A Change in UT

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Just from reading a few threads, it's apparent that people are so used to the old ways that they just pull things out of their asses ("Level 50 is less pure than level 100!" or "Item clause stifles the metagame!") or just use the cop-out "It's tradition."
Ok, show me a thread inside UT where the claim that Level 50 is less pure then level 100 because I can't see any that even talk about it. Also:

"Item clause stifles the metagame!")
How is this statement in anyway been something older posters been posting against item clause? From what I saw in that thread, the anti-item clause side was giving good evidence to show that forcing a team to run only 1 copy of an item shafts defensive teams greatly, and that forcing the player to run sub-par tiems just because of an arbitary clause does not promote diversity.
 
Since I have been here for around six months, does that sort of qualify me for being on some kind of neutral ground between newcomers and veterans?

As far as I see it, we Smogonites love policy. Notice that policy is different from rules - policy is the metarules, as it were, the rules for creating rules. And Smogon's primary rule-making policy is "Only change the rules if there is a problem with the current rules; if there is a problem, any rule changes which correct the problem should be as simple as possible." Smogon veterans have this idea so deeply ingrained that any suggestion that disobeys this rule tends to get rejected offhand. We (wrongly) don't even feel the need to justify ourselves to the newcomers, even though they may not be aware of this idea. And even if they are, they may think the philosophy is misguided; whereas we, who are so used to it, either don't think of it at all, or observe that, since it's ingrained in everybody's heads anyway it won't ever change, because the veterans will always outnumber and outrank any dissenting or even questioning voices.

However, the newcomers, whether they are able to articulate them or not, have some counterarguments that are at least worth considering:

Rules are made to be broken: as evidenced by the recent NU suspect test, in which Liepard was a suspect. Policy might dictate that since Liepard was clearly broken, it should have been banned; however, most voters chose the option of banning Prankster + Assist, an arguably unnecessarily complex ban (and we all know what people think about complex bans). Nonetheless, since outside of Assist, Liepard was obviously not broken, it made more sense just to ban that and keep other sets like pivot Liepard, which was incredibly healthy not only because it checked several top-tier threats but also because it rewarded skilful play. In the same way, people seem to argue that it doesn't matter if not having Item Clause doesn't cause problems - if the metagame is better with Item Clause (cf pivot Liepard) we should be doing that. (Of course, whether Item Clause actually would make the metagame better is a totally different story.)

Turning Smogon policy on its head: "Only change the rules if there is a problem with the current rules" - what if incompatibility with Nintendo's rules is considered a problem? With the barriers between the communities seemingly being slowly eroded, people will come to play here from Wifi communities, and shouldn't we make it as easy as possible for them to do so, particularly in cases (like level 50 versus level 100) where it wouldn't have too big an impact? Case in point for me: I never got into Little Cup, partly for the reason of those crazy-ass EV spreads that I still don't understand because stuff is different at level 5. I get the feeling that moving to level 100 might have enticed a few more players from other metagames without sacrificing the metagame's playability (in fact I get the impression that many players consider gen V Little Cup an overcentralised failure anyway). So shouldn't we be helping players from other communities as far as possible? And a related question: would we rather have a bad metagame with many active players or a good metagame with fewer players?

Just for the record, I'm not swayed by these arguments, but they are certainly worth thinking about because they probe at why our rule-making policies are what they are in the first place.
 
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Well, I'll try my best to contribute.

I'm planning on staying here anyway; Aegislash is only part of the reason why I made this account.
 
by "elite" the OP meant that he feels hes good because his account is somewhat old. i agree with the OP because i think its funny how few people even understand competitive pokemon battles. dont even get started on how few are actually good at them lol. go away new people. we have to keep our somewhat exclusive talent safe.

jk, welcome new players. first thing you have to know is charizard sucks and never listen to anything ign tells you
 
There is a reason for Smogon's seemingly stiff and heartless policies, its mainly because from what I can gather, in the past Smogon was more swayed by the type of arguments they dismiss now, it the result were disastrous. All one has to do is look to past generations for this. If you are bored one day, look into the history of Smogon's BL lists, up until gen 4 they were pretty much "ban whatever we think is OP" on the whim, leading to BL lists that were monstrous and bloated. And as far as adhering to what is easy to do in game, keep in mind that at one point the use of lendary Pokemon with hidden powers was banned in GSC because it was too difficult to get in game. Its not like these policies don't exist for no reason, its important to remember that they had to be made for a good damn reason in the first place.
 
