I think this thread has shown a few things:<br /><br />1.&nbsp; Guys who aren&#039;t playing have a say if they post on the forums (Chow has 1.5? seasons played thus far).&nbsp; Hope we see him play this season however (Chow you have until Dec. 3 to confirm, man up)!<br /><br />2.&nbsp; This is probably as close to democracy as the IDL gets in this thread.&nbsp; Sadly most players will not post in this discussion due to lack of interest, time, etc just like real democracy.<br /><br />IDL Board does play politics, no surprise there.&nbsp; It is a political position.&nbsp; By engaging in this discussion everyone is also playing politics.&nbsp; This is probably one of the better boards so far and definitely better than when we just had Ralphis alone deciding everything.&nbsp; Not that Ralphis wasn&#039;t good but there were definitely some slip ups or delays that would probably be impossible to occur now with a board type setup.<br /><br />My understanding is Mikehail has resigned from the board (not sure if this was made public) and Bones is looking for a replacement.&nbsp; Why doesn&#039;t someone like Jenova or Chow step in for him?<br /><br />[quote author=MassVC link=topic=544.msg5499#msg5499 date=1322682155]not one single person has suggested one single map to be included.&nbsp; Not Fastidious[/quote]<br /><br />What?&nbsp; I&#039;ve been suggesting SmartCTF for probably over a year now.&nbsp; I also posted many thoughts on specific maps and even a thread on general map types and my preferences.&nbsp; I never came out with a specific &quot;HEY LOOK AT THIS MAP!&quot; but I made plenty of suggestions and thoughts towards maps.&nbsp; I even entered a fucking map in the contest that you jerks wouldn&#039;t even play test it once seriously.&nbsp;  :&#039;(&nbsp; You are obviously ignoring reality here.<br /><br />[quote author=Ralphis link=topic=544.msg5513#msg5513 date=1322695101]<br />[b]2)[/b] You preach about transparency but, aside from posting some rules, you guys are no different from what we were EXCEPT for the fact that we would straight up tell people that we were making the decisions and that&#039;s the way it was. You are offering a false &quot;participatory&quot; community. You are running your mouth about how nobody provided suggestions of what maps to add hot on the heels of preaching to others about how all of your discussion goes through the forums.[/quote]<br /><br />I&#039;m quoting in whole because I totally agree.&nbsp; Lots of people posted various thoughts but I&#039;m not sure any of it was actually taken into account when voting on maps.<br /><br />[quote author=Ralphis link=topic=544.msg5513#msg5513 date=1322695101][b]3)[/b] [i]Who are you to represent the players anyway[/i]? Remember, you&#039;re the guy accusing my leadership of not being transparent.[/quote]<br /><br />I think the whole #idlb thing is a joke.&nbsp; I&#039;ve never go in there but I understand there are now 10 or so people who hang out in there.&nbsp; Why not just suck it up and do discussions in #idl.&nbsp; You guys already admit to arguing for hours, it&#039;s possible the added people in #idl might actually speed things up.&nbsp; I&#039;ve never been a fan of secrecy or elites only discussions.&nbsp; Excluding people is not what the IDL was built on.<br /><br />[quote author=Ralphis link=topic=544.msg5513#msg5513 date=1322695101]-You play two seasons back as &quot;MassVC&quot; and become the board leader and start trying to push radical changes on a league and system that has, for the most part, worked just fine for half a decade.[/quote]<br /><br />I&#039;ve been a critic of Ralph and the IDL for a long time and I frequently want more changes.&nbsp; I do agree IDL is working good but being stagnant is not a property of the IDL either.&nbsp; The IDL has always had change.&nbsp; I don&#039;t see any changes this season as drastically radical compared to previously.&nbsp; I&#039;d actually argue some seasons have had bigger changes.<br /><br />[quote author=nostar link=topic=544.msg5514#msg5514 date=1322695919]There probably have been &quot;shady deals&quot;. I probably have been a part of some. But then again I have only been on the board for 3 months. Before that I was just a player/captain trying to make the league better. And I did. I&#039;m glad you&#039;ve taken up the cause.