[F.Rq] Event entries

[SamsaraTAS]

I'm finally getting around to requesting this, in accordance to discussion from this thread.

TASVideos has marathon/event presence, notably through the TASBot community, but we've never really had a good way of hosting or showcasing that sort of content on the site. Currently, judging submissions requires them to have perfectly accurate and syncing input files. Runs showcased at events may not be able to provide accurate input files, meaning we can't process them as normal submissions. On top of that, it wouldn't be quite right to publish these movies under the current system either, as that would imply that they are movies that could be changed or obsoleted, which they aren't. To fix this, we should have a separate publication entry system where these runs can be "processed" and showcased adequately.

Event submissions, for now, could be handled through our normal submission system, though in the future it could change to an entirely separate system. We could either leave it unchanged and just have event submitters use dummy input files, or we could maybe add in a checkbox. Trash mockup:

It would be a way of allowing people to submit runs without input files while also making it extremely obvious that we only accept them for events.

Event entries should be functionally similar to publication entries, though a few things would need to be changed:

1. URL: To differentiate from xxxxM publication entries, we should use something like xxxxE.
2. Obsoletion field: Entirely unnecessary to have given that events wouldn't ever obsolete each other.
3. Emulator Replay: Input files would either be impossible to provide for technical reasons or they would already be published runs.

A few more things I feel need a bit more discussion:

4. A/V Files: We would be requiring videos of these events, and we may not always have permission to redistribute them.
5. Console/Game Name: There will likely be multiple per event, so we may want the option of stripping them, or we can come up with a different solution ("MULTI" console? game name = event name?)
6. Rating: Just doesn't feel necessary to let people give ratings to events.

[vadosnaprimer]

I think the desired end result is users not having to provide a dummy file and instead entering the time manually.

Ability to attach several replay files would be cool since they may exist, and it's better than linking individual userfiles from the description.

Regarding video files, it would feel weird for us to have entries for those events without permission to host their videos on TVC or archive. Should this permission be turned into a requirement for acceptance?

I don't mind having rating to increase audience involvement.

It would be useful to catalog each involved game separately within the same entry, better than only having textual descriptions of them, since we can cross-link things that way.

[SamsaraTAS]

I think the desired end result is users not having to provide a dummy file and instead entering the time manually.

I actually hadn't considered manually entering the time as a possibility. It makes sense, though at the same time I don't think the time should be a factor here. Otherwise, yeah, the best way of going about this is not having to require an input file at all, while ensuring that functionality isn't mistaken for a valid way of submitting legitimate runs.

It may actually be much easier in the long run to just build a new page for event submissions and give "judging" permissions to Judges and Ambassadors.

Ability to attach several replay files would be cool since they may exist, and it's better than linking individual userfiles from the description.

Assuming they're not already published runs, this would be great, yeah, though ideally we'd be able to publish any individual movie that shows up in an event if it were to be submitted by itself.

Regarding video files, it would feel weird for us to have entries for those events without permission to host their videos on TVC or archive. Should this permission be turned into a requirement for acceptance?

I wouldn't want it to be a requirement, though I can see how that might be something we'd need. I'm considering possible cases where the permission doesn't lie with the submitter, i.e a panel that was professionally filmed by a videographer who only gave permission for the convention the panel was held at to upload the final video. I don't think we really have to worry about it right now: If the A/V Files field is built into event entries, this permission requirement is effectively nothing more than a site policy change.

Regarding permission as a whole, what I would want to require is that the submitter has to be involved with the event they're submitting.

I don't mind having rating to increase audience involvement.

I don't mind it either really, I just worry about ratings being skewed for reasons outside of anyone's control, like video/audio quality or technical glitches for stream VODs. I'm probably overthinking things, though.

It would be useful to catalog each involved game separately within the same entry, better than only having textual descriptions of them, since we can cross-link things that way.

Multi-Catalog would be the best course of action, yeah.

[vadosnaprimer]

If we can't mirror or reuse the recordings of an event, then we won't be able to help if something happens with original recordings, even if we allow simply linking to a third-party site for them.

[SamsaraTAS]

Yeah, fair. As I said, it's a site policy thing so we can change it whenever we want. We can start with the requirement and agree to remove it if there's pushback.

[SamsaraTAS]

I'm assigning critical priority to this, both as a way of saying that it is a critical feature and as a way of pushing myself and the rest of staff to come up with a set plan instead of just a list of ideas.

[Masterjun3]

I worked a bit on this, and I want to share and summarize a bit. Before all else, I decided to not merge this new system into the current submission-publication system. There was a lot of discussion, and I decided it would be easier to create a completely new isolated system. With that said, here is what I have:

The current idea is to end up with a fully editable "publication" type of page xxxxE for "Exhibition". The title is a simple text field, that can say anything. It's possible to add any amount of Contributors, Games, Urls, and Files. (Relationships always work both ways, so it'd be possible to show the Exhibition on the Games page for example.)

That's the page we end up with. Now how do we get there?

