User talk:Robc1787

MARIO KART COMMUNITY
The Mario Kart community is a group of elite video gamers, who basically love gaming. The first website for the Mario Kart community was the MK64 site in 1997, and it took off from there. Each Mario Kart game has its own website, with the host site being www.mariokart64.com, and each different game branches from there, ie mariokart64.com/mkdd; /mkds, / smk… You may be wondering, how are these websites managed? Well obviously someone had to create the website to begin with, and as the games grow in popularity, a community starts to form. The veterans moderate websites and forums basically from mere respect, because if it weren’t for them none of it would have been possible.

PLAYERS/TIMES
When a player submits his/her times, they do so through yahoogroups.com. Then an updater, trusted player or moderator, approves the times sent in from the players, and then the times are put through a program created by one of the website veterans. Players times get updated, and possibly their rank improves. Rankings are done by adding up the place of each time a player has, and figuring out the average finish, or AF, in Mario Kart terms. Currently on Mario Kart (Double-Dash) there are a possible 32 times, 16 races each with a course and a lap time. Another way to rank the players is through average rank. There is a sophisticated table with a lot of abbreviations and a lot of times. To a “noob”, like I once was, this can get very confusing and often you will get lost, but to the community veterans, they know exactly what everything means and how it affects them. “Then names of the standards are God+10 down to God+1 and God (11x God ranks), Myth+ and Myth A-D (5x Myth), Titan+ and Titan A-D (5x Titan), and A-D of each Hero/Expert/Advanced/Intermediate/Beginner (4x each = 20). We also have an automatic catch-all rank called 'Newbie' that's used for missing (or weak) scores. There are 41 ranks all up,” for Mario Kart: Double-Dash.

PROOF
At first glance someone might visit the website and figure, “Oh someone could just make up times.” Well yes of course they can, but if they are at a level where nobody notices, then they’re times really don’t matter to begin with. When a player gets to a certain pre-determined respectful rank, they are required to provide some sort of proof of their times which proves credibility. When a player reaches that point they are asked to provide that proof and there are a number of ways for one to do so: picture of time (easily faked, soft proof), video of race (best proof), witness, sending a trusted player your memory card, or from past gaming communities a player could have developed credibility among players. Of course, if a player wishes to provide proof such as videos, moderators will be happy to approve the player’s trustworthiness establishing credibility. In those cases also veteran and better players watch those videos and provide hints to a lower ranked player to help him improve times.

CONCLUSION
If you are interested in checking any of the websites out, go to www.mariokart64.com and links to other games will be on there. Any questions about technicalities will obviously be better answered by a website GM which will be happy to answer anything you have.

Robert Chastain