Hey, kd24, do you mind cleaning up the Greninja page? It's 37 pages long, and I feel like there's way too much useless and/or now-proven false information, and I don't really like to have to scan 37 pages just to find one measly piece of info.
 
If you are a new user reading this thread, and wish to learn how to make quality posts, or are looking for guidance on how to be a more involved member of the community, please come on #mentor on SynIRC and say hello. Everyone who has ops in the channel is an active mentor and will be willing to answer any questions you have or point you in the correct direction. If the channel is quiet, just highlight a few random ops who you think have cool names and they'll probably respond!
I had mentioned in the beginning of the thread the rounds of the mentor program. Could you explain the differences between that and the IRC channel? Also, with the inevitable influx of new/bad players, it might be a good idea to do just a tad bit more promotion of the mentoring opportunities and enshrined rules/policies.

Edit: Charizard is not bad at all, Charizard just suffers from too many fanboys and a rock-wrecking weakness. Charizard X/Y on the other hand are pretty epic. Drought Charizard with base 150 Special Attack and Reshiram Charizard both prove to be useful. Gamefreak finally did something right!
 

Garchompi

Banned deucer.
I honestly don't understand this logic. What's it to you if a thread has "stupid" posts by your (rather high) standards, if there are also good posts as well?
High quality and low quality posts can coexist on a forum: there is nothing wrong in letting the excited folks voice their opinion on the new metagame while letting the more serious ones do their job with their research.
I also find gratuitous post deletion extremely rude, like the equivalent of yelling "Shut up!" in real life to someone who was only trying to be nice. Heck, I don't think I have ever seen another forum with such a high rate of post deletion.
One thing is deleting obvious trolling/flaming/false info posts, but another thing is being so strict.
 
Yes, the standards are "rather high". We make your standards high because we want people to learn that posting sub-par crap is not the way to go at Smogon. Is there anything wrong with that at all?

I also find gratuitous post deletion extremely rude, like the equivalent of yelling "Shut up!" in real life to someone who was only trying to be nice.
Uh, that is not how it should be viewed at all. If your post is deleted, it should be viewed as incentive to learn from your mistakes and make better posts. Also, deletion of a large amount of posts are really only used when a thread needs to be cleaned up due to it becoming too bloated.
 
I honestly don't understand this logic. What's it to you if a thread has "stupid" posts by your (rather high) standards, if there are also good posts as well?
High quality and low quality posts can coexist on a forum: there is nothing wrong in letting the excited folks voice their opinion on the new metagame while letting the more serious ones do their job with their research.
I also find gratuitous post deletion extremely rude, like the equivalent of yelling "Shut up!" in real life to someone who was only trying to be nice. Heck, I don't think I have ever seen another forum with such a high rate of post deletion.
One thing is deleting obvious trolling/flaming/false info posts, but another thing is being so strict.
Did you even read the op at all?

Think of this as a plea and a "warning" (not a bad warning, but a "this will happen soon" warning).

This is Smogon. We are supposed to represent the elite of competitive Pokemon with thoughtful competitive discussion and theory. But with a new generation, it's inevitable that excitement and Smogon becoming more popular through social media and advertisement has resulted in new users coming here to discuss their favorite Pokemon. That's perfectly fine, but on our IRC channels and through other posters, I've heard nothing but "This forum/thread/etc is garbage". Okay, but how do you fix it? With a new generation's excitement, people lose sight of "discussion" and proceed to give one-liners that barely tiptoe the line of "content".

There's no reason why our standards should be so low. With pretty much every thread created at this point until an actual metagame and ladder for the current meta is established, we can focus on improving these threads by actually posing discussion points. I don't want to "supposedly represent" or "try to represent elite discussion", we WILL be the elite discussion.
Smogon is a reference for competitive pokemon, the standards should NOT be low. Everyone is welcomed to come here and voice their opinions, what is NOT welcomed however are posts and threads that provide no healthy discussion whatsoever. If a post is deleted, its a warning to the user to improve their quality.
 
