who is Farmer Barney Moe ?

[scrawnybob]

hi all

just for those of you who maybe really observant - Ive transferred some of my caretaker teams over to myself ... under an admin account "Farmer Barney Moe"

this is purely so that I can create additional teams to caretaker (as the limit is 5)

I'm having to do this because it seems some of the team captains are MIA and I have noticed a backlog of new members requests to join teams that arent full ...

getting ignored

this isnt good as it means members showing an interest have been snubbed

I strongly urge captains

a) with full teams to reply to requests if they get them

b) with teams with slots to make sure they approve or reject requests to join asap -
and NOT leave members in limbo

Ultimately I think we need to address the issue of stagnating team league as there are clearly new and existing members who want to get involved but due to a lack of active teams with slots in - they're either applying to teams with spaces and getting no response or just giving up

My proposal is this ... We split each successful team of 10 into two teams of 5 at the end of each season (or maybe every other season) ...

this means that we are more likely to find a 2nd new team captain to step up and run a new team ...

a) that free's up 10 spaces in the two "new" teams

b) it also creates more of a level playing field rather than having 2 or 3 really strong teams that others cannot catch

c) it means the new teams have an identy already and also means that it has active playing members

captains (and others) let me know what you think

in the meantime I'm setting up a couple of additional caretaker teams - however the big problem with this approach is that its first come first served ... and therefore we can end up with teams that are less rather than more active (with maybe 2 out of 10 ever playing) ... with my suggestion of taking succesful teams and creating 2 teams this should be better all round IMHO

suggestions ?

cheers scrawnybob

cheers scrawnybob

[kingmotan]

IMHO ... why splitting a successful team? I understand about the active part but if my team wins this season (and it will) I don't want to be separated from them. I'm Disturbed all the way!! New members should just join the teams with free spots .
I know I'm a new member and all, but this is my ..opinion..
Cheers

[scrawnybob]

hi motan

yep this is open to discussion

and I appreciate that what I see as a great solution from a league and forum management POV is maybe seen as a less good thing to some members

(BTW I want to add another league at another sites next season if I can afford to fund it -
which makes getting the format right and able to grow all the more important)

at the moment what happens is odd members want to join in with the team league - they want to join an active team so that they have a chance to contribute to a half decent active but find they dont know anyone and dont have much in the way of choices ...

so I create teams for members who dribble in as things grow BUT those teams dont get cohesive and ends up with maybe 6 inactive members and 3 active members who then get hacked off trying to compete against a team of 8-10 active members

I've tried getting members to setup additional new teams to rival each other but the trouble is if some people say they will stick together then the other semi competitive teams also feel the need to "have" to stay as one 10 strong unit

my suggestion to split maybe the top 3 teams each season isnt supposed to be a negative thing - more a chance for even more friendly rivalry where 1/2 the winning team can try to beat not only eveyone else again but also their former team mates

if we have this with the top 3 teams at the end of each season - IMHO it would make things alot more balanced - it could be done either my highest scoring members in order go to the alternate team of by choosing

this would mean 3 existing 10 man teams would be 5 each and there would be 3 new 5 man teams from previously participating players

it would leave 5 slots in each team for new players to get taken on OR for example allow active members who played in the previous season but in very inactive teams to move to an active team ...

so effectively this would encourage the inactive teams to die off and the good active members in the successful teams to branch out and build another successful team using 1/2 the sucessful team as seed members

if this was done for the top 3 teams - it would level things out a bit more which IMHO would be a good thing

but I appreciate that members might be diehard stay in the same team - in which case if one team has this view then the whole idea wont work

with the expansion coming from the top teams down there is also a better level of security in terms of the passwords etc otherwise it will have to run with the caretaker teams which leads to an adhoc first come first served team management

at the end of it all one thing that definately needs to happen is members taking on captain of their team rather than me overseaing more and more teams

cheers scrawnybob

ps. if there are better solutions to the problems then I'm all ears

[nb1961]

I see a lot of potential for resistance from some teams to splitting. I look at Team UK and think at the end of this season we are likely to lose 2 players at least, who are or will become inactive. If we were to be in the top 3 the remaining 8 would be split to 2 teams of 4 leaving each new team to find 6 new members. Would this act as a dampener to peoples team spirit and will to play the team game?

One thought I had while reading this thread was allowing some of us existing team captains to be "executive" team captains for some of the leaderless teams to help build them up and pass on when a permanent captain is willing to take it on. Because the nature of our team game is every man/woman for themselves and there is no actual team play I don't see this causing any conflict.

Just an ideas there to throw into the pot for discussion.

