On the use of Hats and Bombs

Another thing, people shouldn't be allowed to hat their own drafts. Quite a few tropers are doing that on TLP with drafts they just submitted. Granted i cant tell if they did but no one hats a poorly developed draft as soon as it comes out.

I was actually thinking the same, though there's been instances of people using socks, so there's no way we can really crack down on this unless we can see who hatted/bombed anything.

I'm not so sure. People hat undeveloped draft pretty quickly if they like the idea and if they are certain it's not covered by existing drafts. I once submitted a draft with a basic idea (you know, just a laconic and the description was just three sentences before I got to that) and with very few examples. It started getting hats immediately. I had to write people to hold their hats. I really appreciated the support, but it was clear that draft was not prepared for launch. Like at all. And if it had been someone else's draft, I would have suspected the OP added the first hat.

The way I see it is less that "only sponsors hat underdeveloped drafts", but just that sponsors are biased toward their own work more often than not, and thus their hat might not be considered legit because what they may see as perfectly ready to launch may have glaring flaws, and giving yourself a hat to get to 5 just seems a little fishy or otherwise illegitimate. I can't think of the word, so those will do; but you know what I mean.

The way you said that implies that you think that all sponsors break the rules when they hat their own drafts, and that's PROBABLY not what you meant.

I'm going to say this before somebody else says the same thing in a much more butthurt tone: There are sponsors who follow the rules when they hat their own drafts and there are sponsors who develop their drafts to stricter standards than the rules before hatting their own drafts, but unfortunately, they seem to be in the minority.

I'll rephrase it.

Sponsors are more likely to be biased and thus to use hats improperly.

And I'll confirm it as a sponsor. I launched one trope, Gunderwater, and have one trope as a draft (Container Caper.)

(I've rogue launched a trope once, but we won't get into that.)

My point is, when I first created Gunderwater, I gave it a hat as soon as I got 3 examples because I believed that a sponsor could hat their own draft.

Before reading these posts, I was on the fence about whether or not to hat Container Caper.

After reading some of these forum posts, I decided to leave it as it is and neither hat nor bomb my draft.

Edited by Dacool1here on Mar 17th 2020 at 9:01:28 PM

My draft for Petite Is Prettier has gotten thirteen bombs even though it has no hats.

Please read their responses

I want to undust this since something came to my mind.

Should something be done and we have to choose one thing to implement in code, we seem to be in agreement that it should be for bombs to do something, so a draft can only be launched if it has 5 net hats.

But how about the opposite? Should a draft only be discarded if it has 5 net bombs?

Maybe? Sponsors have the ability to discard whenever, and discarding is a lot less troublesome since a draft can just be restored. Some drafts get a lot of excess hats for no reason and would need a lot more bombs than usual to discard them, so sometimes it's not always that reasonable.

Gay, at the time of writing this, has over 100 bombs and 5 hats. This has brought up serious concerns that the draft could actually be launched.

It really highlights the big issue with the Hats and Bombs system. Bombs, while intimidating, are mostly just for show and don't actually do anything but make the discard button appear. Hats, meanwhile, let you launch as soon as you get 5 hats, even if you have a net count of -95.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 7th 2020 at 2:31:22 PM

It's definetly more than 95 at this point, XD

But in all seriousness, I personally think that hats and bombs shouldn't be anonymous. It sort of just allows you to do whatever without giving meaningful imput. Even with "Gay" and "Mario Pissing", nothing would be lost from the bombs having names attached to them.

Yeah, this problem's starting to get out of hand. Changing (in simplified terms, I don't know the precise TVT language)

"if hats>=5
{
enable launch button;
}"

to

"if (hats-bombs)>=5
{
enable launch button;
}"

shouldn't be that hard for the admins, but they just won't fix simple things like these.

Edited by Piterpicher on Sep 7th 2020 at 8:39:59 PM

Here to state my support for both ideas but something to add to the latter.

What should we do in the event of people who would try to shake every bomber (who may or may not give their reason(s) for bombing)?

Edited by VidExGuy on Sep 7th 2020 at 11:40:02 AM

Simple; we'd make bomb (and hat) reasons compulsory. Then everything is out in the open.

Also, you know, make it against the rules to harass people over their vote.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 7th 2020 at 2:40:13 PM

Yeah, that works.

Another argument for this, the mods have nothing to gain by leaving this unfixed. In fact, it just creates more problems like rogue launchers and general discontentment they'll have to deal with.

Edited by VidExGuy on Sep 7th 2020 at 11:43:48 AM

It's admins who'd have to fix this as it'd require changing the code. They aren't that involved with wiki happenings, they may not know. Mods already know the pain, they have to clean things up on the wiki level.

Edited by Piterpicher on Sep 7th 2020 at 8:47:32 PM

Yeah, TLP issues have apparently been on the checklist for ages now but aren't being worked on yet. What's ahead of them? IDK...

Whoops, thanks for correcting that.

Yeah, some of the ideas we've had for overhauling it take effort, but surely it's simple to change from 5 total to 5 net hats, as was demonstrated above...

... unless someone coded it really, really badly.

...Shake down doesn't include "politely PM someone to take another look at your draft now that you've fixed the issue they had", does it?

That doesn't sound like a shakedown to me. A shakedown would be more like "Hey! I've CHANGED it so now YOU have to change your BOMB into a HAT!", not "Hey, just letting you know that I've made some changes to my draft in respond to your feedback, and I'd appreciate your thoughts on whether that addresses" blah blah.

Also, you can't change a bomb to a hat. All you can do is post a hat in addition to your bomb, neutralizing yourself.

Is that true? I've managed to change them. Please test your statement here. Give a bomb, then give a hat, then give a bomb again.

Edited by Piterpicher on Sep 8th 2020 at 2:12:31 PM