[OPEN] FFR Simfle Judge Applications

[Silvuh]

FFR Simfile Judge Applications are OPEN.
e-mail applications to ffrsubmissions@gmail.com with the subject "{username} Judge Application", e.g. Silvuh Judge Application
Please send any new information (any updates to Part A or notes for Part B) as a reply to your first e-mail, so your whole application will be threaded together.


If you think you have what it takes and the time to actually help out, please fill out this first part of the judge application and e-mail it to ffrsubmissions@gmail.com. Please do not post completed applications in this thread. The thread is for discussion of the process and your hopes and concerns for it. Stuff like that.

Part A is a questionnaire. Worthy applicants will move on to Part B, which will be reviewing test files.

Test files are not ready yet, so they will be sent out starting April 15. Full-length critiques of the test files should be e-mailed within five days of receiving them.

DO NOT send the test files to anyone. DO NOT discuss them with anyone outside of the application process.

Applications may take a week or so for game managers to go through. Applicants will be PMed as soon as decisions have been made.

Applications may close at any time if we feel like we have enough members, and they will reopen when we are in need of more help.


--- Part A ---

1. Do you have experience reviewing simfiles? If so, please give at least two examples of a reviews you've written with a link to the original file.


2. Do you have experience creating simfiles? If so, please list your three best files with download links (if not on FFR) and name anywhere any of your files can be found.


3. Describe how well you can interpret and judge files at different difficulty ranges (please cover the whole 1-99 scale).


4. What is your availability like throughout the year? For example, do you have more free time in some months than others? Does judging either 20, 40, or 60 files every two months seem like something you can do?


5. What is your work ethic like? For example, do you work better doing a little bit every day? or by doing infrequent but intense work sessions?


6. Of the following, which would be the best channel to get your attention through? Would you respond right away through it?
(Note that FFR staff are required to join Slack)
-- FFR User Control Panel (PMs, subscribed threads)
-- E-mail (the address you sent in this application with)
-- Instant Messengers (name which IM service you would be using)


7. If there is any more relevant information you can share that was not prompted by one of the previous questions, please put it here.


--- ---
EDITS
April 1, 22:36 >> Changed the wording of Question 3 to clarify that it is about judging files, not difficulty placement.
April 2, 19:16 >> Changed the wording of Question 4 from "70" to "20, 40, or 60", because, really, a judge doesn't usually look at every file in a batch, only one set (about 20) at a time.

[Deadlyx39]

Is there any specific requirements? Such as being a high level player or being someone that's at least 18? Wanted to ask before I sent an application.

[PhantomPuppy]

yea i was gonna ask the same thing as deadly. do i have to be 18?

[Silvuh]

You have to be at least 13 to use the forum and profiles, so there's no age requirement other than that. I was 17 when I started judging. You just have to be able to take the job seriously.

You don't need to be a high-level player, either. But I can imagine someone who can't FC 30s not knowing what makes a good 70+ file. I can't even judge anything over 85. Also, someone who can AAA 90s might have trouble remembering what works best for less-experienced players. So it's good to have both. This is what Question 3 is for.

[MarioNintendo]

Very nice. Best of luck to all applicants!
(Praying for not april fools)

[lurker]

i too think the biggest joke on ffr is the idea that stuff can actually happen

[Deadlyx39]

And sent!
My submission is under the email dylan.s.kramer@gmail.com

[Silvuh]

I've edited a couple of the questions and will keep track of those edits at the bottom of the OP. If, after reading your application again, you feel you need to add more to your answers, the best thing would be replying to your old e-mail with just the new information, so it will all be threaded together. This would be better than sending a whole new e-mail with all the information again each time I edit the survey.

Actually, now that I think about it, any Part B e-mails may as well be responses to Part A e-mails, so all of an applicant's stuff will be in one e-mail thread. I'll edit the OP to mention that.

P.S. The only joke was how I said I'd fired all the judges in the Queue/Batch thread. No one's been fired, but there does need to be a serious talk about what it takes to keep the Simfile Judge title.

EDIT: Okay, well, someone did do a reply with new information, but it still showed up as a new e-mail rather than as part of a thread. The reply had the same subject prefixed with "Re:", which is something Gmail looks for when deciding to thread an e-mail. So, I'm not sure what happened there. But if your first e-mail didn't have the proper subject, and you reply to it, don't change the subject.

So all the reply ended up doing was appending the old e-mail to the end of the new one. At least all the information will still be in one e-mail, so I'll just remove all the old ones from the inbox.

