(S23) - PT 5 - A New Leaf

[AsylumParty]

There are any number of ways in which one might benefit the league with a rule change, an additional rule, or perhaps a cut rule. That said, there is one particular idea that stands out to me as an especially important one.

The idea that I am referring to would consist of returning us to the weekly predictions posts. Now, I am not entirely sure if this is technically a rule, but it is an idea that the league would benefit from, in my opinion, and I think the spirit of this PT is to improve the league through functional ideas. Earlier this season, Mith released a poll (albeit with a small sample size relative to our user base, if I remember correctly), and there was a clear desire to return to weekly predictions based on the results. Again, I may be fuzzy on details, but I believe that the sample replied rather overwhelmingly that they not only would put more effort into their predictions, as opposed to other tasks, but that they outright enjoy them more as well. And after all, if we are not here to facilitate enjoyment of the user base, as well as ourselves, I am not sure what any of us are really here for then.

[DarknessRising]

Holistically, the league runs well and is much fun. However there are still areas that can be improved for maximum satisfaction and fun. The two most prominent are Free Agency and end of season awards.

Firstly, Free Agency is known to be quite a boring affair, it what should really be one of the most interesting parts off the season. As of now, it is completely dwarfed by the draft, with only 2-3 players really getting any sort of buzz around their future and probably too often, does the player just return to their team due to the way money is in the league. With such strict tampering rules with a short FA window, teams don’t have much time to work out who they might sign, who they can afford to let go whilst figuring out their draft needs. By changing the FA window opening to either the trade deadline or end of the regular season, it increases time for teams and players alike to maximise their free agency period. Introducing a better way to denote who are the FA players and when they decide on their future, a clearer way of seeing where players have landed, will also get more people to look into the process and generate more league-wide buzz. As of now, most of it comes from players making media pieces about their future team but if we introduce something small like an article that FA players then respond to when they agree to join a team, will make it easier not only for teams to keep track of the players available, but for the other users to see what is happening in real time.

Secondly, the awards at the end of the season, whilst beloved, is in some dire needs of changes due to the large amount of criticism it gets when it comes around each season. Making a few tweaks into the process of nominations and award recipients, will therefore make this process quicker, smoother and less contentious and it shifts to being a bit more objective than subjective. Introducing a system to weight stats, like how fantasy points are earned, tailored to each position in order to find the 5 nominations for each award will help boost objectivity. In order to find the right formula and weighting of each stat, I think looking back at the stat lines of around the past 5 award winners to compare among one another, should give a good baseline as to what was expected of an award winner. This eliminates needing people to vote on nominees, a process that is apparently not well liked and taken very seriously from the amounts of talk about it during award season. This also frees up more time for the awards committee to make their choices since the nominees are streamlined and more discussion between fewer players can benefit in a larger consensus decision.

[LimJahey]

I believe that the league has done a great job with changing and adapting since I've joined recently. Something I would really like to see is a way to help newer members to hopefully improve the odds that they will stay active. The biggest problem I have noticed is that there is almost no help or guidance given to those who have recently joined the league. I dont know an exact fix for this, maybe the new website will make it easier, but I also feel like there is almost no communication between most of the older members and brand new members. Maybe they could hire another rookie mentor or make more guides to help rookies get more active and involved in the league. Another issue I've noticed is that while we changed our name to the ISFL since we're international, we are still using an American style logo, so maybe a new ISFL logo that better interpretates our international fanbase and franchises. The last issue is that for new players especially, there really isnt a good way of learning about old league history, like the history from S1-10. I know that we have a wiki, but lets be honest the wiki sucks, so maybe we could update the wiki with some storylines from the first few seasons, help introduce some of the older lore of the league to the newer players. I know that the issues I've brought up aren't really all that important or big, but I genuinely believe that the league is in a very good spot right now, where we don't need any improvements.

[Attopax]

It is my opinion that the league does many things well. That said, I do question why some things haven't been streamlined and brought into the 21st Century. For example, I do wonder why Trivia does via PMing the Trivia account and then posting, etc. Google Forms can be set up and entries timestamped all the same. The same thing with the banking system. Although our bankers are rock stars for doing the manual tedious work they do, at a certain point, it is less helpful when the bank may be lagging behind significantly in accuracy. The ability to at least automate or streamline things like training and equipment purchases would help out the banking departments workload significantly which would help out accuracy in the bank sheets. While I have heard of other leagues streamlining updating and such, I have heard that systems such as that are actively in development, so I won't harp on that any more.