Hey, kd24, do you mind cleaning up the Greninja page? It's 37 pages long, and I feel like there's way too much useless and/or now-proven false information, and I don't really like to have to scan 37 pages just to find one measly piece of info.
yeah it's the next one i'm going through, hopefully finished by tonight. as a note to anyone posting there...our threads for discussion or not journals on your ingame breeding projects.

edit: taking longer than expected
 
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tennisace

not quite too old for this, apparently
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I had mentioned in the beginning of the thread the rounds of the mentor program. Could you explain the differences between that and the IRC channel? Also, with the inevitable influx of new/bad players, it might be a good idea to do just a tad bit more promotion of the mentoring opportunities and enshrined rules/policies.
You're confusing the Tutor program with the Mentor program. Tutoring, or Battling 101, is focused almost entirely on battling strategy. It has structured rounds and you can apply in the Battling 101 forum when a new round is posted. Mentoring is more laid back, and is focused on involving new members in the community at large, or helping more established members get involved in a different part of the community. There are no rounds or signups, and to get a mentor all you have to do is either go on the IRC channel and say you're new and you'd like a mentor, or PM a mentor directly (list is here!)

Again: we as mentors don't care about your join date or post count. If you want to learn about any part of the community, come chat! We don't bite*!

*note: Birkal has been known to nibble on occasion.
 
My apologies, I noted you had a mentor program and didn't know there was also a tutor program. Insightful.

Did you even read the op at all?


Smogon is a reference for competitive pokemon, the standards should NOT be low. Everyone is welcomed to come here and voice their opinions, what is NOT welcomed however are posts and threads that provide no healthy discussion whatsoever. If a post is deleted, its a warning to the user to improve their quality.
Question: When a post is deleted, is there a notification sent to the person's alert box? And if there is, does the notification just simply tell you or does is also have the option for the moderator to give input? I know that is possible on other forums and it might help lower the sting of a post being simply deleted. I can agree with the high standards =/= average posts but there's a negative way and a positive way to go about it. Especially if someone is new and doesn't know the people/boards. It could be construed as bashing new players to simply delete a post with no explanation because they're not in the inner circle of the community here.
 
Since I have been here for around six months, does that sort of qualify me for being on some kind of neutral ground between newcomers and veterans?

As far as I see it, we Smogonites love policy. Notice that policy is different from rules - policy is the metarules, as it were, the rules for creating rules. And Smogon's primary rule-making policy is "Only change the rules if there is a problem with the current rules; if there is a problem, any rule changes which correct the problem should be as simple as possible." Smogon veterans have this idea so deeply ingrained that any suggestion that disobeys this rule tends to get rejected offhand. We (wrongly) don't even feel the need to justify ourselves to justify ourselves to the newcomers, even though they may not be aware of this idea. And even if they are, they may think the philosophy is misguided; whereas we, who are so used to it, either don't think of it at all, or observe that, since it's ingrained in everybody's heads anyway it won't ever change, because the veterans will always outnumber and outrank any dissenting or even questioning voices.

However, the newcomers, whether they are able to articulate them or not, have some counterarguments that are at least worth considering:

Rules are made to be broken: as evidenced by the recent NU suspect test, in which Liepard was a suspect. Policy might dictate that since Liepard was clearly broken, it should have been banned; however, most voters chose the option of banning Prankster + Assist, an arguably unnecessarily complex ban (and we all know what people think about complex bans). Nonetheless, since outside of Assist, Liepard was obviously not broken, it made more sense just to ban that and keep other sets like pivot Liepard, which was incredibly healthy not only because it checked several top-tier threats but also because it rewarded skilful play. In the same way, people seem to argue that it doesn't matter if not having Item Clause doesn't cause problems - if the metagame is better with Item Clause (cf pivot Liepard) we should be doing that. (Of course, whether Item Clause actually would make the metagame better is a totally different story.)