SUPER-LATE EDIT: Turns out the above was due to Conversation Mode being turned off. Welp! So yeah. Replying to your original e-mail with new information totally works and will keep everything together.

[_Zenith_]

I hope the best of luck for all applicants. Glad to see some movement in staff currently!

[James May]

I might join in on this...I have a bit of judging experience but we'll see...

[Fission]

Originally Posted by Silvuh

there does need to be a serious talk about what it takes to keep the Simfile Judge title

you're really off base here. if you are proposing that inactive judges should be stripped of their title then you better start getting all other inactive staff stripped of their titles as well.

[Xiz]

Originally Posted by Fission

you're really off base here. if you are proposing that inactive judges should be stripped of their title then you better start getting all other inactive staff stripped of their titles as well.

Which should happen.

[Fission]

i'm not debating if it should happen or not but purging only part of inactive staff now would be ridiculous; it's all or nothing

[psychoangel691]

Originally Posted by Fission

i'm not debating if it should happen or not but purging only part of inactive staff now would be ridiculous; it's all or nothing

Game managers only have say in certain aspects just like as Event manager I only have say in event titles.

If he wants to purge people who are inactive it's his decision to do so. As per other staff you can take that up with Zaggy.

[Fission]

even if it is his decision, that doesn't change the nature of the potential decision that is to be made. i never meant to imply that i am undermining your authority silvuh but doing this would set a dangerous precedent.

anyway, i strongly disagree that different managers should be able to have drastically different policies such as this because now there is conflicting styles of leadership which is just going to cause problems

EDIT: if each manager runs their section differently then how can there be consensus as to how to move forward and what priorities there are

[Silvuh]

Originally Posted by Fission

you're really off base here. if you are proposing that inactive judges should be stripped of their title then you better start getting all other inactive staff stripped of their titles as well.

If the discussion sets a precedent, it'd only be if the other branches of staff never knew how the Simfile Judge title was meant to work.

The FFR Simfile Judge title was introduced in 2012 as a way to distinguish judges who were experienced and active. jimerax proposed a set of rules, and we came to agreement on what it should take for a judge to earn, keep, and regain the title. Under those rules, only eleven of the 22 users in the group would have the Simfile Judge icon right now. And everyone would still be able to access the judge forum and change one's username color to the Judge color.

The only reason it changed is because the admins deleted the Simfile Judge usergroup that awarded the title, assuming it was redundant, without asking any game manager about it. This was when titles were being replaced with the shape icons. I didn't ask about reviving the group, because no one complained about it being gone. But the current inactivity has made me reconsider it.

The "serious discussion" would have been about bringing this system back, not about completely stripping inactive judges of all privileges. (Though I do think that if a judge has officially retired and consents to being removed from the group, it would be reasonable to remove that judge.) I only mentioned "firing" because I made an April Fool's Day joke about it in the Queue/Batch thread.

As long as I've been on staff, the different branches have always been pretty separated. That's how it's been. So it's not that there's new movement towards autonomy, there has actually been movement toward more unification. It wasn't until Zag created the FFR Staff Slack that we had a single channel for everyone on staff. That's where the big, over-arching questions will be asked when we need a consensus. And of course, each branch still has their own private group there.

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by Fission

EDIT: if each manager runs their section differently then how can there be consensus as to how to move forward and what priorities there are

If you're asking this question I strongly question if you have any idea how management of anything works at all
Hint: no one person can run everything, and (shockingly) sometimes various managers have slightly different opinions from other ones

I'll be completely honest, your posts in this thread, and with regards to staff in general, are obnoxiously whiny

[Xiz]

Lol

[Fission]

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

If you're asking this question I strongly question if you have any idea how management of anything works at all
Hint: no one person can run everything, and (shockingly) sometimes various managers have slightly different opinions from other ones

I'll be completely honest, your posts in this thread, and with regards to staff in general, are obnoxiously whiny

you don't think i know that people have different opinions? of course they do, that's human nature. my point is that differing opinions should be reconciled as much as possible. if you got the wrong idea about what i meant, i apologize.

on the other hand, it's pretty hypocritical that you criticize me for failing to recognize that people have different opinions, yet here you are calling my whiny because i don't feel the same way about this situation as you do

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by Fission

on the other hand, it's pretty hypocritical that you criticize me for failing to recognize that people have different opinions, yet here you are calling my whiny because i don't feel the same way about this situation as you do

I was fine with it for a while, but it does get old after a while if you respond to literally every staff thread with the same issues that have previously been replied to and dismissed.