Restricting tournaments to a group

[Shivaware]

I'm curious about how it works when a tournament is restricted to a group. In particular, I'm wondering how it looks for people joining such a tournament. Will everyone be able to see it in the list of tournaments, or only group members? Is there any indication from the list view, or do you have to click on each tournament to see that it is restricted to a group? When creating a tournament, can you restrict it to any group, or only groups that you created? Can someone point to an example of a tournament that is restricted to a group?

Would it be feasible to have a giant group intended for people that behave themselves in a tournament and follow any posted rules that the organizer has specified? Admins could remove problematic players from the group after receiving reports and confirming the bad behaviour in the reported game.

[wsbgofficial]

We run tournaments from groups. There are 3 settings for group security you can set your group and each one will act differently. When someone is in a group, any posts made including links to new tournaments will appear in the user's news feed (the exclamation mark when you click on your profile picture) Group types are Public, Invitation Only and Private.

Public - Anyone can see any links to tournaments you post here. You will want to use this if you want your tournaments available for everyone to join and will not require them to have enough elo to join. You can make your tournament private for the group and then post the invitation link so anyone in the group can join without needing enough elo. This may not be a good idea because poor karma players can easily get in your tournament also. This is a better option to post public information about your group.

Invitation Only - This allows you to control the content posted but no one else except members can post in the group. However, you do NOT want to post bypass links in the forum because all posts are still publicly available.

Private - This is the best option to posts invitation links to tournaments that bypass elo. Your group however is not searchable and you will need another public group or to post in the tournament forums to publicize the tournaments you are trying to run and have them request entry into the private group. This is also best if running tournaments from another medium such as a Discord server or Facebook group. This is also the best option to be able to remove problematic players from being able to access tournaments.

If you want to see how our World Series of Board Gaming tournaments work you can check out our group here: https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=18902360 Our private group is only available to our Premium members which they must go to our website wsbgvegas.com to join.

Hope this helps!

[FSKFSK]

The problem with restricting tournaments to a group is that you now have to do the work of maintaining the group.

I wish there was a setting that let you block people who timed out in a tournament game in the past 1-3 months. When I see people timing out of tournament games, I look at their karma page and they have a whole bunch of timeouts.

[Meeplelowda]

I wish there was a setting that let you block people who timed out in a tournament game in the past 1-3 months. When I see people timing out of tournament games, I look at their karma page and they have a whole bunch of timeouts.

Same. Or maybe a filter for excluding those who have timed out twice in the same tournament or something like that, so we can allow for a little human error. The standard karma filters don't catch this. In my experience it's people who have dozens or sometimes over 100 turn-based games going. Because they have so many games going there is a steady flow of completed games to quickly rebuild their karma so they stay above the threshold of the tournament filter.

I'm currently running a tournament where one group is already done with all four steps of the first stage while the other group hasn't even finished Step 3. It did not surprise me to see that two of the repeat offenders are playing in the slow group.

[Shivaware]

Thanks to everyone that replied. There is lots of useful information there about things I hadn't considered.

I'm hoping someone can provide a link to a tournament that was restricted to a group. I think that will help answer some of the questions I asked about.

[FSKFSK]

allow for a little human error

There could be variable settings here. In any system, timeout karma penalties older than 3 months should expire so people have a chance of redemption. It could be anywhere from zero tolerance (any timeouts in the past 1-3 months and they're excluded), or more than 3 timeouts in that period, or timeouts in fewer than 5%-10% of tournaments entered.

I also would fix it so that you can't kick someone for time in a mostly completed game, in the case where someone goes slightly under time but is still playing. To phrase it as a rule "If completion percentage of game is greater than percentage of maximum time used, then nobody can be kicked even with a negative clock."

[RazorOz]

I'm curious about how it works when a tournament is restricted to a group. In particular, I'm wondering how it looks for people joining such a tournament. Will everyone be able to see it in the list of tournaments, or only group members? Is there any indication from the list view, or do you have to click on each tournament to see that it is restricted to a group? When creating a tournament, can you restrict it to any group, or only groups that you created? Can someone point to an example of a tournament that is restricted to a group?

Would it be feasible to have a giant group intended for people that behave themselves in a tournament and follow any posted rules that the organizer has specified? Admins could remove problematic players from the group after receiving reports and confirming the bad behaviour in the reported game.