[villaridge]

beats me sb, like nb said, gonna run into resistance with breaking winning teams. I like mine cause like most folks, change is weird and unsettling. I know my teammates and am comfortable with them.

Newbies looking, and not finding response is a problem tho. We should make a better efort here at 4K to get them on a team.

Consider forced membership on a team. That is, a newbie shows up and wants to get on a team. Give them the option for a while to find their own team, then if they can't, then go to x/y/z team that has openings and put them there, a done deal. They are on a team, and will start building friendships, and maybe go on to build their own team in following seasons. Also, make executive decisions, and if you have 2 teams with 8 players and only 3 show up on each, get rid of the no-shows and combine them. The no shows come back later and go "what happened" put them back in the que of teams forming, or let them search for a team on their own.

This might be the way to go sb, but it involves more work for you, and being how u like to do everything here, maybe not the best solution, lol.

Another idea I had, in my usual drunk state, is that you, sb, make an arbitrary decision at the end of this season, that 10 member teams are no more. Just go on and make 5 or 6 person teams the new standard. Stick to your guns, and this by itself will start a new "team formation scramble"

hey, lol, u asked for ideas, lol

[scrawnybob]

hi all

great "farmer barney moe" thread is getting lots of good feedback - which is what I'd hoped for

short version of long ramble below is

if the idea of splitting the sucessful teams if its not seen as a good feature will be a bad idea - so Im not going to force unpopular ideas - if no-one buys into the "clever" way it regulates keeping teams more equal - then we wont do it

afaiks the idea of some currently active captains taking on a 2nd caretaker team seems like a brilliant idea - Voluteers PM me and also post in the captains thread - then we can transfer some of my carentaker teams to captains to figure out what shape they are in etc and we can look at additional ones either me managing or between us.

Part of the problem has maybe been maybe handing teams over to less than enthusistic team members - good team members but not really wanting to captain (nothing wrong there)

the other other problem is we have forum members who want to play who are in new teams of less than 5 members (I'll have to post password IMHO and we'll have to keep an eye on any password sharing issues)


there is no point in me wanting to split the teams if members are happier staying put rather than say creating the rivalry of for example

disturbed INC v more disturbed inc v the rest (also in split groups)

we did have something of a re-jig a while ago ... we had teams of 20 which I said had to be cut down to 10 max teams BUT with the proviso that teams had to start with max of 5 existing active members ... this is kind of where the problem started as too many good teams DIDNT follow this "directive" and made teams of nearly 10 active players ... once one or two strong teams had done this - the transformation point was lost and we effectively just ended up with 10 man teams instead of 20 ... not the half full 5 man teams able to grow to 10 with new blood

I guess I really should take from that attempt that trying to engineer things a bit now and again isnt going to work ;-)

NB and villaridge have some up with a couple of ideas that I had also been toying with

a) automatic team membership when you join forum (actually not when you join but maybe when you hit the 10 posts required) ... I like this idea but again the problem comes with having inactive teams not only with members who "thought they would probably play" but also members who have no interest to play at all

but I think I need to get some automated PM's setup (this is planned anyway) when a member hits 10+ decent posts - so they know they can play in a team / in the general leagues / get a free bumper sticker etc etc

so that is planned

b) automated membership to xyz team when they request to join a team - the problem at the moment is Ive had a few members PM me to join a team and want to know which are even active or have a chance of winning / doing ok ... in other words they want to join a team that will be like a team for them

I need to cull out the inactive teams - definately with help if its on offer :-)

and reoffer those members who are active an active team or put those active into a new team - this would be primarily the caretaker teams but there are others that arent full and arent being run and have maybe 2 or no active players in etc

again the natural selection bit I prefer of active players getting hacked and wanting to combine or move - but I'm not sure they get the chance without captains to lead the way

c) I like the idea of mentored teams - I like that alot because most of the captains we have at the moment are proactive and reliable so could run an additional "caretaker" team or 2 as I have ... the crucial thing is (without sounding negative) actually being able to off load the caretaker teams when they have full members or are running ok ... we need more active captains wanting to take on their "own team"

I think on the whole the most managable idea IF we get 3 or 4 offers to help is to delegate out my old caretaker teams to active captains for them to caretaker and knock into shape - find out who is active etc and who isnt

Also I need to make a list of total players in the TPT over the next few weeks - so we know who actually plays in the games

I want to ideally put on a Tuesday team game at FullTilt (TOC II) in addition to Sundays Carbon game - this is why we must have a setup that will enable members to join a team quickly and effectively ... because FullTilt is alot bigger site and we have alot more FT playing members than Carbon ...

We are getting turnouts close to the 50 mark in Carbon games - afaiks most if not all are legit team members ... so this format is clearly popular in the forum

cheers scrawnybob