If you look at the competetive legacy thread they categorise every deck into just control, aggro and combo, which might be hard for some decks but its pretty clear. For modern you could add midrange perhaps. The legacy one is probably easier to use than the modern one. Not trying to pick a fight, grateful in fact for the good work by the modern mods, but ultimately I think the new arrangement is a bit overthought- and I would rather have all w hatebear decks in one place.
We appreciate the constructive criticism, so no worries as coming off as aggressive.
1) For the archetype division, it's an added layer of complexity that is much less relevant in Modern than it is in other formats. Sure, we have some "true" representatives of each archetype (UWR for control, Affinity for aggro, Storm for combo, etc.), but we also have a lot of bleeding going on between archetypes (Melira/Kiki Pod, RG Tron, Mono U Tron, Infect, UR Delver, etc.). This makes it much harder for new players and site visitors to find decks. If I am a new player to Modern, I would have no clue to look for Soul Sisters in the aggro forum, even though that deck is technically aggro. Or does it even belong there at all? Hatebears has aggro and midrange elements. Tempo (e.g. Delver) isn't really midrange or aggro or control, so does that get its own subforum? All of those questions are easily resolved by putting the threads in just the "Proven" subforum and leaving it at that, which is the final decision of the staff.
2) I understand that some veteran forumgoers want to see all similar decks in one place, such as Death and Taxes going with Hatebears, or UW Tron going with RG Tron. But in some cases, this can be very misleading for new (and old) players who want the most accurate information about the forum. Consider a deck like Tron. RG Tron has frequent MTGO wins and lots of paper performances. UW Tron, however, sees a lot less play, comparatively speaking, and almost never shows up in dailies. It's inaccurate to say that UW Tron is "proven" or solidly tier 1, unlike RG Tron which definitely fits both of those categories. So if I am a new player and see UW Tron with RG Tron, I might think they are both proven even though that isn't quite true. The new organization makes that much more clear, and that is why we are going with it for the foreseeable future.
I’m curious about the following decks being in the Proven section: Martyr Life, UR Delver, UR Storm, Naya Zoo, Living End. Are they really considered Proven giving as they haven’t put up any results for the last two months now, unless I’m missing something. I’m using www.mtgtop8.com for my data, is there a more reliable website you guys are using? I also question BW Tokens too, 5th at Worlds is good but is it really a Proven deck? What are the requirements for the Proven section?
I collect the data on my own from MTGO along with a few other friends of mine. It is a time-intensive process but it does lead to an extremely accurate portrait of the metagame. All other websites, to my knowledge, only use the data reported from Wizards: 4-0/3-1 decks from a single Daily per day. Given that there are between 4-5 dailies per day, and dozens of 2-2 or worse decks that are unreported, these sites do not give great estimates about deck prevalence.
Of those you mentioned, Delver and Storm are absolutely Proven decks. Storm sees as much play on MTGO as Hatebears, Kiki Pod, and Bogles. Delver sees as much as Melira Pod and more than BG Rock, Scapeshift, and Burn; in fact, Delver is currently the 7th most played deck online.
Life and Living End represent interesting cases. Life/Marty/Soul Sisters is one of the oldest decks on MTGO to this day. It still has about a 1-2% metagame share, and it has some paper performances over the past 8 months. Although it's not as strong as, say, Twin, it definitely gets played. Living End is similar, with a consistent presence, some very high profile finishes, but not a big following or lots of prevalence. We are still deciding what to do with decks like this. They don't belong in Established alongside decks like UW Tron, Goblins, and Boros, but they also aren't quite at the level of Jund or UWR Control.
We could use more flexible criteria for deciding what decks go where. That lets us pick decks that fit your average MTGO metagame, and it gives us freedom to move things around. Or we could use a harder, but somewhat artificial, cutoff point for what decks get included in what subforum. That would give us some objective justification to our organization, but it might be too rigid for giving players information about what decks they need to prepare against (and what decks they can play).
We are still finalizing the criteria for Established, but 8Rack doesn't meet any of it. It has, to my knowledge, zero 4-0/3-1 finishes on MTGO, no major paper finishes or placements, and no day 2 Grand Prix appearances. I like the deck; heck, I named it! But it isn't Established yet. If it gets there, which it could, then I would be happy to see it promoted.
Actually I have a bunch of 3-1 finishes in MTGO and one 4-0 finish with 8Rack. I have screen shots and qualifier points to prove this if needed. I also keep my primer updated with current lists and video replays. Does that qualify for something other than Deck Creation?
If not, it's fine. I dont really care where my primer lists go as long as the awesome discussion continues. Either way, I was planning on doing an updated video primer since the deck has developed quite a bit since the original was made.
Also I have another primer I want to work on that will maintain the same quality as my older primers i.e. in depth written primer and accompanying videos.
However, it's unclear to me what it is you're doing with the data and what you are extracting from it. Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're telling me, but are the decks I mentioned constantly winning 4-0s or 3-1s in Dailys or in paper or are they just regularly played decks regardless of whether or not they have strong results?
Right now on MTGO, there is an appreciable correlation between which decks are widely played and which decks are successful. That's absolutely true in the instance of two of the decks you mentioned. Delver has the same win rate (game wins / total games played) as Melira Pod and UWR Control. Storm has a higher win rate, comparable to Twin and RG Tron and surpassed only by BG Rock and Affinity. Both decks are also widely played. By every MTGO metric, these two decks deserve to be in Proven today.
We get into trickier territory when we look at a deck like Living End and start considering paper events. Living End got 2nd at a major Grand Prix and probably should have won it. It saw a fair amount of play throughout both July and August (comparable to Storm, Gruul Zoo, and RG Tron), and has only recently dwindled online. It also saw some PTQ Top 8s during the season. That strikes me as "Proven", at least for now: We can always "demote" it if the deck falls too heavily out of favor. Soul Sisters is in a similar situation. It only makes up about 2% of the MTGO metagame, but it has held that 2% for essentially 1-2 years at this point. From July-August, it was the 10th most played deck online.
Like you say, most sites stick to the use of decks that solely get 4-0 and 3-1s, they tend to do this because they want to show people clearly what the best performing decks are.
Well, they show the selection of 4-0/3-1 decks because it's the only data that they have access to. Using the Wizards public data, you can try to estimate the metagame but you often won't get it right. For example, mtgtop8.com suggests that Birthing Pod has made up 15% of the online metagame (both Kiki and Melira) over the last 2 weeks. But the real share is closer to 8%. As another, more pertinent, example, Storm doesn't even show up on the radar for mtgtop8's 2 week perspective, but we know it makes up about 3-4% of the metagame. This is the sad consequence of a biased sample, and that's what my data collection tries to prevent.
If my concerns are correct, inasmuch as the forum is being tiered by playing percentage of the decks rather than win ratio percentage, I would look at renaming the sections from "Proven" etc to something else. As to me, and probably most of the people who visit the site, assume that "Proven" means the "proven" best decks in the format, not that they are the most played decks.
Generally, if a deck is being widely played on MTGO, it is also probably winning a lot. Or it is at least winning enough to be a contender. There are some small exceptions to this; back in July, Mono U Tron made up about 3.5% of the total metagame, but barely 1% of the 4-0/3-1 decks. Similarly, today, UWR Control is the worst performing deck of the big decks played online, but it is still clearly a Proven contender. The point is that prevalence often means performance on MTGO, and in cases where it doesn't, we can make exceptions. But from a data perspective alone, the top 12 widely-played decks are identical to the top 12 decks that go 4-0/3-1.
As for the definition of "Proven", it is the same now as it has been for months: PROVEN: Competitive Decks Representing the Current Metagame
The current metagame is necessarily a function of decks that are both present and performing. In practice, this includes decks that are a) prevalent and high performing and b) prevalent but not as high performing as others. Because if you are designing a testing gauntlet or preparing for your next event, you will likely meet those decks even if they aren't the single most successful decks out there. Our goal on the site is to give a new player an accurate representation of the average Modern metagame, and we think that all lists in the Proven section (with maybe 1-2 exceptions) accomplish that.
Actually I have a bunch of 3-1 finishes in MTGO and one 4-0 finish with 8Rack. I have screen shots and qualifier points to prove this if needed. I also keep my primer updated with current lists and video replays. Does that qualify for something other than Deck Creation?
Both Mill and Restore Balance have similar 4-0/3-1 finishes, and neither of those are going out of Creation any time soon. We are still working on the cutoff criteria for that promotion, but my mental criteria for Established is as follows:
Established decks must have made up 1% of the MTGO metagame in the last X months (3-6; still unclear the exact range) and/or have at least 1 paper top 8 finish in a major event with 100+ players, or a top 16 in a Grand Prix.
That's a working definition more than a concrete one, so don't quote me on it yet. But it gives 8Rack, not to mention Mill and Balance, something to strive towards.
Both Mill and Restore Balance have similar 4-0/3-1 finishes, and neither of those are going out of Creation any time soon. We are still working on the cutoff criteria for that promotion, but my mental criteria for Established is as follows:
Established decks must have made up 1% of the MTGO metagame in the last X months (3-6; still unclear the exact range) and/or have at least 1 paper top 8 finish in a major event with 100+ players, or a top 16 in a Grand Prix.
That's a working definition more than a concrete one, so don't quote me on it yet. But it gives 8Rack, not to mention Mill and Balance, something to strive towards.
Seems a bit arbitrary to me. I am perfectly fine with things to stay the way they are now, but if you are going about reorganizing things I would think it should be based on something a bit more concrete. They way you guys are going about it basically boils down to "the popular decks get showcased". If your deck is unpopular but still good enough to win it does not deserve to get "moved up". You need to consider that some decks only function at peak efficiency BECAUSE they are unknown and unpopular. Being rare isn't a bad thing, in fact it could be one of your deck's biggest assets because the lemming netdeckers will not be carrying answers for your deck.
I think you guys should prioritize activity / interest in the deck as well as quality of the primer along side tourney results. Take a look at a lot of the established lists with old / outdated primers that made it through "the culling". Almost none of the threads in that forum see as much activity as the stickies in deck creation.
There are a lot of problems with Established:
You have got several decks in Established that could be grouped together as "Gifts". All of those have outdated primers and havent had ANY activity at all in weeks, and very little activity over the past couple months. YOu should merge all of those threads together in one area and then MAYBE you would create enough discussion to warrant a spotlight.