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />There have been some but most were in the past and probably detailed on DE forums.&nbsp; Part of it was when Ralphis was alone he couldn&#039;t cover everything as much as more people can now on the board.&nbsp; Also one person is a lot more fallible than a group generally.&nbsp; I can still remember two specific examples that I doubt would happen now with a board (I&#039;ll post if anyone really cares).&nbsp; I could probably dig up a few more in my old IRC logs but I&#039;m not really a fan of gotcha! moments.&nbsp; I&#039;ve long since stopped logging IRC.<br /><br />[quote author=Gilgamesh link=topic=544.msg5515#msg5515 date=1322697204]<br />The issue is when the board is making decisions that the majority of the community is REALLY not happy with, and the board just blows off those opinions because of stubbornness or whatever the reason may be.[/quote]<br /><br />A big part of it is the board operates in secrecy and doesn&#039;t try to get the public involved.&nbsp; Basically they decide in secret then announce the decisions, then the public says, &quot;WTF?!?!&quot;, then the board says &quot;too late!&quot;.&nbsp; That has been happening season after season and it&#039;s pretty dumb.<br /><br />[quote author=Gilgamesh link=topic=544.msg5515#msg5515 date=1322697204]If NOBODY wants to play certain maps, just throw them out before you make a wad that is going to last 1-2 seasons.&nbsp; The board should be reflecting on the opinions/wants of the player base instead of pushing only their own views.[/quote]<br /><br />I wish we had map stats off TT to see what people play in priv (for 3v3, 4v4, etc).&nbsp; Then we could see real popularity of maps not just opinions.&nbsp; There have been some basically unplayed maps in the wad across multiple seasons now.&nbsp; I know priv isn&#039;t IDL but it would show what players actually like to play.&nbsp; There is some merit to a balanced IDL schedule but I much prefer Quake style where teams pick what maps they use.&nbsp; It&#039;s hard for players/teams to bitch if they can pick maps they play on and you&#039;d see more of the wad used.&nbsp; Why even fucking include 32 maps if the IDL season doesn&#039;t even use a 1/3 of them?<br /><br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=544.msg5516#msg5516 date=1322705008]<br />- When mikehail brought up my idea of namespacing the Masterbowl maps differently (like &quot;map mb001&quot;), the board voted it down[/quote]<br /><br />This is such an awesome idea Ralphis should just put it in the wad even if the board is against it, haha.<br /><br />[quote author=MassVC link=topic=544.msg5520#msg5520 date=1322718980]The thing is, I honestly don&#039;t care whether players suggest new maps or not.&nbsp; My point is that, if they don&#039;t suggest new maps, then they have no place to stand and complain about the new maps.&nbsp; And they still haven&#039;t.[/quote]<br /><br />??? Then why the fuck did you say it was your &quot;main point of satisfaction&quot; before?&nbsp; ??? What kind of game are you playing here?&nbsp; ???&nbsp; You are making less and less sense.&nbsp; Are you drunk again?&nbsp; ???<br /><br />[quote author=MassVC link=topic=544.msg5520#msg5520 date=1322718980]I honestly don&#039;t understand what everybody is crying and peeing about.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Seriously?<br /><br /><br /><br />Since this is a bit off topic I put it at the end.<br /><br />[quote author=Hatred link=topic=544.msg5486#msg5486 date=1322637413]I&#039;ll give credit where credit is due, however, as I remember Fastidious and Mass really trying to pursue just that. The sad thing is, very rarely did they play in 3v3 settings.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I tried to test them as much as possible in 3v3 settings with match demeanor instead of herp derp but it didn&#039;t work well as you know.&nbsp; I still think we could have used more contest maps this season.<br /><br />And god damn Skyrim is like digital crack.