Originally Posted by
Lag
The requirement MU has for community eligibility is both transparent and hasn't changed in years:
- Has the community played at least one FM game in the last year?
The bar for entry is so low because one of the primary goals of Champs is to promote cross-community interaction. By having such a low bar to entry it maximizes the number of different communities that can participate in Champs. After all, different communities have different activity levels and different standards of activity, and while some sites might be dedicated FM sites - others might only play a game or two every year! (For example, a community that runs 12 day/2 day phases will have games that last 10 to 14 weeks on average, there's only enough time in a year for 3 to 4 of such games in total!)
And see, there is an important concept in policymaking:
A good policy aligns incentives with morals.
So what does the policy of "1 Champs rep per community that has played a game in the last year incentivize?"
It incentivizes veteran players from big sites that want to go to Champs to seek out small communities that are struggling to even fill games, to be active members in those communities, to bring new life to them, and potentially even introduce some of the players there to the wider FM world.
Compare that to the policy of "Champs reps are assigned proportional to community size"
Which incentivizes shunning small communities because why bother when you can just be one of the 12 reps from your big homesite?
It is completely within the power of MU staff to enact the second policy if they wished, but they choose not to.
Now, does the first policy still theoretically allow for the blatant abuse you describe? Yes.
Does it actually happen as you describe it though? No, not really.
A single player cannot just unilaterally nominate themselves to represent a community at Champs - they would have to have played in a game on the site and then gotten nominated by players on that site. Which at that point leaves the decision up to the players in that small community not MU staff.
Now a group of players could theoretically raid a small community with enough votes to out-vote the home denizens of said small community, but honestly - that's more of a boogeyman that really just doesn't happen with any sort of frequency to be concerned about.
Finally, I understand you have disagreements with the staff at MU due to your ban there, but the overwhelming majority of players I have met and played with from MU are awesome people: Guillo, Nanook, DoctorZeus, Hollowkatt, Schweppes, Bradland, TripleHaven, Dum, Garden Gnome - and those are just the players the ones that I've met on MU that went on to participate in our community here too! There are many more great people I've met there and so I do not appreciate and will not allow this thread to fall into largely unfounded community bashing. If you want to continue this discussion further, feel free to message me on Discord!