Furthermore, you also have a bunch of overlapping midrange / board control decks that could all fall under a single "mid range" category. Pretty much the rest of the decks in there could be grouped together as Full spectrum aggro and Glass cannon combo.
You should group similar strategies together in a sub forum. This would possibly generate some more activity in those threads. As it stands now the established forum seems uninteresting. Very few people are even posting in it, and the primers are almost all out of date. Why are you guys keeping them there? Take Assault Loam as one example. Over the past 4 months there have been barely 2 pages of posts in that thread. The primer is outdated. No one is playing the deck or really talking about it in articles or anything. And yet it deserves to stay in Established? There are many more examples, just look through some of the threads.
I also really dislike the idea of make FOUR subforums for decks. 3 is already too much as you can clearly see by the lack of activity in Established. In fact if you guys are planning on keeping that type of thread in the established section I much PREFER keeping 8rack and any future primers I make in the creation forum. There is a lot more activity going on there, and isnt that the most important thing at the end of the day?
Seems a bit arbitrary to me. I am perfectly fine with things to stay the way they are now, but if you are going about reorganizing things I would think it should be based on something a bit more concrete. They way you guys are going about it basically boils down to "the popular decks get showcased". If your deck is unpopular but still good enough to win it does not deserve to get "moved up".
Established is a bit of a different issue from Proven because its definition allows for more flexibility. Established decks are "Tournament Decks with Results" per the definition of the subforum. Theoretically, this could mean any deck with any tournament result ever!! But that's clearly not it's intention, at leas as I read it. It suggests to me that Established decks are a level below Proven. They are good decks with results, but not the same results as Proven ones. They also don't necessarily represent a metagame even if they win games
PROVEN
Let's define Proven first (nothing in stone; just some preliminary definitions). Looking over the online numbers, 3% prevalence for a 2-3 month period is about accurate for assessing the MTGO decks to beat. Those decks should also have 4-0/3-1 shares that are comparable to their metagame shares. For paper events, we can define "Proven" as decks with 1+ Top 8 finish at a Grand Prix or multiple (# TBD) finishes at 100+ player events. All paper events having to be in the last 6-8 months. We could even add Grand Prix Day 2 prevalence in there as an additional metric.
ESTABLISHED
To me, it follows that Established should be something just below that, so we want criteria that matches this definition. What might that look like? For online prevalence, perhaps 1%-3% of the MTGO metagame. For paper events, 1+ Top 8 finish at 1-2 paper events with 100+ players. Or a top 16 at a Grand Prix. Given the Proven criteria, this seems like a reasonable step down.
And yes, we could argue about what makes a measure objective versus arbitrary, but that's not really an important point. Most other sites and subforums have way less stringent criteria for what goes where, and ultimately, defining cutoffs is just an arbitrary business. In this case, I can at least support the cutoffs with justifications; the 3% prevalence cutoff is the average plus one standard deviation of the population.
You need to consider that some decks only function at peak efficiency BECAUSE they are unknown and unpopular. Being rare isn't a bad thing, in fact it could be one of your deck's biggest assets because the lemming netdeckers will not be carrying answers for your deck.
Agreed, but such a deck is still going to need to have some big performance to back it up. And that means more than just Daily wins. To me, that means T8ing at a paper event with 100+ players, or T16ing at a Grand Prix. If a deck lacked the MTGO or paper prevalence but still managed to perform at those events, I would be happy to put it in Established. I would also be open to other metrics of performance that would separate a rare but strong deck from decks that are just rare and bad.
There are a lot of problems with Established:
We agree. That's why I am having this conversation with you all here.
Established appears to have two tiers of decks. It has decks that , probably belong in Established (e.g. Merfolk, Reanimator, Junk, etc.), and it has decks that really need to be in Creation (Goblins, Boros, etc.). The threads in the former category see lots of traffic and lots of play. The decks in the latter category are relics of previous forum organizations, or band-aid fixes for the dismemberment of the old Proven.
I am, however, going to restate a firm line on organization: There will not be any more deck subforums. In practice, these subforums had very little activity outside of the main thread. There's a myth that all sorts of discussions happened in these subs, but it's not true; I did the research. And what little activity did happen outside could easily have been occurring inside the main thread. Or it could take place in Modern General. More importantly, these proven subforums tended to be clogged full of similar decks that were not "Proven" by any means. Tron was the worst offender in this regard (UW Tron is not even close to RG Tron), but Jund and UWR Control had similar issues. Finally, subforums make it much harder to change the organization as metagames shift. So for all those reasons, subforums for individual decks are out.
In reorganizing the forums, the objective is to provide accurate and useful information to players. We want our decks to reflect both the current metagame (Proven) and the competitive decks (Proven and Established). So yes, decks are going to be kicked out of Established and probably Proven in the near future. Proven is very close to being accurate. Established has work to do. But the definitions I have offered in this post, along with the criteria, give some idea of the thought process behind the organization. And again, I am happy to hear criticisms, suggestions, and ideas about those cutoff points.
Agreed, but such a deck is still going to need to have some big performance to back it up. And that means more than just Daily wins.
Why?
Why does it need anything more than a high degree of interest, a well written primer and some concrete tourney results from MTGO that proves that it is viable, if only on a small scale? I would much rather have a forum dedicated to developing interesting unheard of decks than a rehash of Tier 1 spin offs that are basically sub optimal versions of those same Tier 1 strategies.
To me, that means T8ing at a paper event with 100+ players, or T16ing at a Grand Prix. If a deck lacked the MTGO or paper prevalence but still managed to perform at those events, I would be happy to put it in Established.
Now that is just totally subjective and pretty biased as well. What makes paper magic more "legit" than MTGO? I could (and have in the past) make paper magic disciples look very silly when they start thinking their medium is in any way superior to the digital game.
Now I will grant you that you are a mod, and this is the type of decision that your subjective opinion is allowed to be acted upon. That is the mod's job, I get that. Still, I think your priorities are pretty backwards.
At the end of the day, this is just a message board. The most valuable threads are the ones that are interesting enough to people to make them want to post. YOu should take a look at what deck threads are POPULAR and spotlight those threads. Its not the popularity of the deck that should matter here, it's the popularity of the THREAD.
Who cares if a deck Tier 1 or 2 or whatever. If no one cares enough to bother posting anything about it, why bother spotlighting it on a message board? Put those type of decks in a reference archive.
Bottom line: Your most valuable assets are your popular discussions. You should take a look at those threads and pick the ones that have proper and up to date primers and put THOSE threads into their own forum. You dont even have to call it established if you feel that would be misleading. Call it "MTGS Deck Spotlight" or "Decks of the Moment" something along those lines. When those threads begin to die off in popularity, you move them out and put in new ones.
Why does it need anything more than a high degree of interest, a well written primer and some concrete tourney results from MTGO that proves that it is viable, if only on a small scale? I would much rather have a forum dedicated to developing interesting unheard of decks than a rehash of Tier 1 spin offs that are basically sub optimal versions of those same Tier 1 strategies.
Now that is just totally subjective and pretty biased as well. What makes paper magic more "legit" than MTGO? I could (and have in the past) make paper magic disciples look very silly when they start thinking their medium is in any way superior to the digital game.
These two points are similar, so I am going to address them together. Ultimately, the division between digital and paper needs to come down to giving appropriate weight to both results. I do give slightly (emphasis on slightly) more weight to paper finishes, but that has nothing to do with the quality of players. Player skill is probably about the same between your average 110 person Daily and your average 110 person paper tournament. It has everything to do, however, with the length of events.
Dailies are 4 rounds. A 100 person tournament is 7. A 130 person tournament is 8. As you probably know from playing in events yourself, there is a huge difference between 4 round events (the Swiss norm for a 16 person event) and 7-8 round events. Someone who wins at 4 rounds might have gotten lucky. The more rounds you add to that, the more we eliminate luck. If some guy takes down a GP, I'm willing to chalk that up to a lot more than luck. If some guy takes down a 40 man PTQ, that could just be a series of good matchups and good draws.
We account for this by giving multiple ways for a deck to get elevated to Established. If you T8 at a large paper event, or T16 at a GP, that's good enough to get you to Established for a few months. But let's say that the deck in question has only MTGO appearances. That's totally fine! If a deck gets 4-0/3-1 at X or more dailies over the past Y months, then it can also get moved up to Established. X and Y would have to be chosen here to both ensure that quality decks were moving up but also to respect that MTGO isn't much less accurate than paper.
Now I will grant you that you are a mod, and this is the type of decision that your subjective opinion is allowed to be acted upon. That is the mod's job, I get that. Still, I think your priorities are pretty backwards.
At the end of the day, this is just a message board. The most valuable threads are the ones that are interesting enough to people to make them want to post. YOu should take a look at what deck threads are POPULAR and spotlight those threads. Its not the popularity of the deck that should matter here, it's the popularity of the THREAD.
Who cares if a deck Tier 1 or 2 or whatever. If no one cares enough to bother posting anything about it, why bother spotlighting it on a message board? Put those type of decks in a reference archive.
Bottom line: Your most valuable assets are your popular discussions. You should take a look at those threads and pick the ones that have proper and up to date primers and put THOSE threads into their own forum. You dont even have to call it established if you feel that would be misleading. Call it "MTGS Deck Spotlight" or "Decks of the Moment" something along those lines. When those threads begin to die off in popularity, you move them out and put in new ones.
Simple.
When you type in "MTG Modern" into a search engine (at least in my city and IP range), the fourth hit on the page, and first forum hit, is our site. When you type in "MTG Modern forum", we are the first hit period. This means that our site is a go-to hub for information about the Modern format and all of its dimensions. This includes the current metagame (Proven), decks that are viable but not necessarily representative of the current metagame (Established), and decks that are fun brews with no/minimal tournament successes (Creation). In my view, and that of the staff and probably most players, you go to a forum like this for two reasons. The first is to figure out what deck to play. The second is to figure out what decks to beat. There are some additional goals one might have, such as general format discussion or meeting likeminded players, but from an information perspective, those are probably the big two.
Unfortunately, highlighting popular threads does not fulfill either of those objectives. But that doesn't mean it isn't important! I agree that our site should absolutely showcase popular threads, and we do that in different ways across the forum. In Deck Creation, it's by sticking threads. In fact, Deck Creation stickies are almost explicitly a function of popularity and nothing else (at least, under the new organization). But it takes more than popularity alone for a deck to move out of that forum. Otherwise, we are misleading players abut what decks are competitive and which are not.
