Spartan

Anchor Link: https://anchor.fm/spartan56/episodes/Spartcast-4---Recruitment--Retention--and-Solving-Problems-e1bd6pa WARNING: I SWEAR A LOT. NOT. SAFE. FOR. WORK. Also made a oopsies and mentioned a no-no word, you have been warned. Timestamps, Topics, Mentions: 0:00-1:06 Intro 1:06-6:32 Confession + Rage + Moscow/LVA LR Culture and Goals @JardyB10 @samx @N0HBDY @Enorama @Doomsday @a_Fork @Blazzer @Alex_J32 6:32-17:50 First-Gen Retention/VHLM GM Waiver Issues + Idea to fix both issues! @Alex_J32 @McWolf (@samx a bit I guess) 17:51-18:55 Rage + Idea Conclusion 18:55-25:30 VHLM League Size/Recruitment Methods Concerns @MexicanCow123 since it relates to the Recruitment team 25:30-26:45 Forgetting what I heard on other podcasts @JardyB10 @samx @N0HBDY @Berocka @dasboot @bigAL (I listened to your solo thing last night but forgot to mention it, was nice) 26:45-27:26 Rage 27:27-30:11 A What-If? to have potentially avoided the VHLE's existence (I call the 1 and a half Aussies crew a bunch of snitches) 30:12-34:09 The VHLE is the best thing to happen to S80+ Goalies @CowboyinAmerica @Beketov @fishy @16z @N0HBDY 34:10-39:17 VHLE Community Criticisms and how I'd revitalize/fix the VHLE

You don't know the half of it.....lol Might have accidentally written a full article on the completely wrong player before writing this one

I don't get your argument that hitting the VHLE is unattainable for everyone when you're making a decision not to put in the same effort others are. I can agree that it's a bit behind a paywall under its current structure, but choosing not to participate in uncapped tpe opportunities is a choice you have made. It is accessible to everyone, and many folks will get tpe from them. Some games even guarantee you at least one, such as playoff brackets and VHFL. You're not on unequal ground as others, you're simply choosing not to take advantage of opportunities available to you. If you're only claiming 12 a week, you're not even pressing the practice facility button lol.

@youloser1337 me fuckin up fantasy shit! (in a good way)

I'm going to deny this media spot once you claim because this is weenie-like behavior to the max and is completely unacceptable. Fuck yo chicken strips nuggets

Well, anyone in Moscow or anyone who was on LVA when I GM'd there can attest that most of our general conversations happen in our public chat. Any discussions specific to our team, performance or strats go in our private channel. I'm sort of putting myself on a weird pedestal here, but mainly because it is how I've set servers up and it seems to have worked so far, and the LR's have been active. It's up to the GM of a team to set that kind of system up and commit to it, or find something else they like that works. If a GM doesn't take LR activity seriously, why would their players?

It's also my personal opinion that the quality of a locker room depends on the GM and the culture in place, as well as the people brought in. None of my locker rooms have been purely players, but also guests/friends/alumni. I can go off on a whole other tangent about how the main VHL server has negatively impacted the amount of time the most active members spend in LR'S, but I remain firmly of the opinion that dead LR's are solved with a commitment from the team staff to bring in active voices, even if they are not members of the team.

Out of love and friendship with Spence, he's not the same as you and I. He loves the VHLM, he loves player development, wanted to be an M GM since he joined the league, and I think even has personal irl ties to development hockey leagues. Him being that passionate about playing in the M (and he wasn't even going up to the E) is not the standard to set when treating the average member's development through the VHL league structure.

@Vice

Basically, part of it was that Victor didn't want to do it anymore. Also, trivia answer sharing has become extremely common, with one or two people's work getting passed around to 90% of the community. There was no point in keeping it in its current format. There have been discussions as to how to bring it back, and the best solution seems to be to put it on the portal in a question bank and give each person two random questions. This would prevent someone from having to run trivia manually, and would also give each person a different set of questions, to limit answer sharing. However, putting trivia on the portal will take time, and the portal developers have other projects and tasks on their hands with more urgency and attention needed. It will be some time before trivia comes back, in my opinion.

but the team records!!!

because uh....I forgot as well and sorta just submitted them one night while driving somewhere

Wait this is actually insanely awesome, I had no clue you and Hatter were that close to a bunch of Moscow team records! Let's get you both to the top of the franchise charts

