Important: The tag titles

[Deskfan45]

Five years ago today, Winner3, the admin of this website had his characters, the SWAT Cats, win the tag team titles. He has held these titles ever since, while taking many long leaves of absence, leaving the title stagnant and inactive for years. Winner is a busy person, with the responsibility of managing this entire site as well as whatever else he might have going on in the real world, so it's understandable that he doesn't have much time to RP. This is a fun hobby and shouldn't take priority over actual obligations. However, him holding onto the title for this long and with very little activity is an extreme violation of his own rules regarding titles.

Reign length - After 1.5 years of IRL time of your character being a champion, I will ask you to disclose to me your plans for who you intend to have your character drop their title to and how. After 2 years of IRL time, if you have not begun the thread in which your character will pass their championship on to someone else, your title may be vacated. This rule can be negotiated with communication with the mods and admin. We all understand that stuff happens and life can get in the way. But going forward, these timeboxes will be largely enforced.
Additionally, LAW Title reigns are judged, in-universe, by the quality and quantity of title defenses, and not by the number of days. Number of days gets screwy as a metric since each person controls their own character's timeline and doesn't necessarily use IRL time. Number of PPV cycles might be a better metric but I stand by number of defenses and quality of contenders as the best metric to use for storytelling/RP purposes

I'm not a stickler for rules, I don't mind enforcement of them being lax, as long as they are enforced equally. But they are not. Winner personally made the decision to force ADarlingDucky to vacate the middleweight title, when her character, Lillian Byrne, had reigned for three years. (Sept 23rd 2019 - Oct 18th 2022) Ducky's title reign was long, and during the latter half, things moved somewhat slowly, however it did not come close to the length and stagnation of Winner's own title reign today. And as a side note, while the user was not forced to vacate, I find it relevant to mention that the reign of SuckerPunch's Rose Gold, which was heavily criticized for it's length, also only lasted a little over three years. (Feb 7 2021 - April 26th 2024)

Winner3, the admin of this website, has held onto the tag titles for five years while very rarely being active, and in the past he forced a person to vacate a title when they held it for a length of time that he has now far exceeded. I wouldn't see much issue with this if other people were allowed to do the same thing, but they're not. The rules apply to others, but not to him. What do we, as a community, think about this? Does Winner being the admin give him the right to enforce rules on people that he himself does not follow? Should he be allowed to hold a title for an egregious period of time when others have been punished by him or criticized by the community for far more mild offenses of this nature?

[Malkavia]

It's obviously a bad look. It's true that tagteams aren't the most active or popular space, but it wouldn't be hard to drop the belt to one of the few teams who'd like it. It's an easy fix.

That said, keep perspective. The amount of fun I've had on the site has had almost no correlation with who's holding which belts. However, nothing has killed my enthusiasm for the site like arguments where both sides are too in their feelings. It doesn't matter if you're right if you just make yourself and others miserable.

[Blade ocs]

That feels like something the .ods and such would have to discuss

[FreestylePoet]

Yeah I'm with Malk. I think it's basically bogus to hold onto a belt for so long while using your position as admin to, formally or informally, push others to drop belts for far less egregious violations. So if you made me take a position I would say the belts should flip. I think that's pretty clearly the correct position here.

But, like, I also am not really affected by it either way. I imagine most users are similarly unaffected by the tag title (or any title) going stagnant because 99% of the stories we tell on LAW have nothing to do with a belt. So, y'know, whether the correct outcome happens or not, I'm pretty chill with it. But there is definitely a correct outcome.

[Deskfan45]

I feel like a lot of people have sorta missed my point with this. I don't care about title reigns being too long. Honestly I think people need to chill out about titles and I agree with the sentiment of Malk and Poet.

This isn't about titles, this is about unfair administration and Winner's hypocrisy. Winner has severely broken his own rules when other people have been punished by him for far lesser violations. I don't think there's any excuse for that.

[anime_hentaifighter]

Don't think Winner3 did it on purpose , and what you forgot to mention in regards to rose gold reign was more that the roleplayer who played her made a op character. Who could never lose , and when it came time to drop the belt she just vacated it rather then lose as she never wanted to put anyone over

[Deskfan45]

Even if he wasn't deliberately prolonging his title reign, Winner still could have vacated the titles at any time in the last two years. In the same way that SweetHeart willingly vacated the hentai title due to irl obligations, Winner could have seen that he had held the titles for far too long while taking many long breaks from the site, and vacated them. But he didn't. And yet when Ducky held the title for a length of time that he has now far exceeded, he forced her to vacate. He held her to standards that he will not hold himself to.

I am by no means here to defend SuckerPunch, but whether or not he was power playing and writing an OP character is not the discussion I aim to have today. I brought up Rose Gold's title reign to emphasize that Winner's own reign far exceeds it in length. And length was one of the things that Rose's reign was criticized for. While they are not entirely the same issue, I still believe that it's a relevant comparison to make.

It's important to me that this discussion doesn't get off track, so I would like to again emphasize that this is about unfair and hypocritical management far more than it is about titles themselves. I would take no issue with Winner's title reign if it weren't for the fact that he allows himself to get away with things that he will not allow others to get away with.

[Ichi]

Admittedly, the tag team title not being turned over in a timely manner is, in and of itself, largely immaterial to most people's experiences on the site.

However, it's part of a much larger pattern of broken trust that has been material to a non-negligible subset of users. At a cursory, not fully informed glance, it might seem as though people are getting upset simply because Winner did not handle the tag team title matter in a prudent way—but if you pair that matter with other situations and interactions, it becomes comprehensible why people are making an issue out of something that could seem trivial.

I question whether or not it would be prudent to, at least at this moment, publicly get into the other matters underpinning the situation. But I will say that, to people who have an idea of the various grievances, it seems reductive—regardless of the speakers' intent—to dismiss the objections over the tag title as being of little import.

[Avalyn117]

Not that have any in the know knowledge, but I doubt it was done with malicious intent, we’re busy adults and stuff gets overlooked. Doesn’t take any serious enjoyment away from the site, and I’m sure if it’s addressed it will be resolved. On another note, could always make your own unofficial tag gimmick title and go crazy with it!

[Ichi]

Don't think Winner3 did it on purpose , and what you forgot to mention in regards to rose gold reign was more that the roleplayer who played her made a op character. Who could never lose , and when it came time to drop the belt she just vacated it rather then lose as she never wanted to put anyone over

I don't think Winner held onto the tag titles out of malice. But, for a number of reasons, I believe he could've reasonably known (and likely did know) that he was holding onto it for an "overly long" period of time.

A lack of ill intent does not mitigate how this particular issue (the tag title reign) has hurt trust in and of itself and corroborated with other circumstances to undermine faith in LAW's leadership. Granted, this point is hard to notice as much of the frustration isn't made public. But, it definitely is a consideration, and I don't think it's immaterial.

I'll also say that SuckerPunch's situation is largely immaterial to the tag title situation. Yes, there are very valid criticisms and gripes surrounding SuckerPunch. However, trying to use that as a way to minimize other issues is essentially "whataboutism". To give an analogy, just because a politician commits wanton, politically motivated executions doesn't mean that the other politician who money laundered isn't worth criticizing.