I will ignore the discussion about weighting paper tourneys to MTGO tourneys and the skill level of the players at each. We would get wayyyy side tracked and I would certainly step on some toes.
Unfortunately, highlighting popular threads does not fulfill either of those objectives. But that doesn't mean it isn't important! I agree that our site should absolutely showcase popular threads, and we do that in different ways across the forum. In Deck Creation, it's by sticking threads. In fact, Deck Creation stickies are almost explicitly a function of popularity and nothing else (at least, under the new organization). But it takes more than popularity alone for a deck to move out of that forum. Otherwise, we are misleading players abut what decks are competitive and which are not.
Look you have your "Proven" forum for people (lemmings) who just want to type something in google then come to the site to look at the overall best decks of the format. IN the proven section they can figure out which one to play and what they need to beat.
Why do we need an established forum to accomplish those two goals?? If you keep established the same as it is now or mostly the same then please keep me out of it. No one goes there except for a few threads, and those few exceptions would certainly get more attention in the deck creation.
Based on the goals you set above, you should do away with the "established" forum altogether and create a "MTGS Deck Showcase" Forum to showcase those primers that are:
1) Popular
2) High Quality and up to date
3) Beginning to show some tourney results - on any medium
Look at death and taxes for example. That thread is extremely popular, but is almost never played. Having it in a forum called "Established" is pretty misleading. Having it in a Deck Showcase forum makes a lot more sense. You could say the same thing for some of the others too like Merfolk.
Currently there is no reason to want to get your thread moved to Established. People aren't going there to look for new deck concepts, nor are they going there looking for Tier 1 decks. The words "Established" and "Proven" are completely interchangeable in this case, but the decks that reside within those headings are not. Just get rid of the Established forum, keep the threads that are worthy of spotlighting and archive the rest.
Then create a new forum for the good threads in Established and the good threads in Deck creation that has a meaningful AND TEMPORARY title like Deck SHowcase. IF the threads in there start to die, they can be easily replaced with others without hurting anyones feelings or affecting the perception of the deck.
Leave Deck Creation forum alone. That is BY FAR the most popular and best forum in the whole modern category. Dont screw that up.
Why do we need an established forum to accomplish those two goals?? If you keep established the same as it is now or mostly the same then please keep me out of it. No one goes there except for a few threads, and those few exceptions would certainly get more attention in the deck creation.
As I have said repeatedly throughout the thread, Established is for decks that do not necessarily comprise the current metagame, but are nonetheless competitive. This includes decks like Merfolk, Reanimator, Junk, Death and Taxes, Infect, etc. These decks are substantially different from some of the Creation stickies that may be interesting and popular brews, but are not decks you would want to bring to an event; they do not have the tournament data to suggest performance. I have also repeatedly said that the current decks in Established are out of date and need to be moved around, so please do not take its present state as an indication of what it will eventually look like.
Based on the goals you set above, you should do away with the "established" forum altogether and create a "MTGS Deck Showcase" Forum to showcase those primers that are:
1) Popular
2) High Quality and up to date
3) Beginning to show some tourney results - on any medium
That is basically the criteria we use for stickying a deck in Deck Creation. We do not need another subforum that accomplishes the role of Deck Creation stickies. Those threads are getting a ton of traffic as is, just by virtue of being stickied (and by virtue of the updated criteria for how they are stickied in the first place: They are already "popular" by definition).
Look at death and taxes for example. That thread is extremely popular, but is almost never played. Having it in a forum called "Established" is pretty misleading. Having it in a Deck Showcase forum makes a lot more sense. You could say the same thing for some of the others too like Merfolk.
There is nothing misleading about those two decks being in Established. I think that you have an inaccurate idea of what the MTGO metagame looks like. D&T makes up 1% of the online metagame today, 2% in August, and 2.5% in July. It has maintained those shares for over a year. Merfolk currently makes up 2% of the MTGO metagame, surpassing Gruul Zoo and Soul Sisters, and rivaling the prevalence of Bogles. Both decks also have over a dozen paper T8 finishes over the last 6-8 months. These decks do not quite fit the definition of "current metagame" representatives (as RG Tron or Twin), but they are definitely contenders that have "Established" their successes.
Leave Deck Creation forum alone. That is BY FAR the most popular and best forum in the whole modern category. Dont screw that up.
Not sure where this is coming from. I do not believe that either I nor any of the other staff have given any indication that we are doing anything different with Creation. I have streamlined the criteria for what gets a deck stickied, which was an improvement over the old version. But the subforum is staying as is.
Thanks for your reply, I feel I have a better idea of what you mean by Proven and Established now. I think you should definitely consider a cut off point with the results you show though, say 3-6 months, then dismiss the data and move decks accordingly to appropriate sections, if required.
The cutoff will probably be 6 months. Or it will be based on banning cycles; every two ban announcements constitutes 1 "cycle". Or we could do it for every announcement. That would mean that Proven gets updated either 2 or 4 times per year.
Also, please give serious thought to including a small definition in each of the different sections, it is a little confusing as it is now.
Absolutely. All sections will be accompanied with a stickied, "Read This", and succinct definition of why decks are in what forums. This hasn't been posted yet because, with the exception of Deck Creation, those criteria haven't yet been decided on.
Ok so why even bother having a thread to discuss the reorganizing of the sub forums. From what I can tell you are going to keep things 95% exactly the same as they are now.
Established will continue to be unused and pointless. The deck creation stickies are fine and get tons of traffic, but if you put some of them and some of the popular "established" threads in a deck showcase subforum you would probably get a bunch of traffic from those lemmings that would normally skip directly to the proven forum.
The reason established in vacant now is because the deck traffic here is divided into 2 sets:
1) People who only care about Tier 1 deck discussions
2) People who are interested in new creations
Neither group particularly cares about that "middle" group you keep defining as tier 1.5-2. Those decks are neither novel nor are they as good as the decks in proven. There is no point in keeping such a place here. If you had a deck showcase forum you would get traffic from both groups. The decks in the show case need not be Tier 1 contenders, they could just be interesting decks that have well written primers and lots of discussion.
Yes I get it, you think the deck creation stickies perform this function, but why not make it official? There is a ton of traffic that goes directly to Proven that would probably be interested in some of those stickies, but they will never read them because they are stuck in a forum called deck creation.
The Established forum is a complete bust. Unless you plan on making -major- changes to the threads that are in it then this whole discussion is completely pointless. Take a step back and think about what I am saying. Let go of the idea of having a forum dedicated to all of those tier 2ish decks with unpopular threads. Sure the decks may be popular, but if no discussion is going on in the threads what business do they have being showcased on a message board?
All of the things you are suggesting to change about Established will not fix the underlying problem that the threads about those decks are boring or have been developed to the point which no new content is being added. When the thread about a good deck reaches that point it needs to be moved out of the spotlight and into an archive so folks can reference it.
Here is what I would do if the decision were up to me:
4 Modern Subforums:
1) Proven - Tier 1 decks, stays the same
2) Deck Creation - remains the same
3) MTGS Deck Showcase - Contains high quality primers from Deck Creation, and popular threads from the old Established forum. As these threads die, they will be unstickied and return to Deck Creation, or if they were really good they get moved to:
4) Established Decks Archive - Contains the dead threads currently in Established. Will be the future home to those Tier 1.5ish primers whose threads have died. Proven decks whose threads have died can also come here. Discussion about these decks can continue here as new cards are released.
Here is what I would do if the decision were up to me:
4 Modern Subforums:
1) Proven - Tier 1 decks, stays the same
2) Deck Creation - remains the same
3) MTGS Deck Showcase - Contains high quality primers from Deck Creation, and popular threads from the old Established forum. As these threads die, they will be unstickied and return to Deck Creation, or if they were really good they get moved to:
4) Established Decks Archive - Contains the dead threads currently in Established. Will be the future home to those Tier 1.5ish primers whose threads have died. Proven decks whose threads have died can also come here. Discussion about these decks can continue here as new cards are released.
I'm only responding to this post because it basically encapsulates all of your arguments made in the one before it. If you think I have missed a point that you want me to address, just let me know.
It seems that your issues with Established, as it currently exists, are a) it's name and b) the criteria that gets decks into the subforum. Indeed, that second point about criteria is something that I am working to fix. That is why I have repeatedly stated that there are numerous threads in Established that probably shouldn't be there. There are a number of discussions in Established that represent boring decks or low-traffic conversations, and in many cases, those decks are also uncompetitive. Similarly, there might be decks that aren't in Creation that should be there. The question is, what are the least arbitrary and most justifiable criteria by which to select Established decks?
RE: Deck Showcase Forum
We are not creating a second subforum for a deck showcase when we already have stickies that perform that function. The stickied threads in Creation get a lot of traffic by virtue of their official, stickied status. There is just no need to add another layer of organization to fulfill a function that is already being fulfilled. I don't want to put you on the spot, but as far as I can tell, you are basically alone in this request. For basically everyone else that has posted here, the divisions make sense. They also made sense to the staff and users who created them in the not-so-distant past.
But none of that is to say that the forums don't have problems that shouldn't be fixed. I want Established to showcase any competitive deck that you could take to a tournament and use to get results. That includes obvious entries like Merfolk and Reanimator, but it also might include some of our popular and better-developed lists from Creation. But in all of those cases, performance is the common theme. And that gets us back to the specific criteria that would promote a deck to Established. This criteria should describe both the clear tier 2 decks that get lots of discussion (e.g. Merfolk) and also the more rogue decks that are still tournament contenders.
I approve, that should help any confusion in that regards. Do you have an date when you want the criteria to be agreed upon by? Will it be open to public discussion here? Like a poll with options or something.
I do want to discuss it here, but I don't necessarily want a poll. Popular opinion might not always know the best way to quantitatively select representative decks from the MTGO/Paper populations.
