About a month ago I realized a part of our league is about to have an anniversary. I thought about it a bit and decided I wanted to write up, if not a celebratory post, at least something, acknowledging the passage of time. So, a couple of weeks ago I embarked on a little journey. In between doing my duty at my place of employment, making other posts and dealing with the rest of my everyday life, I went back a ways in the SNAIL thread and began some light research. This light research moved at (pun certainly intended) a snail’s pace. There’s been a lot of ground covered, over the course of the last 2 years and 8 months, but my intent was to highlight what has been with us for the last 12 seasons of racing. To that end, I give you;
S.N.A.I.L. started out as the Sunday Night American Intermediate League on
December 12 2011. In a few short months it went from a small group of friends to 3 divisions of Gran Turismo 5 players, dedicated to having the closest and cleanest racing possible. By the summer of 2012, the league had grown to five divisions and the acronym had been redefined as the Sunday Night American Interactive League. Over that time the league had collected many individuals that helped evolve the standards and methods the league operates under, and, guide the league out of its infancy. Some of those members are still active in the league today, to varying degrees. Some have moved on to other endeavors.
SNAIL enjoyed more than a year supplying a place for over 50+ drivers to enjoy clean racing on the GT5 platform. In GT5’s waning months, some changes to how clean racing was enforced were put in to practice. While it kept to the basic tenets the founders developed using the GT Planet OLR, it streamlined and automated much of the process. Prior to this system being developed and employed, drivers in SNAIL, when faced with reporting an OLR infraction, would use the GTP messaging system to alert their Division Steward, the Steward would then copy that information to what was then a group forum thread, the steward corps would then review the reported incident and each would make a ruling. One steward was tasked with collecting these rulings, collating the data and publishing those rulings to all league members.
In
September of 2013, after a few weeks of testing, the SNAIL Incident Reporting and Review system was
given the green light and became the
only authorized way for members of SNAIL to report OLR infractions. The system consists of a Google Documents spreadsheet and
an input form, which were used to collect the data, both from infraction submissions and Steward ruling scores. The system programmatically sends notifications to the appropriate Division Steward, the Driver the infraction was filed against and the driver filing the report. It also creates a Google document the stewards use to express their opinions and reasons for their rulings. There is also programming in place to assist that one steward, tasked with giving everyone the news regarding who was penalized and what the price paid for those infractions is. The system has been tweaked a few times and also provides some statistical records, for analysis by the Steward Corps and League Management. The league member who is, for all practical purposes, the one responsible for making this system work as it does, is
@kcheeb. He’s one of those members that moved on to other endeavors. His presence in SNAIL is missed.
In the last 12 months SNAILIRR has been used to track 555 incident reports and 16 Stewards have amassed 1,832 rulings, which results in an average of 3 stewards reviewing each incident. At its peak level, from racing on 23 February 2014, 204 reviews were recorded, and, an incident reported from races on 12 January 2014, received 10 steward rulings, to include a guest steward’s opinion. Of the 16 stewards on record, the most prolific steward carries 21.8% of all reviews scored. The second most stands at 20.3%.
to everyone in SNAIL for helping this system do what it's designed to do. When I mean everyone I mean everyone, not just Stewards and TEAM SNAIL members.
Does anyone remember the havoc Gran Turismo 6’s alpha release caused to the league as a whole? I can say there are several stewards who would like to forget the agony of relying on a practically broken and completely frustrating replay lottery that was played for at least the first 8 weeks SNAIL raced on the GT6 platform.
Many things have smoothed out since then, some things have not. Network fragility and incompatibility issues continue to plague our league, tools we could put to good use, have yet to materialize. What is astounding, really, is how, at the beginning of GT6 we had
contracted to 3 divisions, but, the 1st league night using the new game, where points were awarded, a
4th division was
stood up, that night. In the space of 3 short months, following the start of SNAIL on GT6, and considering the catastrophic issues we experienced on that first, for points night, attendance records were not just beaten, they were obliterated. The explosive growth brought us from 4 divisions to 9, which included the West Coast time slot, and one crazy night saw over 100 SNAILs vying for Prize candidacy and collecting Sponsor prize challenge points. We have since stabilized somewhat in divisional structure, with a contraction down to 6 divisions, and have enjoyed some steady growth back to 8 divisions, to start the September 2014 season.
A couple other nifty stats – The first two years saw this thread hit
40,726 posts, and that was with who knows how many excess drama posts removed by moderators. In the almost 8 months of the third year, and with this post, that number has hit 68,071, and again, with who knows how many of those excess drama posts being removed. My maths are a little rough here, but it stands to reason, with already eight thousand more than our previous two year average, and about 4 months until the SNAIL 3rd year anniversary is upon us, if we continue with our current monthly post count, we’ll easily hit 81,000 for a post count. That’s a tad less than double in one year what was posted in the first two. Whoda thunk it?
By the way, myself and @socalnatv will be celebrating 2 years in SNAIL on the 2nd of this month. Where is that post with all the stars and flags anyway?
reserved for incoming epic post. 
I won. Thanks for playing all!
But I guess your right. If the parts and resources are available I should probably give it a go.
