Hosting a Community Run Contest

[nesman]

Policy​

TF2M Unofficial Scheduled Event guidelines:

• Cannot intersect with any official events that are already scheduled (the reverse is not a guarantee).
• Given a channel, Discord events and announcements, and site calendar events. All of these will make it clear the event is unofficial at all times.
• Scheduled events need their own forum post (1 each, no combining) and follow the below guidelines.
• Locking of voting threads upon request.
• No additional features or support from TF2Maps itself will be provided. No social media posts.

TF2M Unofficial Scheduled Event guidelines:

• Must schedule at least 24h ahead of time and at most 1 month ahead of time
• Limit of 3 Events per person/topic at any given time.
  • "per topic" means that any given contest, jam, bonanza, etc. share the same limit regardless of how many people try to schedule them.
• These are approved/denied with the total discretion of TF2M admins and simultaneous topics may force rationing of slots for reasons of fairness.

Guide-ish, more helpful tips to make things go smoothly for you and us.​

1. Gather your thoughts.

• What kind of contest do you want to do? Asset? Map? Etc.
• Is there judging? Are you looking for judges? How will the judging process work?
• What does scoring look like? How many rounds of scoring? Are there prelims?
• What do you need from Staff? Channel? Soft announcement (no pings)? We have limits.
• What's the schedule look like?
• Can people collaborate? Is there limitations on bespoke assets? How does crediting work? Is there a set number of people per map?
• Is the contest idea even good? Take a look at past contests to get an idea of what works well. Usually the more time the better for making a map especially if it needs to be detailed.
• Ideally you'll want some kind of banner art for the forum post and discord events.

2. Open a forum DM with staff/mods.

• We need to know ahead of this whole ordeal so we can give the greenlight or make needed adjustments. Whether you intend for it or not, our necks are on the line too.
• Fourm DM and not modmail? Yes. See all these funny people https://tf2maps.net/members/?key=staff_members https://tf2maps.net/members/?key=server_mods Add them to a conversation. It's more reliable than discord modmail at the moment.

3. Ready. Set. Go?

• Kind of. It depends on what kind of contest this is. If it's a 3 day jam style contest, then yeah it's relatively simple.
• Make the forum post. Tell us so we can pin it!
• Request the discord channel.
• When it comes to scheduling gamedays for map tests/gamenights that are for the contest. We've seen a lot of saturation before and don't want to see people get worn out. 3 may be the max we'll allow, but ideally 2 is the sweet spot and can heavily depends on the amount of entries you get.

4. Ok now what? The contest has been going for a while.

• Well it's time for you to tell us the contest is in nearing its end so we can lock forum posts/make discord events for you. This is especially important if there's a voting period or if you need to lock submissions.

 

[nesman]

This is a work in progress, but should provide some consistent ground rules for people wanting to host a contest.

 

[Radial]

This all looks good, but I'm unsure about the limit of 3 contest tests and/or game nights for judging. Anything longer than a month, and not a single map in that contest would get the judging and testing it deserves.

I assume this rule was due to Ye Old Conteste getting a ton of tests and the burnout that resulted in, and it's fair to limit the total amount. But a decent amount of that burnout was the fact it was medieval.

While you could say the amount of votes YOC got did not warrant the amount of tests/game nights it had, most of that was, again, because it was medieval. I suspect a contest of similar length that was about normal TF2 maps would have seen significantly more voting and attention, and warranted getting the same amount of events given to it.

Here are what I think are good limits:
Less than a month: 3 tests/game nights.
1 month. 5 tests/game nights.
2 Months. 10 tests/game nights.

As for length: I think 2 months should be a form of soft limit, and accepted without a ton of question. One can argue for longer, but must provide reasoning and make it clear what value going for longer would bring. This of course goes for arguing for more tests/game nights.

 

[nesman]

Please note that it says 3 tests at a time, not in total. This makes it easier for multiple people to schedule at once. A problem that was happening was an entire month was being claimed which made it much harder for someone else to host a gameday. For example, as soon as a planned gameday has concluded, now you have 2 events scheduled and can schedule a 3rd. So in theory you can still end up using the same amount of tests while allowing for others to schedule at the same time.