Here is what I am currently toying with for criteria. Note that this has changed since the last time I posted it. Also note that these are PRELIMINARY ideas and are open to revision:
Proven Competitive Decks Representing the Current Metagame
A deck is considered "Proven" if it fulfills one or more of the following criteria:
Has above average prevalence on MTGO (Average deck prevalence = 1.5% of the metagame)
Has 1+ Grand Prix Top 8 appearance in the last 6 months
Has above average prevalence in the Top 8 of paper events with 100+ players, all in the last 3 months (Average Top 8 prevalence = 2.5%)
Established Tournament Decks with Results
A deck is considered "Established" if it does not meet the requirements of "Proven" but still fulfills one or more of the following criteria:
Has finished 4-0/3-1 at 4+ dailies in the past 3 months
Has 1+ Grand Prix Top 16 appearance in the last 6 months
Has placed in the Top 8 of 1+ paper event with 50+ players in the past 3 months
Some of those numbers are based on data and won't be changed (the 1.5% in Proven, for example). But the time cutoffs can definitely be changed. Also, I would be willing to hear arguments about whether "Above average metagame appearance" is a good indicator of the current metagame (Although I have strong reason to believe that it is). I would also entertain arguments about smaller paper events, especially because not everyone has local access to large ones to showcase their awesome brews.
These criteria, just to use these current ones as examples, represent huge steps forward for how MTGS organizes its Modern decks. It not only keeps things current but it also fulfills MemoryLapse's concern about up and coming decks not getting the prestige and showcasing that they deserve.
Established Tournament Decks with Results
A deck is considered "Established" if it does not meet the requirements of "Proven" but still fulfills one or more of the following criteria:
Has finished 4-0/3-1 at 4+ dailies in the past 3 months
Has 1+ Grand Prix Top 16 appearance in the last 6 months
Has placed in the Top 8 of 1+ paper event with 50+ players in the past 3 months
These criteria, just to use these current ones as examples, represent huge steps forward for how MTGS organizes its Modern decks. It not only keeps things current but it also fulfills MemoryLapse's concern about up and coming decks not getting the prestige and showcasing that they deserve.
OP UPDATED WITH THESE NEW CRITERIA!
The main problem with this criteria, and the piece of my posts that you keep ignoring, is that you make no mention of the quality or popularity of the actual threads. A deck could fulfill all of those criteria you listed but have a crappy outdated primer and no new discussion taking place. Most of the threads in Established meet those criteria and they have dead threads.
You dont seem to understand that it is not the quality or potential of the specific deck that matters its the quality and popularity of the THREAD!!! If you are going to reorganize things, then why dont you showcase your true assets: THE POPULAR DISCUSSIONS.
Who cares about tier1.5-2 decks that no one talks about on the forum? They do not need a special forum, they are just basically being referenced for their lists. Put those decks in the archive.
The main problem with this criteria, and the piece of my posts that you keep ignoring, is that you make no mention of the quality or popularity of the actual threads. A deck could fulfill all of those criteria you listed but have a crappy outdated primer and no new discussion taking place. Most of the threads in Established meet those criteria and they have dead threads.
You dont seem to understand that it is not the quality or potential of the specific deck that matters its the quality and popularity of the THREAD!!! If you are going to reorganize things, then why dont you showcase your true assets: THE POPULAR DISCUSSIONS.
Who cares about tier1.5-2 decks that no one talks about on the forum? They do not need a special forum, they are just basically being referenced for their lists. Put those decks in the archive.
If a thread is popular, well-written, has active discussion, but does not also have performance, it isn't going in Established. That's misleading to new members and visitors, and it's inconsistent with other decks that go there. As I have said before, probably ten times now, we already have a way of showcasing popular, well-written, active threads that do not necessarily have tournament performance: Stickies in Deck Creation. It's a formal mechanism that generates a lot of traffic to those threads and keeps discussion going strong. It has worked for years and is working well today.
For the criteria, it it is giving us some false positives (i.e. if it is identifying some decks as Established that clearly don't belong there), then the criteria will get adjusted. Same for false negatives. But you need to understand that Established is not just a popularity contest, even if popularity is something we want to encourage. The forum is also about getting accurate information to users and giving them the OPTION to discuss a deck. For example, Infect has very, very little discussion going on, but a Modern forum without an Infect thread is woefully inadequate. New visitors need the opportunity to discuss an Established deck, even if they are not doing it en masse at any given time.
Our forum accomplishes two goals. It showcases popular threads and it showcases good decks. In some cases, those goals overlap. In other cases, they don't. Proven will always give the "best" decks, and incidentally, all of those threads are very popular and well-trafficked. Established will always exhibit decks that can be taken to a tournament and put up results, whether or not they are popular. Creation will sticky popular discussions and showcase those for the public. They get a lot of traffic and a lot of discussion just by virtue of being stickied.
At this point, I am going to stop this line of discussion. I have made my stance very clear, as you have yours. I respect your opinion but am not compelled by your arguments, because we are already accomplishing all of your goals in the current design (and with the redesign of Established which will eliminate most of the under-trafficked threads). Moreover, as far as I can tell, we are the only two people talking about this. So until another person decides to offer their opinion, this conversation is closed.
Why on earth should the popularity of the threads or quality of primers matter? Some of the decks in Established or may be downgraded to Established like Soul Sisters have been around since basically forever, so moving them into a Deck Creation Forum just because MTGS users haven't been discussing them for a while seems comical to me.
Many people looking to get into modern, alone the number of budget deck requests in Modern justifies the presence of a subforum like Established.
I never suggested moving them to the deck creation forum. I said move them to a new forum called Established Deck Archive. I am suggesting you delete the Established forum completely because it serves no purpose other than to house a couple popular threads and a bunch of dead ones. Then I suggested doing something, you know, useful with that spot by spotlighting popular threads, more so than the deck creation stickies.
If you guys dont want to do that, fine with me. Keep your established forum full of dead threads that people only visit to reference if that makes sense to you. I am pretty shocked at how little value moderators put on their true assets. Your assets are not dead threads about great decks, they are popular threads about any sort of deck.
In the business world companies that do not realize that their greatest assets are their employees do not stay in business. Think about it.
Soul Sisters for example may get downgraded to Established and there's not really a lot of discussion going on, so that kind of fits you criteria for Deck Creation.
Please correct me if I'm wrong or misinterpreted something, not trying to bash your ideas here.
If soul sisters was a dead thread it would get moved to #4 in my example the - Established Deck Archive, or if the term archive is repellent to some people call it Established Deck Index. It would be a place for dead threads of good decks to remain accessible. As new cards are created those threads may see some activity, but for the most part the threads are there simply to be referenced.
Nearly all of the decks currently in Established should be there. Maybe some of the Proven decks could go there as well if the threads are dead. Decks that go to the Showcase from Deck Creation and then die would return to deck creation unstickied UNLESS they proved to be fantastic and in that case they could retire in the Established Deck Archive.
This system seems flawless to me I have no idea why anyone would want to keep around the Established forum, even with modified criteria as they are suggesting because it is full of dead threads. What is the point of a non archive forum that houses nothing but dead threads?? Can someone please explain that to me?
Nearly all of the decks currently in Established should be there. Maybe some of the Proven decks could go there as well if the threads are dead. Decks that go to the Showcase from Deck Creation and then die would return to deck creation unstickied UNLESS they proved to be fantastic and in that case they could retire in the Established Deck Archive.
Why would we make a Showcase subforum when stickies in Creation are already fulfilling that function?
You also don't seem to understand that MTGS has numerous overlapping goals with its forums. I have already outlined them in regards to Modern. We accomplish the goal of showcasing popular threads through stickies in Creation. Popular threads? Check. We accomplish the goal of showing the current metagame and encouraging its discussion in Proven. Tier 1 talk? Check. And we accomplish the goal of exhibiting tournament-ready contenders, and allowing their development, in Established. High-performing deck talk? Check.
I think that you overvalue the threads like 8Rack and undervalue the ones like Death and Taxes. I am trying to give appropriate value to all of them and put those threads where they belong. Remember that when you search for "mtg Modern forum" that we are the first hit. That means we have a lot of different responsibilities to meet. It's just like The Source, the number one hit when you search for "mtg Legacy forum". They fill a lot of roles in the mtg Legacy scene and we have a similar obligation in the Modern one. That means showcasing popular deck in the appropriate place, sure, but it also means giving information about the format, about competitive decks, and a dozen other goals.
Why would we make a Showcase subforum when stickies in Creation are already fulfilling that function? To attract people that would normally go straight to the Proven forum.
You also don't seem to understand that MTGS has numerous overlapping goals with its forums. I have already outlined them in regards to Modern. We accomplish the goal of showcasing popular threads through stickies in Creation. Popular threads? Check. We accomplish the goal of showing the current metagame and encouraging its discussion in Proven. Tier 1 talk? Check. Agreed Proven is working as intended.
And we accomplish the goal of exhibiting tournament-ready contenders, and allowing their development, in Established. No. Established is currently functioning like a "good deck archive". Aside from a couple exceptions, most threads in that forum are dead. The fact that the threads are about decks that are supposed "contenders" is irrelevant. Dead threads are dead. Archive them for reference and move on. If any of those threads had been unstickied in Deck Creation they would be buried under dozens of pages..
High-performing deck talk? Check. Yes you have this, but most of it is happening outside of established.
I think that you overvalue the threads like 8Rack and undervalue the ones like Death and Taxes. No this is completely incorrect. In fact I used D&T as an example of the type of thread that is perfect for the Showcase forum. It is a lively thread filled with lots of development. I personally do not care much for the deck itself but I highly value the thread if only as a great read.
I am trying to give appropriate value to all of them and put those threads where they belong. Remember that when you search for "mtg Modern forum" that we are the first hit. That means we have a lot of different responsibilities to meet. It's just like The Source, the number one hit when you search for "mtg Legacy forum". They fill a lot of roles in the mtg Legacy scene and we have a similar obligation in the Modern one. That means showcasing popular deck in the appropriate place, sure, but it also means giving information about the format, about competitive decks, and a dozen other goals. Nothing in my suggestion interferes with any of those goals, even the ones you only allude to. In fact it promotes the idea of sharing information about competitive decks in a much more logical way while simultaneously creating a new and fun area for popular and well written primers of any calibur to be TEMPORARILY showcased while they remain popular.
I think Lapse is looking at old threads and not seeing a bigger picture. The idea was to have fresh Primers for all of the decks. If the threads are dead after that it will be evident and easy to remedy.
Maybe give the new movement time to work itself out? It hasn't even been a month. I expect better flow by October. If the model they are using doesn't work then you change it. You have some good ideas, but I think the ones in place now need time to pass or fail.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
The big problem with expecting updated primers all the time is that people don't keep them updated, or there aren't that many changes to the deck.
