What to do about Gravity Swap and its 0s World Record?

On February 21st, 2018 Xedron achieved what might be the most controversial World Record in the history of Marble Blast, a time of 00:00.000 on the leaderboards custom level Gravity Swap. This caused an immediate uproar because this time literally cannot be beaten. There are many claims that certain World Records are unbeatable but there is always theoretically time to be saved, here that is not the case, the timer never ticked up even a single millisecond, actually factually unbeatable. But the consensus was that because this time was so far ahead of now second place time 3.877, that no one would beat it or even come close to it for a long time.

Then in August 2019, up and coming speedrunner Doomblah became the second person to achieve a time of 0 seconds, tying the WR, after discovering a tweak to make achieving a 0s time much simpler. A year after that a 3rd 0s time was set by Mazik and before long Battlecube314 set a 0s time, and suddenly there were many many more. That brings us to today where runner Hirassy tied this 0s WR becoming the 11th person to do so pushing the list of WR holders to the second page, once again sparking conversation about this topic.

At first only Xedron's time was counted as a World Record and all subsequent zero second times being ranked 2nd, 3rd, and so on. At some point the change was made so that all tied times counted as the same rank, making them all the tied WRs they deserved to be. But now that 11 people have tied this unbeatable World Record, the controversy has arisen yet again. What should be done about this?

I'm making this forum post to be a hub for this popular and controversial topic so as not to lose each discussion in the glut of messages on Discord. Please share your thoughts on the matter, so we can decide what if anything to do about this issue.

My opinion on this has changed a lot over time, probably as a result of my time "beating" the WR in bonus time until Xelna got his 0s time. I admit my bias to have a WR pushed me to convince HiGuy to implement the tied WR function on the LBs which I still believe is a good change regardless of whatever times I may have set along the way. This bias also made me encourage leaving this issue alone. Well, I might still be biased, but I think I've grown a fair bit in the years since. I'll try to lay out my reasoning for what I think should happen to this level going forward and you can judge for yourself what you think of it.

I don't think that we should just have an ever expanding list of 0s WRs on this level, thats just kind of silly. I also think that removing the level entirely is also quite silly and while perhaps that's the simplest solution is the one that seems least fair. My preferred solution is one that Battlecube314 suggested, reduce all the Time Travels in the level from 5s to 4s. This effectively makes each time 6s longer as there is now 6s less bonus time (6x 5s TTs). Without changing anything else.

This has been proven to not be a complicated task to do, take all the times > 25s bonus time and subtract the time to 25s and the time that was subtracted off is added to the timer, so a time of 0s with 29.555 bonus time would become a time of 5.555s with 25s bonus time. This doesn't have to deal with the issue of there being a catch that must be accounted for because all TTs, were they 4s long, have been proven to run out before they reach the finish. All times are adjustable easily with this method. This turns the board of all 0s times into one where they're all between 5 and 6 seconds long, except for Whitepoplar's 4.700. This effectively solves the elapsed time issue without having to fundamentally rewrite how the entire leaderboards works which is not only more work but I think a an unfair way of ranking times.

Times on the Leaderboards as of right now are ranked first by the time on the clock, the final time, then by date submitted to the LBs. Some people are suggesting that we instead have times ranked first by Final Time then by Bonus time (elapsed time but if the final time is the same then the only difference is bonus time), then thirdly by date. I think this is the wrong way to go about this issue. Because what matters first and foremost is that final time, and whoever achieves that time first deserves to be ranked above anyone else who sets that time. This second ranking by bonus time obliterates that and I don't think that's fair. Now, I'm all for creating a second parallel leaderboard for all levels that have Time Travels whereby times are ranked by elapsed time (final time + bonus time), since this is a categorically different kind of competition it deserves its own leaderboards. We shouldn't fundamentally change how the current times are ranked, but instead include this second leaderboard for this second type of competition on levels with Time Travels.