08-04-2019, 08:36 AM
The protests are not done just by Henrique, they're done by some community members too, as stated in a video a random callsign made: https://youtu.be/7HSvcgkk4oE?t=150
There you can see that whole point of SRS (from techincal POV) is that it can be run by one person. Everything is pretty much automated, and already set up the way he wants it to be. Could it be better? Probably. Is it bad the way it is? IMO, not at all. Some minor things I would set up differently, like qualifying starting at 95-6%, same number of incidents for 20 min races as for 1h and smaller stuff like that...
The Protest Form and the way protests are submitted, I wouldn't touch almost at all. Even though there are multiple "stewards" it would still be more work to open a replay, find the timestamp, click through all the drivers to find the one submitting it, find the other guy, and watch it from their perspectives. Multiply that by the number of incidents per race, and number of races per day, and that number gets very big, very fast. Just for an example, in F3, I submit 2 reports per race on average. It's by far the biggest so far in my "career" at SRS, usually it was 2-3 per season. And bear in mind that I'm not somebody who reports every little contact or "illegal" move, just major stuff. There are probably people who protest far less infractions. The point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of incidents, like in every race, and lot of incidents means that the time it takes to analyze all of that multiply exponentially. 10 extra seconds in one place might mean an hour at the end of a day. The stewards have to watch every protest carefully, they don't know if it's bullshit or valid. They have to take time to treat everything equally. And limiting a number of protest a driver can submit makes no sense. If it's a smaller number (let's say 2), you're at risk of forcing a driver to drop one valid if he's unlucky enough to have more (3+) in one race, if it's a larger limit, it makes no difference.
The way it's now, the person submitting protest takes all the workload and the steward only clicks link, watch 2-3 minutes of footage and brings the verdict. Judging by the "automated" nature of verdicts I've received for the protests I've submitted, I'm guessing that that part is pretty much automated too, like Pawel said. They probably just select the verdict (warning, racing incident, length of suspension...) and the reason (unsafe rejoin, dangerous driving...) and the system takes care of everything else. After all, IMO, if you're the one pointing finger at somebody and asking for their punishment, you should be the one providing evidence. And I think the part of a reason that's set up this way is to give a driver a chance to look at the incident few more times, from few more angles. Maybe he'll realize that it's racing incident, or even his fault. I know I've dropped out few reports because when I looked it from the outside or other guy's POV, I've seen that it's not the same as it looks from my cockpit.
And then there's a whole matter of storing all those replays. With the settings I'm using, it takes about .5 GB for one 20 min race. Sure, you can probably go even lower, but let's say .5. There are, what, 25-30 20 mins a day, and 2-5 1h? That's like 15-20 gigs a day. By itself, not much, but it accumulates pretty easy. Especially when you have in mind that it would have to be some sort of cloud based storage, so that every steward can access it.
I would go in line with increasing the number of stewards, though. 4-6 weeks is just too much to have any effect. I would say that it shouldn't be more than two weeks. Maybe have a public thread where people could apply, give selected few some test cases and decide if they'll fit the team or not. But than again, if Henrique really wanted to expand the number of stewards, chances are that we probably would.
And to end on "on topic" topic, great job in proposing rules adjustments, but I'm afraid that was probably an expected response. And the sad thing is that it's the most logical one. How does that saying go, you can lead a horse to a water, but you can't make it drink? As I've stated in other thread, people who read the rules, are usually (I would go even for 99% of the time) not the one who need them. You can make all the posts with regulations, send them daily, put it as the MOTD on the server, but the chances are that they won't even bother to read it. Literally 3 rules would be enough, if people would actually care for them: 1) use your eyes, 2) use your brain, 3) use your brakes/steering.
There you can see that whole point of SRS (from techincal POV) is that it can be run by one person. Everything is pretty much automated, and already set up the way he wants it to be. Could it be better? Probably. Is it bad the way it is? IMO, not at all. Some minor things I would set up differently, like qualifying starting at 95-6%, same number of incidents for 20 min races as for 1h and smaller stuff like that...
The Protest Form and the way protests are submitted, I wouldn't touch almost at all. Even though there are multiple "stewards" it would still be more work to open a replay, find the timestamp, click through all the drivers to find the one submitting it, find the other guy, and watch it from their perspectives. Multiply that by the number of incidents per race, and number of races per day, and that number gets very big, very fast. Just for an example, in F3, I submit 2 reports per race on average. It's by far the biggest so far in my "career" at SRS, usually it was 2-3 per season. And bear in mind that I'm not somebody who reports every little contact or "illegal" move, just major stuff. There are probably people who protest far less infractions. The point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of incidents, like in every race, and lot of incidents means that the time it takes to analyze all of that multiply exponentially. 10 extra seconds in one place might mean an hour at the end of a day. The stewards have to watch every protest carefully, they don't know if it's bullshit or valid. They have to take time to treat everything equally. And limiting a number of protest a driver can submit makes no sense. If it's a smaller number (let's say 2), you're at risk of forcing a driver to drop one valid if he's unlucky enough to have more (3+) in one race, if it's a larger limit, it makes no difference.
The way it's now, the person submitting protest takes all the workload and the steward only clicks link, watch 2-3 minutes of footage and brings the verdict. Judging by the "automated" nature of verdicts I've received for the protests I've submitted, I'm guessing that that part is pretty much automated too, like Pawel said. They probably just select the verdict (warning, racing incident, length of suspension...) and the reason (unsafe rejoin, dangerous driving...) and the system takes care of everything else. After all, IMO, if you're the one pointing finger at somebody and asking for their punishment, you should be the one providing evidence. And I think the part of a reason that's set up this way is to give a driver a chance to look at the incident few more times, from few more angles. Maybe he'll realize that it's racing incident, or even his fault. I know I've dropped out few reports because when I looked it from the outside or other guy's POV, I've seen that it's not the same as it looks from my cockpit.
And then there's a whole matter of storing all those replays. With the settings I'm using, it takes about .5 GB for one 20 min race. Sure, you can probably go even lower, but let's say .5. There are, what, 25-30 20 mins a day, and 2-5 1h? That's like 15-20 gigs a day. By itself, not much, but it accumulates pretty easy. Especially when you have in mind that it would have to be some sort of cloud based storage, so that every steward can access it.
I would go in line with increasing the number of stewards, though. 4-6 weeks is just too much to have any effect. I would say that it shouldn't be more than two weeks. Maybe have a public thread where people could apply, give selected few some test cases and decide if they'll fit the team or not. But than again, if Henrique really wanted to expand the number of stewards, chances are that we probably would.
And to end on "on topic" topic, great job in proposing rules adjustments, but I'm afraid that was probably an expected response. And the sad thing is that it's the most logical one. How does that saying go, you can lead a horse to a water, but you can't make it drink? As I've stated in other thread, people who read the rules, are usually (I would go even for 99% of the time) not the one who need them. You can make all the posts with regulations, send them daily, put it as the MOTD on the server, but the chances are that they won't even bother to read it. Literally 3 rules would be enough, if people would actually care for them: 1) use your eyes, 2) use your brain, 3) use your brakes/steering.