High-Level Organized Play Decisions Absolutely Matter (Part 4 of ???)

Elaine Chase put forth some interesting changes to how WotC wants to think about the MPL and its tournament invites going forward. The official notice is here, in the second paragraph: https://www.mtgesports.com/news/mpl-adds-janne-savjz-mikkonen-and-jessica-estephan

There's another interview-y article at https://esportsobserver.com/magic-esports-diversify-pro-scene/ that adds to this topic.

The fact that Elaine Chase admits at all that the decision of who is invited to tournaments changes the face of Magic indicates that high-level Organized Play decisions matter a lot. The fact that there is a lot of foment on the internet after this indicates that high-level Organized Play decisions matter a lot. The fact that this is still an amorphous system run strictly on human judgment and biases, and not a set of criteria (even if it in no way resembles the old criteria, because they didn't account for the right things) also matters, because human biases are known to be racist, sexist, classist, etc. High on recency bias too.

This is also not the first time WotC has used invites that people sneer at as 'diversity invites' for its major tournaments: there was a time in the 2011-2013 era when people got invited for both community and 'you got to multiple PTQ finals but didn't close, so here's an invite' patches to the system's holes. I made a note about this in my post about Autumn's success here: https://mechalinkjones.blogspot.com/2019/03/high-level-organized-play-decisions.html

Whether you like it or hate it, this stuff matters, and that means WotC, and everyone who cares about Magic, should take real time to analyze the system, and not just when it changes.