[PASSED] Creating a GMOTY Selection Committee

[Matt]

Situation:

We brought GMOTY virtually unchanged from SLOR to SLN. Currently, every playoff team is considered a candidate, and the league uses normal voting to determine a winner. GMs are incentivized with RP to vote for a candidate and to explain their choice in a post. The winner is given a prize of 1000 RP and the ability to extend or cut short a contract of their choice by one year.

Benefits:

There are benefits to the current system. It incentivizes activity with RP and encourages GMs to put some base level of thought into their choice by justifying it in the thread. Everyone’s voice is weighted equally.

Complications:

I think there are several issues with the current system:

- Reward is overpowered

SLOR was an RP-inflated environment where GMOTY earned you the equivalent of two podcasts, and where several GMs had RP balances over 10k - the current award is probably twice as valuable in terms of the RP alone than it was in SLOR.

The other part of the reward, removing a year on a contract or extending a contract by a year, was also basically an RP reward in SLOR, because there was no hard cap and higher team salaries were penalized by RP (no competing team would ever have a total salary under $100m). In SLN, this piece of the award is actually an insane competitive advantage.

- Bloc voting

I started charting this over time but got bored, but it definitely is a thing in the data - people (myself included) tend to vote for our friends / trees.

- Voting for the sake of RP without much thought

I’ve definitely been guilty of this in the past - I think often times people will vote because they know it earns them RP, but don’t put much thought into their vote. I think this leads to groupthink and people voting for the candidate that they see people stumping for vs. coming to their own conclusion

- Inconsistent criteria across voters

This one is a smaller issue I think, because everyone should have their own voice and should be able to vote the way they want to vote. Yet, given how powerful the reward is, it seems silly that each person can have a completely different definition of success. Even something as simple as the time period in which GMOTY is evaluated is contested (some people put lots of stock in past years moves that culminated this year, others think the award is a single year award; some people think it’s a regular season award, others think playoffs matter).

Resolution: GMOTY Committee with Ranked Choice Voting

Here is my proposal for the future of GMOTY:

To resolve the issues above, I propose that a committee of GMs (one from each tree, elected by each tree, counting the O6 as a “tree”, and compensated with RP) choose the top 2-5 candidates each year and are tasked with writing the case for each GM that they wish to nominate for GMOTY. The cases should be structured so as to remain objective - specifically, the should include (based on the results of Joe’s survey and subject to change / suggestions):

• Team performance during the season in question and YoY improvement in team performance
  - Since we usually vote on GMOTY during the playoffs, rather than after, I think the evaluation period should be the regular season, but can be decided on by the GMOTY Committee
• Trades made this season, specifically rewarding proactivity, creativity, and ballsiness
• Any relevant FA signings
• Any creative DC moves
• Overall expected wins / championships added by the moves made this season

For example, if I were to nominate the 2021 Hawks, it might look something like this:

Nominee: Heimer (Atlanta Hawks)

• Team Performance: 72-10, +14.2 (2020: 59-23, +9.2)
  
• Trades Made:
  - Traded LeBron and $2 BB for Deandre Jordan and 1069 RP
  - Traded 1269 RP for Zach Collins
  
• Relevant FA Signings: N/A
  
• Depth Chart: Normal
  
• Overall Value Added:
  - Heimer’s main move, trading LeBron for Deandre Jordan, catapulted his team into the record books with the best regular season SLN has ever seen. He’s set up to roll out the same team for the next two seasons at least, and should be the prohibitive championship favorite for the next couple seasons as the result of that move and the foundation he’s built.

The hope is that by putting the relevant statistics / moves on paper for voters to see, we get less recency bias / have less instances of “oh yeah i forgot about that move” after a vote is cast.

Timing (section added based on comments*)

In an effort to standardize the process, the Committee will do their best to post the nominees as soon as the regular season ends. Nothing will change between the time of the trade deadline and the end of the season besides record and point differential, so ideally most of the work can be done ahead of time.

Voting should be affected by the playoffs as little as possible, but we're all human. Within reason (i.e., as long as Ashes isn't going sicko mode and we get a bunch of sims quickly), the vote should lock before R2 begins. Usually it takes some time to get all the DCs in for R1 anyway, so this should give a solid two days to vote, which should be enough.

Voting:

To try to combat bloc voting, I propose a blind, ranked-choice voting system. Here’s how it would work:

One member of the GMOTY Committee serves as the Committee Chair, and receives votes via text. If there are more than two candidates in a given year, votes should come in as a top-3 ranking. Each first place vote will earn that candidate 5 points, each second place vote earns 3 points, and each 3rd place vote earns 1 point. The Committee Chair will then tally up the vote points and post on the boards the final tally along with the list of GMs who voted (for the sake of voting points). After the final tally is posted, GMs can then post on the thread explaining who they voted for and reacting to the results of the vote to get the additional free candy RPs.

Compensation Structure, Election, and Turnover for GMOTY Committee:

Each committee member should be compensated with 250 RP per season, with the Committee Chair earning 400. There will be 5 members of the committee including one chair, so this will stimulate the economy with 1,400 total RP per season.

Members of each tree will volunteer to be considered for GMOTY Committee, and will be selected at random from those who volunteer. Once the committee members are selected, the chair will be randomly selected. Each season, a new chair will be randomly selected from the committee members (chairs may not serve twice in a term).

Every fourth season, trees may hold their own “election” process and randomly select a new committee member (if someone volunteers). If no one volunteers, that tree’s committee member is “reelected”.

[Matt]

Also - this is in no way a response to this year's GMOTY voting, I have been vocal about the award being broken for a while

[Hoff]

I think this is a great idea, and thank you for putting a lot of thought into this. Would there be a change to the GMOTY reward compensation (1000 RP and removing/adding a year of a contract)?

[SoNicks]

I think this is a great idea, and thank you for putting a lot of thought into this. Would there be a change to the GMOTY reward compensation (1000 RP and removing/adding a year of a contract)?

I’d vote for yes in changing and reducing the rewards! I think this is why it’s so heavily debated every season.

Contract adjustments is broken

[Matt]

I think this is a great idea, and thank you for putting a lot of thought into this. Would there be a change to the GMOTY reward compensation (1000 RP and removing/adding a year of a contract)?

Oof yeah kinda forgot to include this...but I also think this should probably be its own rule change proposal - one change for how we decide the award, and another change for the reward compensation

[SoNicks]

I voted no not because I don’t want to change GmOy but because of how it is written above. Committee seems like it would just put a target on specific heads.

I’m in favor of reducing the rewards for GmOY heavily, eliminating any and all criteria so it’s entirely up to each gm, and creating an espys style award where everything gets RP rewards and maybe like a +1 strength or something.

Contract extension elimination is so stupid and completely takes out the realism from the league.

Espys (GmOY, wgmoy, best article, best pod cast (group award), etc) is my vote.

[SoNicks]

Also if my own vote is the deciding vote I’d be willing to change it I suppose if others would be happy

[heimer]

great proposal matt. i voted yes. i think this is an important change that the league has been missing for awhile. we are all busy and can’t all be up to date on every GMs season. appointing a committee to create unbiased writes ups and collect votes privately sounds like a phenomenal idea

[Jesse]

seems like it could make sense . i think those currently w/o jobs should be first in line for the "committee" or whatever that is, since it seems like an easy way to get people rp who don't think they have vehicles for that sweet sweet cash

[Jordo]

voting yes, great write up Matt, i think this kind of opened my eyes that its probably the voting process that's broken as opposed to the award itself. I think this solidifies the criteria a bit more too