Weekly Report #1

Hello! We will be bringing you the latest internal topics that came up inside the Quality Assurance Team. We would like to keep this in a regular basis (and weekly if possible) to let you stay tuned about our whereabouts!

osu!standard nominators tests are ongoing. We received about 100 applications from dedicated modders who are willing to become part of the Beatmap Nomination Group in the coming days. The number of applications looks overwhelming, but our test creators Irreversible and Mao are working hard on correcting all the received tests until now. The process can still last a few more days than we initially planned, so stay tuned when the results come out to meet the new nominators!

Nominators that failed the previous osu!standard test will be tested again along with the new applicants. All the current nominators and QATs took the same test as the applicants a few months ago. The ones that didn’t manage to pass the test need to apply what they’ve learned in the past few months if they want to stay in the Beatmap Nomination Group! Good luck to you guys!

Inactive nominators have been removed from the group. After discussion within the team, individual cases were brought up and decided if they were still active in the nomination and modding scene. We would like to thank them for all their effort and hard work they have contributed and we wish them the best for the future - maybe we will see them active again someday!

Changes within the Criteria Council are still being developed. The members of the Criteria Council are working hard to remake the current ruleset of the Ranking Criteria. Whereas osu!catch finished their workload a few weeks ago, the team members of osu!, osu!taiko and osu!mania are still making progress with the newly added members. The team responsible for osu!taiko are reconsidering rules regarding finishers and 1/8 snapped notes. Meanwhile the people in charge of osu!mania have brought up proposals revolving around the usage of Slider Velocity changes, as well as the rankability of dumps and semi-dumps and where to draw the line. Council members for osu! sunk their time into defining controversial terms and finding a common ground of understanding, and also approached complicated topics such as difficulty-specific regulations that would only affect beatmaps of a specific difficulty level.

Ask us anything!

On this little section we want to answer your questions in a regular basis. Do not hesitate posting more of your concerns or questions here!

• Outside of their specific team roles, what do QATs do now that the community is more involved in map disqualification? Most of the workload of the QAT is behind the scenes, preparing new tests, for example. Some of us also help with the chat and forum moderation together with the GMT, and all of us check the report thread in a regular basis. There are almost daily discussions about qualified maps, whose threads may also need moderation.
• Can you explain to us in detail the selection process for QAT members? I don’t think it’s been explained anywhere publicly for other’s knowledge. The QAT selection process is managed by the Community Managers mainly. The new additions are generally dedicated members who contribute to the modding and mapping community, whose character could be defined as reliable, self-confident and open-minded. You have to realise that the new members will also need to moderate the beatmap section, which is quite often a conflictive area. To answer the question "when does a nominator get promoted", I would answer with the motto "do not look for us, we will find you!".

That would be all from us for this week. Do not forget using the "Ask us anything!" feature of this blog if you have some more questions about our activity, or whatever you can think about.

—Deif