You can also see that decks are cyclical and some like Aggro loam are very FOTM.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
I think Lapse is looking at old threads and not seeing a bigger picture. The idea was to have fresh Primers for all of the decks. If the threads are dead after that it will be evident and easy to remedy.
Maybe give the new movement time to work itself out? It hasn't even been a month. I expect better flow by October. If the model they are using doesn't work then you change it. You have some good ideas, but I think the ones in place now need time to pass or fail.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying that the new system is already in place?????
Oh. My. God.
I never go into Established (like most people) so I just assumed what I have been looking at for the past couple days is the "old forum" that they wanted to revamp. You are now telling me that this is already the revamped version.
Yeah, you need to take a big step back and rethink your whole plan. The forum is even more useless and empty now than it was before. Im not trying to be obnoxious by saying that I am simply pointing out the hard truth.
Do you what you like with your forum, but I guarantee you my suggestion would generate more interest in the Deck Showcase forum than what you have now in the "thread graveyard" that is Established.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying that the new system is already in place?????
Oh. My. God.
I never go into Established (like most people) so I just assumed what I have been looking at for the past couple days is the "old forum" that they wanted to revamp. You are now telling me that this is already the revamped version.
At the risk of coming off as offensive, you need to calm down and take a breather. I have said, repeatedly and very explicitly, Established reorganization is not done. We are still making changes to both the criteria that gets decks there and, by extension of that changed criteria, the decks that are included in Established. I cannot be more clear on this and I am sorry if you do not understand.
Established is currently the holding ground for a number of threads that had once been scattered across Proven, and a number of threads that had once belonged in Established. It's getting fixed, but it's getting fixed at the right pace to ensure that we fix it properly. We have basically fixed Proven and we have basically fixed Creation. Creation had the sticky criteria tightened and clarified, and the stickied threads were themselves updated to reflect popular discussion. We are now tackling Established. You need to stop using the current threads in Established as examples of a dead forum. We know it's dead. We know threads are outdated. We know the discussions are stagnant. That's why we are fixing it. That is the entire point of this thread, and the entire point of the reorganization.
To attract people that would normally go straight to the Proven forum.
It sounds to me like you want to see popular discussions highlighted outside of Creation because you are worried that users are jumping straight to Proven and looking over Creation entirely. Given the amount of traffic in Creation, and to those stickied threads, I suspect that this is untrue. I also suspect you have zero hard evidence to back up your claim.
That said, one potential solution that I have long considered is to have a regular "Modern Showcase Article/Primer" thread in Modern General where a user writes an article on their deck and points visitors to the discussion on that deck. It would be stickied and regularly updated. This idea was something I was thinking about further down the line, but it's relevant now. Such an article showcase would not only address your niche, personal issue in regards to showcasing popular decks (remember: You are the only user I know of arguing for it), but it would also increase the number of quality Modern articles out there on the internet. We have a lot of knowledgeable posters and decent writers on our site, and it would be great to give them some air time.
Maybe give the new movement time to work itself out? It hasn't even been a month. I expect better flow by October. If the model they are using doesn't work then you change it. You have some good ideas, but I think the ones in place now need time to pass or fail.
Not only has it been less than a month since changes were made, but the changes are not even done. Proven is basically done, but we still haven't finalized criteria. Established is just getting started. Creation is probably the most done, but it will still likely undergo changes. Remember that we did most of our first round deck moves around 8/20/2013. We did our Creation moves around 8/30/2013. Everyone needs to maintain some strategic perspective here when thinking about time lines.
At the risk of coming off as offensive, you need to calm down and take a breather. I have said, repeatedly and very explicitly, Established reorganization is not done. We are still making changes to both the criteria that gets decks there and, by extension of that changed criteria, the decks that are included in Established. I cannot be more clear on this and I am sorry if you do not understand. I'm calm. I was just flabbergasted that the Established revamp had already taken place and what is there currently is supposed to be considered an improvement over the old one.
Established is currently the holding ground for a number of threads that had once been scattered across Proven, and a number of threads that had once belonged in Established. It's getting fixed, but it's getting fixed at the right pace to ensure that we fix it properly. We have basically fixed Proven and we have basically fixed Creation. Creation had the sticky criteria tightened and clarified, and the stickied threads were themselves updated to reflect popular discussion. We are now tackling Established. You need to stop using the current threads in Established as examples of a dead forum. We know it's dead. We know threads are outdated. We know the discussions are stagnant. That's why we are fixing it. That is the entire point of this thread, and the entire point of the reorganization. But all you are doign is setting up criteria for what belongs in your "established" and what does not, and none of that criteria seems based on the popularity of the decks discussion thread. This seems completely backwards to me. Why on earth would a message board place more value on a dead thread than a popular one? Just because the thread is about a deck that is Good(tm)?
It sounds to me like you want to see popular discussions highlighted outside of Creation because you are worried that users are jumping straight to Proven and looking over Creation entirely. Given the amount of traffic in Creation, and to those stickied threads, I suspect that this is untrue. I also suspect you have zero hard evidence to back up your claim. Well yuo are correct about this. I have no proof that people go directly to Proven. All I have is my personal experience with this forum. I never go into Established and very rarely go into Proven. I spend a lot of time in the Creation forum. A causual glance over the Proven section shows me a bunch of regulars there that I never see posting in creation, but that is not exactly proof I suppose. Even though proven and established hold no interest to me I would be quite interested in an MTGS Deck Showcase forum. I am a pretty normal person, I think it is reasonable to assume that some fraction of the total mtgs population would feel the same way.
That said, one potential solution that I have long considered is to have a regular "Modern Showcase Article/Primer" thread in Modern General where a user writes an article on their deck and points visitors to the discussion on that deck. It would be stickied and regularly updated. This idea was something I was thinking about further down the line, but it's relevant now. Such an article showcase would not only address your niche, personal issue in regards to showcasing popular decks (remember: You are the only user I know of arguing for it), but it would also increase the number of quality Modern articles out there on the internet. We have a lot of knowledgeable posters and decent writers on our site, and it would be great to give them some air time.
Not only has it been less than a month since changes were made, but the changes are not even done. Proven is basically done, but we still haven't finalized criteria. Established is just getting started. Creation is probably the most done, but it will still likely undergo changes. Remember that we did most of our first round deck moves around 8/20/2013. We did our Creation moves around 8/30/2013. Everyone needs to maintain some strategic perspective here when thinking about time lines. Shrug. I guess you can do whatever you want. I think the underlying problem is that you or whoever is in charge of this whole project places more value on good decks than they do on good threads. Unless you guys are willing to consider shifting your priorities in this regard I am basically wasting my time talking about it. Theres not much else to say I guess, the Established forum pretty much speaks for itself. If it were my I would cut my losses by scraping it and starting over with a fresh new idea. Your call though. At the end of the day Deck Creation is such a fantastic place, I am pretty content with things as is. Could they be much better? Sure, but I am not gonna hold my breath or waste my time with suggestions that fall on deaf ears.
Ok I'm done with this. Mine is blue. Hopefully you take the advice to heart. Whatever you do this is still the best forum to talk about MTG so thanks for that.
Established will continue to be unused and pointless. The deck creation stickies are fine and get tons of traffic, but if you put some of them and some of the popular "established" threads in a deck showcase subforum you would probably get a bunch of traffic from those lemmings that would normally skip directly to the proven forum.
If you guys dont want to do that, fine with me. Keep your established forum full of dead threads that people only visit to reference if that makes sense to you. I am pretty shocked at how little value moderators put on their true assets. Your assets are not dead threads about great decks, they are popular threads about any sort of deck.
I just don't understand why you think that popularity adds validity to a deck that does not perform well. For example, I have been subscribed to threads such as Modern Ninjas and Knights which have a firm and dedicated following and regularly attract people new to the format. When I was subscribed to them I was getting email alerts every day, sometimes indicating multiple posts, and the thread were always looking at the newest cards to add to the archetype. They were very popular, sometimes more popular than D&T (which has periods where there might not be a new post for a week), but they have no results to speak of. If I am understanding your intention correctly you would place Ninjas in the same subforum and as prominently as D&T, and that is just absurd. Modern Ninjas is in no way established just because it is popular.
I think part of the root of your position can be traced to the fact that you give little weight to tournament and/or pro results, which you have expressed countless times on MTGS. The conflict is that most players do care about decks that have results, because they want to play a deck that has a chance of winning, not a deck people just talk about a lot on a message board.
I think the Mods see the forum architecture as a tool for illustrating the current metagame as accurately as possible.
We appreciate the constructive criticism, so no worries as coming off as aggressive.
1) For the archetype division, it's an added layer of complexity that is much less relevant in Modern than it is in other formats. Sure, we have some "true" representatives of each archetype (UWR for control, Affinity for aggro, Storm for combo, etc.), but we also have a lot of bleeding going on between archetypes (Melira/Kiki Pod, RG Tron, Mono U Tron, Infect, UR Delver, etc.). This makes it much harder for new players and site visitors to find decks. If I am a new player to Modern, I would have no clue to look for Soul Sisters in the aggro forum, even though that deck is technically aggro. Or does it even belong there at all? Hatebears has aggro and midrange elements. Tempo (e.g. Delver) isn't really midrange or aggro or control, so does that get its own subforum? All of those questions are easily resolved by putting the threads in just the "Proven" subforum and leaving it at that, which is the final decision of the staff.
2) I understand that some veteran forumgoers want to see all similar decks in one place, such as Death and Taxes going with Hatebears, or UW Tron going with RG Tron. But in some cases, this can be very misleading for new (and old) players who want the most accurate information about the forum. Consider a deck like Tron. RG Tron has frequent MTGO wins and lots of paper performances. UW Tron, however, sees a lot less play, comparatively speaking, and almost never shows up in dailies. It's inaccurate to say that UW Tron is "proven" or solidly tier 1, unlike RG Tron which definitely fits both of those categories. So if I am a new player and see UW Tron with RG Tron, I might think they are both proven even though that isn't quite true. The new organization makes that much more clear, and that is why we are going with it for the foreseeable future.
I collect the data on my own from MTGO along with a few other friends of mine. It is a time-intensive process but it does lead to an extremely accurate portrait of the metagame. All other websites, to my knowledge, only use the data reported from Wizards: 4-0/3-1 decks from a single Daily per day. Given that there are between 4-5 dailies per day, and dozens of 2-2 or worse decks that are unreported, these sites do not give great estimates about deck prevalence.