Turning Smogon policy on its head: "Only change the rules if there is a problem with the current rules" - what if incompatibility with Nintendo's rules is considered a problem? With the barriers between the communities seemingly being slowly eroded, people will come to play here from Wifi communities, and shouldn't we make it as easy as possible for them to do so, particularly in cases (like level 50 versus level 100) where it wouldn't have too big an impact? Case in point for me: I never got into Little Cup, partly for the reason of those crazy-ass EV spreads that I still don't understand because stuff is different at level 5. I get the feeling that moving to level 100 might have enticed a few more players from other metagames without sacrificing the metagame's playability (in fact I get the impression that many players consider gen V Little Cup an overcentralised failure anyway). So shouldn't we be helping players from other communities as far as possible? And a related question: would we rather have a bad metagame with many active players or a good metagame with fewer players?

Just for the record, I'm not swayed by these arguments, but they are certainly worth thinking about because they probe at why our rule-making policies are what they are in the first place.

This is an incredible post and I suggest everyone gives it the attention it deserves

Smogon is obviously known around the internet as the place for English language Pokemon simulation, but outside of it's community everyone does legitimately think its a joke for its incredibly inward attitudes towards deciding what goes where and its ability to ignore seemingly apparent common sense with a lot of its changes. For one thing I see people who are not incredibly involved in Smogon's community cannot believe the attitudes that lead you to suspect test Pokemon one at a time for B/W OU and then ban the ones that are unpopular in the community as if a popular vote is any sort of criteria for why a Pokemon needs to leave OU.

There's ofc a place to call for quality goodposts from the core members and it's fair of this place to demand that. But my point is Smogon as a whole is not that respected as a community, what is respected is the exceptional players/individuals at the top that community supports, and the amount of legwork that's put in for the Strategydex, Youtube coverage and other things that comes out of them. Being a Smogon regular with "x" number of meaningless badges and "xxxx" posts carries no weight at all.
 
There is a reason for Smogon's seemingly stiff and heartless policies, its mainly because from what I can gather, in the past Smogon was more swayed by the type of arguments they dismiss now, it the result were disastrous. All one has to do is look to past generations for this. If you are bored one day, look into the history of Smogon's BL lists, up until gen 4 they were pretty much "ban whatever we think is OP" on the whim, leading to BL lists that were monstrous and bloated. And as far as adhering to what is easy to do in game, keep in mind that at one point the use of lendary Pokemon with hidden powers was banned in GSC because it was too difficult to get in game. Its not like these policies don't exist for no reason, its important to remember that they had to be made for a good damn reason in the first place.
That BL "policy" actually continued well into mid-4th gen. Look at this BL banlist in April 2008, about a year and a half after DP came out:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080430134635/http://www.smogon.com/dp/tiers/bl

Everything that was perceived as "strong" was banned to BL. That's a total of 61 BL Pokemon. Of those in the above list, more than one third (22) unsurprisingly ended up in NU afterwards.

Now, I'm of the opinion that we're doing the same thing with OU now - as a very obvious example, just at the start of 5th gen, there were a significant amount of "esteemed" users who wanted to start with Wobbuffet banned. Either way, the current system is very much needed.
 
I kinda get the feeling this thread is about me. Which I'm OK with - I will never be an elite min maxer of the pokemon arts and won't ever pretend to be. As others have mentioned, while my posts may have been silly or wishful thinking, anyone can go back and see valid points that support the item clause. But I do understand the policy now of "if it ain't broke, we ain't gonna fix it".

I propose that you all pick a direction though. You can't be "noob friendly" and then get all upset when noobs make suggestions. Either encourage the posts of all users and encourage your veteran contributors to play nice with those folks, or only encourage the most thought-provoking pokemon posts that only include math and intense strategy. Both are fine, I can either lurk or post, respectively. But you need to choose one.
 
I can already tell that this thread is going to go around in circles, as always.

So to go back to the OP: I agree that the crappy one-liners (including those made by veteran members) need to go. However, I think just flat-out deleting posts (or locking controversial threads) is a horrible idea, as it quickly turns into a slippery slope of "What is spam and what disagrees with our arbitrary policies?" Just saying "I dislike Aegislash because I think it's cheap" is a bad post. Stating "I think banning Blaziken altogether is arbitrary when Speed Boost Blaziken should be banned instead" may be an unpopular opinion, but is a reasonable post. Don't tell me that silencing dissent doesn't happen, either - just look at all the locked threads in the Gen V OU forum questioning the bans, or how moderators just silence any complaints on the Smogon Showdown server with "That's the way it is."

