I like this idea because it's an attempt to find a simple and direct measure of success (views after 1 month). I can imagine people disagreeing with this measure though, thinking that someone's videos are much better and deserve more views. I measured the quality of videos by how I feel about the video, which was of course influenced by some factors that the current rules are trying to quantify (number of tricks, video length, etc.) and more (novelty, aesthetics, etc.). This is the most direct measure of success, the impression made on a trusted judge. I imagine that a group of trusted judges could do something similar these days too. Things like video duration and number of tricks were a recommendation from the judge (me), not a hard rule, clubs knew they could deviate from the recommendation when it makes sense. btw this is the 1000th reply to this topic lol, do I get a prize? No?

Yeah, a bunch of people would be mad, and another bunch would be happy, that's the political nature of club paints. Opinions depend mostly on club membership, friendships, values and concerns. TFP members wanted the paint of course, at some point their forum topic even said that's the club's mission. Some others disagreed on who deserves the paint. And yet another group of people was bothered by problems the paint (or even the idea of it) caused. For TFP getting Phoenix was a dream come true, for some it was a symbol of injustice and neglect, and for some it was a reason for many fights that spoiled the friendly atmosphere of the parkour community (which is either bad or good, depending on how much they love the drama). As most people probably know, I'm in the "don't want the paint's issues" camp. When FnF got Phoenix too, I chose not to reject it because I knew some of my club members will enjoy it, and that it will make some people relax and feel that justice has been restored. But it came at a cost that my club and I wouldn't have to pay if Phoenix simply didn't exist. By the way @Adab, this is an example of how the existence of the paint affects even people who personally reject it. Rejecting the paint for my whole club was a bad option, even though they knew when joining the club what the leaders thought about the paint. And I sure as hell wouldn't leave the club or split it or harm it in any other way just to stay away from the paint. When you tell people that they can just choose to stay away from the paint, you neglect people's friendships and dedication to a club, and the difficulty of leaving it and starting a new club or joining one.

I agree 99%. When a rule says "be member of only 1 club", it is not clear to people that the intention of this rule is only about double club support and not about everything else people think of as club membership. Also, this way you don't allow them to receive credit in the club's forum topic for their participation in an equal way to other players in the club. The only 1% of disagreement I have is about the complication of deciding which club to receive support from. I think it'd be better if people didn't have to worry about it, and instead had a limit to the amount of support per time that a member of multiple clubs gets. Clubs will likely vary in activity, and it will suck for players who maybe dedicate twice the time, effort and supplies on playing in 2 clubs to only receive half the reward they deserve, or even less if they happen to be registered to receive support from the currently less active club. I suggest at least letting players receive a maximum of 2 "support packages" per month, or 3 packages per 2 months, something like that, I don't know the current upload rates and value of a single support package for one video, so I don't know what a reasonable limit would be.

The fight was about which club is better, and by the time F&F got the paint there was nothing I could do to stop the fight. I got the "job" before it had a name. I kept taking more responsibilities, starting from being a forum mod and running the parkour forum (and making the club rules), to managing club support, to organizing contests (I came up with the idea of the Parkour Survival contest, organized the first contest, and partly the 2nd contest. I was asked/offered to help organizing more contests, but I refused). For lack of an official name for my position, people called it however they wanted, it started from "parkour forum mod", but over time "parkour admin" got more popular. You too!

When I was the parkour admin, only the community manager decided about the Official status. If it was up to me, Phoenix wouldn't have existed in the first place. Besides, if I asked to remove Phoenix back then, people (probably including the community manager) would think I'm just being a TFP hater (because of the fight between the clubs at the time).

Hi! Good to see you ? and yeah a lot changed since then. FnF closed because the leaders wanted to leave, and without someone willing to take leadership and able to uphold our high standards, we decided it's better to close the club. Those were big shoes to fill, because in FnF the leaders came up with the tricks, and our standard was to include only creative tricks that have never been done before by anyone, and occasionally a few that had a special twist that made them interesting and new enough. (I'm not sure how well this standard was kept by our last leader, but I'm still impressed by what he managed to do without the old leaders, being a great parkourist is one thing, inventing tricks is a whole different skill.) I'll reply to more of what you wrote when I have the time ?

I think that option 1 is better.