Of those you mentioned, Delver and Storm are absolutely Proven decks. Storm sees as much play on MTGO as Hatebears, Kiki Pod, and Bogles. Delver sees as much as Melira Pod and more than BG Rock, Scapeshift, and Burn; in fact, Delver is currently the 7th most played deck online.
Life and Living End represent interesting cases. Life/Marty/Soul Sisters is one of the oldest decks on MTGO to this day. It still has about a 1-2% metagame share, and it has some paper performances over the past 8 months. Although it's not as strong as, say, Twin, it definitely gets played. Living End is similar, with a consistent presence, some very high profile finishes, but not a big following or lots of prevalence. We are still deciding what to do with decks like this. They don't belong in Established alongside decks like UW Tron, Goblins, and Boros, but they also aren't quite at the level of Jund or UWR Control.
We could use more flexible criteria for deciding what decks go where. That lets us pick decks that fit your average MTGO metagame, and it gives us freedom to move things around. Or we could use a harder, but somewhat artificial, cutoff point for what decks get included in what subforum. That would give us some objective justification to our organization, but it might be too rigid for giving players information about what decks they need to prepare against (and what decks they can play).
Actually I have a bunch of 3-1 finishes in MTGO and one 4-0 finish with 8Rack. I have screen shots and qualifier points to prove this if needed. I also keep my primer updated with current lists and video replays. Does that qualify for something other than Deck Creation?
If not, it's fine. I dont really care where my primer lists go as long as the awesome discussion continues. Either way, I was planning on doing an updated video primer since the deck has developed quite a bit since the original was made.
Also I have another primer I want to work on that will maintain the same quality as my older primers i.e. in depth written primer and accompanying videos.
Right now on MTGO, there is an appreciable correlation between which decks are widely played and which decks are successful. That's absolutely true in the instance of two of the decks you mentioned. Delver has the same win rate (game wins / total games played) as Melira Pod and UWR Control. Storm has a higher win rate, comparable to Twin and RG Tron and surpassed only by BG Rock and Affinity. Both decks are also widely played. By every MTGO metric, these two decks deserve to be in Proven today.
We get into trickier territory when we look at a deck like Living End and start considering paper events. Living End got 2nd at a major Grand Prix and probably should have won it. It saw a fair amount of play throughout both July and August (comparable to Storm, Gruul Zoo, and RG Tron), and has only recently dwindled online. It also saw some PTQ Top 8s during the season. That strikes me as "Proven", at least for now: We can always "demote" it if the deck falls too heavily out of favor. Soul Sisters is in a similar situation. It only makes up about 2% of the MTGO metagame, but it has held that 2% for essentially 1-2 years at this point. From July-August, it was the 10th most played deck online.
Well, they show the selection of 4-0/3-1 decks because it's the only data that they have access to. Using the Wizards public data, you can try to estimate the metagame but you often won't get it right. For example, mtgtop8.com suggests that Birthing Pod has made up 15% of the online metagame (both Kiki and Melira) over the last 2 weeks. But the real share is closer to 8%. As another, more pertinent, example, Storm doesn't even show up on the radar for mtgtop8's 2 week perspective, but we know it makes up about 3-4% of the metagame. This is the sad consequence of a biased sample, and that's what my data collection tries to prevent.
Generally, if a deck is being widely played on MTGO, it is also probably winning a lot. Or it is at least winning enough to be a contender. There are some small exceptions to this; back in July, Mono U Tron made up about 3.5% of the total metagame, but barely 1% of the 4-0/3-1 decks. Similarly, today, UWR Control is the worst performing deck of the big decks played online, but it is still clearly a Proven contender. The point is that prevalence often means performance on MTGO, and in cases where it doesn't, we can make exceptions. But from a data perspective alone, the top 12 widely-played decks are identical to the top 12 decks that go 4-0/3-1.
As for the definition of "Proven", it is the same now as it has been for months:
PROVEN: Competitive Decks Representing the Current Metagame
The current metagame is necessarily a function of decks that are both present and performing. In practice, this includes decks that are a) prevalent and high performing and b) prevalent but not as high performing as others. Because if you are designing a testing gauntlet or preparing for your next event, you will likely meet those decks even if they aren't the single most successful decks out there. Our goal on the site is to give a new player an accurate representation of the average Modern metagame, and we think that all lists in the Proven section (with maybe 1-2 exceptions) accomplish that.
Both Mill and Restore Balance have similar 4-0/3-1 finishes, and neither of those are going out of Creation any time soon. We are still working on the cutoff criteria for that promotion, but my mental criteria for Established is as follows:
Established decks must have made up 1% of the MTGO metagame in the last X months (3-6; still unclear the exact range) and/or have at least 1 paper top 8 finish in a major event with 100+ players, or a top 16 in a Grand Prix.
That's a working definition more than a concrete one, so don't quote me on it yet. But it gives 8Rack, not to mention Mill and Balance, something to strive towards.
Seems a bit arbitrary to me. I am perfectly fine with things to stay the way they are now, but if you are going about reorganizing things I would think it should be based on something a bit more concrete. They way you guys are going about it basically boils down to "the popular decks get showcased". If your deck is unpopular but still good enough to win it does not deserve to get "moved up". You need to consider that some decks only function at peak efficiency BECAUSE they are unknown and unpopular. Being rare isn't a bad thing, in fact it could be one of your deck's biggest assets because the lemming netdeckers will not be carrying answers for your deck.
I think you guys should prioritize activity / interest in the deck as well as quality of the primer along side tourney results. Take a look at a lot of the established lists with old / outdated primers that made it through "the culling". Almost none of the threads in that forum see as much activity as the stickies in deck creation.
There are a lot of problems with Established:
You have got several decks in Established that could be grouped together as "Gifts". All of those have outdated primers and havent had ANY activity at all in weeks, and very little activity over the past couple months. YOu should merge all of those threads together in one area and then MAYBE you would create enough discussion to warrant a spotlight.
Furthermore, you also have a bunch of overlapping midrange / board control decks that could all fall under a single "mid range" category. Pretty much the rest of the decks in there could be grouped together as Full spectrum aggro and Glass cannon combo.
You should group similar strategies together in a sub forum. This would possibly generate some more activity in those threads. As it stands now the established forum seems uninteresting. Very few people are even posting in it, and the primers are almost all out of date. Why are you guys keeping them there? Take Assault Loam as one example. Over the past 4 months there have been barely 2 pages of posts in that thread. The primer is outdated. No one is playing the deck or really talking about it in articles or anything. And yet it deserves to stay in Established? There are many more examples, just look through some of the threads.
I also really dislike the idea of make FOUR subforums for decks. 3 is already too much as you can clearly see by the lack of activity in Established. In fact if you guys are planning on keeping that type of thread in the established section I much PREFER keeping 8rack and any future primers I make in the creation forum. There is a lot more activity going on there, and isnt that the most important thing at the end of the day?
Established is a bit of a different issue from Proven because its definition allows for more flexibility. Established decks are "Tournament Decks with Results" per the definition of the subforum. Theoretically, this could mean any deck with any tournament result ever!! But that's clearly not it's intention, at leas as I read it. It suggests to me that Established decks are a level below Proven. They are good decks with results, but not the same results as Proven ones. They also don't necessarily represent a metagame even if they win games
PROVEN
Let's define Proven first (nothing in stone; just some preliminary definitions). Looking over the online numbers, 3% prevalence for a 2-3 month period is about accurate for assessing the MTGO decks to beat. Those decks should also have 4-0/3-1 shares that are comparable to their metagame shares. For paper events, we can define "Proven" as decks with 1+ Top 8 finish at a Grand Prix or multiple (# TBD) finishes at 100+ player events. All paper events having to be in the last 6-8 months. We could even add Grand Prix Day 2 prevalence in there as an additional metric.
ESTABLISHED
To me, it follows that Established should be something just below that, so we want criteria that matches this definition. What might that look like? For online prevalence, perhaps 1%-3% of the MTGO metagame. For paper events, 1+ Top 8 finish at 1-2 paper events with 100+ players. Or a top 16 at a Grand Prix. Given the Proven criteria, this seems like a reasonable step down.
And yes, we could argue about what makes a measure objective versus arbitrary, but that's not really an important point. Most other sites and subforums have way less stringent criteria for what goes where, and ultimately, defining cutoffs is just an arbitrary business. In this case, I can at least support the cutoffs with justifications; the 3% prevalence cutoff is the average plus one standard deviation of the population.
Agreed, but such a deck is still going to need to have some big performance to back it up. And that means more than just Daily wins. To me, that means T8ing at a paper event with 100+ players, or T16ing at a Grand Prix. If a deck lacked the MTGO or paper prevalence but still managed to perform at those events, I would be happy to put it in Established. I would also be open to other metrics of performance that would separate a rare but strong deck from decks that are just rare and bad.
We agree. That's why I am having this conversation with you all here.
Established appears to have two tiers of decks. It has decks that , probably belong in Established (e.g. Merfolk, Reanimator, Junk, etc.), and it has decks that really need to be in Creation (Goblins, Boros, etc.). The threads in the former category see lots of traffic and lots of play. The decks in the latter category are relics of previous forum organizations, or band-aid fixes for the dismemberment of the old Proven.
I am, however, going to restate a firm line on organization: There will not be any more deck subforums. In practice, these subforums had very little activity outside of the main thread. There's a myth that all sorts of discussions happened in these subs, but it's not true; I did the research. And what little activity did happen outside could easily have been occurring inside the main thread. Or it could take place in Modern General. More importantly, these proven subforums tended to be clogged full of similar decks that were not "Proven" by any means. Tron was the worst offender in this regard (UW Tron is not even close to RG Tron), but Jund and UWR Control had similar issues. Finally, subforums make it much harder to change the organization as metagames shift. So for all those reasons, subforums for individual decks are out.
In reorganizing the forums, the objective is to provide accurate and useful information to players. We want our decks to reflect both the current metagame (Proven) and the competitive decks (Proven and Established). So yes, decks are going to be kicked out of Established and probably Proven in the near future. Proven is very close to being accurate. Established has work to do. But the definitions I have offered in this post, along with the criteria, give some idea of the thought process behind the organization. And again, I am happy to hear criticisms, suggestions, and ideas about those cutoff points.
Why?