Believe it or not, this is a problem. By acting like it's 2004 and staying stuck in their own little "tradition" mindset, Smogon isn't causing the competitive community to grow - if anything, it's fracturing it. We have Wi-Fi players (who actually play the game) vs simulator players, Smogon players vs. official Nintendo format players, etc. all boiling under the surface, no matter how much the moderators try to hide it by deleting posts or locking threads. All deleting posts is going to do will cause this problem to grow. Instead, Smogon should be asking, "Do our policies really have a place in the current environment?" Because, let's be honest - the people making the games you play, Game Freak, really don't care about Smogon's increasingly arbitrary rules. They've stated in multiple interviews, like this one, that they pay attention to the official Video Game Championships format, but have never stated that Smogon is relevant in their eyes. The Pokemon Company International also looks for feedback from its players - see here - but only for an official format. See where I'm going? It's almost like we're playing two completely different games now, and if Smogon refuses to pull its head out of its ass and realize this, it's going to find itself in the dust as Game Freak/TPCi continues to cater their games towards official formats.

So there does need to be a change in UT, but not necessarily the one stated in the OP. Smogon needs to state what exactly "advancing competitive Pokemon" entails. Does it mean following the competitive format that Game Freak/TPCi has set up and bases their decisions around, or a completely fan-made format often ruled by politics and unofficial simulators? Until everyone knows what exactly Smogon is trying to accomplish, we're going to get the same questions from the newbies and the same divisive issues boiling under the surface.

I may have gone off-topic, but if Smogon wants to get to the root of the real problem, this is a good starting point.
 
Believe it or not, this is a problem. By acting like it's 2004 and staying stuck in their own little "tradition" mindset, Smogon isn't causing the competitive community to grow - if anything, it's fracturing it. We have Wi-Fi players (who actually play the game) vs simulator players, Smogon players vs. official Nintendo format players, etc.
It's almost like we're playing two completely different games now, and if Smogon refuses to pull its head out of its ass and realize this, it's going to find itself in the dust as Game Freak/TPCi continues to cater their games towards official formats.
If you dont like smogon tiers, dont play here, simple.

Because, let's be honest - the people making the games you play, Game Freak, really don't care about Smogon's increasingly arbitrary rules.
Their rules are arbitrary. Our rules have real reasoning. Thats why we dont care about them either.

So there does need to be a change in UT, but not necessarily the one stated in the OP. Smogon needs to state what exactly "advancing competitive Pokemon" entails. Does it mean following the competitive format that Game Freak/TPCi has set up and bases their decisions around, or a completely fan-made format often ruled by politics and unofficial simulators? Until everyone knows what exactly Smogon is trying to accomplish, we're going to get the same questions from the newbies and the same divisive issues boiling under the surface.
Thats exactly what we do and have always been doing.
 
Magicxgame, it is true that Game Freak is only bothered about its own flagship events when it comes to satisfying competitive players. Why? Because Smogonites can play without actually buying the games! We aren't strictly speaking Game Freak's customers (well not all of us anyway). So I'm not surprised. Of course they care about you, because you hand over hard-earned cash for their products.

However, since I don't play on Wi-Fi and know little about the community, I'd like to ask you this: do Wi-Fi players ever moan about the rules imposed upon them, or do they just deal with stuff even if they don't like it? Do they even talk about things being "broken"? Or do they just play and put up with facing broken stuff, or even use it themselves?

I guess in the end, there are two ways in which people enjoy any sort of competition. There are those who want to win, and for them that is the only way to have fun, and there are those who find the game itself interesting and just want to make the game as fun as possible, win or lose, and I think I have made myself clear which side of the fence the two communities fall. I think this is the biggest difference in ideology, and it's leading to a "Wi-Fi players are from Mars, Smogonites are from Venus" scenario where we just aren't communicating. If you just want to win, fine. But for goodness' sake don't complain because somebody else doesn't share your opinion.

