There has been a call recently for action to be taken against defaulters and incompleters. It has been suggested that if you do these things frequently, then your ability to enter battles should be taken away until you submit a completed BB, or something similar.
This is a really difficult thing. I am not sure how necessary it is, but I want to hear thoughts on it.
On one hand, frequent defaulters are way WAY less likely to be selected for tournaments. They also build a reputation for themselves. There are certain people I would never team up with or battle, because personally, I want a good fight from my opponent.
To me, this seems fair. But putting out sub-par work, or not at all, you're limiting who is willing to collab with you, battle you, and what tournaments you can be in. And if someone DOES want to battle or collab, I'm assuming they KNOW your reputation and they are willing to accept that risk.
IF we did have a punishment for defaulters/incompletes the rules would need to be extremely clear to keep things fair. Just as an example, lets say you default/incomplete x number of times. You would need to submit a completed BB before you can battle again. I'm not sure I see the value in this, but I'm willing to hear reason why someone might think it's a good idea. Depending on your reasons for defaulting, it might not change a thing.
The excuse you had for defaulting would not be taken into consideration. If your computer dies, you were in the hospital, or you got lazy, its a strike against you. The less judgement that needs to be made by a person, the better. This would eliminate any bias a mod might have (or that you think we have
) No reason is more or less valid than another one. It is what it is. I think a major problem with the site used to be that punishments were dealt out whenever a mod thought it fit. I think our current staff is very level headed, but we are all humans and have friends on the site. So, not to seem cold, but having a clear-cut rule is the fairest thing to do.
Personally, I'm not super keen on punishments. This is a small community. We all know each other, and our battle records are easily seen. I HOPE that everyone takes pride in their work here, and does their best regardless. Shit happens and I'm not about to shame anyone for it.