Why does it need anything more than a high degree of interest, a well written primer and some concrete tourney results from MTGO that proves that it is viable, if only on a small scale? I would much rather have a forum dedicated to developing interesting unheard of decks than a rehash of Tier 1 spin offs that are basically sub optimal versions of those same Tier 1 strategies.
Now that is just totally subjective and pretty biased as well. What makes paper magic more "legit" than MTGO? I could (and have in the past) make paper magic disciples look very silly when they start thinking their medium is in any way superior to the digital game.
Now I will grant you that you are a mod, and this is the type of decision that your subjective opinion is allowed to be acted upon. That is the mod's job, I get that. Still, I think your priorities are pretty backwards.
At the end of the day, this is just a message board. The most valuable threads are the ones that are interesting enough to people to make them want to post. YOu should take a look at what deck threads are POPULAR and spotlight those threads. Its not the popularity of the deck that should matter here, it's the popularity of the THREAD.
Who cares if a deck Tier 1 or 2 or whatever. If no one cares enough to bother posting anything about it, why bother spotlighting it on a message board? Put those type of decks in a reference archive.
Bottom line: Your most valuable assets are your popular discussions. You should take a look at those threads and pick the ones that have proper and up to date primers and put THOSE threads into their own forum. You dont even have to call it established if you feel that would be misleading. Call it "MTGS Deck Spotlight" or "Decks of the Moment" something along those lines. When those threads begin to die off in popularity, you move them out and put in new ones.
Simple.
These two points are similar, so I am going to address them together. Ultimately, the division between digital and paper needs to come down to giving appropriate weight to both results. I do give slightly (emphasis on slightly) more weight to paper finishes, but that has nothing to do with the quality of players. Player skill is probably about the same between your average 110 person Daily and your average 110 person paper tournament. It has everything to do, however, with the length of events.
Dailies are 4 rounds. A 100 person tournament is 7. A 130 person tournament is 8. As you probably know from playing in events yourself, there is a huge difference between 4 round events (the Swiss norm for a 16 person event) and 7-8 round events. Someone who wins at 4 rounds might have gotten lucky. The more rounds you add to that, the more we eliminate luck. If some guy takes down a GP, I'm willing to chalk that up to a lot more than luck. If some guy takes down a 40 man PTQ, that could just be a series of good matchups and good draws.
We account for this by giving multiple ways for a deck to get elevated to Established. If you T8 at a large paper event, or T16 at a GP, that's good enough to get you to Established for a few months. But let's say that the deck in question has only MTGO appearances. That's totally fine! If a deck gets 4-0/3-1 at X or more dailies over the past Y months, then it can also get moved up to Established. X and Y would have to be chosen here to both ensure that quality decks were moving up but also to respect that MTGO isn't much less accurate than paper.
When you type in "MTG Modern" into a search engine (at least in my city and IP range), the fourth hit on the page, and first forum hit, is our site. When you type in "MTG Modern forum", we are the first hit period. This means that our site is a go-to hub for information about the Modern format and all of its dimensions. This includes the current metagame (Proven), decks that are viable but not necessarily representative of the current metagame (Established), and decks that are fun brews with no/minimal tournament successes (Creation). In my view, and that of the staff and probably most players, you go to a forum like this for two reasons. The first is to figure out what deck to play. The second is to figure out what decks to beat. There are some additional goals one might have, such as general format discussion or meeting likeminded players, but from an information perspective, those are probably the big two.
Unfortunately, highlighting popular threads does not fulfill either of those objectives. But that doesn't mean it isn't important! I agree that our site should absolutely showcase popular threads, and we do that in different ways across the forum. In Deck Creation, it's by sticking threads. In fact, Deck Creation stickies are almost explicitly a function of popularity and nothing else (at least, under the new organization). But it takes more than popularity alone for a deck to move out of that forum. Otherwise, we are misleading players abut what decks are competitive and which are not.
Look you have your "Proven" forum for people (lemmings) who just want to type something in google then come to the site to look at the overall best decks of the format. IN the proven section they can figure out which one to play and what they need to beat.
Why do we need an established forum to accomplish those two goals?? If you keep established the same as it is now or mostly the same then please keep me out of it. No one goes there except for a few threads, and those few exceptions would certainly get more attention in the deck creation.
Based on the goals you set above, you should do away with the "established" forum altogether and create a "MTGS Deck Showcase" Forum to showcase those primers that are:
1) Popular
2) High Quality and up to date
3) Beginning to show some tourney results - on any medium
Look at death and taxes for example. That thread is extremely popular, but is almost never played. Having it in a forum called "Established" is pretty misleading. Having it in a Deck Showcase forum makes a lot more sense. You could say the same thing for some of the others too like Merfolk.
Currently there is no reason to want to get your thread moved to Established. People aren't going there to look for new deck concepts, nor are they going there looking for Tier 1 decks. The words "Established" and "Proven" are completely interchangeable in this case, but the decks that reside within those headings are not. Just get rid of the Established forum, keep the threads that are worthy of spotlighting and archive the rest.
Then create a new forum for the good threads in Established and the good threads in Deck creation that has a meaningful AND TEMPORARY title like Deck SHowcase. IF the threads in there start to die, they can be easily replaced with others without hurting anyones feelings or affecting the perception of the deck.
Leave Deck Creation forum alone. That is BY FAR the most popular and best forum in the whole modern category. Dont screw that up.
As I have said repeatedly throughout the thread, Established is for decks that do not necessarily comprise the current metagame, but are nonetheless competitive. This includes decks like Merfolk, Reanimator, Junk, Death and Taxes, Infect, etc. These decks are substantially different from some of the Creation stickies that may be interesting and popular brews, but are not decks you would want to bring to an event; they do not have the tournament data to suggest performance. I have also repeatedly said that the current decks in Established are out of date and need to be moved around, so please do not take its present state as an indication of what it will eventually look like.
That is basically the criteria we use for stickying a deck in Deck Creation. We do not need another subforum that accomplishes the role of Deck Creation stickies. Those threads are getting a ton of traffic as is, just by virtue of being stickied (and by virtue of the updated criteria for how they are stickied in the first place: They are already "popular" by definition).
There is nothing misleading about those two decks being in Established. I think that you have an inaccurate idea of what the MTGO metagame looks like. D&T makes up 1% of the online metagame today, 2% in August, and 2.5% in July. It has maintained those shares for over a year. Merfolk currently makes up 2% of the MTGO metagame, surpassing Gruul Zoo and Soul Sisters, and rivaling the prevalence of Bogles. Both decks also have over a dozen paper T8 finishes over the last 6-8 months. These decks do not quite fit the definition of "current metagame" representatives (as RG Tron or Twin), but they are definitely contenders that have "Established" their successes.
Not sure where this is coming from. I do not believe that either I nor any of the other staff have given any indication that we are doing anything different with Creation. I have streamlined the criteria for what gets a deck stickied, which was an improvement over the old version. But the subforum is staying as is.
The cutoff will probably be 6 months. Or it will be based on banning cycles; every two ban announcements constitutes 1 "cycle". Or we could do it for every announcement. That would mean that Proven gets updated either 2 or 4 times per year.
Absolutely. All sections will be accompanied with a stickied, "Read This", and succinct definition of why decks are in what forums. This hasn't been posted yet because, with the exception of Deck Creation, those criteria haven't yet been decided on.
Established will continue to be unused and pointless. The deck creation stickies are fine and get tons of traffic, but if you put some of them and some of the popular "established" threads in a deck showcase subforum you would probably get a bunch of traffic from those lemmings that would normally skip directly to the proven forum.
The reason established in vacant now is because the deck traffic here is divided into 2 sets:
1) People who only care about Tier 1 deck discussions
2) People who are interested in new creations
Neither group particularly cares about that "middle" group you keep defining as tier 1.5-2. Those decks are neither novel nor are they as good as the decks in proven. There is no point in keeping such a place here. If you had a deck showcase forum you would get traffic from both groups. The decks in the show case need not be Tier 1 contenders, they could just be interesting decks that have well written primers and lots of discussion.
Yes I get it, you think the deck creation stickies perform this function, but why not make it official? There is a ton of traffic that goes directly to Proven that would probably be interested in some of those stickies, but they will never read them because they are stuck in a forum called deck creation.
The Established forum is a complete bust. Unless you plan on making -major- changes to the threads that are in it then this whole discussion is completely pointless. Take a step back and think about what I am saying. Let go of the idea of having a forum dedicated to all of those tier 2ish decks with unpopular threads. Sure the decks may be popular, but if no discussion is going on in the threads what business do they have being showcased on a message board?
All of the things you are suggesting to change about Established will not fix the underlying problem that the threads about those decks are boring or have been developed to the point which no new content is being added. When the thread about a good deck reaches that point it needs to be moved out of the spotlight and into an archive so folks can reference it.
4 Modern Subforums:
1) Proven - Tier 1 decks, stays the same
2) Deck Creation - remains the same
3) MTGS Deck Showcase - Contains high quality primers from Deck Creation, and popular threads from the old Established forum. As these threads die, they will be unstickied and return to Deck Creation, or if they were really good they get moved to:
4) Established Decks Archive - Contains the dead threads currently in Established. Will be the future home to those Tier 1.5ish primers whose threads have died. Proven decks whose threads have died can also come here. Discussion about these decks can continue here as new cards are released.
I'm only responding to this post because it basically encapsulates all of your arguments made in the one before it. If you think I have missed a point that you want me to address, just let me know.
It seems that your issues with Established, as it currently exists, are a) it's name and b) the criteria that gets decks into the subforum. Indeed, that second point about criteria is something that I am working to fix. That is why I have repeatedly stated that there are numerous threads in Established that probably shouldn't be there. There are a number of discussions in Established that represent boring decks or low-traffic conversations, and in many cases, those decks are also uncompetitive. Similarly, there might be decks that aren't in Creation that should be there. The question is, what are the least arbitrary and most justifiable criteria by which to select Established decks?
RE: Deck Showcase Forum
We are not creating a second subforum for a deck showcase when we already have stickies that perform that function. The stickied threads in Creation get a lot of traffic by virtue of their official, stickied status. There is just no need to add another layer of organization to fulfill a function that is already being fulfilled. I don't want to put you on the spot, but as far as I can tell, you are basically alone in this request. For basically everyone else that has posted here, the divisions make sense. They also made sense to the staff and users who created them in the not-so-distant past.