Only group members will be able to see the tournament listed, there's no actual indication from the list, only on the tournament page, for example: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=426721. The only way others will be able to see the tournament is they will get notification of x registers for the tournament from players on their friend list.

I think you only have to be member of the group to restrict it to that group, it's definitely not creator only, as I didn't create Heat Degens, I am admin, but I doubt that makes a difference.

It is feasible, that's kind of what Heat Degens is for Heat. The work is in setting it up, the actual upkeep isn't much once you have it going, but to really get it up and running in the first place you are likely to be a) well known in that games community, b) need support from other players. It likely helps if you have a few of the most active/top players on board, just because are more like to join if they know who you are.

Here's another example: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=501394.

[Shivaware]

I'm curious about how it works when a tournament is restricted to a group. In particular, I'm wondering how it looks for people joining such a tournament. Will everyone be able to see it in the list of tournaments, or only group members? Is there any indication from the list view, or do you have to click on each tournament to see that it is restricted to a group? When creating a tournament, can you restrict it to any group, or only groups that you created? Can someone point to an example of a tournament that is restricted to a group?

Would it be feasible to have a giant group intended for people that behave themselves in a tournament and follow any posted rules that the organizer has specified? Admins could remove problematic players from the group after receiving reports and confirming the bad behaviour in the reported game.

Only group members will be able to see the tournament listed, there's no actual indication from the list, only on the tournament page, for example: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=426721. The only way others will be able to see the tournament is they will get notification of x registers for the tournament from players on their friend list.

I think you only have to be member of the group to restrict it to that group, it's definitely not creator only, as I didn't create Heat Degens, I am admin, but I doubt that makes a difference.

It is feasible, that's kind of what Heat Degens is for Heat. The work is in setting it up, the actual upkeep isn't much once you have it going, but to really get it up and running in the first place you are likely to be a) well known in that games community, b) need support from other players. It likely helps if you have a few of the most active/top players on board, just because are more like to join if they know who you are.

Here's another example: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=501394.

Thanks very much for taking the time to provide this detailed answer. I see that Heat Degens is a private group, so members need to be invited. I guess you could create a forum thread to advertise the group, and then invite the suitable people that reply. That certainly makes it sound difficult to get something started.

If you have a public group, can an admin remove members from that group? If so, that should be an easier way for people to join and get the group going.

[wsbgofficial]

I'm curious about how it works when a tournament is restricted to a group. In particular, I'm wondering how it looks for people joining such a tournament. Will everyone be able to see it in the list of tournaments, or only group members? Is there any indication from the list view, or do you have to click on each tournament to see that it is restricted to a group? When creating a tournament, can you restrict it to any group, or only groups that you created? Can someone point to an example of a tournament that is restricted to a group?

Would it be feasible to have a giant group intended for people that behave themselves in a tournament and follow any posted rules that the organizer has specified? Admins could remove problematic players from the group after receiving reports and confirming the bad behaviour in the reported game.

Only group members will be able to see the tournament listed, there's no actual indication from the list, only on the tournament page, for example: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=426721. The only way others will be able to see the tournament is they will get notification of x registers for the tournament from players on their friend list.

I think you only have to be member of the group to restrict it to that group, it's definitely not creator only, as I didn't create Heat Degens, I am admin, but I doubt that makes a difference.

It is feasible, that's kind of what Heat Degens is for Heat. The work is in setting it up, the actual upkeep isn't much once you have it going, but to really get it up and running in the first place you are likely to be a) well known in that games community, b) need support from other players. It likely helps if you have a few of the most active/top players on board, just because are more like to join if they know who you are.

Here's another example: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=501394.

Thanks very much for taking the time to provide this detailed answer. I see that Heat Degens is a private group, so members need to be invited. I guess you could create a forum thread to advertise the group, and then invite the suitable people that reply. That certainly makes it sound difficult to get something started.

If you have a public group, can an admin remove members from that group? If so, that should be an easier way for people to join and get the group going.

Yes, an admin can kick a person from a public group.

[Shivaware]

Yes, an admin can kick a person from a public group.

Thanks for this confirmation!

It sounds like creating a public group for this purpose could work. I don't think I will be able to organize something like that anytime soon, but if anyone starts such a group, I'd love to hear about it!