10. Hear ye, hear ye, peasants, a new king has arrived in the kingdom, and this king has some strong opinions. First and foremost, all activity under my reign will be thoroughly documented, catalogued, and made available for reference. By that, I mean: each department in the league will be responsible for creating process documents to explain how and why they perform the duties of their jobs the way that they do. These documents will then be collected, edited for consistency, and published in or adjacent to the rulebook. The open and transparent nature of these documents will serve several purposes, the chief of which is to increase user confidence. Especially when first hired, a common sentiment is “I’m not sure if I’m doing everything I should be” or maybe “I hope I’m doing enough” – let’s put those questions to rest by providing standardized on-boarding documents for every position in the league. Yes, it’ll be a bear to create the documents and complete the project, but the value for the future would be incalculable. Once the primary document has been created, it can remain a “living document” to be edited when changes to job functions occur, as new jobs or created, or old jobs are eliminated. This would also make for a handy resource for any user who is interested in applying for a job – they would be able to look through the document to get a strong sense of the typical duties of the position and whether they’d make a good candidate for that position.
For the users, I bequeath to you a “player status” – All player pages will now include an additional line: Player Status. In nearly all cases, this will say “Active, Rostered”, but in the case of newly created players, it would move through each phase of the onboarding process to give the user an accurate sense of what’s happening to their player. This is a question that I’ve seen pop up commonly in the rookie discord, so I feel like it might be an easy one to address in this way. The status would begin with “Waiting for Approval”, then either “Approved, Draft Eligible”, “Approved, Waiver Eligible”, or whatever other scenario might happen. If a player is found to be inactive, their status will change to “Inactive, Rostered”, and the final status for a player would be “Retired”.
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14. While the hype of adding new teams and growing the league always has an optimistic shine about it, I unfortunately don’t believe that now is an appropriate time to pursue an expansion for either the ISFL or the DSFL. Unofficial league statistician and all-around cutie @lemonoppy put together a utility that showed the relationship between rostered players and league need, and we still have roster space for more players on our current collection of teams. Adding an additional team (or two) would thin the locker rooms of each team slightly, force GMs to manage more bots, and in general would probably create more overall “league labor time” than would be worth any potential upside we would see at this point.
The real value, in my opinion, of an expansion, is the hype factor. It’s something big and splashy that the league can talk about, it generates a lot of media posts, people have strong opinions, and in general it’s good for what you might consider the “sim sports new cycle” – I can all but guarantee that news of an ISFL expansion would make it to the other sim leagues and potentially draw some new eyes our way. Instead of an expansion, maybe it’s time for a team relocation or rebrand? The last movement we had on that front was the Cape Town Crash and they seem to have successfully recovered from the curse of the Philadelphia Liberty. If no one is willing to move their team, maybe something as simple as a change of graphics could be a way to somewhat scratch the itch of an expansion without really making any significant changes to the rostering.
Having said all that, I would really like to see an Ohio team make its way into our league in one way or another. If an expansion were to happen, I would be lobbying hard in favor of a little representation for the Buckeye State. Sandusky has Cedar Point, and they’re known for their roller coasters, so maybe there’s good ground to cover in terms of branding.
For the users, I bequeath to you a “player status” – All player pages will now include an additional line: Player Status. In nearly all cases, this will say “Active, Rostered”, but in the case of newly created players, it would move through each phase of the onboarding process to give the user an accurate sense of what’s happening to their player. This is a question that I’ve seen pop up commonly in the rookie discord, so I feel like it might be an easy one to address in this way. The status would begin with “Waiting for Approval”, then either “Approved, Draft Eligible”, “Approved, Waiver Eligible”, or whatever other scenario might happen. If a player is found to be inactive, their status will change to “Inactive, Rostered”, and the final status for a player would be “Retired”.
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14. While the hype of adding new teams and growing the league always has an optimistic shine about it, I unfortunately don’t believe that now is an appropriate time to pursue an expansion for either the ISFL or the DSFL. Unofficial league statistician and all-around cutie @lemonoppy put together a utility that showed the relationship between rostered players and league need, and we still have roster space for more players on our current collection of teams. Adding an additional team (or two) would thin the locker rooms of each team slightly, force GMs to manage more bots, and in general would probably create more overall “league labor time” than would be worth any potential upside we would see at this point.
The real value, in my opinion, of an expansion, is the hype factor. It’s something big and splashy that the league can talk about, it generates a lot of media posts, people have strong opinions, and in general it’s good for what you might consider the “sim sports new cycle” – I can all but guarantee that news of an ISFL expansion would make it to the other sim leagues and potentially draw some new eyes our way. Instead of an expansion, maybe it’s time for a team relocation or rebrand? The last movement we had on that front was the Cape Town Crash and they seem to have successfully recovered from the curse of the Philadelphia Liberty. If no one is willing to move their team, maybe something as simple as a change of graphics could be a way to somewhat scratch the itch of an expansion without really making any significant changes to the rostering.
Having said all that, I would really like to see an Ohio team make its way into our league in one way or another. If an expansion were to happen, I would be lobbying hard in favor of a little representation for the Buckeye State. Sandusky has Cedar Point, and they’re known for their roller coasters, so maybe there’s good ground to cover in terms of branding.