But none of that is to say that the forums don't have problems that shouldn't be fixed. I want Established to showcase any competitive deck that you could take to a tournament and use to get results. That includes obvious entries like Merfolk and Reanimator, but it also might include some of our popular and better-developed lists from Creation. But in all of those cases, performance is the common theme. And that gets us back to the specific criteria that would promote a deck to Established. This criteria should describe both the clear tier 2 decks that get lots of discussion (e.g. Merfolk) and also the more rogue decks that are still tournament contenders.
I do want to discuss it here, but I don't necessarily want a poll. Popular opinion might not always know the best way to quantitatively select representative decks from the MTGO/Paper populations.
Here is what I am currently toying with for criteria. Note that this has changed since the last time I posted it. Also note that these are PRELIMINARY ideas and are open to revision:
Proven
Competitive Decks Representing the Current Metagame
A deck is considered "Proven" if it fulfills one or more of the following criteria:
Established
Tournament Decks with Results
A deck is considered "Established" if it does not meet the requirements of "Proven" but still fulfills one or more of the following criteria:
Some of those numbers are based on data and won't be changed (the 1.5% in Proven, for example). But the time cutoffs can definitely be changed. Also, I would be willing to hear arguments about whether "Above average metagame appearance" is a good indicator of the current metagame (Although I have strong reason to believe that it is). I would also entertain arguments about smaller paper events, especially because not everyone has local access to large ones to showcase their awesome brews.
These criteria, just to use these current ones as examples, represent huge steps forward for how MTGS organizes its Modern decks. It not only keeps things current but it also fulfills MemoryLapse's concern about up and coming decks not getting the prestige and showcasing that they deserve.
OP UPDATED WITH THESE NEW CRITERIA!
The main problem with this criteria, and the piece of my posts that you keep ignoring, is that you make no mention of the quality or popularity of the actual threads. A deck could fulfill all of those criteria you listed but have a crappy outdated primer and no new discussion taking place. Most of the threads in Established meet those criteria and they have dead threads.
You dont seem to understand that it is not the quality or potential of the specific deck that matters its the quality and popularity of the THREAD!!! If you are going to reorganize things, then why dont you showcase your true assets: THE POPULAR DISCUSSIONS.
Who cares about tier1.5-2 decks that no one talks about on the forum? They do not need a special forum, they are just basically being referenced for their lists. Put those decks in the archive.
If a thread is popular, well-written, has active discussion, but does not also have performance, it isn't going in Established. That's misleading to new members and visitors, and it's inconsistent with other decks that go there. As I have said before, probably ten times now, we already have a way of showcasing popular, well-written, active threads that do not necessarily have tournament performance: Stickies in Deck Creation. It's a formal mechanism that generates a lot of traffic to those threads and keeps discussion going strong. It has worked for years and is working well today.
For the criteria, it it is giving us some false positives (i.e. if it is identifying some decks as Established that clearly don't belong there), then the criteria will get adjusted. Same for false negatives. But you need to understand that Established is not just a popularity contest, even if popularity is something we want to encourage. The forum is also about getting accurate information to users and giving them the OPTION to discuss a deck. For example, Infect has very, very little discussion going on, but a Modern forum without an Infect thread is woefully inadequate. New visitors need the opportunity to discuss an Established deck, even if they are not doing it en masse at any given time.
Our forum accomplishes two goals. It showcases popular threads and it showcases good decks. In some cases, those goals overlap. In other cases, they don't. Proven will always give the "best" decks, and incidentally, all of those threads are very popular and well-trafficked. Established will always exhibit decks that can be taken to a tournament and put up results, whether or not they are popular. Creation will sticky popular discussions and showcase those for the public. They get a lot of traffic and a lot of discussion just by virtue of being stickied.
At this point, I am going to stop this line of discussion. I have made my stance very clear, as you have yours. I respect your opinion but am not compelled by your arguments, because we are already accomplishing all of your goals in the current design (and with the redesign of Established which will eliminate most of the under-trafficked threads). Moreover, as far as I can tell, we are the only two people talking about this. So until another person decides to offer their opinion, this conversation is closed.
I never suggested moving them to the deck creation forum. I said move them to a new forum called Established Deck Archive. I am suggesting you delete the Established forum completely because it serves no purpose other than to house a couple popular threads and a bunch of dead ones. Then I suggested doing something, you know, useful with that spot by spotlighting popular threads, more so than the deck creation stickies.
If you guys dont want to do that, fine with me. Keep your established forum full of dead threads that people only visit to reference if that makes sense to you. I am pretty shocked at how little value moderators put on their true assets. Your assets are not dead threads about great decks, they are popular threads about any sort of deck.
In the business world companies that do not realize that their greatest assets are their employees do not stay in business. Think about it.
If soul sisters was a dead thread it would get moved to #4 in my example the - Established Deck Archive, or if the term archive is repellent to some people call it Established Deck Index. It would be a place for dead threads of good decks to remain accessible. As new cards are created those threads may see some activity, but for the most part the threads are there simply to be referenced.
Nearly all of the decks currently in Established should be there. Maybe some of the Proven decks could go there as well if the threads are dead. Decks that go to the Showcase from Deck Creation and then die would return to deck creation unstickied UNLESS they proved to be fantastic and in that case they could retire in the Established Deck Archive.
This system seems flawless to me I have no idea why anyone would want to keep around the Established forum, even with modified criteria as they are suggesting because it is full of dead threads. What is the point of a non archive forum that houses nothing but dead threads?? Can someone please explain that to me?
Why would we make a Showcase subforum when stickies in Creation are already fulfilling that function?
You also don't seem to understand that MTGS has numerous overlapping goals with its forums. I have already outlined them in regards to Modern. We accomplish the goal of showcasing popular threads through stickies in Creation. Popular threads? Check. We accomplish the goal of showing the current metagame and encouraging its discussion in Proven. Tier 1 talk? Check. And we accomplish the goal of exhibiting tournament-ready contenders, and allowing their development, in Established. High-performing deck talk? Check.
I think that you overvalue the threads like 8Rack and undervalue the ones like Death and Taxes. I am trying to give appropriate value to all of them and put those threads where they belong. Remember that when you search for "mtg Modern forum" that we are the first hit. That means we have a lot of different responsibilities to meet. It's just like The Source, the number one hit when you search for "mtg Legacy forum". They fill a lot of roles in the mtg Legacy scene and we have a similar obligation in the Modern one. That means showcasing popular deck in the appropriate place, sure, but it also means giving information about the format, about competitive decks, and a dozen other goals.
Maybe give the new movement time to work itself out? It hasn't even been a month. I expect better flow by October. If the model they are using doesn't work then you change it. You have some good ideas, but I think the ones in place now need time to pass or fail.
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
You can also see that decks are cyclical and some like Aggro loam are very FOTM.
Wait wait wait. Are you saying that the new system is already in place?????
Oh. My. God.
I never go into Established (like most people) so I just assumed what I have been looking at for the past couple days is the "old forum" that they wanted to revamp. You are now telling me that this is already the revamped version.
Yeah, you need to take a big step back and rethink your whole plan. The forum is even more useless and empty now than it was before. Im not trying to be obnoxious by saying that I am simply pointing out the hard truth.
Do you what you like with your forum, but I guarantee you my suggestion would generate more interest in the Deck Showcase forum than what you have now in the "thread graveyard" that is Established.
At the risk of coming off as offensive, you need to calm down and take a breather. I have said, repeatedly and very explicitly, Established reorganization is not done. We are still making changes to both the criteria that gets decks there and, by extension of that changed criteria, the decks that are included in Established. I cannot be more clear on this and I am sorry if you do not understand.
Established is currently the holding ground for a number of threads that had once been scattered across Proven, and a number of threads that had once belonged in Established. It's getting fixed, but it's getting fixed at the right pace to ensure that we fix it properly. We have basically fixed Proven and we have basically fixed Creation. Creation had the sticky criteria tightened and clarified, and the stickied threads were themselves updated to reflect popular discussion. We are now tackling Established. You need to stop using the current threads in Established as examples of a dead forum. We know it's dead. We know threads are outdated. We know the discussions are stagnant. That's why we are fixing it. That is the entire point of this thread, and the entire point of the reorganization.
It sounds to me like you want to see popular discussions highlighted outside of Creation because you are worried that users are jumping straight to Proven and looking over Creation entirely. Given the amount of traffic in Creation, and to those stickied threads, I suspect that this is untrue. I also suspect you have zero hard evidence to back up your claim.
That said, one potential solution that I have long considered is to have a regular "Modern Showcase Article/Primer" thread in Modern General where a user writes an article on their deck and points visitors to the discussion on that deck. It would be stickied and regularly updated. This idea was something I was thinking about further down the line, but it's relevant now. Such an article showcase would not only address your niche, personal issue in regards to showcasing popular decks (remember: You are the only user I know of arguing for it), but it would also increase the number of quality Modern articles out there on the internet. We have a lot of knowledgeable posters and decent writers on our site, and it would be great to give them some air time.
Not only has it been less than a month since changes were made, but the changes are not even done. Proven is basically done, but we still haven't finalized criteria. Established is just getting started. Creation is probably the most done, but it will still likely undergo changes. Remember that we did most of our first round deck moves around 8/20/2013. We did our Creation moves around 8/30/2013. Everyone needs to maintain some strategic perspective here when thinking about time lines.
Ok I'm done with this. Mine is blue. Hopefully you take the advice to heart. Whatever you do this is still the best forum to talk about MTG so thanks for that.
I just don't understand why you think that popularity adds validity to a deck that does not perform well. For example, I have been subscribed to threads such as Modern Ninjas and Knights which have a firm and dedicated following and regularly attract people new to the format. When I was subscribed to them I was getting email alerts every day, sometimes indicating multiple posts, and the thread were always looking at the newest cards to add to the archetype. They were very popular, sometimes more popular than D&T (which has periods where there might not be a new post for a week), but they have no results to speak of. If I am understanding your intention correctly you would place Ninjas in the same subforum and as prominently as D&T, and that is just absurd. Modern Ninjas is in no way established just because it is popular.
I think part of the root of your position can be traced to the fact that you give little weight to tournament and/or pro results, which you have expressed countless times on MTGS. The conflict is that most players do care about decks that have results, because they want to play a deck that has a chance of winning, not a deck people just talk about a lot on a message board.
I think the Mods see the forum architecture as a tool for illustrating the current metagame as accurately as possible.
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!