For what it's worth, I wanted to skip the M, not the E. Many can attest to my persistence in the S79-80 offseason to try and get into the E last season, but I was ultimately denied. Looking back at it, I wouldn't have skipped the M anyways since PF is 2 in the M and 1 in the E. As a competitive earner, I'd prefer to keep 2 PF for as long as possible. Also I wanted to play in the VHL this season instead of playing in the E due to the changes to player career lengths. With careers being extended to 9 seasons, I wanted to have a 9 season VHL career, instead of the typical 8 seasons. If you had the opportunity to play 72 more games in your career that counts towards the most meaningful awards, championship and records, wouldn't you want those 9 seasons as well? At the end of the day, both the M and E have fantastic communities and the GM's do their part in engaging, retaining and developing their players. There is going to be no positive change if we gripe about stuff without offering realistic solutions. When the M had empty teams and the E was getting crammed, leagues were adjusted. There was productive discussion in the general community before that change. If M GM's present the E as undesirable, or as something they don't want to be part of, of course the first gens under their tutelage will echo the same thoughts. We will have roster issues in the M and VHL without the E, so it's here to stay. If there are specific issues in the E beyond "oh others are saying they want to skip it so I want to as well," have a productive conversation about it - identify the issue and offer some solution.

will take Andrew Su, S72 who played for Vancouver.....right? I've got the right guy?

Claim 3/4

With Moscow one game away from finishing the first third of their schedule, I felt it'd be nice to chat a little bit about what's been going on with our team. Duncan Idaho is continuing to play at his co-MVP level, but has also been joined by Paul Atreides and Aurelien Moreau at the top of the points leaderboard. The trio have combined for 51 goals and 89 assists, 140 points, in just 23 games. There's no discounting the 2nd unit either though. The Seabasstard leads that group with 38 points, but him, Glass, Strong, Markinson and Chara sport some of the league's best +/-, with Strong leading the league with a +32 rating. While the offense doesn't flow as freely as it does through Atreides and Idaho, the second unit has more than held their own and doesn't allow goals against. Goalies have had a pretty solid season so far, Papa seizing control of the team as soon as Rara left to free agency and currently holding a .923 save percentage and 16 wins in 20 starts. Still waiting on his first shutout of the season, and I expect it'll be soon. Leroy Johnson has also played lights out as a backup, going 3-0-0 in his three starts with a 2.0 GAA and .918 save percentage. Goalie tandem looks set for the future. Small detail, but one that I really, really appreciate STHS provides since it doesn't really give much. Atreides is the clear leader in FO% at 61.43%, a stat I like to correlate with possession metrics in my own way. Win faceoffs, drive the way your possession goes - in theory at least until STHS tosses in like 6 turnovers in a row. Small thing I liked to see from Atreides who is really having a breakout year this season in all facets. Hope the second period of the season goes just as well!

Good luck with finals! Your podcast is some nice asmr lol

A head's up that you don't actually have to criticize a PT to claim it as a review, your review just has to be "constructive" - we generally take that to mean that your review is somewhat substantive and not just "wow you recorded a podcast! I really like your voice. Overall, you did a pretty good job, 10/10." I think whatever you guys end up writing as response pieces to podcasts fits the "constructive" definition, in my opinion at least. Adding a random criticism for the sake of it can be scrapped lol.

One time since I've been in the league lol

Yeah this rubs me the wrong way as well, and it's odd that I feel that way. Bek and Sam are both highly active members of the server, and Josh was part of the team in the past as well. I really have nothing to hide about what goes on in Moscow, and plenty of people have eyes on what goes on in there. The simple idea of just not having full ownership and creative/authoritative control over a team that I really, really love just bothers me to a mildly unreasonable extent. I don't like feeling like I, or my team, needs a set of eyes outside my own to be monitoring us. Or that due to the accidental action of another GM in an isolated incident, I am no longer trusted to hand over the locker room if the next GM wants it. It's a lack of trust and an odd expectation to set that just makes me feel like I'm not considered as capable enough, or responsible enough, to handle my shit or Moscow's shit. Heck, I joked about it in gen chat that I'd just add "Not the" before Moscow Menace in the server name. It's such an exploitable loophole. If there were more harmful situations of locker rooms getting deleted and people being upset about it, then I'd maybe sympathize with the folks arguing the "staff owner LR's" point. But I've seen multiple M LR's get purged/remade on a GM's whim without an eye batted. Gen chat was even purged at one point, under staff ownership. I just don't get the argument at all to either centralize LR's or to put them all under staff ownership. I don't know of a single other major sim league that operates like that. At this point, I'm just tired of this stuff. I'll happily pass Moscow over to the next GM if I get removed for cause one day. Until then, I'll keep doing what I'm doing and I'm not going to get told what to do and how to do it.

I'm glad Sam likes Moscow enough to want to GM the team. I would like to issue the kindest "fuck off, you're not getting my job," thanks

Yeah Dil dm'd me as well to let me know, I will go back and edit. I was under the impression that a new locker room was made at the time because Dil didn't hand over Halifax in a fit of rage, and that he ghosted on the league at the time. Apologies to Dil, and even fewer instances of LR's getting nuked outside a supposedly accidental one!

sam = in every locker room dasboot = timezone hire dom = advocated for mods owning locker rooms in the past dil = ???? we need to figure out the conspiracy logic behind dil's hire!

