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bigAL
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Posts posted by bigAL
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On 11/10/2021 at 3:14 AM, JardyB10 said:
What I liked about your conversation with yourself is that it felt like your exaggerated Canadian half and your exaggerated Australian half were fighting to come out.
It was an epic power move hiring yourself to do your intro. Why not eh, there's an Aussie and a Canadian person each in that intro.
Selling skunky beer is a sleazy move, but I guess way up at the lodge, he who has the beer has the power.
> "There are so many people who want to be GMs, and they just promoted mostly VHLM GMs to the E? Whyyy?"
We really, really don't like people to see the VHLM as a stepping stone to a bigger league GM job, but in this case, it kinda was. Adding the E was going to change the purpose and philosophy of the VHLM, and to be fair to the GMs there, that wasn't exactly what they signed up for. We wanted to give them a chance to run a more-competitive development league team, as the VHLM gets "less competitive" with the lower TPE cap. In replacing the VHLM GMs, commissioners can find people who know what they're getting themselves into. Getting hired into the newest, super-development-focused version of the VHLM is like getting hired to a rebuilding team - you have to understand the purpose and be on board with it, because if you're not, it'll be a bad time for the GM and the team.
Frig you're smart eh, you predicted the "too many teams in the VHLM" problem way before we yoinked Yukon and Minnesota from the league. Nicely done.
We're happy to have you on the mod team, probably because you've had run ins and genuine reconciliations with fong and Quik.
For fucks sakes man, put a note on your fridge to remind yourself to wait and crack the beer ten seconds later so we can hear the satisfying sound too.
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Thanks for (not specifically but I hear ya) calling me out on the "don't be a dick" explanation as an all-encompassing direction. It made me think real hard about that idea, and you're completely right that it doesn't fit. I think, like you and I love this quote, "never was into harassing, that wasn't something I had to unlearn." Listening to everyone this week, reading all the discussion on the forum, made me realize that harassment is such a grey area that people need and want genuine, clear, specific education on it. "Don't be a dick" works for malicious behaviour - maybe just, like, don't use that slur? - but harassment is so subjective and situational that, like more than a few people mentioned in the comments thread, it's hard to know exactly what's offside. So you're right, that's shit advice, I'll revert back to my "it's offside when someone tells you it's offside" generic blanket statement for harassment and consent.
I've never had a backtrack to one of my pods, but I heard it on 3PPAO and think it's great. I didn't find it too loud.
Your thoughts about BoG being active and exciting are really interesting, because I've seen a lot of shit talk about BoG from the inside lately. One member who just left described on a pod that it was a complete disorganized shitshow where nothing gets done; another new member (in one of those few random times I lurk into genchat) described BoG as "just another forum the obc uses to gossip about members and pick fights with each other." That's, uhh, not good (or true). I'm glad you're enjoying the experience. It can be overwhelming, there is a lot going on, but the disagreements are civil and well thought out, and the gossip is actually just us doing our job in selecting new BoG members. I love good governance, fuck yeah bureaucracy, and hearing someone say good things about the BoG makes me happy.
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Is this a way to get 9 seasons in the VHL?
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5 uncapped
Doubles Week
$1M Player Store
Transaction ID: 20828397721994291
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Also, the schedule’s out and things are happening quickly. Can we do an easy forum post signup for S82 recreates they want to declare for the E, just for this season until we formalize and automate it?
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15 hours ago, Beketov said:
This would put some people into the VHLE at lower TPE levels mind you, that could potentially be an issue for their balance that we’d have to look at, but at least people would have a choice
That sounds like a them-problem, You can’t declare for the E at 180 and expect first line minutes or to be a high draft pick.
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19 hours ago, Beketov said:
What if we just made it a choice when you sign up as a recreate? New members go directly to the VHLM but recreates get the option of skipping the VHLM draft if they so choose and jumping straight to the VHLE draft.
Love it. Skipping the M draft has to be only available to recreates. If not, new members will see all the kool kidz skipping and want to do the same, and that defeats the purpose of even having the M.
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7 minutes ago, fishy said:
Yeah, it's most definitely a net positive thing to see that, in every branch across the network, the copies of a book I want to read are checked out. It's fantastic to know that people are taking advantage of local libraries.
But also, selfishly, quit taking the shit I want to read
I recently found an app called Libby that my library websites were advertising. It gives you access to online books available from a library, and all you need is a library card. If you can handle ebooks (I don't know if it's available anywhere other than the US) and have a library card, I'd definitely recommend checking it out!
Yeah! My library used to use Libby and then switched to CloudLibrary. Same same but different. It's still a "library", and at first it pissed me off that you still had to wait your turn to get a non-physical book, but that's fine. Now I do a combo public-service/pirating where I borrow an ebook from the library, rip the DRM off it, and return it. Win win - they hit their numbers and I can read it for more than two weeks!
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I'm not a fan. I think we need less incentives to keep IA players in the league. If they regress back to <400, they can go back into the VHLE too. I'm curious to see where the other @Commissioner fall on this.
