources.

I can't speak for everyone, but that's how I read this thread.

[Long_Bomb]

This just springs to mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

[Warpstone]

Having just read the comments from Woolfe I'm a bit concerned about the way we as a community are acting towards those who give up their time to support us within the NAF. This is not aimed at a particular individual but is a general comment for everyone who uses this forum.

It seems that after doing something the community has been asking for (updating the website), which must have taken quite a bit of time and effort, the responce from the community is "Why the hell didn't you tell us sooner?".

If all we do is complain even when things are being done then I can't blame them for not making the effort in the future. The NAF is run by volunteers and they may have responcibilities, but so do we and part of that is supporting them.

I would just like to say thank you to the NAF Committee for all of the things they do including all the day to day stuff that most of us take for granted or don't even know happens.

+1

Longbomb, Lycanthrope, I have no idea who Woolfe is. I've probably never even met him. But his frustration regarding the lack of NAF's relevance to league players, "Define the NAF - is it all BB or is it Tournies" is exactly what I and many other NAF members have experienced for years now.

I'm sure the NAF volunteers (elected or not) are all good people trying their best. They certainly have done a great job with the resurrection tournament scene. But what if you're not part of that scene? What if the very volunteers you're asking me to commend have focused on tournaments to the exclusion of the league play that sustains my BB community? Further, what if that very same executive has apologists claim that NAF really is still good for me in theory so I should appreciate what they do on faith?

When the NAF newsletter started, my request for more league info wasn't accepted http://thenaf.net/index.php?name=PNphpB ... 5351#85351. I can't blame JP for it, he was really clear that the focus was on tournies. Fair enough, that's obviously the direction he received. During the TD election, calls for league support brought OBBLM up as mentioned above. There is no action on this front. Can I blame Pippy for it? No, he's the Tournament Director after all, it's not his portfolio and he was clear about not wanting to mix league results into rankings.

But the question is still hanging out there: who is going to make NAF welcome and support non-tourny players? Is it Lycos? Is it someone he appoints?

People who defend the current executive and NAF in general seem to believe the organization is inherently valuable to all Blood Bowl players. But how is this the case when there is no plan for league support? Is there a view to appointing a League Director? With the sole exception of Mike (Sann) there is franky no communication from NAF acknowledging or endorsing Blood Bowl as it exists outside of a resurrection tournament envelope! Even Streetbowl is somehow able to get more NAF traction than Leagues. That's galling if you're going to tell me that NAF is a representative organization for Blood Bowl.

Why shouldn't NAF and its executives receive criticism and scrutiny for a complete failure to respond to this? Again, I'm sure they're fine gentlemen, but if they have no desire to mobilize NAF to support Blood Bowl outside of their tournament scene, then just tell us. The criticism will stop immediately once league players realize they no longer have the slightest reason to expect anything from NAF.

[Darkson]

Every review of every organisation I have ever been involved with, including military organisations, has always had complaints about the communication. I don't know what any of you do for a living but can I ask how many of you work for an organisation where you are happy with the communication from those higher-up?

The communication from my higher-ups is shit.
It's also a damn sight better than we get from the NAF officials and they've not promised to improve it.

[Warpstone]

Easy enough with a filter?

With the current ranking system? Probably not. Slup and Mepmuff could probably find a way to add date filtering, but there are no fields in the DB to sort via relevant concepts like LRB version, rule sets, variants, etc. The data just doesn't exist.

I assume ombbl would work - I've never used it as I never got a reply back from them.

But as an example, check out Yakromunda. While its not designed for it (I assume), I can in theory play a game with any other member there, as all the gang sheets are hosted on the site.
Something similar for Blood Bowl would be great.

For an international league concept as has been raised in this thread, it would indeed be workable within obblm; that said, you'd have to set it up the entire worldwide facility as a single league with multiple divisions; administration would be a bit of a headache, and some complications might occur with interdivisional games allocating points and/or SPPs in the home leagues, but yeah, it's possible.

The ship has sailed in terms of NAF providing league management software. Leagues have either signed up with fee-based services or self-hosted OBBLM.

But the what NAF can still do is act as the middle-man that synchronizes inter-league data sets.

If Shteve0 plays Darkson, the result is reported to NAF. The NAF system then transmits the results via a RESTful api to Shteve0 and Darkson's home league managers (i.e OBBLM and AROS). In other words, NAF is responsible for creating and sharing an API for importing and synic match results between various systems. It takes the risk of duplication away from home leagues and allows records to reconcile against NAF's match report.

There are probably other ways to do it. I'm just suggesting that asking NAF to become the central league data store is probably 5 years too late.

[Blammaham]

Easy enough with a filter?

With the current ranking system? Probably not. Slup and Mepmuff could probably find a way to add date filtering, but there are no fields in the DB to sort via relevant concepts like LRB version, rule sets, variants, etc. The data just doesn't exist.

I assume ombbl would work - I've never used it as I never got a reply back from them.

But as an example, check out Yakromunda. While its not designed for it (I assume), I can in theory play a game with any other member there, as all the gang sheets are hosted on the site.
Something similar for Blood Bowl would be great.

For an international league concept as has been raised in this thread, it would indeed be workable within obblm; that said, you'd have to set it up the entire worldwide facility as a single league with multiple divisions; administration would be a bit of a headache, and some complications might occur with interdivisional games allocating points and/or SPPs in the home leagues, but yeah, it's possible.

The ship has sailed in terms of NAF providing league management software. Leagues have either signed up with fee-based services or self-hosted OBBLM.

