Good evening everyone!
Most of you are probably aware that hosting XHBs requires you to pay a bunch of boons and you will only get these boons back if your battle gets a certain amount of entries. (3 for OHB, 7 for 2HB, 11 for 4HB)
A lot of you also know that theres a common practice to submit so called "boonsave" entries to help the host and save them their boons. A boonsave entry is a thing someone made within a few seconds after the battle deadline already exceeded, only to save the host from a boonloss when noone else is submitting.

This was never a good practice and you probably know that the boonback-threshold is there for a reason. It makes sure that the host is aware of the risk to host a stupid battle idea in a stupid format at a stupid time. Or in other words: If the battles you host dont gain enough interest, you will be punished by maybe losing your ability to host more of them. There needs to be a way to make sure that people are actually interested in ongoing battles.

We (as in: the admins) noticed a mariopaint battle yesterday, that had 2 boonsave entries, both submitted by the same person (one by using Public Toilet), and we agreed that submitting boonsave entries is indeed a scrub-worthy way of exploiting the dynamics of the page and its system.

Since this was probably not clear enough until now, we won't act over the things that happend yesterday. We will just give a warning to not do it again! From now on, if we (admins) notice an obvious "boonsave" entry in a battle, we will give a 2 week scrub ailment for this.

is this just referring to if someone is submitting with multiple accounts, or is it also including people who only submit one entry late? first case is fair but i dunno about the 2nd case

@tennisers i don't think it's that subtle of an issue as a participant… just use your best judgement and don't act in bad faith and we'll all be fine

I do what I want

eh

Understood! Good to know going forward and I appreciate the merciful decision.

Expanding on "eh"
Ik I'm just new here, but I dont like this, lol
the system is already uh, fucking weird
It requires great amounts of boons to start hosting
(been here for like a month and I have 30 entries ( not counting some pb ones) that's one ohb every day)
I have 130 boons.
So basically, (assuming I dont do majors and get boons from it) if I wanted to host my first battle without asking someone else to lend/give boons, I'd have to keep going at this pace for.... 6 months more.
(I am not complaining here, just saying the boons you get from OHBs as a participant, are nothing compared to what you get from hosting)
So that means that basically the real gatekeeper for who is able to host XHBs is the community. If you like some bloke enough and they want to host, and you have boons , you lend/give and it works out.
This is not a bad thing at all however. And I feel like boonsaving is just an extension of the community work, keeping the wonky system in balance.
Stretching a bit there, but if ,like, Tenn hosts a sunvox 2HB with a good bitpack and warns in advance, but two of the rare people interested of that format that said they would be there can't for some reason, you can be sure I'll boonsave in a heartbeat

Also : "(It makes sure that the host is aware of the risk to host a stupid battle idea in a stupid format at a stupid time.)"
I know you're kind of kidding, but there are no stupid formats, and honestly even though it does prevent bots & trolls from hosting willy nilly I strongly feel like actual musical people often avoid hosting what they actually want to make because of that rule, and this is exactly why I'm ok with boonsaving, from my new user perspective

The website might seem like a cold, brutal bastard, but it's populated by a warm community. Many folks have boons to spare. If the admin team agrees that boonsave entries are bad why would you blatantly and openly disregard the request when you could just ask for the boons you need to host?
Liek, seriously, "the system is hard so imma break the rules" instead of "can someone help me with my goals?" really?

Alright. So if I got this right:
Effortless entries made just for saving the host from boonloss, either through host alt-making entries or having mutuals back them up, is a big nono. Especially ones made when time's already out.
Gotcha! I'm not afraid of loosing boons on hosting here :)

I'm agreeing with the mod-op's. It's not that bad if you lose so much boons that you can't host - you'll always get them back in one or another way, depending on site-activity, which isn't that hard. The mechanics are there for like you said Svipal: the community. The community of the site is the source to push out the goods on it. If they don't agree on an idea you host, talk it out. Convince them or learn from them, don't feel insulted by them if their objective opinion they give you is because they wanna help you.

puke you're stealing the words from my mouth
a WORD THIEF IS ON TEH LOOSE

mhm
i will say this much that even though boonloss battles are still a thing, they're far less common nowadays than they were even months ago. (at least, i don't notice as many nowadays) this might be because of the influx of people coming in who are interested in a multitude of formats mixed with more responsible hosting nowadays, but yea boonsave isn't as much relied on as it is almost an inevitability i think. plus, boonsave entries are pretty scummy if abused for battles ngl so the distinction and newly-enforced punishment from the admin team is very much appreciated.