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10 hours ago, RomanesEuntDomus said:
I find a bit unfortunate is how vague this all is
It kinda needs to be eh? This discussion came up when looking at other leagues’ mod policies. Some five very specific punishments related to very specific infractions, but we need the flexibility to adapt to every situation. We trust our mods’ collective professional judgement to use the rules to keep everyone happy and safe here. Being super specific leaves so many loopholes and gaps because we can’t plan for every possible human action or reaction. Vaguely specific and specifically vague allows the guidelines to be applied broadly when they need to be.
The less official version mostly boils down to one of my life mottos: “don’t be a jerk, and respect people by considering how your actions might affect them.”
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1 hour ago, Beketov said:
99 scoring beats everything else so now everyone is a sniper, okay. So Defense costs extra to get to max
My understanding was always that DF was the equally or more important one because it affects getting and keeping the puck, and just a general “Hockey IQ” stat?
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9 hours ago, Nykonax said:
with VHLE changes I think we just sit on this for a season or two and see how the reduced team amount affects things?
It’s one of those ones we have to plan a few seasons in advance though, I imagine there are already S83 or 84s that have changed hands. We can implement it today, leave the traded picks as they are, and then in three seasons it’ll be a real thing for real
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46 minutes ago, fromtheinside said:
fair but I don't understand why people are saying VHLM should be skippable.
Fair, and context needed.
When we were going through the initial deliberations about the VHLE, the super earner contingent (Sonnet and Beav for sure, probably others but that’s who I remember the loudest) were very adamant that the VHLE has to be optional. They were mad that this minor league was another seasons’ delay from them making the bigs, and that they only cared about VHL and went borderline IA while their player was in the minors.
But, we put so much blood, sweat, tears, and really bet on our future with the VHLE that we need to do everything we can to make it successful. Making it optional to the old boys club would be an optics nightmare. If someone from the OBC says it’s stupid and they hate it and everyone should skip it, then everyone will think they should skip it. They’ll power earn to get past the cutoff, and complain and complain and complain if they fell short. We left a provision for skipping the E in there but the numbers are so ridiculously high that it’s basically unattainable for all but one or two players per draft.
But, the “I’m bored, when do I get to the show?” question has some merit for high earning recreates. A) this shit takes a lot of real world time, and when time is limited, you want to spend it on what’s “important”, which B) HoF only really values VHL experiences, awards, and stats. Of course not everyone is hyper focused on the HoF, but the kind of people that try to skip the E are.
So do I want to skip the M then? It comes back to another discussion we seem to always be having about the philosophy and purpose of each league. We say the M is a development league, and I always struggle with what that physically, literally means. At it’s essence, it means we’re teaching people how to survive in the VHL. I see the VHLM (in one way) as a big filter, a test that promotes the people who want to be here and filters out the ones who don’t before they get to the higher leagues and clog up the system.
I don’t think I’m surprising anyone by saying I know how to survive here and have passed the trials. But, I recognize the value of having experienced members around. I hit on it up here so I won’t rewrite everything.
On 11/8/2021 at 5:55 PM, bigAL said:That's what the letter of the law is now, 200 is the min for the VHLE. Fair enough.
I feel a bit like that's what we did with the 9-season career though. If there's a year to skip for recreates, it's the VHLM year, not the E. I think of it this way:
- The recreate knows what's up in the league. The VHLM is training and development.
- Yes, the recreate is a valuable tool of institutional knowledge and M teams benefit from having them, but
- We want the league to be for the new members. In my perfect world, I don't want teams with star-studded lineups of capped recreates.
- I'd rather stick with the current model, where the newly drafted or waivered members make up the team core, play together all season, earn earn earn, and then are complemented with recreates at the TDL. They get the benefit of the recreates' experience and wisdom, without being overshadowed because they'll have a higher TPE than the recreates.
- After playing those 3-4 weeks in the VHLM, the top 10% have nothing left to prove. Recreates often grumble about the M, don't care about it, don't follow it. It's a shitty mentality, but it exists. We talked about how more palatable the VHLM is if you still have a player finishing out their career in the VHL, but I don't.
- We worked really hard to make the VHLE work, and I don't want anyone skipping it.
- The TPE gap between recreating at the deadline and the upper limit of the VHLM is much smaller than the gap from VHLE to VHL.
So, just a collection of thoughts I had about the VHLM's purpose in our new league structure.
I think the VHLM is better with *less* recreates in it full-time. I love that the drafted and new players build a core team, and us old wise folk show up at the TDL and provide reinforcements. That’s a time for us to get to know the new members, have a few weeks of good fun, and then move onto the competitive part of the VHL. The new members still get to know us, but it’s *their* team that they take ownership of. I saw this in Philly this year and it blew my mind how strong the team was before I joined, how it was all the first timers who ran the leadership group, and I had fun slotting into what they had already built. I didn’t want or need or even feel comfortable telling them what to do, as experienced members used to running show sometimes do. I was a guest in their organization, with everyone involved knowing I was only there for the remainder of the season (and they were like happy kids who just finished a science fair project and wanted to show it off so badly hahaha Philly was great.) If I enter the draft and come out 1OA, then that whole dynamic flips. It becomes a team built around me, which is a fun valuable experience that I got at the VHL level with Groovy and don’t need to take that feeling and time away from a new member who
won’t be a DCD FRANCHISE POINTS AND HITS AND BOULET TROPHIES LEADER. Let it be the new members’ team, have recreates show up later, max earn - or even click - their way through the remainder of the season, and then move on.
