Reffing Discussion

[M&F]

Double battles and the like would definitely benefit from partial referees -- sure, the coordination could become tricky, but the hefty workload that these have would be eased a lot by sharing the weight. Once people really get the hang of this, even battle royales not reffed by Negrek would start becoming more feasible.

That said, it does come with plenty of complications, as Kusari highlighted -- rank, payment, etc. And then there's the fact that, at first, the idea would be very much entirely new, which means nobody will know how to do it that well (exceptions are possible but not to be counted on), specially not people who lack experience with full reffing.

Personally, I'd still continue reffing fully, since I've gotten used to both parts of the job just fine. Still, unless that increases my workload too significantly, I'd be willing to lend either one of my abilities.

 

[blazheirio889]

I'm kinda eh on the idea of partial referees. Theoretically it seems fine, certainly - it'll encourage people who don't like to write to ref by calculating and vice versa, but then again it'd make things complicated and perhaps slow. Pretty much echoing Negrek here. I'm not particularly /keen/ on the idea, per se, but I'd like to try it out - maybe it'll turn out better than pessimistic me would expect.

Rank and stuff would be kinda odd though... Rank is usually based off of how well people do the calculations (how little they screw up), how well people write, and how fast/frequent they are. The partial referees could be marked on their respective part, but what about how fast/frequent they are? It'd be a bit difficult to determine that, as the other person may lag with writing/calculating and whatnot.

 

[RespectTheBlade]

I'm fine with the concept, but would other refs who are more comfortable with doing both parts by themselves still be able to do so?

I'm personally comfortable with doing both parts myself, it just takes me some time. One possible problem I could forsee would be that fights/blame would be placed on other people if the reffing was subpar. I prefer to notice and fix my own mistakes, and be solely liable for them, rather than toss blame around for them.

 

[Blastoise Fortooate]

I don't like this idea. It seems to me as if having two people working on one reffing would only make the process longer, more rife with mistakes, and altogether more unwieldy. Also, I don't think that the way to make referees better is to let them only do the easy part. Granted, being unwilling to do a half of the reffing process probably does keep a number of people from joining up, but I think the real question is if we want those people to be referees at all. There's already a calculator that makes most of the calculations amazingly simple to do anyway, so I don't understand exactly why that work would be needed to be divvied up among two people. As far as someone who just wants to do the math, if they can't do the rest of a reffing then I'm not sure exactly what their options later on are.

I suppose it's a question of whether or not we're expecting the partials to ascend to full refereehood, which I don't see happening.

 

[Shadow Serenity]

As far as someone who just wants to do the math, if they can't do the rest of a reffing then I'm not sure exactly what their options later on are.

I'm going to agree with this. What's the point of splitting the job now? It makes it slow, complicated, and they're only learning half of the process, unless we're going to use this process for every single battle that ref takes from then on, if they do become full-fledged refs. Considering how long it takes for a reffing as it currently stands, I personally wouldn't be too fond of having to wait for two different people to have the time to not only do their half, but coordinate with each other in the event of a question or some other confusion. The way I figure, if a person can't/doesn't want to do both halves, why should they be given the chance?

That being said, if we're going to try it anyways, I'm willing to offer my services as a writer for the action. I'd do both, but since I haven't reffed in a while, I'll just leave the math to someone else until I get back in the swing of things.

God that sounds so hypocritical...