12-02-2023, 11:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-02-2023, 11:49 PM by DarknessRising. Edited 1 time in total.)
S45 Newsletter
Hello everyone,
As always, HO releases newsletters to go over matters we think are important to recap for the league. Going forward, to increase our transparency to all within the league, we want to include more notes about what HO is currently starting, or soon to start work on. Think of it like our very own roadmap for where the league is going and where we are putting our resources into changing and improving.
As a result, this is a pretty long newsletter compared to normal, but please don’t let that put you off reading it in its entirety, as there are lots of different topics and information presented that will help make you an informed ISFL community member.
Intern hires
Both ISFL and DSFL HO have new hires to announce for this season. @Alikh and @Fronk find themselves alongside the continuing @Dindog as the ISFL interns, whilst @oilmandan joins @WALDOas the DSFL HO interns.
Christmas period
As we now are into December, the Christmas Holidays, as well as the New Year festivities are inching ever so closer. A time to reflect on the year and spread joy, it results in the invaluable workers around the league having commitments to their family and friends that see us need to tweak the schedule. AS YOU CAN SEE HERE, we have altered the schedule by adding an extra week into the regular season, to allow days off in and around Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve and New Years Day. The 2-week period around these holidays will effectively count as one league week with 3 gameday streams, a single set of Activity Check / Weekly Training / Point Task periods covering both weeks, and no updates on the weekend of December 30th and 31st.
Once again @IceBear32 is running an ISFL Secret Santa Sigs, where you can sign up to participate, create a sig for a randomly drawn person, whilst receiving one yourself. If interested and eager, no matter your skill level of graphics, check out the post here with all the details
Lastly, HO will be looking at how to make the Christmas period and end of the year a fun one, whether that be using the extra time to put on some type of event stream, or just an event on the forums to spread joy. Stay on the lookout for anything that might randomly pop up, or even approach a member of HO if you think you have an idea that just might be a hit!
New League Bots
1. Combine Bot
The ISFL Combine has been a quiet mainstay of the league, and has included every class from S1 through to modern day. Recently we have made a small change in how this information is presented. Previously we depended upon people processing the data and preparing write ups for it to be presented as media. However, @Thor has written a bot which can retrieve combine results on demand in both the ISFL General discord server and the Rookie discord server. To get started, use the command "/combine Player Name" and check it out! These stats are official and can be used on wiki pages to fill out that table. Don't forget, kickers have their own segment of the combine which can also be accessed via the bot using the command "/kc Player Name".
2. MonitoRSS Replacement
MonitoRSS was a discord bot that automated the posting of forum links to discord for important announcements, point tasks, and media/graphics. It was also used for various official league functions, like advising the Rookie Mentor team of new creates or the Budget team of team transactions/retirements. Unfortunately MonitoRSS announced that by the start of November they would move to personal feeds instead of server wide feeds, rendering the bot useless for league purposes.
As a replacement, Thor has created a custom made replacement fit for purpose (MjolniRSS), which has now been implemented in 28 servers (and growing) across both the SHL and ISFL. If you're interested in adding this bot to your server, simply type "/invite" in any of the servers it's in, and "/help" to be guided on how to use it, if you have any issues, concerns or suggestions for new feeds feel free to reach out to @Thor!
3. DSFL Waiver Automation Bot
Something that may not be familiar to a lot of people is the DSFL Waiver Claims process. When a user creates after the DSFL draft or as a Trade Deadline player prior to the end of season for temporary team placement, their player is put onto the waiver wire and claimed by teams using a priority based system. For a long time, the processing of these waivers has been done manually by our fantastic Rookie Mentor team, but recently we have moved to a discord bot solution, once again created by Thor, which automates the majority of the process! Now, Rookie Mentors only have to input the details of the player, the DSFL GMs lodge their claims and the bot works out the correct allocation of players, saving our RM team a significant amount of time and effort as well as simplifying the process for our GMs and increasing the efficiency of waiver allocations.
Once again, Thor has created this custom bot, and whilst it is exclusively a behind the scenes aspect of the league, we wanted to draw attention to some of the ways that we look to improve on current league systems and processes through our various league departments!
Nunccoepi appreciation
As you know, DSFL HO has transitioned to a new commissioner and, with a transition season now behind us, it is time to bid our former commissioner, @nunccoepi, a bittersweet adieu. Nunccoepi has been a member of DSFL HO since the body was reintroduced to the league approximately three and a half years ago in S23, and served as DSFL commissioner for north of a year prior to passing the torch. We cannot express enough our gratitude for nunccoepi's TWENTY TWO seasons of stalwart leadership, and although we are sad to see him go, we wish him all the best in his continuing adventures both within the league and beyond our reach.