Woah Puke, I really didn't mean to come across that way
What I was saying wasn't at all "the system is hard so I'm gonna break the rules', or even "give me boons reeee")
It was, the system is kind of weird to begin with (not hard, what does hard mean ? ) but the community makes it good, and I think boonsaving is an extension of that community's influence to make it better. Then I constructed an imaginary case in which boonsaving
would seem to me like the fair thing to do
Didn't mean to threaten to boonsave in battles , (I've even never done it, lol) I guess my wording WAS kinda defiant lmao sorry for that

No disrespect to the admin team, as I said I am new and my perspective is necessarily limited

I just want to say - Lumby & kf, you're right that boonloss battles are not common at all. But that' because a vast majority of battles are in common formats.

Once again I DONT know if I'm right I'but it strongly seems to me that the boonloss thing makes people not dare to host OHBs in the formats they' d like but rather play it safe

Peace

basically the reason why we have b750 as the deposit, 3 entries for boonback and all that stuff is because people abused compo-hosting in the past already. the deposit was a lot lower and you didnt need badges to host 10 years ago.

the system might seem weird at first, but its basically just what the community made it to over the past 16 years. sometimes, you need a certain amount of moderation and restrictions, otherwise its too easy to run into chaos. i know almost all people on here are good-hearted and just wanna have fun.. but rules arent here only to annoy you, they are the result of maybe less-good-hearted people who try to exploit and troll whenever they have the chance to do so.
and at that point, its important that everyone is following these rules, otherwise it would be tedious or impossible to act fair as an admin when you have to punish people after they did bad stuff

dunno if my post helped set a negative tone, it was a joke. I do support however the site needs to be run

I have done a few boonsaves in the past not to subvert the penalty but mainly to like, show some love for my fellow botbr or somethin lol. I had thought it would be a nice unexpected charm for host to see someone come out of the woodworks last minute to help them out. I'd wager that's the motives of others when they do it too

it is funny to me cos now you can REALLY show some love and devotion by going to scrub jail for two weeks

my entries all sound like boonsave but I swear they're not im just bad lol

* Reads post
* Checks my song list
* 'save teh boons.nsf'
* Looks around nervously

So... Uh... how do I delete an entry? I need to destroy some evidence :P

On a more serious note, yeah boonsaves are a bit of a rule dodge.

i feel like botb should have more oppressive rules that exist just so people can break them and it feels good

https://battleofthebits.com/barracks/Profile/Public+Toilet/

mummi'ing Public Toilet probably has to be like one of the worst decisions ever made on this site

Very upset rn

[This n00b ashamed of what written. - BotB]

sure it is allowed. o.o
and you can just communicate with people and make clear it was not to boonsave the compo but to actually try something out for fun, in case it is very unclear

@2a03fox just by comparing your average score with mine, your comment scares a lot! :D

Just out of curiosity, while the subject is brought up, what would the consensus be on slightly lowering the number of boons necessary to host?
I'm not saying it's a good idea or a bad idea off the bat, but Amy mentions that the number was raised because of people abusing comp-hosting. I'd be curious to know if, with the current community of botbrs we have, this would still be an issue.
I have a lot of trust in the maturity of the current active botbrs, which is why I pose the question.

buh if yall want boons for battles you can always just bug me its not like i use them

its true, she hasn't used a single nub in months

pidge has a good point, maybe the issue could be easier addressed by just punishing the one-off scrub hosting events rather than making it harder to host in general

although tbh i kind of like gaming systems that are grindy, so i dont really care that much if anything changes or not