[REJECTED] Proposed Rule Change: Outlawing Ghosting

[Matt]

The goal of SLN was to create Nirvana, a league where 29 out of 29 GMs were active, engaged, competitive, contributed to the league consistently, and got along well as a group of friends of friends. I think, in large part thanks to all of the GMs, we’re close to that vision - but in my opinion, there’s low hanging fruit that we can pick off to improve the league: heavily disincentivizing ghosting and other inconsiderate behavior in trade negotiations.

I’d like to propose the following rule to address this issue:

Every GM is required to respond to trade offers within 48 hours of receiving them. This response can, of course, be “I need to think about it” or “I’m busy today I’ll check in tomorrow” or even “I have a big meeting in a few days that I’m prepping for, I’m not looking at SLN until then” or whatever - but as someone who has been ghosted before it’s extremely frustrating and I think the league would be better with a rule against it.

Specifics:

If a GM doesn’t respond for 24 hours, the GM who is waiting for a response can “call the clock” on the ghosting GM. From the time when clock is called, the ghosting GM has another 24 hours to send a response (of any kind). If the ghosting GM still doesn’t respond, the waiting GM can post in the RP thread and claim 500 RP from that team (which does not come from their trade bank). If they don’t have RP at the time, they owe it in the future when they earn RP.

Example:

GM A sends an offer to GM B at 5pm on Monday. GM B doesn’t respond. At 7:30pm on Tuesday, GM A calls the clock. If GM B doesn’t respond by Wednesday at 7:30pm, GM A can post and collect 500 RP from GM B.

I personally think responding to trade offers is like the ultimate bare minimum requirement to be in this league - both from a competitive perspective and from a just being considerate to your friends perspective. Obviously life happens, but I think this is a pretty low bar that we can all hold ourselves accountable to.

[Joe]

No brainer yes for me. Would love to hear the “no” position articulated tbh from one of the no voters because I’m having a really hard time seeing it. Responding to a message within 2 days with a message that says “sorry I’m busy” or “hey let me think about it and get back to you in a couple days” - or literally the 3 letters “CTN” - is objectively not a hardship on anyone and is just a representation of a baseline level of respect for another human being, SLN GM or otherwise.

And, in practice, I wouldn’t expect to see “clock” called almost ever as this ghosting thing is really only a problem for a handful of GMs in the league and most people are very responsive (even just to say they can’t look now) - as Matt said, we’re really close to nirvana, but this has happened to me a number of times and it’s insanely frustrating and inconsiderate.

In Mantypas’s nirvana post from a season or two ago, he expressed some frustration with communication mediums and double texting - totally fair points. Others responded saying ghosting was a problem as well. I’d argue that this rule change would completely eliminate the need for any double texting and would simultaneously discourage ghosting at no cost to anyone - it just reinforces respectful practices all around, and should honestly never need to be enforced if we all adhere to those practices.

[SoNicks]

Pro taxation is unamerican

[Jesse]

Voted No b/c formalizing this with fines seems a little weird / awkward to enforce.

But I completely agree with the premise and the post! I think we just replace the GM(s) who repetitively ghost. We have a waitlist.

[Matt]

Would love to hear the dissenting opinions!

[Jesse]

Ghosting violates rule #1! Just be a good lad!

Labrony wouldn’t ghost

[Joe]

Voted No b/c formalizing this with fines seems a little weird / awkward to enforce.

But I completely agree with the premise and the post! I think we just replace the GM(s) who repetitively ghost. We have a waitlist.

Agree with this. I voted yes because an RP tax was a smaller penalty than removal from the league, and gives ghosting GMs a chance to reform (although 25 seasons in there have been plenty of chances I suppose). Totally fine with replacing GMs that ghost, would still need a way to formalize that too tho

[Jesse]

I don’t think it needs to be formal lol. If you are too cool to respond “can’t respond busy sry” I don’t think you’ll care much if an eager beaver takes your team

[mantypas/CavsCzar]

I voted no simply due to how the rule is constructed. I try not to ghost folks and sorry if I do, but the people I have ghosted (sorry Jwoo) it’s likely cuz I’ve gotten a bunch of offers and they know I am not super interested. We know there are some more active and less active individuals in this league. That’s ok IMO. If you love love this and talk all day about it great, if you log on once a day or once every two days, that’s fine too IMO. I know this was not the intent of the rule at all, but it could lead to the more active people spamming trade ideas to less active people, clocking it, then snagging RP from people that may just not be on their phones/computers as often as others. Again, I don’t think people actually would do that, love of the game right, but it is a possibility with how the rules is currently proposed.
And 500 RP is a lot for less active folks.

[Joe]

I think it should be assumed that no one is going to use this rule as an RP factory by spamming as many garbage offers around the league as they can and starting timers. This kind of behavior would be easily identified (we all talk to eachother) and clearly as big a violation of rule #1 as ghosting itself. The purpose of formalizing this is to put some sort of safeguard in against people that are egregious ghosters - no one HAS to call clock if they believe the responding party is putting in a good faith effort to respond. This rule should only even be a thought for a handful of GMs - everyone else just goes about their business as usual!