But the what NAF can still do is act as the middle-man that synchronizes inter-league data sets.

If Shteve0 plays Darkson, the result is reported to NAF. The NAF system then transmits the results via a RESTful api to Shteve0 and Darkson's home league managers (i.e OBBLM and AROS). In other words, NAF is responsible for creating and sharing an API for importing and synic match results between various systems. It takes the risk of duplication away from home leagues and allows records to reconcile against NAF's match report.

There are probably other ways to do it. I'm just suggesting that asking NAF to become the central league data store is probably 5 years too late.

Something like this would drive large numbers of league players, that would otherwise have little reason to join up, to the NAF IMO. S.

[Woolfe]

Having just read the comments from Woolfe I'm a bit concerned about the way we as a community are acting towards those who give up their time to support us within the NAF. This is not aimed at a particular individual but is a general comment for everyone who uses this forum.

I keep wondering why this is being discussed so heavily over here and not on the NAF site where it should be??

Because I am indicative of part of the BB community. A part that doesn't use the NAF because we get little benefit from them.

Is the NAF about BB or about tournaments. I am not a member of the NAF, but I play BB. Is the goal of the NAF to support all BB players and bring them under the one banner, or do they wish to just do the bits they do?
I don't play tournies, so at this point I will never join the NAF, so will not be on the site. If thats what you want then fine. But if you want to grow the NAF. Then you need to engage with us, those who don't go to the NAF site.

If all we do is complain even when things are being done then I can't blame them for not making the effort in the future. The NAF is run by volunteers and they may have responcibilities, but so do we and part of that is supporting them.

As I said, I am basing my knowledge on what I am reading here. There might be really really good reasons why they haven't done what they said they would. Maybe its because they were doing so much other good stuff that they couldn't get to it. Awesome. But that doesn't change the fact that they said they would do something and they either haven't or it has taken this long to get it done.
Stop with the volunteer excuses. If you can't do it, then don't volunteer. At what point does it move beyond, volunteer issues and just not doing the job?

Long_Bomb wrote:
Every review of every organisation I have ever been involved with, including military organisations, has always had complaints about the communication. I don't know what any of you do for a living but can I ask how many of you work for an organisation where you are happy with the communication from those higher-up?

The communication from my higher-ups is shit.
It's also a damn sight better than we get from the NAF officials and they've not promised to improve it.

Indeed.... Every organisation I have ever worked in has had poor comms, and has suffered as a result of it.
I work in IT. If we have an outage, even a small one, then you send out a notification about it. Why because it is better to say "We had an issue and have fixed it" then to not say anything and everyone thinks "Bloody IT can't do anything".

Communication, Communication, Communication.

That damn horse isn't dead yet!

[daloonieshaman]

Question on NAF BloodBowl Player Umbrellia:

What about other Blood Bowl Branches?
Who in the heck plays BBTM, Who is running Tournies

As Far as Leagues
There have been an independent site or 2 mapping leagues with very minor as people just do not know where to start looking for a league in their area (let alone a tourny)
Should this fall under the "responsibility" of TFF/NAF/others

[sann0638]

When the NAF newsletter started, my request for more league info wasn't accepted http://thenaf.net/index.php?name=PNphpB ... 5351#85351. I can't blame JP for it, he was really clear that the focus was on tournies. Fair enough, that's obviously the direction he received.

I've never received any particular direction like that, and in the next newsletter we will have at least 2 league reports, which will hopefully spark off more coming in.

While I will be taking Warpstone up on any offers of help, I'm still dubious that e.g. shtev0 playing Darkson will happen often enough to be worthwhile putting something into place for it? Or do you mean more local inter-league stuff, so a better example being me v Darkson?

[Sandwich]

Part of the problem, other than this has been promised for years (at least 2 runs in office) is the continual lack of communication, not just on this project but overall. I understand there are things that, for various reasons, can't be discussed in detail, but when nothing is said...

Joe is trying to crow in the website thread about elected officials keeping election promises, and yes, it looks like they have on this one, but they also promised better communication, and have failed miserably on that.

As I suggested earlier, quarterly reports on projects could solve this issue, but no one seemed to notice my post. *shruggs*

Wanted to quote these 2 because they really do sum things up for me.

First up: great news about the website, looking forward to it, and I hope the change-over goes well. I also understand completely that communication about this issue has been as expected - you wouldn't want to announce it too early then find things can't be done.

But... still no idea what's happening with regards to leagues (lots of decent suggestions in this thread). Still no idea what's happening with GW, or with regards to dice. Still no idea what else is happening behind the scenes. I know we can't be told every little detail, but sending out an update from each of the head-honchos in the NAF, once every few months, would be really good. And yes, I'm pretty sure most of these things were promised in the elections.

[mawph]

This may have been mentioned previously (I've not read the whole thread...) but when I was putting a teamsheet together for the NAF champs, there wasn't an easy way to do this outside of excel. What would be ideal for the NAF site is a teamsheet tool which is linked to the tournament.

The organiser would put in the parameters of the event (TV, skill set, available inducements, etc.) when they enter their tournament.
The gamer then goes into the Teamsheet tool, selects the tournament that they are attending and selects their team. They could even submit this directly to the organiser and then print a PDF copy to take in person. Those who want to choose at the last minute could still do so and it wouldn't be obligatory for each tournament, just an easy way of ensuring that the teams are legit for the event and for printing out a roster.

Thoughts?

[sann0638]

That's a really good idea, one that antipixi mentioned earlier. It's on the list!

[Darkson]

I mentioned that on the NAF site, as a use for STARS (or QUILT) and got trolled.