Missed charity raffle
From the S43 Charity Drive, one of the raffles that was supposed to happen was missed. For reaching the $300 milestone,@SomeSay... put up a $50 gift card to be raffled off to anyone that donated, no matter the amount. Below you can find the video of the makeup raffle, so the 40 people who donated and have entries, please watch below to find the result!!
https://youtu.be/l8AmBsv1dKY
Future HO Work
As alluded to in the introduction of the newsletter, here we will mention topics that HO are either starting to unpack or plan to start during the season. The details within the topics are subject to change, but if they are being mentioned, then they are definitely going to undergo HO discussion or work in some way
Contraction
While it is a very contentious topic, unfortunately discussions to consider whether and how a potential contraction may be necessary have started recently. Unfortunately, smaller draft classes in recent recruitment cycles have created issues at both the DSFL and ISFL levels which may need to be addressed through contracting teams. Small classes mean that DSFL teams may not be able to add enough active rookies in the draft to offset their callups to ISFL teams, whilst ISFL teams may find themselves utilizing lower TPE players and relying more on inactive players to fill out rosters. While the best solution is to increase the number of active users in the league, concentrating the existing players among a smaller number of teams increases team activity levels and provides a better league environment for all.
As such a big topic, it’s paramount to know that just because it's being discussed, does not mean it’s going to happen. After being considered nearly a year ago now prior to Season 40, we learnt that the process needs to be smoother and more visible. At the moment, talks around contraction are to do with the process, asking ourselves questions like “How would we know if we need to take action?”, “What timeline would be the smoothest route and how can we stick to that?”, or “What issues did the process create last time that we can improve upon?”. Contraction will always be a tough issue, but easing it as much as possible if it is to occur, starts with us examining the process ahead of crunch time.
Off-season Survey
At the end of this season, HO will be doing another off-season survey. For those who don’t remember or are new, let me explain it. It is a short survey with questions from HO, departments from the league or any sought-after data valid to the leagues structure/running that is put out as a task during the off-season, running the same time as the off-season task. It will award TPE for completion, and provide HO or department heads with important data that would be hard to obtain otherwise without such a central means of doing so. So look forward to a bit of extra TPE this off-season, and those in league management can start to think if they want a section or just a question within the survey, whilst the general public is free to suggest anything to members of HO or leadership (their GM’s or department head for example).
Salary cap and Contract discussions
Some may know this from talks I’ve had in media replies or on discord, but I want to take a serious look at how contracts and salary cap can be overhauled. We all know we currently utilize a flawed system, but finding a solution that works without causing its own havoc is a laborious task.
Our own internal method of projecting team salaries as to evaluate the cap for the following season has also run into difficulties due to the change in human OL compared to bot OL since it was made, and it rolls into us finally getting stuck into finding what we could possibly transition to. Any changes would be very up front and in advance to coming through, and honestly, pretty slow to happen anyways, but such a topic will have the community buzzing with ideas, and we hope to not only hear and work with them, but also show our own internal ideas to gather feedback on where a possible system could go.
Continuing Improvement
In addition to these specific discussions, a large part of HO’s role continues to be finding ways to continuously improve how well the league functions as an organization. While HO has no shortage of its own ideas to explore and work towards, we also greatly appreciate the input of any users on things that you think would improve the league or pain points that you think could warrant an increased amount of HO attention to address. The off-season survey is one method that we use to solicit that feedback, but always feel free to use the #suggestion-box channel in the ISFL Discord or DM any HO members on the forums or on Discord to share your feedback.
To give a specific taste of what this looks like, one initiative that we are looking at to ensure the continuity of league departments and help new hires learn the ropes quickly is the creation of a set of department guides (potentially videos or written) that lists the functions of each league job, from general purpose to the specific details of how work gets done. This would be based on the existing videos that exist for the sim team and streamers, but generalized to all departments in the league. We think this could also serve to improve the department hiring process for applicants to be able to understand more of what the job would entail before applying.
And, while we are on the topic of league improvement initiatives, this seems like a good time to mention that we are indeed investigating the potential of adding an update portal to the ISFL, similar to the one used in SHL, to help streamline even further the process of updating your player. Expect more updates in future HO newsletters as we continue to learn more about what that might look like in the ISFL.
Conclusion
Thank you to all that have read this lengthy edition, it is very worthwhile in my opinion to understand what is going around the league and for us to publicly share that information with everyone so you know what HO is at work doing behind the scenes to achieve improvement in the league. As always, you can always DM me if you wish to talk about anything you want to say from content in this newsletter, or have big ideas for the league you think we should look at.