6)
I have had a pleasure of experiencing various perspectives in this league ever since I joined in February. Apart from being an user to a player like every other users do, I am a part of both ISFL and DSFL war rooms, hold a league job as a rookie mentor, and had the pleasure of GMing the Dallas Birddogs. That's not something most of the users here get to experience.
And while I am extremely thankful that I had the chance to enjoy this league even more through thise multiple perspectives, that doesn't mean there hadn't been things that frustrate me both as a normal user, and a person who is bit more involved than that. The most prominent among those 'things' is the presence of unwritten rules. I am quite confident that I know the rulebook reasonbly well, but I got into several troubles regarding the rules because of the presence of thise undocumented rules. Said 'rules', which are usually case by case precedents of past HO decisions, usually tend to randomly pop out when a somewhat obscure case pops out, frustrating many league job holders- especially newer people like me- to no end.
Why are they so frustrating, you might ask. Case by case decision and unwritten rules are kind of common in other communities, after all. Well, the first and most important problem is that there is no way a newer user can learn the 'rule' until it becomes an agenda to a specific situation. Unwritten rules are exactly that, unwritten. So you won't find it however hard you ransack the rulebook. And usually there's almost no chance of finding the precedent it is based since those decisions are usually made very quietly and tend to be buried by forum or discord traffics.
And also, they generate a sense of unfairness from the newer users, as they tend to take disadvantages because of their ignorance to those rules, while older users get into less trouble of the same sorts due to their experience and knowledge of those precedents.
To show that how much frustration and confusion can be generated from those unwritten rules, I'll use a recent situation from the Birddogs as an example. The Birddogs almost lost a capped CB- their number 1 at that- to auto retirement, as the user recreated while the player was still in the DSFL, therefore violating the rule that no user was allowed to have 2 players in the DSFL at once. The problem was, there was no rule actually prohibiting that in the rule books, and the rule HO provided as the reason was meant and worded for a completely different situation. That generated a ton of confusion between the GMs (who had no idea why their LCB was taken away, further damaging their weak roster), and the rookie mentors (who never had any idea that the player was not fit to be approved, at all). And naturally that led to a half a day long argument against the HO, who wanted the player gone from the DC as per the 'rule'. Fortunately for us, the situation ended when the appeals team reversed the decision and advised the HO to actually add that to the rules, but there are many other cases that didn't end up in a happy ending like mine.
Then, what can be the solution to this? My suggestion is to make a new judicial committee. We can make a resonably big temporary task force consisting of relevant parties like the HO, some GMs and department heads and maybe some experienced users to gather up all the unwritten rules and procedures and either get them n the rule book or abolish them altogether through the rule summit votes, and then replace the task force with a smaller but permanent judicial committee who will be tasked with repeating the process with new unwritten rules that pop up down the line, as well as improving the clarifying the rule books, since it needs a lot of work in that department too, as it can be quite confusing sometimes especially to newer users, as it is somewhat not reader friendly due to a lot of newer rules thrown in Misc section instead of the places they actually belong in. The rules committee will be consisted of hired volunteers and a few liasons from both the ISFL and DSFL HOs, and I believe that they will do a lot of good in alleviating the confusion and frustration caused because of the rules- both written and unwritten- compared to current practices where HO holds the sole authority in interpreting and exercising the rules, as that will allow more transparency and general public's input into the process of making and interpreting the rules, which most certainly affects everyone in this community. The committee will create more job openings for eager new users, which is a great side benefit.
All in all, I really hope that the ISFL community become a better experience for all, by resolving the problems we have along the way with peaceful and creative methods. (847)
I have had a pleasure of experiencing various perspectives in this league ever since I joined in February. Apart from being an user to a player like every other users do, I am a part of both ISFL and DSFL war rooms, hold a league job as a rookie mentor, and had the pleasure of GMing the Dallas Birddogs. That's not something most of the users here get to experience.
And while I am extremely thankful that I had the chance to enjoy this league even more through thise multiple perspectives, that doesn't mean there hadn't been things that frustrate me both as a normal user, and a person who is bit more involved than that. The most prominent among those 'things' is the presence of unwritten rules. I am quite confident that I know the rulebook reasonbly well, but I got into several troubles regarding the rules because of the presence of thise undocumented rules. Said 'rules', which are usually case by case precedents of past HO decisions, usually tend to randomly pop out when a somewhat obscure case pops out, frustrating many league job holders- especially newer people like me- to no end.
Why are they so frustrating, you might ask. Case by case decision and unwritten rules are kind of common in other communities, after all. Well, the first and most important problem is that there is no way a newer user can learn the 'rule' until it becomes an agenda to a specific situation. Unwritten rules are exactly that, unwritten. So you won't find it however hard you ransack the rulebook. And usually there's almost no chance of finding the precedent it is based since those decisions are usually made very quietly and tend to be buried by forum or discord traffics.
And also, they generate a sense of unfairness from the newer users, as they tend to take disadvantages because of their ignorance to those rules, while older users get into less trouble of the same sorts due to their experience and knowledge of those precedents.
To show that how much frustration and confusion can be generated from those unwritten rules, I'll use a recent situation from the Birddogs as an example. The Birddogs almost lost a capped CB- their number 1 at that- to auto retirement, as the user recreated while the player was still in the DSFL, therefore violating the rule that no user was allowed to have 2 players in the DSFL at once. The problem was, there was no rule actually prohibiting that in the rule books, and the rule HO provided as the reason was meant and worded for a completely different situation. That generated a ton of confusion between the GMs (who had no idea why their LCB was taken away, further damaging their weak roster), and the rookie mentors (who never had any idea that the player was not fit to be approved, at all). And naturally that led to a half a day long argument against the HO, who wanted the player gone from the DC as per the 'rule'. Fortunately for us, the situation ended when the appeals team reversed the decision and advised the HO to actually add that to the rules, but there are many other cases that didn't end up in a happy ending like mine.
Then, what can be the solution to this? My suggestion is to make a new judicial committee. We can make a resonably big temporary task force consisting of relevant parties like the HO, some GMs and department heads and maybe some experienced users to gather up all the unwritten rules and procedures and either get them n the rule book or abolish them altogether through the rule summit votes, and then replace the task force with a smaller but permanent judicial committee who will be tasked with repeating the process with new unwritten rules that pop up down the line, as well as improving the clarifying the rule books, since it needs a lot of work in that department too, as it can be quite confusing sometimes especially to newer users, as it is somewhat not reader friendly due to a lot of newer rules thrown in Misc section instead of the places they actually belong in. The rules committee will be consisted of hired volunteers and a few liasons from both the ISFL and DSFL HOs, and I believe that they will do a lot of good in alleviating the confusion and frustration caused because of the rules- both written and unwritten- compared to current practices where HO holds the sole authority in interpreting and exercising the rules, as that will allow more transparency and general public's input into the process of making and interpreting the rules, which most certainly affects everyone in this community. The committee will create more job openings for eager new users, which is a great side benefit.
All in all, I really hope that the ISFL community become a better experience for all, by resolving the problems we have along the way with peaceful and creative methods. (847)
![[Image: 003p.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/L6LP7S5b/003p.png)
![[Image: 9HnCxY0.png]](https://i.imgur.com/9HnCxY0.png)