No, it's not about deserving. I'm not upset with anyone getting the paint, I'm sorry for what it costs them. It's about people giving up some of their preferences and satisfaction in order to pursue the paint, and taking on pressure from the deadlines. We can't eliminate it, but we can reduce it significantly, rather than continuing to contribute to it. I've seen over and over how the paint has always been a huge trigger for these things, and it escalates existing conflicts, draws more people into them, makes them much worse and creates long term problems between some of the people involved. If you remove that, it won't eliminate all the problems, but it sure will prevent some big ones. I love this part for 2 reasons. First of all, I like your honesty and that you didn't leave this important bit of information out of the discussion, understanding each other's motivations is very useful. Second, I find it funny that this is the impression you got, you'll see why when I answer your question: I did exactly that! Except my club was much bigger than 5-10 people (see our members list). I'm the leader of the parkour club FnF (Fight & Flight), which is now closed, but was active for 4 years of great success. We didn't care about the paint, we didn't care when someone else got it, and we got plenty of recognition without it. In fact, we had so much recognition that people protested in Tanki's vlog comments and livestream chats, saying FnF is the best and should get Phoenix. We stuck to our values, and had the honor of being chosen by the community rather than by one person that decides who becomes Official, that's a greater honor than any Official club ever had. And then we actually became Official and got the Phoenix paint, which we never used in our videos. So I had (and still have) plenty of recognition from those who were around back then to see my contribution to the parkour community (which includes things outside of FnF too, and fun fact, I was the first parkour admin). So I have no reason to be jealous of anyone else having the paint, I only want to take it away because I see how much damage it kept doing to the community. I'm all for giving parkourists as many good things as possible, but the paint is more of a curse in disguise.

If playing a game feels like a job to you, you're doing it wrong. (Unless you're actually getting paid real money.) Which brings me to one reason to remove the paint, it makes people feel like making club videos is a job. Gotta keep up with the required upload rate, gotta keep making videos even when you don't feel like it, gotta give up any desires of what you want your videos to be like if those desires contradict some requirements (like you can't make videos that take too long to produce, so bye bye to the more time-consuming tricks or to videos beyond a certain duration or amount of tricks). I've seen many people experience this feeling. The other good reason, since you asked for 2, is the one you quoted in your previous message and said that "there is simply no valid reason" lol. Like it or not, the paint has always been a cause of rivalry, hostility, fights, jealousy, and disagreements about who deserves it and who doesn't. Parkour is not eSports, there is no one clear definition of a winner that everyone can agree on.

I expected such a reaction, of course people want to stand out and are motivated to get the paint, if this wasn't the case then we wouldn't be having this conversation. The fact that the paint becomes people's goal/motivation is the source of many of the reasons I mentioned in favor of removing the paint. Clubs were doing just fine before there was a paint to motivate them, there are enough sources of motivation for parkour clubs anyway, and I think it'd be good for players to focus on those better motivations.

Yes! I thought for a long time that removing the Official status and paints is a good idea. No more distraction, no disagreements about who's Official and about requirements, no competitive rivalry, no suspicion of corruption, and yeah no paint diggers. Remember when TFP and FnF (and their fans) started arguing about who's better? If I recall correctly, it started when TFP got Phoenix and some players said that FnF is more deserving of a paint than TFP. The first thing Phoenix paint did to the parkour community was create lots of fights and conflicts between people and clubs, and it kept doing this pretty consistently since then. I know, I wasn't clear about what I meant by generosity. I was thinking about not asking the clubs for much in return, like not asking them to keep a certain pace, it certainly doesn't hurt to support slower clubs too, so be kind to them, don't give them a choice between "grind/change for support" and "no grind/change no support". (Sure, a video every 12 weeks can feel easy to some clubs, but every club is unique, some might have less time to play, or want to make longer videos or more time consuming tricks.) I guess you're right, I can't read your mind and can't know how much you really care. When it comes to conversations, sometimes it's good to know how to express this caring and not give people the wrong/opposite impression. I believe that you have good intentions, but sometimes it's just really hard. Oh I didn't know that they moved to another locale. It was LPS, here. Many people strongly hold opposing opinions about the paints (who should have it, when, for how long), and no matter who will get the paint many people will be unhappy about it. For example, some people think TFP should have Phoenix for historical reasons (or for other reasons), others think there's no good reason to let TFP keep it. And many people have a problem with parkour admins who make their own club Official, they see it as corruption. It seems that there is no option that will be accepted by the community when it comes to giving someone Phoenix.