But I believe that at the moment Wi-Fi players are doing themselves a disservice by eating up whatever crap Game Freak throws at them. You said yourself Nintendo are looking for feedback to try and improve the games, so give them feedback. If you are unhappy with something, complain. Game Freak didn't even nerf Moody this generation, and Wi-Fi players had the power to make that happen. Smogon pandering to the Wi-Fi community isn't the only solution - the Wi-Fi community taking on board some of Smogon's philosophy could really actually get Game Freak to listen, resulting in a more diverse official metagame, which ends up being better for everyone (Wi-Fi players have better rules to work with, Smogon players don't get Wi-Fi players complaining at them that their rules are wrong).

In essence, both sides can learn from the other - but that requires a willingness to swallow one's pride, a trait that rarely goes hand in hand with wanting to win at all costs, especially among those who succeed in doing so. And I readily admit that in some senses that, were the Wi-Fi community to actually use its consumer power for the good of the metagame, Smogon would then be the inferior community, as we would have little more reason to exist other than to avoid paying Game Freak what is rightfully theirs. And if that happened, I'd switch allegiances in a heartbeat. I'd start saving up for a 3DS now, but I doubt it will ever happen.
 
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alexwolf

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I can already tell that this thread is going to go around in circles, as always.

So to go back to the OP: I agree that the crappy one-liners (including those made by veteran members) need to go. However, I think just flat-out deleting posts (or locking controversial threads) is a horrible idea, as it quickly turns into a slippery slope of "What is spam and what disagrees with our arbitrary policies?" Just saying "I dislike Aegislash because I think it's cheap" is a bad post. Stating "I think banning Blaziken altogether is arbitrary when Speed Boost Blaziken should be banned instead" may be an unpopular opinion, but is a reasonable post. Don't tell me that silencing dissent doesn't happen, either - just look at all the locked threads in the Gen V OU forum questioning the bans, or how moderators just silence any complaints on the Smogon Showdown server with "That's the way it is."
Most of the policies of Smogon are not arbitrary or at least not without any kind of logical reasoning. Deleting posts that add nothing to the discussion is ok and you can easily identify such posts. I agree that if a post has something that is worth discussing but is written poorly or with a wrong attitude then the post should just be edited to be more appropriate while explaining why the editing was done. Also, most controversial threads that have been locked have been locked because of the lack of content and serious discussion in the thread not because the mods want to silence people they don't agree with. If a thread with 10 pages has 9 pages with one liner posts and irrelevant arguments and only one page of worthwhile posts it is clear that either the topic doesn't promote good discussion or that the community cannot discuss properly the subject at hand.

Believe it or not, this is a problem. By acting like it's 2004 and staying stuck in their own little "tradition" mindset, Smogon isn't causing the competitive community to grow - if anything, it's fracturing it. We have Wi-Fi players (who actually play the game) vs simulator players, Smogon players vs. official Nintendo format players, etc. all boiling under the surface, no matter how much the moderators try to hide it by deleting posts or locking threads. All deleting posts is going to do will cause this problem to grow. Instead, Smogon should be asking, "Do our policies really have a place in the current environment?" Because, let's be honest - the people making the games you play, Game Freak, really don't care about Smogon's increasingly arbitrary rules. They've stated in multiple interviews, like this one, that they pay attention to the official Video Game Championships format, but have never stated that Smogon is relevant in their eyes. The Pokemon Company International also looks for feedback from its players - see here - but only for an official format. See where I'm going? It's almost like we're playing two completely different games now, and if Smogon refuses to pull its head out of its ass and realize this, it's going to find itself in the dust as Game Freak/TPCi continues to cater their games towards official formats.
Let's try not to exaggerate things so much. Of 'course Smogon is not the most open minded community but saying we are blindly following tradition is wrong and misleading. Nearly all the changes that happen or don't happen with each major change to the metagame (in this case with the introduction of a new generation) have solid logical reasons behind them, which have either been discussed publicly or by the senior stuff (or whatever team of people is appropriate for each subject). Whether you agree or not with those reasons is another issue, but saying that logical reasons have not been given at all and the decision was taken just to ''stick to tradition'' is unfair. Tell me what threads have been closed arbitrarily and which subjects have been shot down arbitrarily so we can discuss them here if you want to support your belief that Smogon does things arbitarily. Also, as i mentioned again, the moderators are not trying to hide anything, they are just doing their jobs and follow the moderating rules. The threads that have been closed so far lacked any level of serious or competitive discussion. What can be considered as serious or competitive? Definitely not one liners and entirely objective opinions such as those that can be found in the 'item clause'' thread. Finally, of course ours and Nintendo's metagames are very different, we never had the purpose of following Nintendo's metagames. Smogon only aims to stay close to the mechanics of the game not to the metagames of Nintendo.

