Method Proposal Standardization

[Silky]

Hey guy, I'll try and keep this short. As most people have noticed, there has been a large influx of method proposals recently - which ISN'T a bad thing. However, many of these proposals are vapid, poorly thought out or reseatched, and/or are rehashing of previously proposed methods. The biggest culprit is obvious RouxFOP.. or BBOP.. or Roux-CFOP Hybrid.. etc. These proposals are very often tactless and have no interest in furthering method development.. which I feel is very frustrating for people that have poured HUNDREDS of hours into developing, testing, researching, and fine-tuning their own, unique, methods.

With this post I am hoping that we can come up with a way to raise the standards of method proposals by creating some sort of outline for what an acceptable proposal should be. I feel that one of the rules should be that, when the method is proposed, it should have prior developments via generated algsets/sheets, fleshed out logic trees, tutorials, and/or example solves. This would hopefully require people to put in a bit more effort when coming up with methods and to avoid the chronic 'list of steps' proposals ( One of my personal pet-peeves is seeing RouxFOP proposed yet there being no attempt to generate EO+DF/DB algs, arguably the only unique thing about the method ).

 

[ruffleduck]

Cute idea, but I don't think any attempts of this ilk will slow the dreaded weekly RouxFOP proposals. The best we can do is ignore them.

To be frank, I'm beginning to view all newly 3x3 proposed methods in a similar light to RouxFOP. I feel there isn't much new under the sun when it comes to 3x3. The last unique thing I've seen is... RUPM, which isn't a speedsolving method and is only a technique for 2G states. All methods I've seen proposed since the original Big 4 (especially mine) are uncreative and are largely just grabbing at straws at reordering Petrus. Indeed, "Or you could just use Petrus" seems to be the subconcious mantra of method "developers," myself included.

 

[Silky]

Cute idea, but I don't think any attempts of this ilk will slow the dreaded weekly RouxFOP proposals. The best we can do is ignore them.

To be frank, I'm beginning to view all newly 3x3 proposed methods in a similar light to RouxFOP. I feel there isn't much new under the sun when it comes to 3x3. The last unique thing I've seen is... RUPM, which isn't a speedsolving method and is only a technique for 2G states. All methods I've seen proposed since the original Big 4 (especially mine) are uncreative and are largely just grabbing at straws at reordering Petrus. Indeed, "Or you could just use Petrus" seems to be the subconcious mantra of method "developers," myself included.

This is definitely more-so mean to try to de-clutter the method wiki ( this has been talked about a bunch but still deserves a revisiting ). The fact that this exists but there's no page for Yellow-Bird or Square-101 is crazy to me. The best solution would to be to have some sort of wiki moderator tbh.

 

[Mastermind2368]

There definitely needs to be some curation of all these method proposals. However without resorting to more moderation, I don't see a way that these posts can be stopped. Most of the people posting these methods seem to be younger people who post 10 new threads per day (I'm probably exaggerating, but you get my point). To me it seems like these are not the people who are reading the rules anyway, and so creating guidelines for method proposals wouldn't do anything in that case.

However, if reading the rules was required before posting a new method (can't remember if it's like this already, as I've not posted a "new" method in so long), that could help reduce the amount of spam.

 

[Athefre]

The wiki has kind of gotten out of hand. I am a wiki moderator and have recently put together a plan that will attempt to handle that. I started by updated the message that appears when creating a new page. It now has a red caution message urging wiki users to first share their method with the community and receive feedback. I suspect that it isn't going to work at first for those who have gotten into the habit of creating new pages and immediately start using the input box. We'll see how it goes over a longer amount of time. If that message isn't enough, I have a few more things planned.

As for the focus that some have on the creativity of proposals, I strongly disagree with those who say that all methods since ZZ (2006) have been uncreative and are just Petrus. That's disrespectful to the amount of effort that has been put forth to make the incredible discoveries that have occurred since that year. I have four or five developments of my own where I have put hundreds of hours each. I put my effort into those developments because I knew that I had discovered something unique and or great.

MI2 / SSC: It is very creative to have figured out that EOLine is a natural start for getting to the DR state.
42: Uses transformation to reduce 614 algorithms to just 42 and it also works out that the overall method has fewer moves than the method that it was based on. From this method also came ATCRM - the first ever two sticker CLL recognition system and one that can be used to recognize CLL, NMCLL, CCLL, and more.
CEOR: First found in 2003 but only developed much later, it is a very interesting realization that CP plus the left 1x2x3 can lead to nice one handed ergonomics.
APB: An actual Petrus inspired method. But one that has creative realizations of its own such as the consistency in ergonomics and move count over Petrus and also LXS with its amazing algs.
Other: I could keep going with other methods, the improvements discovered for existing methods, new individual steps, and new techniques.

 

[Silky]

As for the focus that some have on the creativity of proposals, I strongly disagree with those who say that all methods since ZZ (2006) have been uncreative and are just Petrus. That's disrespectful to the amount of effort that has been put forth to make the incredible discoveries that have occurred since that year.

I'd agree with this. Although I understand the take, it's really just overly reductive. Technically we shouldn't include Roux or ZZ since their just "reusing" ideas from Petrus and Corners First. Just because we stand on the shoulders of giants doesn't mean we aren't creating our own ideas. Uniqueness varies in degrees however there is a fine line between that and a rehashing/ripoff.

However, if reading the rules was required before posting a new method (can't remember if it's like this already, as I've not posted a "new" method in so long), that could help reduce the amount of spam.

I mean ultimately a 'proposal' is supposed to be an application which is accepted or denied based on the grounds of whether or not it meets acceptable standards.. which, I guess, is the whole point of the post. Having some sort of application that should be done before having the method posted on the wiki would be good and such a system would outline the proper criteria for a proposal. The problem is that we don't have that outline so a method, to many people, is just a list of steps.