I +1ed Lando and yebellz' comments to show my support for their motions. Comrades, join me in showing your support if you want the Leagues to commence!

Leagues? Sounds good! Link to the rules and such?

Basically, unless the original organizers strongly object, I intend to work toward getting things started back up. Was Alderian the last organizer?

Actually, Draugnar and orathaic started organising the next League a few months ago. You should speak to them.

==Games==
Classic Map, Full-press, WTA, Anonymous, 25-36hr, 5
Default phase length should be 36hr, but can be shortened by mutual agreement by players in a game.

==Players==
Players organized into two or more tiers plus a wait-list for replacements.
Each tier contains either 14, 21, or 28 players.
Actual number of tiers and size of each tier depends on demand and may be adjusted in between seasons.

==Scheduling==
Two seasons per calendar year: named "Spring" and "Fall", but actually just corresponding to the 6-month halves of the calendar year.
Seasons should be scheduled to prevent likelihood overlap. If a season runs long, the next may be delayed to avoid overlap.
Between seasons, promotion and relegation will occur across tiers and the wait-list.
Each season consists of 2 or 3 rounds. Each player gets one or two games per round. Each game consists of 7 players drawn randomly from the same tier.
The rounds may overlap and their start are schedule toward the start of the season period. The main purpose of the rounds are just to stagger the start of the games.

This is just a rough sketch of a proposal. Discussion and suggestions are welcome.

I'll also come up with some reasonable CD, pause, withdrawal rules.

@Sarg, oh really? I wasn't aware of that. I think I remember hearing something about that on the forum, but I didn't realize that was still underway.

That's my point: I think it's very much not underway at all.

I think your plan sounds pretty good. If you needed any help, I'd gladly volunteer. The Leagues are a great idea and it would be nice to have some continuity.

apologies for not doing what we said we would.

have a list of the previous players if that helps.

I refuse to play in anon leagues, and i think others have voiced this opinion. There are many opportunities to play competitions on this site which are anon, the leagues were the only non-anon, and there were merits to this type of competition.

Of course you're free to do whatever you like - i just feel free to likewise voice my opinion.

I agree with orathaic. The non-anon aspect of the Leagues was something I really enjoyed. Where else do we have that in a tournament?

Either way though, it would be nice to see the Leagues resurrected one way or the other - rather than more flipflopping and talk. No decision will please everyone with regards to anon and non-anon, unfortunately.

Yebellz, I'd be more than happy to lend a hand organizing this. Someone posted some Diplomacy-tournament software on the forums a little while ago and I wouldn't mind toying around with it.

I'm not sure of the reasoning behind the 'rounds' but I wasn't around for the last league so it might be something that I'm unaware of.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but is this not very similar in set up to the Master's?

RE:anon
Well, if the majority of interested players want to keep it non-anon, we can do that.

@Yonni
I hope that this would be quite different from the Masters. For one, the scoring will be WTA rather than solo or nothing. Also, the intent is to have multiple tiers to play for like the leagues had, just with a restructuring to make them each bigger to encourage more fluid movement up the ladder and so players aren't always playing against the same players over a season.

Another question about your set up. How many games do you intend on having people play at a time?

3 rounds per season and 2 games per round gives about 1 game starting each month. At 36hrs/phase, that means many people will likely be playing two games at a time (and occasionally 3).

I'd be fine with that commitment (I normally limit myself to 3 concurrent games) but I'm not sure what sort of commitment is normally expected of people in tournaments.

I would like to voice my support for non-anon.

This was the tournament manager, btw:
http://devel.diplom.org/armada/dtm/

And, yeah, I'd prefer non-anon.

My schedule proposal is flexible as well. That's why I put in a lot of "this number or that number". We could even change the number of seasons.

We'll have to fix something down at some point but that should depend on how many games people would be willing and able to play. It's really all about finding something that works out for the most players involved.

I think the next step should be to put together some sort of interest and preferences poll, but right now I'm hoping that this thread can generate some discussion and ideas regarding the format, as well as raising the issues that will need to be resolved in a poll.