So there does need to be a change in UT, but not necessarily the one stated in the OP. Smogon needs to state what exactly "advancing competitive Pokemon" entails. Does it mean following the competitive format that Game Freak/TPCi has set up and bases their decisions around, or a completely fan-made format often ruled by politics and unofficial simulators? Until everyone knows what exactly Smogon is trying to accomplish, we're going to get the same questions from the newbies and the same divisive issues boiling under the surface.

I may have gone off-topic, but if Smogon wants to get to the root of the real problem, this is a good starting point.
It means following the foundations that have been set up long ago and evolving and changing our policies according to what the community wants. Community doesn't mean all the people that frequent this site, it means the people that have the qualifications to make decisions and influence the subject at hand. Some times there are no qualifications other than having a simple Smogon account and some other times the qualifications are more complex (suspect tests, Policy Review decisions, simulator decisions).
 
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Their rules are arbitrary. Our rules have real reasoning. Thats why we dont care about them either.
This sums up the problem up nicely. The prevailing attitude at Smogon is basically, "We're smarter than GameFreak." There's this widespread belief that GameFreak cannot or will not balance the game and it's up to the online community to do it for them. Those silly GameFreak devs! It's like they just make all this stuff and then don't even test it. lulz, amiright? To Smogon's credit, this was certainly a valid complaint back in first gen. But as the generations have gone on, it's become less and less true. Now, more than 20 years later, it's an obsolete attitude. There are more changes to existing Pokémon, moves, and mechanics in 6th gen than there are new Pokémon, moves, and mechanics. This gen was almost entirely about tweaking and balancing the game! And yet, somehow there's still this belief here on Smogon that GameFreak is incompetent. Why is that?

The answer is that the things GameFreak changed—and perhaps more importantly the things they didn't change—seem idiotic and arbitrary when applied to Smogon's 6v6 metagame. "Why wasn't Stealth Rock nerfed? GameFreak must be idiots!" No, it's just that Stealth Rock isn't omnipresent—or even common—in a 3v3 format with team preview. This is really the root of the problem: Smogon plays a 6v6 format while GameFreak is working to balance a 3v3 format. One format is not intrinsically more "competitive" than the other. It would probably be way easier to balance the game that GameFreak's actually developing than to balance "Smogémon", but Smogon is so invested in the 6v6 format that 3v3 seems anathema. We've got all these articles! All our discussion and critiques! Be a shame to just toss those out. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

It's really strange when you think about it. GameFreak puts so much work into creating this game, yet here we are at the start of a new generation of content, and rather than give it a chance as-is, the premier online battling community rails against it! They stubbornly plow ahead with their unsupported 6v6 format, carrying over all their rules from the previous generation and then needing ever more bans and rules in order to keep their heavily modified version of the game playable and interesting. It's bizarre. If you know the history, you can understand how it happened. But if you take a step back and think about it, it's really weird. When people talk about how Smogon "blindly follows tradition", I believe this is what they mean.

If you dont like smogon tiers, dont play here, simple.
This is the other half of the problem. Smogon "supports" Nintendo's formats. By "supports", I mean there are separate forums for them so that people who want to post about them don't clutter up the important Smogémon discussions. It's a bad joke. If Smogon really wants to be the go-to site for competitive Pokémon battling going forward, they're going to have to embrace Nintendo's formats. Now I'm not saying that 6v6 should be thrown out altogether, but it should be relegated to a secondary format, much like Little Cup, etc. As of right now, Smogon's mission statement is at best misleading. Let's read the first paragraph of Smogon's "About" page.

