Gay Teen Forum

Example wrote:

Kaspar wrote:I. What was the aim? Why did it happen?

It's important to start with stating the fact that the Year Cup was something new, experimental. The idea first appeared around the end of August with the House Cup finishing, to take that kind of summer activities and copy them onto winter standards. It was Jack, Kris, Kyler and I planning it out, and the initial idea was very different. The users were first supposed to be divided into two "Kingdoms" with the events and challenges expecting way more roleplay and encouragement than what you saw here. The goal was to raise the activity that we usually see dropping highly around autumn and the winter break, opposite to what happens in the summer. From the start it was planned as "kinda like a House Cup, but not quite" with the idea of taking more time and slowly introducing challenges, not like we see it fast-paced summer style.

First of all I would like to thank the organizers for running the YC. You never know how something will go until you give it a shot, so experimenting with this idea sounds like an interesting concept. I def understand the concept of keeping people active during the winter and fall - people can get so distracted that they forget about the server


II. Did it work?

I can see both the negative and positive things the YC did for us as a whole. It definitely tightened some bonds between certain people a bit more, which was the main aim, though on a far smaller scale than I for example expected it to. I'm most happy with the fact that it helped certain people ekhm Brennan ekhm show their potential and become an integral part of the community for good. I loved the enthusiasm on his part, as well as some of his teammates, though I need to make it clear that all in all - the activity was very low and quite disappointing. It was quite a blow for us as the organizers, when people complained there is nothing to do, and when they got stuff to do - they didn't take part Just look at the dress up and you'll know what I mean.

I def think it was positive and negative in some regards too:
Positives: Helped me become mildly relevant, helped me meet people I never otherwise encounter, helped make new friends, gave me a chance to accomplish something, and helped me learn to work with my fellow teammates to achieve a common goal
Negatives: Very long between challenges at times - people forgot it was a thing, people had to be asked to participate by myself, asking for participation generally isn't fun

III. What went wrong then?

In conclusion, the issue that we faced the most was very unfair team balance in my opinion. It is possibly connected with three major organizational mistakes we committed upon setting it up.
First, we changed the way people were chosen, so you didn't have to apply like to the HC - this was made in order to have new users possibly encouraged quickly, yet it failed to make them stick around more than usual as it seems. It led to loads of highly inactive dead users being set to a certain team, which made it even worse.

Secondly, the teams were quite imbalanced and while not taking part in choosing the teams personally, I myself had a final overlook and assumed they would work well, which makes it my shared fault too. Turned out they didn't. A small mistake made for such big difference.

Lastly, we had some nasty stuff going on in the very beginning as due to Jack and Tim only being the judges, we had to put two quite engaged team leaders into the judge position (Kyler and I) and then there were some changes with Kamiel resigning, George getting banned... the list goes on. The turmoil only led to more organizational problems and made they imbalance greater, as Temi ended up holding his team basically on his own.

Yeah I think that inactivity really caused a lot of holes to need filling throughout the competition. This isn't really the active judge's fault - we lost 2 captains from each team and TWW picked me up as one. TWW had 3 people compares to TFE's 2. Added onto that is the overwhelmingly high activity of TWW compares to TFE's expanse of null active players. Look at the FF rounds. When my teammates and I were able to coerce 25 people into participating each week, meanwhile TFE could barely manage to get 12, it's not shocking that there was a huge discrepancy.

IV. What can we learn from it?

As a whole community? Well, we can learn that you can't magically bring inactive people back just like that. Our plans exceeded the reality and the lack of engagement killed the event from inside. Even despite that I'd like to greatly thank people like George for helping immensely, with running the thing, Brennan, Sokol and Temi for being very encouraging to their teammates or rather harassing them on daily basis, right Bren? and all the people that despite huge organizational flops and mistakes, found some joy and fun in the thing as a whole

I think there were several positive things that came out of the YC as lessons. I think that Sokol and Dolly were great captains (I can't personally evaluate Temi's work but it looked effective from the outside). Dolly provided comedic relief and sass, Sokol was in the know and knew what he was doing, and I was just the enforcer who pestered people into participating (I argue I was basically the team Gestapo). Also, I think the riddle was overwhelmingly the most fun challenge to do, and would love to see it come back in HC this year and the future. I had an absolute blast and learned many things: I'm good at organizing, I love competition with my GTF friends, and I have waaay too much time on my hands.

V. What do we do with it now?

I would like to hear some constructive criticism and your honest opinions on what you liked, what you disliked, what you'd change or keep etc etc. The staff team really wants the best for the community and you can help us with suggestions. I was thinking that maybe some people would be interested in having Family Feud from time to time but alternatively with individual scoreboard? Don't hesitate to throw suggestions at us, it's always very appreciated
I think I would love to see the return of FF in small, sporadic bursts outside of the Cups - and an individual style for it I believe would be much more fun

Dolly wrote:lol maybe if these incompetent mods hadn't banned ethan, Year Cup, and soon House Cup, couldve been a thing

Dolly wrote:that and im too busy improving myself

George wrote:-snip-
I would be happy to throw my hat in to the ring - if you'd want me, of course - to help with running this in Summer, but I do think we need a comprehensive plan on how we're going to run it, deadlines, dedication, etc.