The work-in-progress currently allows those with permission to just create those pages, and edit them. However, what we want is different. We need some kind of submission publication system. My idea is very similar to our current submission-publication system, except we never end up with 2 entities (submission & publication). We always only have that one singular Exhibition. It goes like this:

1. Anyone can submit an Exhibition. They can enter as many information as they have, Contributors, Games, etc. This Exhibition does not yet have a xxxxE page. It exists only as editable forms.
2. A discussion topic is created. I wanted to avoid the forum, but it is necessary to have two-way communication between submitter and staff.
3. Staff and the submitter can add, edit, and remove information to the Exhibition.
4. Staff can decide to accept and publish the Exhibition draft into a real Exhibition. This is where the xxxxE page is created. The Exhibition will remain fully editable. So this step is similar to simply changing a youtube video from "private" to "public".

We also want groupings of Exhibitions, say, a "Gallery". This would be simple to implement. They can have a name, and maybe a wiki page/description. It'd be a page of all Exhibitions in the group, linked to on all of them.

Once we have this system, we can try out how well it works. We can add more fields, more features, and more automation as necessary.

Work is still being done. Let's hope I haven't forgotten anything big in this implementation draft.

[vadosnaprimer]

Will the thread originally be in a separate subforum, or moved to one after we publish the draft? Would there be a way to see all such drafts?

[Masterjun3]

Where the topic is and where it's moved to can be discussed. Initially everything will just be in one place. And of course there will be a page for a simple Exhibition list that can be filtered by status.

[vadosnaprimer]

Will the thread be public right away?

[Masterjun3]

Yes, there is currently no hidden part in any of the process.

[SamsaraTAS]

Remind me in a few days to sit down and go over this in more detail. I've been going through personal life hell as of late, but I want to make sure I'm up to date with everything.

[vadosnaprimer]

So we're back to discussing this, and Masterjun's plan looks great, I only have one question.

This Exhibition does not yet have a xxxxE page. It exists only as editable forms.

How would the link to the draft page look?

[Masterjun3]

How should the link to the draft page look? Maybe /Exhibitions/Draft/123 ? Then we can also have stuff on /Exhibitions/List and others.

[vadosnaprimer]

Sounds good.

[vadosnaprimer]

The thing we forgot to request is having a way to mark a draft as reviewed and decided on. If some draft is accepted, it becomes an event entry, but if it's rejected, it should not just look like a new draft awaiting a decision.

[moozooh]

Love Masterjun's proposal. Here are some disconnected thoughts...

— The title should probably always include the event name and date (at least I can't think of any cases off-hand where it wouldn't be a good idea). And the latter two should be standardized fields to allow for easy grouping/sorting. — If, hypothetically, it's a multi-day event with TASBot showcases happening more than once, should it be combined into one or split by days/continuous presentations? I'm thinking the latter. — If a presentation uses a submitted/published TAS or several of those, there should be corresponding fields for those to pull the relevant data automatically. — We consider everyone named in a TAS submission authorship field as an "author" (with equal attribution rights), but splitting into roles could be warranted for exhibitions. So e.g. "TAS author", "presenter", "technical support"; all mutually inclusive, of course. Although authors should only be necessary in this context if there is no corresponding submission/publication to pull that info from. — Licensing?

[vadosnaprimer]

If, hypothetically, it's a multi-day event with TASBot showcases happening more than once, should it be combined into one or split by days/continuous presentations? I'm thinking the latter.

I think they should all be in one entry, and it could have several videos, one for each day or something.

Licensing?

CC-BY as always.

[moozooh]

CC-BY as always.

Does this apply to footage with live audience present in the frame? Alternatively, does this apply to footage filmed entirely or partially by third parties who may have already released it under a different license? Or do we simply not consider any footage as part of the "submission"?

[vadosnaprimer]

I mean we can't control what we can't host on the server, and we won't be hosting encodes. They will be on youtube most likely, and it has its own license already (you can choose CC there tho).

[vadosnaprimer]

Would it be possible to only add the most basic functionality to the current WIP, to make it possible to create event entries even if it's not user-friendly? If complete implementation requires too much effort I think it makes sense to have a simpler version first, and improve it later?

[Masterjun3]

The current WIP is now too out of date to be salvaged. It needs to be redone. With how volatile all the current TASVideos system and policy changes are, I don't want to work on something this big if nobody really knows what it should do or what's going to happen with it. There's a complaint about the current system not being sustainable. For me it doesn't currently sound logical to add yet another new big system on top of what we have, while the current system is still being discussed.

[SamsaraTAS]

Would it be possible to only add the most basic functionality to the current WIP, to make it possible to create event entries even if it's not user-friendly? If complete implementation requires too much effort I think it makes sense to have a simpler version first, and improve it later?

The last time we added a "simpler version first" with Playground, it took two and a half years for the first improvement to be made to it, and barely a couple weeks after that we realized we wasted that entire time by not communicating well enough to realize PG never needed a new system in the first place.

I'm going to be hardline on this. Either we come up with a full, fully realized plan before implementation, or we sit down and figure out if it's even necessary to develop a new system at all. I'm sick of settling for in-betweens and "temporary solutions".