Smogon is the most comprehensive and accurate online resource for competitive Pokémon battling. We offer articles and advice via our community forums to help fans of the game compete at every level, while honing their skills in every aspect of competitive Pokémon from team building to battling tactics. Our over-150,000-member organization is growing at an ever increasing rate, constantly expanding our knowledge base and our ability to be at the cutting edge of the game.

The entire page completely fails to note that it's a resource not for Pokémon as it exists today, but for Smogémon. Smogon has hundreds of pages of articles and advice that are almost useless to anyone actually playing Pokémon on a DS cartridge. How far we've strayed, and without even really realizing it.

PS:

Game Freak didn't even nerf Moody this generation, and Wi-Fi players had the power to make that happen.
Moody wasn't nerfed directly because it didn't need to be. It takes three things to abuse Moody. You need Moody itself, Substitute, and Protect/Detect, and Substitute got nerfed HARD this gen. All sound-based moves go through it. Anything with Infiltrator can bypass it with damaging moves. Roar and Whirlwind bypass Sub and can no longer miss. Even Pin Missile got a huge buff, for what that's worth; Mega Heracross certainly doesn't care much about Subs.
 
The prevailing attitude at Smogon is basically, "We're smarter than GameFreak."
We may not be smarter than Game Freak, but we do have way more resources to playtest stuff than Game Freak ever had because there are 150,000 of us and a generation lasts three or four years. So, while to a certain extent, Game Freak has to balance stuff by guesswork, Smogon players can actually test how powerful various Pokemon and strategies are. And we will discover that things are broken. Going back to Moody, I'm sure it wouldn't have been released into the game had anybody realised how easily it could be abused with Protect and Substitute. Similar things could be said about Prankster + Assist - in fact, for all the players we have it still only got "discovered" a month or so ago, when it had been "out there" for years. And Game Freak overlooked these things, not because they are idiots, but because they had limited playtesing, and the playtesting they did have would have been to iron out bugs in the game rather than to balance their own metagame, let alone ours.

This is really the root of the problem: Smogon plays a 6v6 format while GameFreak is working to balance a 3v3 format. One format is not intrinsically more "competitive" than the other.
Well, Smogon was doing fine well before Game Freak supported any format. Are you suggesting it is harder to balance a metagame that has had considerable effort to balance it in a format with rather small differences than it was to balance a metagame with no attempt at balancing at all? As for which format is intrinsically more competitive, 6v6 allows a wide range of playstyles, has more emphasis on switching and prediction, is sufficiently complex that a player's win strategy is not immediately obvious upon the battle starting, lasts longer and is therefore more hax-resistant, and is less dependant on team macth-up. In fact, you could even say that Smogon were smarter here, by choosing a more tactically interesting metagame than Game Freak.

They stubbornly plow ahead with their unsupported 6v6 format.
Smogon was the first body to formulate official metagame rules, so you could argue that it is we who are not supporting them, rather than vice-versa.

...needing ever more bans and rules in order to keep their heavily modified version of the game playable and interesting.
I have yet to see any evidence that the "official" 3v3 metagame does not require similar rule changes to keep it "playable and interesting". People just put up with its arbitrary rules because they feel they don't have the power to change them (which is not entirely true, the theme of my previous post).

If Smogon really wants to be the go-to site for competitive Pokémon battling going forward, they're going to have to embrace Nintendo's formats.
Alternatively, if Nintendo actually wants competitive players to buy its games rather than just playing on simulators for free, it would do well to start embracing Smogon. See how every single point you make can just be turned around by people who disagree with you?

The entire page completely fails to note that it's a resource not for Pokémon as it exists today, but for Smogémon.
And nuggetbridge etc are by the same reasoning resources for Nintendomon. In both cases, the organisations have taken the games and created metagames by imposing rules of competition. The only difference is that Nintendo's metarules are either totally arbitrary or solely for the benefit of cartridge players (eg banning event legendaries, because not every Wi-Fi player will have access to them), whereas Smogon's rules are not only well thought-out, they are the results of thousands, perhaps even millions, of hours of playtesting.

Moody wasn't nerfed directly because it didn't need to be. It takes three things to abuse Moody. You need Moody itself, Substitute, and Protect/Detect, and Substitute got nerfed HARD this gen.
Just you wait until the inevitable Ubers Moody suspect test.
 
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