I know a lot of players will play if you do make it anon. I will not speak for them, but my recollection is that myself, MM, Wiz, and several others from last year's premier tier wanted anon rather than not. If you choose to go with anon, I'd like to ;play, if non-anon, I'll defer.

There was a robust discussion sometime in October or so of last year about re-starting the league and plenty of ideas were discussed. I had several ideas there which I don't want to re-type. hopefully someone with more time on their hands and enough interest will try to dig that thread up and post a link to it here.

This can be a new 'league' and does not have to be the same 'league' as previously existed so that one can stay non-anon or whatever...

another option is you can do the 'upper' tier as anon and the lower tier as non-anon since the anonymous issue seems to affect the higher-caliber players more. plenty of high-caliber players also prefer non-anon as well, so it really is just a matter of taste - but my observation has been that the higher-ranked players are more circumspect when it comes to non-anon games.

anyways - please do PM me if this idea gets off the ground. And thank you for picking up the baton and running with it.

another idea... if you have 14 or 21 or even 28 players in each 'tier' you can do an annual League with 6-10 "inter-league" games or something. so it would be a year-long commitment and would provide more of a chance for a longer-term standings... like a real sports league. Of course then it would limit the game to players willing to commit to 10 games a year... but that will not be too hard to find on this site.

I'll be back on board to helping organize it, but only if it stays non-anon. We have enough anon now. If it goes anon, I won't even be playing in it.

We had locked in making the leagues bigger (14 per individual league) so that the games got a mix of players but everyone still got to see some familiar faces form game to game, just not knowing when or if they'd see them again in the future to reduce serious cross game metagaming.

I think throwing out the previous leagues results is a bad idea. People played in the previous leagues with the goal of moving up the ladder. I was one of them. when you effectively declare last season's results null and void, you destroy morale and motivation.

If there is some preference to distribute countries somewhat evenly throughout the games, I believe that making the games non-anon would be advantageous. It would allow the TD to take some time an set up a schedule ahead of time.

Of course that could still happen if the TD and mods helping to switch around country assignments aren't playing in any of the games. However, I imagine that the TD and mods would have interest in playing.

I'm up for playing in a league, would be fun.

What do you have to do to qualify or play in the League?

They could still do the switching around as long as they didn't switch one of the games they were in. Not all the mods will be in the same league, so a mod in premiere could handle A or B and vice-versa.

I'd prefer non-anon. It'd be cool to play these again.

I am adamantly opposed to anon in leagues.

Quick reason: Leagues == fun, non-anon, building friends. Tournaments == win win win!!

This is like being in a bowling league: You play a game you enjoy, have fun, and build friendships. This isn't about being the top dog (though some people will take it far too seriously... mostly people too concerned with their GR... basically most of the people demanding it to be anon). That's what tournaments are for. Leagues are for fun, a standard time to play games, and to get to know one another. The only reason to have various 'tiers' of levels in the tourney is to play with others that are of your level.

I'd also suggest having NO 'overall winner' of the league, and no 'prizes' in the league (unless it is something like 'favorite player to get stabbed by', 'funniest player', etc...).

Honestly, if there was a way to make it so league games don't affect GR and don't negatively count towards your record, I think that'd really boost the ideas of what it should be.

The results of the previous league season can be found here:
http://tournaments.webdiplomacy.net/The-php-League/leagues-winter-2011

For those interested, the previous league rules can be found here:
http://tournaments.webdiplomacy.net/The-php-League
and here:
http://tournaments.webdiplomacy.net/The-php-League/thephpleaguerules

Note, I have edit permissions for the tournaments.webdiplomacy.net pages and could be talked into helping update them with the new league season as long as I don't get stuck holding the bag again. I just don't have time to be a TD. Unfortunately I don't have permissions to give other people permission. I assume only Ghost has that.

@fortknox - Dude, if I could +1 you a thosand times, I would! Perfectly said and my feelings exactly.