Even with a lower cap, we’re going to see 2-3 season careers in the VHLMstill. Maybe we even nerf the late-joiner bonus so we don’t have someone zooming through the league faster than they should because of timing? Anyways not important.
Neutering the M is a harsh way to put it, but I can see how it looks that way to someone with deep connections to the league. By adding in a new league, we have to and have had to re-examine the purpose, policies, and practices of each league in the system. The M is the most vague one (“development”) so we’re always looking to talk about what that actually means and looks like. This is what I think the philosophy of the M is and how I see it factoring into the career of Nagy AL now that the E exists. If the power earners need to skip a league, it should be the M and not the E.
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One last claim for the ol Doodmeister
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You guys ever read this book, The Lost Dream: The Story of Mike Danton, David Frost, and a Broken Family? It's the best, most-revealing / traumatizingly scary book about hockey culture I've ever read. It's really important that people interested in changing hockey culture read this book. David Frost is a predator, an animal, a ruthless abuser, but knows how hockey families and people think, and knows exactly what strings to tug on to get what he wants. It's "win at all costs", it's "do whatever it takes to not embarrass yourself in front of the boys", it's "don't be a distraction to the team", it's "me against the world", all those toxic, toxic traits that permeate pro sports and hockey especially. There are some happy endings in this book - Sheldon Keefe was one of the kids manipulated by Frost, and he's turned out alright (I'm pretty proud to be from Pembroke and went to Lumber Kings games all the time when he was owner/GM/coach, trying to rehabilitate his life). But for the most part, it's a lesson to everyone about how being blinded by cultural norms can be so dangerous to our most vulnerable kids, and that the ones that exemplify those dangerous cultural norms are the ones that get promoted to the highest level, and the toxicity ramps up as you climb the ranks. I highly recommend it.
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29 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:
if you're at 200 TPE at the time of your draft.
That's what the letter of the law is now, 200 is the min for the VHLE. Fair enough.
29 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:I'm not sure how I feel about making a policy to specifically benefit only the very highest earners, though.
I feel a bit like that's what we did with the 9-season career though. If there's a year to skip for recreates, it's the VHLM year, not the E. I think of it this way:
- The recreate knows what's up in the league. The VHLM is training and development.
- Yes, the recreate is a valuable tool of institutional knowledge and M teams benefit from having them, but
- We want the league to be for the new members. In my perfect world, I don't want teams with star-studded lineups of capped recreates.
- I'd rather stick with the current model, where the newly drafted or waivered members make up the team core, play together all season, earn earn earn, and then are complemented with recreates at the TDL. They get the benefit of the recreates' experience and wisdom, without being overshadowed because they'll have a higher TPE than the recreates.
- After playing those 3-4 weeks in the VHLM, the top 10% have nothing left to prove. Recreates often grumble about the M, don't care about it, don't follow it. It's a shitty mentality, but it exists. We talked about how more palatable the VHLM is if you still have a player finishing out their career in the VHL, but I don't.
- We worked really hard to make the VHLE work, and I don't want anyone skipping it.
- The TPE gap between recreating at the deadline and the upper limit of the VHLM is much smaller than the gap from VHLE to VHL.
So, just a collection of thoughts I had about the VHLM's purpose in our new league structure.
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As we get into off-season mode, can we circle back to something that came up in the discussions and a bit in the Commish discord lately.
I can’t find the posts right this second, but during the debate about skipping the E, I was pro “no skipping the E, and if you want to zoom to the VHL, you can skip the M.”
I’m saying this as a player with 163 TPE, not necessarily as a blue, but I don’t wanna play in the VHLM again. I did my time, signed on waivers with Philly, had fun, time to move on. I’m going to get fairly close to 200 by the cutoff date, cap by the first or second week of the season, and then back to banking. Ugh.
Can I / is there a mechanism for declaring for the VHLE draft this season and electing not to play in the VHLM? I suppose I can get drafted in both, and if I get drafted to an E team that’s full and doesn’t want a 200 TPE loser they can choose to send me back to the M (but I’d probably tell them in my draft interview that I don’t want to be picked if they won’t play me).
Thoughts?
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Matty Socks, Groovy Dood, Dakota Lamb, S73’s locks for the Hall of Very Good.
I know modding is such a stressful, rough job. I’m not ashamed to say I declined when fong asked me to do it. But I hope this week has made you feel valued and appreciated by the community. Life’s better with you three mods keeping everyone accountable to everyone. You da best.
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Yup yup yup. I’m a good group manager, pick me
Members I Would Instantly Ban If Given the Chance
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UHHHHH THAT WAS NOT MENTIONED IN THE JOB INTERVIEW.