The Organizer's Alliance Against Absent Athletes, or TOA for short, is an initiative by online tournament organizers to reduce the number of no-shows and mid-tournament drop outs by players. Numerous online events have suffered from players missing important matches, delaying or pre-maturely ending broadcasts, disappointing viewers, and even playing a large part in the end of numerous events like SHOUTcraft Clan Wars. Thus, the following tournament organizers are banding together to combat the problem through a new system we're calling Foreigner Jail.
Foreigner Jail is a system designed to create consequence for players that consistently no-show in an effort to reduce it.
For those who want the tl;dr:
Players receive strikes when they no-show, drop out of a tournament mid-way, or fail to cancel in the allotted amount of time set by tournament organizers(varies by event).
After 3 strikes, the player is put in Foreigner Jail for 2 months
Players in Foreigner Jail can’t sign up for any events made by any of the organizers, though they can finish existing commitments
Each strikes expires after 9 months(Strikes must expire before being removed! They are not removed just because you leave Foreigner Jail!)
This is effectively a blacklist system for repeat offenders who no-show for tournaments with little to no notice, or drop out mid tournament. While it is with great hesitation and caution we implement such a system, we believe that the terms presented are fair and reasonable. If a player commits to playing in a tournament, showmatch or event, they are expected to show up and participate in the event or give some notice that they will be unable to.
When a player no-shows an event, there is a cost to the event organizer. Less broadcast time because of a no-show means less visibility for sponsors, less time opportunities for subscriptions to be purchased, less chance for viewership growth and brand awareness, etc.
Checks and Balances
With online tournaments being a fairly large portion of the events players can play in, there is a lot of power in a system that outright bans players from competing in them for a period of time. Because of this, we are putting together a small council that will approve/deny any 2nd or 3rd strikes to players for tournaments. This is a safety precaution to prevent a hopefully unlikely scenario that personal misgivings or bias come into play between an event organizer and a player. Evidence for any strike assigned must be provided for the strike council to review. Additional details of how the strike council will function is available in the rules linked above.
The strike council will consist of the following members:
If you have any questions or complaints, feel free to leave a message in this thread and we will address it. If you'd like to discuss a situation in private, you can reach out to anyone on the strike council and we will respond to you as soon as we can.
Any common questions will be included in this section so if you have any, ask away!
How do I Join The Organizer's Alliance? Currently, this organization is very new. We want to get a firm footing and iron out the kinks before we start growing this to include other organizations. We may take applications in the future. However, the list of players in "Foreigner Jail is public so feel free to use the list as you please.
What if I have a medical/family emergency that prevents me from playing Medical/family emergencies will be excused as stated in the rules.
Is this being applied retroactively to people who have broken the rules before this ruleset released No. We won't be holding players to a ruleset they had no way of knowing about until now. This ruleset will begin being enforced starting today though.
Why is it called Foreigner Jail? Is it only for foreigners or can Koreans be put in the jail too? It's really just a play on the old joke "kespa jail". Koreans can be put in it. The name was just too cute an opportunity to pass up using.
Is this a real thing or a joke? This is indeed an actual organization with a set of rules that will be enforced.
I actually really like this, as it keeps players in check. My question would be, is this just starting now? or are you already giving "strikes" based on past behavior. I ask, as last Olimoleague like ALL the Samsung players didn't show up, and you have players like Major who have dropped out of tournaments more times then i can count.
On July 27 2015 01:41 partydude89 wrote: I actually really like this, as it keeps players in check. My question would be, is this just starting now? or are you already giving "strikes" based on past behavior. I ask, as last Olimoleague like ALL the Samsung players didn't show up, and you have players like Major who have dropped out of tournaments more times then i can count.
This will be starting as of today. I think the first event this will apply to will be Team Gravity Fight Night today and ASL starting tomorrow. We decided it wouldn't be fair to retroactively start assigning strikes for a ruleset that was not released.
Great stuff! Thanks to the casters and organizers involved for helping to improve the scene, and Feardragon especially for putting the effort in to get this going.
This is an awesome initiative. But honestly, I think you overdid it. You shouldn't put rules like "strike are removed after 3 months" because you are not sure what you will exactly need.
You should rather say "we are going to compile the no-shows and decide on a case-by-case basis", especially because I don't think there are hundreds of different cases.
One question though: I think, if someone has a car accident and proves it, when he is back from hospital e.g., strike deletion should be fair, right? I mean, ofc many no-shows are probably intentionally, but there might be some few things that can really be not your own fault, and it would be unfair to punish people far having a car accident, lol.
But I think, that was already considered. I just didn't read anyting of this, so, yeah. Just asking for safety.
On July 27 2015 01:51 fezvez wrote: This is an awesome initiative. But honestly, I think you overdid it. You shouldn't put rules like "strike are removed after 3 months" because you are not sure what you will exactly need.
You should rather say "we are going to compile the no-shows and decide on a case-by-case basis", especially because I don't think there are hundreds of different cases.
This is definitely still very much a system that needs to be ironed out through real experience. The "strikes removed after 3 months" exists for two reasons. One is that we didn't want to penalize players for 2 months because they no-showed 3 times over the course of a very long period of time(like a year or two), so we wanted strikes to expire. The second reason ties into the fact that strikes expire after a longer period of time than the "jail time" is(3 months for strikes to expire, 2 months for jail time). This means there's an effective "probation" period for someone who goes to jail, where they still retain at least one strike(or more) for a month.
As mentioned, this is a system in trial. Adjustments will be made over time as we find problems.
On July 27 2015 01:57 Taari wrote: Nice. I highly approve that.
One question though: I think, if someone has a car accident and proves it, when he is back from hospital e.g., strike deletion should be fair, right? I mean, ofc many no-shows are probably intentionally, but there might be some few things that can really be not your own fault, and it would be unfair to punish people far having a car accident, lol.
But I think, that was already considered. I just didn't read anyting of this, so, yeah. Just asking for safety.
As mentioned in the Q/A section, "Medical/family emergencies will be excused as stated in the rules." We will work with any players who give this as a reason to verify the situation. This is a pretty case-by-case basis thing so I don't want to list out too many "explicit rules" for it.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4hkswOw.gif)
