Panda Express League A fantasy football group

Trade Committee

24 Feb 2024

Last updated: 2024-07-20

Summary

It has been observed that in every season when a trade is vetoed, there seems to be instances where teams are left confused or frustrated. This is especially true when both teams feel that their trade was fair. In order to provide better feedback on rejected trades, the proposal is to reduce the group of people who can veto a trade in order to provide transparency and accountability to a veto decision. This group’s goal is to provide more consistent and unbiased decisions across the season along with transparency with their decisions.

There are checks and balances to limit abuse.

The league is entitled to expectations from the proposed system and they are defined.

Goal

The intention of this group is to provide transparency and accountability for declined trades between two teams. Other intentions include: more successful trades across the season and fewer instances of confusion or frustration when trades don’t get through.

Proposal

This policy proposes that a group of 5 Judges in a trade committee will conduct all trade reviews going forward.

A panel of trade judges that will discuss and deny/veto any detrimental trades (in terms of the trade participants as well as the league). This panel will best represent the league in terms of consistency and have a preference for the flow of trades. Most importantly, since they are delegates, these Judges should also be socially accessible by everyone in the league.

Mechanics

To start, the league will be changed to “Veto By Commissioner”. This will allow the Panel to function as described.

When a trade is accepted, the Yahoo app will notify everyone in the league (this is how it behaves now). In parallel, a bot will receive the same notification that the trade is accepted.

This bot will create a Trade Review Team (T.R.T.) for every trade. The bot will randomly pick 3 out of 5 Judges to form each TRT. The TRT is responsible for evaluating the trade, but the entire Panel is expected to be involved with the discussion.

By “simple majority rules”, the TRT can elect to do:

  1. Nothing. The trade will automatically succeed in 3 days
    1. 3 days is the trading period with league vetoing, and we will borrow this same time window.
  2. (Up for debate) Immediately confirm the trade.
    1. Initial feedback suggests that this shouldn’t exist. See “Appendix B“.
  3. Veto the trade. Requires 2/3 votes.
    1. A veto will cause the bot to send a notification to the league containing:
      1. Members of the TRT
      2. Voting numbers
      3. Ruling/Explanation
      4. Status (this is just stating the obvious to alleviate concerns about errors in the ruling or bot)
      5. (Optional) Dissenting opinions
    2. “Notification” is an e-mail.
      1. “Appendix C” covers technology choices.
    3. It is up to the owners to inquire on the decision.

If any Judge is a trade participant, the bot will automatically exclude them from the TRT. If 2 Judges are trading with each other, then the remaining 3 Judges will form the TRT.

To set a precedent: due to their complexity, multi-way trades (e.g., 3-way trades) will require unanimous consensus from the entire Panel to allow them to pass; a single veto will stop a multi-way trade.

It is important to restate that the entire Panel is encouraged to discuss every trade, including trades where the Judge is not elected in the TRT. This consistent engagement will refine the Panel’s mindset of how trades are evaluated.

Mechanics - Terminology

A trade goes through the following 3 phases:

  1. Proposed
    1. When a trade is offered, or the terms of the trade are being discussed.
    2. In the Yahoo app, nobody is notified yet of a trade existing. For similar reasons, the bot won’t be notified either.
  2. Pending
    1. When a trade is accepted.
    2. In the Yahoo app, everyone is notified of a trade.
    3. Likewise, the bot will be notified.
  3. Completed
    1. The trade is either intentionally accepted, or the minimum number of days passes and auto-succeeds.

Judge - Term referring to one of the 5 representatives.

Panel - The name for the group of 5 representatives.

Trade Review Team (TRT) - Group of 3 that will discuss & evaluate the trade.

Trade Panel Guidelines

Evaluating trades is a subjective exercise. In general, trades should be guarding against the following characteristics:

  • Collusion - A near-impossible claim to make objectively. If trade participants are found to be cheating or colluding in their trade, the Judges must deny and/or reserves the trade.
  • Bad Faith - Managers can operate in isolation and still commit collusion-like trades without orchestrated effort. Trading immense amounts of future draft capital without intending on returning the next seasons to fulfill their debt is harmful to the health of the League.
  • Apathy - Trades should be improving their respective teams. A team manager may grow to become apathetic towards their team, and are trading without keeping their team’s best interest in regard.

It needs to be explicitly mentioned that the Judges should NOT be evaluating trades for perfectly equivalent exchanges.

Other Judge responsibilities are enumerated in Appendix D.

Panel Membership

The initial Panel will be comprised by the following delegates:

  • Mike
  • Josh
  • Darren
  • Fred
  • Tony

Management

The most straightforward rule for managing the Panel is: Commissioner says so. The Commissioner is encouraged to maintain the same Judges for the entire season to have consistency in trade evaluations.

League-wide input is encouraged to evaluate performance of the Judges. This feedback should strongly influence the composition of the Panel for this system to garner any confidence from the League.

