ghadilliAnd finally to be clear: I am explicitly NOT talking about the millie team/situation here. They are literally not sandbagging, by definition. They are NOT trying to play at a level artificially below what they're capable of. They ARE trying to play at a level appropriate for them and being caught in an unfortunate loophole in the rules that should be fixed.
Pedantic point I'm about to make, but according to the sheet with restriction rules somebody linked earlier, restrictions after getting top 4 can be lifted via admin discretion depending on strength of season/player. I would argue then the millie/tree fiasco cannot be a "player(s) become(s) victim of blindly applying previously established rules" type situation (rather common in RGL's history) if it's already acknowledged that admin discretion can, and I assume has in the past based on the asterisk, override these types of blind restrictions. Thus it's not a loophole at all but evidence of the current sandbagging policy working as RGL intended. There is nothing here to "fix"; if anything, the fix already exists. It was a deliberate decision to mark millie and tree as too strong for the division.
FWIW I agree with you that most ppl are talking past each other a bit and maybe a bit too willing to hit the nuclear option button. But you can't really imply that the 'pro-sandbagging' side is making some sort of specious argument when they do the following:
ghadillithe 'pro-sandbagging' side keeps pointing to a team that is obviously not even sandbagging as a confounding point that is unaddressed by arguments meant to address actual sandbagging. Which is by design because, again, millie & tree are not sandbagging.
when, in the eyes of the only people who quite frankly actually matter, they are literally sandbagging, by definition, and this sandbagging label isn't some freak happenstance but rather entirely intentional in nature.
I understand that theory and practice are separate insofar as one can be anti-sandbagging in principle but acknowledge that it's mostly pointless if the ones enforcing the rules are braindead when it comes to the restrictions, but even in a fully hypothetical situation a philosophical advantage of the 'pro-sandbagging' side (acknowledging that the delineation is mostly arbitrary) is that you by construction avoid stupid shit like the millie/tree situation. Of course a simple counterargument would be to state that for these extreme cases like millie/tree it is obvious that the anti-sandbagging policies, whatever they may be, would not apply, and thus any particular realizations of that fact are simply instances of poor practice and not an indictment of the theoretical merit of the anti-sandbagging position.
But is it actually that obvious? After all, RGL is not some malicious entity that likes to kill teams for no reason. They clearly agree with many of the points brought up in this thread about the benefits of appropriate skill divisions, the substantial negative impacts of sandbagging teams, etc. etc. and clearly restricting a player that is in no way too strong for the division runs counter to those ideals. Individual admins I'm sure also ascribe to these ideals; people have brought up M17 and sung his graces, and I'm sure (or at the very least desperately hope) he isn't like "yeah fuck those players serves them right"; rather, he probably laments having to kill a team but genuinely believes that it would be better for the health of the division if they were not allowed to play without restriction.
Despite all this, somehow it keeps coming up that a team that is "obviously not even sandbagging" gets shot dead. A repeating phenomenon, no matter who the admin is or who the players in question are. So while in theory it seems blatantly obvious that, at the very least, extreme "non-sandbaggers" shouldn't be victim of anti-sandbagging policies (let alone people more borderline), the 'anti-sandbagging' side does actually need to argue in principle that the this is genuinely the case, that the loss of players caught in the crossfire are either 1. a necessary evil and/or, more ideally, 2. fully preventable. Because empirically speaking, there is basically no existing evidence that that is actually possible. Despite it being blatantly obvious it still manages to be a reoccurring issue; thus, to simply abstract the issue away by saying that it is pointless to discuss teams that are "obviously not sandbagging" is dishonest at best.