Preface
First of all, let me clarify that when I am proposing that a question should be included, I do not necessarily have some sort of agenda or opinion. I might just think it is either an important discussion point or something where I expect a clear answer that would be formalized by having a vote with an overwhelming majority. One example for this is "6. What should happen to records for which all video coverage becomes unavailable?". I personally think that it is only important that the videos are available according to the video requirements during the approval phase. During this time anyone has the opportunity to just download them, and removing them afterwards does not harm the validity of the record. I would also expect that this finds almost universal acceptance in the community, BUT: a) We can not know this for sure without actually asking and b) would it not be nice to have this in writing to prevent possible future discussion? Overall, the only downside of including a question like this is that it costs about 10 seconds of your valuable time and that it might in some way distract from the more important topics (which is partly why I put the less relevant questions to the end).
Next, and I hope at least a couple of people had this realization after the implementation of the second based records: You may think that your own personal opinion is what is best for the community or you may think that all problems would simply be solved if everyone just followed the "most reasonable solution" that you propose, but the flaws with that should be obvious because everyone thinks that. The goal is to enable the community to come up with rules under which it as aggregate enjoys running for records the most, and not what one individual thinks others should enjoy running the most. Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that the introduction of second based records is a bad decision going forward, but they have been available for a couple of months and you can count the number of actually interesting submissions (that would not have happened with only minute based times) on one hand. Again, I am not trying to revive the second based records discussion, we have that now (mostly...) - but please reconsider whether we are actually seeing the effects on activity and competitiveness you (that argued for second based records) expected beforehand. What people will actually do is hard to be predict and nobody here, independent of how much you want to believe so, knows it all. Please do not quote the part about second based records because it is irrelevant to this discussion. My point is just that you personally cannot speak for everyone, which is why we need a vote and even questions that you think are obvious should be discussed.
Contentual Discussion
This thread contains some valuable discussion points and arguments that might help people to decide what to vote for. But these points reflect mostly personal opinions, so there is no reason for me to comment on them further than I already did. I also won't engage with comparisons to other games that have absolutely no RNG, are single player and that do not suffer from the necessity of a server connection, I think it is obvious why.
There are multiple points that are worth discussing though, in no particular order:
1. Whitelist/Blacklist: I think I have outlined the most relevant arguments for both solutions here:
http://gwscr.fbgmguild.com/viewtopic.php?p=10237#p10237 . I think what we need to do is come up with how those arguments should be presented in the poll itself to enable people to understand the implications and give their vote as informed as possible. I think there are 2 main ways to do this, a specific whitelist or a more general blacklist.
2. "Glitchless" categories. I personally really dislike this for the reasons mentioned already (ambiguity, further segregation, who would actually want to run for this?), but as I stressed above me disagreeing with this should not lead to a exclusion. Therefore, I suggest we just incorporate this into the vote in some general way and detached from the pure/standard/tas argument. So just an additional question like "Independent from the pure/standard/tas questions: Would you want to see additional categories that restricts what ingame glitches are allowed? e.g. gateglitch, buggy unglitch, glitchspotting". If that results in a majority of yes, we would then follow this up with an additional vote about the specifics.
3. Ingame timer in PURE: Sure, we can vote about this as well in the second round.
Conclusion
There have not been really any complaints about the proposed approach in general.
Here is an updated version of the proposed questions from the initial post, this time with proposed answer options (numbers are different!):
1. Should the Standard category exist? --> Yes/No/IDC
2. If the Standard category exists, should we follow a whitelist (only 3rd party tools that are explicitly listed are allowed) or a blacklist (everything is allowed that is not explicitly forbidden) approach? At the moment, we are using some middle ground solution with some allowed examples and some forbidden examples which sometimes requires moderators discretion when a new tool is introduced or used in a record. The individual items for whitelist or blacklist would be determined in the following vote. A whitelist would be kept more specific (while still as general as possible) and a blacklist more general (while still as specific as necessary). --> Whitelist/Blacklist/IDC
3. If the Standard category exists, we will have another vote about which specific 3rd party tools are allowed. Let us a assume a record that is currently classified as Standard used a tool that will be forbidden after the second vote. Should that record be allowed to stay in the Standard category or should it be reclassified to the TAS category? --> Stay in Standard / Reclassify to TAS / IDC
4. If the Standard category exists, what should be the process to allow/disallow new 3rd party tools? Votes every few months / Another vote when it becomes necessary (to be defined) / Moderators discretion
5 If the Standard category exists, what should be the process to allow/disallow new mechanics that do not require a 3rd tool (for example a new coindrop/slowload)? Allow by default / Ban by default / IDC
6. Should the TAS category allow everything, even if it is about performing actions that are not possible in the boundaries of the unmodified version of the game itself (dialogs, targeting minipets)? If no, then this would mean a full video requirement for TAS records needs to be enforced. --> Allow, keep the current situation / Ban and enforce full video coverage even in TAS, runs that miss one video will not be eligible for records at all / IDC
7. Independent from the pure/standard/tas questions: Would you want to see additional categories that restricts what ingame glitches are allowed? e.g. gateglitch, buggy unglitch, glitchspotting --> Yes/No/IDC
8. What should happen to records for which all video coverage becomes unavailable after the approval process has been completed? --> Keep them on the tables / Remove them from the tables / IDC
Also, there was no feedback about who gets a vote, so I will copy what I wrote initially:
I think it is reasonable to limit voting rights to people that meet either of the following criteria (softened version of the original vote): a) be registered for 3 months and have written at least 5 posts in the last 2 years b) participated in a record that was posted to gwscr within the last 3 years // We would then create a google form for the vote, and 1 question would require the link to the GWSCR profile and another question an arbitrary number that the respondent can come up with. Then when the results get released it would be anyonymous, and "your vote" can be referenced by you by just letting everybody know what your number was.
Outlook
I would now wait 1 more week for feedback on the general approach. Please keep in mind that this would only be the first round and depending on how the result of this first vote ends up, we would need further clarification on which specific 3rd party tools and techniques are allowed in the respective categories.