Support yes, paints absolutely not. Most clubs that ever existed, assumed they'll probably never get a paint, or didn't even care about it. If someone parkours a lot, he probably likes parkour, even if he also wants a paint. Remember when players who didn't love parkour tried to get paints? It was viewed as a bad motivation, they were called "paint diggers" and they were not wanted, because they weren't dedicated enough. In my experience with FnF applicants, paint diggers always quit, and those who like parkour gladly stick around even if they don't get the paint (we had many such "helpers"). No one in their right mind spends a whole year or more doing something they don't like for such a small reward. If they really do, please please PLEASE for the love of God don't make them keep doing it. And if they don't, don't treat them like paint diggers. As @emrakul said, paints were always a problem. In fact, the idea of parkour paints was a problem even before the Phoenix paint existed, because it put pressure on people to do what some thought would get them a paint, at the expense of what they really wanted to do. It was more distracting than motivating. At this point, paints are also too political, have lost their value and meaning, and if I understand correctly, now you've also taken away the paint from the one club that got it before all this mess. Parkour paints are an epic fail. Almost half the clubs closed recently, and one of them publicly stated that the administration (you) pushed them to quit. People don't want a cheap prize to motivate them to play, they want support and freedom to do things their way. In response to players saying they feel rushed, you call the activity requirements generous. Instead of respecting their desire to take their time and release videos when they feel ready, and without an unwanted grind, you reply to them with arguments that basically invalidate their feelings. I can relate to their frustration, there were times when I wanted to quit too because the management neglected my club's needs and values and mistreated us. The parkour community, or what's left of it, is telling you how they feel. Those feelings are real, and they matter, don't ignore them, don't neglect them. By the way, about an earlier message of yours: This is another example of how you completely miss the feelings people communicate to you. Sure, you could point out a logical flaw in the words I used, but you could also take into account that many of the jokes in the parody (that you've read the whole thing) are also explanations for why those rules are problematic and why people feel bad about them. So yeah, free the paint diggers, free clubs from pressure, be generous with support, listen to people's feelings, cookies *-*

I like when people speak honestly and openly, and I always appreciate being told the truth. If people always kept their criticism to themselves, how would I learn? Yes I might disagree with what you'll say, but I wouldn't call that discussion irrelevant, it's on the topic of parkour rules. Also, I think it'd be more pleasant for everyone if you were more open about your thoughts, more of the "I'm here for you, let's hear each other out" type, instead of keeping the discussion somewhat one-sided and being the "I heard you, I insist and won't explain myself, I'm a professional, here's a formal statement instead" type. Trust me, it feels good to be understood and not have to use the voice of authority, and to have people feel that you are on their side and appreciate your effort and thank you for it.

lol if you don't know the applicant by name, what stops them from applying with a fake name? And what stops other people who know the applicant by name from using that name? And if the helper's name is like a password for identification, does that mean players whose nickname is their real name can't apply to be helpers because their "password" is revealed? When a friend of mine applied to be a helper but didn't want to reveal the name, the admin said that it's just for the convenience of knowing how to call you instead of using the nickname (on Skype), and it was ok to skip that question. I'll take your silence as "I couldn't come up with any" ?

What were the issues, and how could rules solve them? I just looked at the old club support topic and found this post which explains part of the reason why I kept the rules to a minimum: In other words, I judged things by how well they do at their goal. I didn't need to make rules like "make the video at least 1 minute long" because a bad 30 seconds video wouldn't get anyone a reward simply because the video is bad. And a good 30 seconds video that shows something special that a lot of time and effort went into it, would be recognized and rewarded. Here's a good 30 seconds video for example btw, as you can see in the comments, people couldn't care less about the video duration ? And yes I did give a definition of what creativity means, and I could have written it as a rule or a scoring formula, but that would only make things worse for 2 reasons: it could end up forcing low score on amazing videos (and vice versa), and it could divert people's focus to creativity because it's "mandatory" and sacrifice their own special way of making their videos great and worthy of support. I guess I should add that sometimes I was delayed or limited by the community manager (or other people who limited him too), I couldn't always give things as soon as I wanted, and I always wished I could give more spectators. People were still happy, because things were improving, and they knew I'm doing everything I can to help them. Read the old posts about club support, they're full of gratitude, you won't find in my time any of the complaints that you are getting. You have the power to give much more than I could, and yet people have complaints about how that goes, doesn't that mean there's a problem now that didn't exist back then? Don't bother picking on small flaws, give me the big issues, the problems that were in my control, not technicalities.