Melee It On Me · @MeleeItOnMe
12th Sep 2017 from TwitLonger
On the purpose of The Competition Committee
Hello all,
The Melee Competition Committee (CC), which includes the Leadership Panel (“The 5”) and the At-Large Panel (“The 25”), was formed so that we’d have a process in place for prominent tournament organizers, players, and influencers to come to the table, and unify rulesets at a critical point in our history. In a time when players were clamoring for consistency, fairness, and clarity in regards to Melee gameplay rules across events, we brought some of the community’s biggest names together to make their opinions accountable: in exchange for having the power to make lasting change, they’d have to make all votes and amendments public.
Regrettably, miscommunication on our part has led to confusion about what the Competition Committee’s responsibilities are and are not, understandably resulting in some uproar the last few days. So to start off with a clarification:
The purpose of the Competition Committee has always been, and will continue to be, to collaborate on a recommended Melee ruleset whose scope is about gameplay rules only. Informally speaking, it’s just about what happens between sitting down and plugging your controller in, and getting up from the station after the set is over. The initial ruleset that was written by the Leadership Panel contained a Code of Conduct (CoC), and so it’s not unreasonable to assume that the CoC falls under the same responsibility and procedure as the rest of the document. This is not what was intended and was a miscommunication on our part. However, we still believe a CoC should continue to live there for the purposes of accessibility. The 25 were selected based on their expertise with competitive Melee as players and influencers, and not on their knowledge of player conduct.
To be clear about what the CC does not do:
- It does not guide player conduct violations (in or out of tournaments) or issue penalties to players.
- It does not penalize any tournaments that don't use this ruleset.
- It does not guide the overall strategy and growth of the Melee scene.
We recognize that even if the responsibility for those topics does not rest with the CC as a whole, it does rest with the broader Melee leadership. We stress that we agree that Melee community leaders have a responsibility to maintain a CoC, and just as importantly, to establish best practices for TOs in the event of gameplay rule violations and CoC violations. This cannot be done without significant counsel and collaboration from women and other minority groups in the community. The Leadership Panel will spearhead an effort involving people separate from The 25 to help with CoC-related amendments when they may arise and take an active approach in setting best practices for rule enforcement. To be clear, The 25 will not be voting on CoC amendments and The 5 will be reconsidering the process for CoC amendments going forward.
We hope this helps clear up the purpose of The Competition Committee, and we understand that the topics of gender representation and Armada’s potential drop from the panel are important to the community. At the time of this post, we are internally discussing these matters and are working toward a solution for the issues raised by them.
Ruleset amendments are currently being accepted to: ssbmrulescc@gmail.com. There are guidelines for amendments that must be followed. You can find them in Section 2.4 of the Melee Recommended Ruleset https://docs.google.com/document/d/14MtvwnEGWXcRytFaTnTtT8ASfojicArU1sveFaXeMmA/
Thank you for reading,
The Leadership Panel