Replacing Judges

Commissioner appoints & removes the Judges. Changing membership of the Panel is not limited to the off-season; Judges can be appointed & removed during the season at the Commissioner’s discretion.

Dissolving the Panel

Commissioner can dissolve the Panel at-will.

The league views the Commissioner as the single party responsible for the Panel, and therefore, must also be responsible for the state of the Panel.

Dissolving of the Panel will revert back to the previous veto-ing policy, or Yahoo standard if a previous policy does not exist.

Temporary Absence

If a Judge is selected for a TRT and cannot participate (e.g., in jail, sick, traveling, vacation), then the TRT will be disbanded. The remaining Judges will be chosen for the new TRT.

In other words: we will re-roll the TRT without the absent Judge.

Insufficient Number of Judges

Likely scenarios:

  • Holidays cause a temporary absence
  • Judges involved in the trade causes the TRT to be less than 3 Judges.

If there are less than 3 Judges available, then the TRT is forced to enlist all Judges in the TRT and the approval must be unanimous.

This is similar to the multi-way trade rule: a single veto will be considered a veto by the entire group.

Document History

Date Description
2024-08-10 Ratified into the Constitution
2024-07-20 Re-word “Summary” & “Goal”
2024-02-23 Guidance on judging trades; restructured policy
2023-11-21 Initial

Appendix A - Background

Delegating the ability to veto to every manager in the league creates an overwhelmingly wide spectrum for trades to be evaluated from. A few individuals can find a trade to be fair, while other folks will believe that same trade is far too unfavorable for one of the traders; it’s not uncommon to find both perspectives “reasonable” or “justifiable”. As such, it’s paradoxical to create trades that sufficiently appeases the vetoing minority for trades to succeed.

Appendix B - Immediate Trade Confirmation

The arguments against immediately approving the trade:

  • It doesn’t give the constituents enough time to talk with their representative. After all, the Panel is composed of folks that are open to talking to each other.
  • It makes it unpredictable in how a trade affects starting line-ups.
    • As a comparison: trades are processed at specific times in the morning.
    • If the traders are not careful, they could end up with unintentional (and unfixable) gaps in their line-up.

Appendix C - Notification preferences

Notifications should avoid the Whatsapp when possible. This keeps discussions from being drowned out and minimize how “spammy” the chat feels.

Setting up email filters is well-documented. If someone really doesn’t want to read any of them, they can set up filters. To help with this, the bot can structure the “Subject” with an identifier. Like “[Trade Ruling] blah blah blah”.

Alternative ideas:

  • Yahoo chat
    • Accessible. People can access it with a reasonable amount of effort
    • “Separate” app but everyone already has it installed for fantasy football.
  • Discord
    • Accessible. People can access it with a reasonable amount of effort.
    • Completely separate app. This is a bigger hurdle for the boomers in the group.
  • Separate Whatsapp group
    • Pay-wall? I think they charge for it now.
    • Not everyone is in the current group, so it’s hard to say how difficult it is for everyone else to adopt this app.
  • Website/webpage
    • Accessible. Links can be shared.
    • Discoverability is potentially an issue. There would need to be some sort of search feature on the site, or a way to organize the record of trades.

Appendix D - Judge Responsibilities

  1. Be transparent
  2. Adapt

Transparent

Transparency is important when the group is operating with asymmetric agency. By not hiding anything, the policy will instill confidence that the Panel is performing their role, especially when the outcome is unfavorable.

Knowing the “why” on trade results will reduce frustration with trading in the league. Even in cases where the TRT do not decide unanimously, capturing the dissenting opinions is important. It also keeps the Judges honest by having to put effort behind their vote.

This scenario highlights the importance of transparency:

Mechanically, 2/3 of the Trade Review Team will decide their action for the group of 3. This can lead to scenarios where 2/3 TRT Judges veto a trade, but the same 2 Judges hold a minority perspective. Another way to phrase this scenario is: 2/5 Judges believe a trade is unreasonable, are selected as part of the TRT, and veto the trade (a la “The Resistance” board game).

Votes on the fringes of shared perspective should be uncommon, but are unavoidable.

Adapt

The Judges should be able to re-shape their evaluations based on how the league is affected and be able to adjust accordingly. Just like the NFL is able to make adjustments every season, so too should the Judges.

  • For instance, a season where RBs are plentiful should not be judged the same as a year where RBs are scarce.
  • A more likely example: the 7 other managers believing that Round 5-9 picks are undervalued should have the Panel pause to reflect upon their trading standards. The Judges do not necessarily need to change their standard; they are expected to keep the conversation open.

Likewise, the Judges should have a shared concern on how the league will persevere. A trade that can destroy the league must be strongly considered for vetoing to preserve the league from imploding.

  • A team trading all their picks for next season should be heavily scrutinized, even if the trade is actually fair. The league has no policy to fix the team if the person leaves the league, and the Panel must recognize that.