Additionally, it is my opinion that the rulebooks should be redrafted. I'm not saying revise the rules themselves, just change how they are presented because, as someone who considers themselves competent in the English language, some of the rules I have read have left me just as clueless as before I looked the rule up. While I certainly understand the need for rules to be written broadly as to not overly restrict their intended application, they must avoid trading in clarity for the sake of flexibility and broadness.

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[bex]

This prompt is a bit hard to answer, given that I do have some amount of power to make change. So, when I see things I think need to be changed or adjusted, I try my best to get the ball rolling. The name change, site change, all of these things are ones that I've been a huge advocate for. While our rulebook is far from great, it was a whole lot worse prior to the review that I helped with in Season 18. I recently presented 4 new rules for potential submission to the rule summit. All this is to say, it's hard for me to say what still needs to change when I'm aware of what the moving pieces are behind the scenes. I know what changes are in progress that haven't been announced, so to answer with one of those would feel like cheating. I also feel like calling for a new sim is cheating in a way, because that is so obviously our weak point as a league. So then what's my answer?
I'd really love to see a change in how the community interacts with management. Obviously there's a community desire for increased transparency in communication from our management positions, but I don't think it's completely unfair to ask the reverse. As evidenced this season, things can get messy when people choose to complain or work through issues publicly rather than directly contacting the people necessary. I love this community, but its seeming preference for outrage and argument over peaceful resolution and understanding can be immensely frustrating. In most cases, it feels like it's more about who can yell the loudest instead of making things better.

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[DrChops]

From my experience, the ISFL has been incredibly well run. The fact that so many people continue to come to this forum to play this game for 23 seasons is incredible. I think most of that is the strong community that has developed within the whole league and the individual teams. I feel the biggest weakness of the league is actually its main product: the simulated games. The software used to simulate the games is decent and does what is required of it, but is not visually appealing. My biggest complaint is the fact that some teams use a color gradient background behind the player stats display, making it very difficult to actually read the player stats. This was a big problem with the old Portland Pythons display which featured a yellow and black background with black font on top. In addition, the coaching AI can be pretty brutal, making some boneheaded play calls, calling bad timeouts, or punting when they shouldn't. Fixing these two issues would go a long way to making this particular software better for the league.

I do not know how possible it is, but using another piece of software with better graphics would also be interesting. In the current software, it is hard to see what is actually happening as the numbers on the circles representing the players are difficult to see and the circles tend to just clomp together. A different software package with 3D graphics would do wonders, as it would be possible see actual highlights from the game. Currently, I feel most people wait to the end of the game to see their stat line and move on.

[Evok]

http://probaseballexperience.jcink.net/ind...ndpost&p=200075

[majesiu]

pbe pt

[Aenir]

I know that I’ve talked about this a few times in podcasts and in posts on the forum, but especially now, with the league changing from the NSFL to the ISFL, I believe it would be the perfect time to get rid of the DSFL, or well, re-configure it. Change the DSFL to be a feeder system for the ISFL and incorporate teams to have affiliates. With all the changes going on, this is the perfect time to redirect the DSFL into that option. I believe having a “feeder” system of sorts will help with teams who lose players to inactiveness or regression, as well as you continue to help the DSFL become more like the ISFL and get more players involved in the big leagues quicker. The DSFL becoming a feeder league to the ISFL, I know, Feeder league isn’t the right word for it right now but it is the only one that I can think of at this moment, would help streamline a lot of rookies and you would be able to send players up and down throughout the season, kind of like how baseball does It in the MLB, and it would help alleviate a lot of the issues with activity in the DSFL as well as the ISFL.

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[hihihi_62]

changing the league name from NSFL to ISFL is definitely a welcome move when it comes to attracting new members but it will still always be NSFL to me. To be frank I quite enjoy the league as it is right now. I know lots of people have gripes with the money system in the league which could definitely be reviewed but for someone like me who makes most of his money from Twitter and Contracts money is kind of tough to come by. I'm not a big media or graphic guy so for me the system works...even though I've never had enough to buy the big equipment tiers! One thing I would recommend changing is weekly PT and Trivia. I don't know what the solution is so this really isn't very constructive but after being in the league for over a year I can tell you that I like trivia because it is easy TPE. It's a great idea in theory but the fact that everyone just shares trivia answers makes it terribly unexciting. The other thing I can say after being in the league a year is that PTs get very boring. It can be very tough to get motivated to write 200 words a week when I don't care for the topic. Whats the solution? I'm not sure but something to discuss with the community for sure.