These two seem to be the main "official" responses to my quote about locker room ownership, so I'll respond to these. I'd like to just point at this thread from October 20th, which was a thread in the Suggestions and Complaints section specifically addressing the point here about locker room ownership - interestingly enough by Dom who became a mod (ties into my other comment that Bek responded to about mods/staff having a very similar collective perspective on moderation related topics beyond "don't be a dick", but that's mildly coincidental from my perspective and not overly relevant to the point I'm making about LR's). Seems like a knee jerk post considering Matty was banned on October 19th, and news spread pretty quickly that Houston's LR was deleted. It's basically exactly what Bek and Fong said in this thread, about making sure that anything officially related to the VHL is accessible to the VHL staff. Here are a few quotes from that thread, which eventually fizzled out and didn't gain any traction: 1. "teams would still have permissions to have private channels etc where 99% of people cant see but no risk of channels being deleted out of spite or malicious intent. It will easily be bypassed though and official and unofficial locker rooms would exist. All in all its a great idea but it probably will be worked around immediately" As Beaviss said before, if you decide to moderate anything VHL related, there is nothing stopping a GM or players from making an unofficial locker room in title, moving all activity there, and doing what they please. 2. "i just dont think this is a huge issue, how many times are LR's nuked vs peaceful handovers, and is it enough to warrant commish's owning every LR. And if that happens what happens if the person who owns everything goes rogue." We seem to be reacting to a recent incident where a user was already punished (aka staff got the information they needed) and THEN the locker room was deleted. I know for a fact that this locker room was already purged by the previous GM before he transitioned it over to Matty, and there were no complaints at that time from what I could see. People make new locker rooms and move on with their lives, but this seems to be a hot topic for a change because a locker room got deleted after a punishment. There was no hiding of information in this case, because moderators had already reviewed the report and handed out a punishment. I would also assume that someone making a report would carry the burden of proof, to at least show some sign of validity to their claim instead of having moderators act like detectives or investigators in locker rooms. If you're making a report, have your screenshots and evidence in your report. If the person being accused of some misconduct deletes the locker room, how does it help them? The screenshots in the report won't go away, and it just makes them look worse as Matty did. Oh also on a note of a moderator owning the server, the GM would still have admin permission right? I don't see any world where a GM should have to ask a staff member to create a channel, or rename one. If that's the case, they'd also be able to delete channels anyways. While you get access to LOOK at everything, unless you want to deny admin access to GM's of their teams, you can't stop the deletion of messages or channels. 3. "What benefit is there to having things hidden away in different servers vs. having the league have them all under one banner like they were when they were on the forum?" - @Beketov Bek, you're in Moscow. You see just about everything that happens in there, except a back room channel where we talk strats. I like controlling who can see team related discussions, and I'd rather not have to make a completely different server or group chat just to discuss it. You can see 99% of what happens in Moscow. You, or any other mod, do not need that last 1%. I'm sure if someone in there was concerned about something I said, they could report me without me even knowing about it. 4. "This is a minor issue being overblown just because it's something that happened recently. It's an extremely rare / low probability occurrence, and obviously the fix was fairly efficient and simple. I don't think this comes down to a player retention issue either, I highly doubt we lose members just because they have to move to a new LR lol." If retention is actually an issue here, I'd love to see some sort of evidence that is becomes an issue when locker rooms get deleted. If anything, people got nominated for community service awards for building temporary locker rooms before a new GM was hired, for bettering the community in the process. Outside Matty accidentally deleting Houston when leaving it and Dil holding Halifax hostage, how many times have LR's gotten nuked? Maybe there were more before my time, but since March 2020, I've seen 2. The community responded in a great way each time. 5. "Imagine how well it would go over if we told VHLM GMs that they have to give up ownership of their servers because they can't be trusted with them. Even if the commissioners tried to make a network of league-owned servers, I'd imagine most GMs would keep using their own server because they have everything just the way they want it. I think that the GM should be able to own the server, and those GMs who leave should transfer ownership, and I can think of a couple examples where either ownership was held hostage by someone else who just didn't want to give it up or the GM disappeared or refused to bring in the new one out of spite or something...but in those cases, I think it's the healthier choice for all concerned to just move on and make a new one. I get what you're saying, but it's a lot of unnecessary complication for what's ultimately a minor issue. " - @GustavMattias He said it best, nothing more for me to add. Feel free to peruse the thread I initially linked if you want to check it out yourself. Also specifically to @tfong relating to "there have been now numerous issues stemming from individual LRs including the loss of such a server a few months ago," I'll just reiterate that your punishment and judgement occurred before the server was deleted. From a moderation perspective the deletion didn't hamper your investigation considering a punishment signifies you had enough information to conclude on the situation. Lot of words, if you read it all, hope it made sense. Bye! (Edit: Removed this line "Hell, Dil got fired from Halifax and refused to transition ownership to the new GM, and he's a moderator now. " since it was made aware to me that it was incorrect.)