08-21-2021, 01:09 PMspooked Wrote:

08-21-2021, 12:39 PMPremierBromanov Wrote: we're not talking about something that is necessarily subject to interpretation (which is why HO exists) -- things like harassment, tampering, and otherwise communicative behavior -- we're talking about pen and paper contracts. Either you have one or you don't. Handshake agreements aren't a thing here, as normally to prove one (in a business law setting) you'd have to prove that both parties had moved forward as if one existed and had upheld the contract (until one party didn't, causing conflict and the court of law is introduced). But we can't prove parties were moving forward because by definition the moment the deadline passed, the players in question are unable to move forward because they are subject to bidding. No contract was tendered officially, no contract was posted officially, nor rejected or accepted. It ceased to be and intent is irrelevant.

I will probably try to end this here since it is a cyclical issue. I am serious when I say I agree with your ideal for how this should work, and we want to work towards that. Ideally for me as well everything is done on the site, and if it isn't we could void it or not count it until it is completed. That is the most straightforward application we can get to in terms of a rules structure and application of the rules.

The issue then becomes that this site is a hobby and not everyone is active 24/7 to accept contracts in time for a deadline, and in some cases they simply don't really care enough to show up. There is a fundamental challenge across the league that we cannot pause the season to wait for someone to have the time to agree in a thread, but the thread gets posted after the GM has already agreed in private, and in cases where people cannot accept in time in the forum, or the GMs are having trouble reaching them, we will defer to a private agreement that is provided as proof to allow the signing to occur under the assumption that when the player returns they can accept the deal. Now, if there are issues when the player comes back that is another topic, which would end up in a punishment.

Without the ability to allow these signings a lot of teams would at some points have struggles locking down parts of their rosters in time for a deadline, and may have issues fielding rosters in time for the season if the problem gets dire enough and they need to replace multiple people who failed to type "accept". In some cases these players may even end up having to sit out a season if no one has space to pick up their contract when they return. If we are going by the letter of the rules, a lot of teams would end up with limbo players (not inactive enough to be autosignable, but not active enough to reliably sign legally within the window they are doing contracts in) and it could impact the league if we made every GM replace every player that didn't show up for a couple days. A player going on vacation during the offseason could see them be left out for a couple months just cause they were busy on a specific day when the threads go up, god forbid its someone new to the site, I doubt we would ever see them again.

You would get literally no complaints from me if we could move to a full-on rulebook wins world, makes my life WAY easier, but that is realistically not something that makes sense in a world where this is a hobby site and fake money that people forget to post in sometimes and aren't all equally motivated to take part in. We need to make things painless for players if we can, and part of that is making contracts easy for them and not confusing them with random team changes because they tuned out for a bit or because their gm was a bit late on something. I have no issues getting your perspective cause I would like things that way if we could, but it would just cause so many headaches that it is literally not worth going down that avenue with some parts of the rulebook.

EDIT: If you want to talk more about this you can reach out on discord probably, I just need to get some other stuff done today so hopefully I explained enough, but I am always available if you want to talk about anything!

If Hamilton posted these before the deadline and they weren’t publicly replied to I don’t think we’d be having a discussion at all. As for having trouble reaching people, that’s what ifa contracts are for and bidding. Baltimore had this a few seasons ago with Maximus, he wouldn’t respond anymore so they had to go to ifa bidding for him. It’s not great, but there are systems in place that everyone else follows or suffer the consequences, except for this one off where there are apparently different set of rules.