It is impossible to be a competitive project if the project does not have the participation of good competitive battlers. In general, competitive battlers do not like to participate in forums dominated by little kids and pokemon noobs who talk endlessly about whether Bulbasaur is cuter than Squirtle, or brag about how amazing Hyper Beam is on Snorlax. You can call competitive battlers elitist or snobs, but the fact remains that most people that play pokemon know very little about the "serious" aspects of battling. It is incredibly annoying for the people that know about competitive battling to hang around with the average pokenoob. So we have to do our best to make a project that is exciting and enticing for knowledgeable battlers, and that means we have to discourage the project from being overrun with fanboys and fanboy concerns.
If you look at the CAP project and most of the participants are pokenerds that don't battle competitively, have no knowledge of competitive battling, and no desire to learn more about competitive battling -- then would you conclude that CAP is a "competitive project"? If you were a typical good competitive player, would you want to jump in and be a part of the project? No. If that was the case, and if you did want to be part of the project, you would not be doing so as a competitive battler. You would participate as a fanboy too and you would do it "Just to have fun".
For individuals and their motivation level, there is nothing wrong with that. But for the project as a whole, it is a terrible influence. If it goes unchecked, the project is doomed.
Unfortunately, when the average new pokemon player comes to Smogon they are somewhat intimidated. All the serious battle strategies, lingo and acronyms, organized tournaments, rules and tiers -- the whole thing is kinda scary to new players. But as they survey the forum listing, they come across a phrase that resonates with them instantly -- "Create. A. Pokemon."
Halleluyah! Something that makes every fan's heart sing -- a place for pokemon fans to make their own pokemon! "OMG, I have the greatest idea for a pokemon! I know so much about Pokemon, I beat the Elite 4 ten times in a row! I will instantly fit right in here!"
Ugh.
So they come in droves. And they don't bother to read rules or learn what the project is all about. They assume they know the game of Pokemon and they dive right into the CAP project. When they see a bunch of competitive mumbo-jumbo being discussed, they bypass that and focus on what they do know about -- which is flavor. And they do this in one of two ways -- they make flavor comments in competitive threads, or they stay out of competitive threads and only post in flavor threads. Both of these tendencies are actually bad for the long-term health of the CAP project. Both forms of participation act as a disincentive for participation from good competitive players. Fanboys either shit up the competitive threads, or they make the competitive threads look like a graveyard of activity -- both of those are bad for CAP.
So here's what we have to do as leaders of the CAP project to keep us on course -- We have to discourage fanboyism and flavor across the board, and play up the competitive aspects of the project as much as possible. I'm basically saying we need to abuse the innocent pokemon nerds, and coddle the smug competitive battlers. It's a harsh statement, I know.
But here's the harsh truth -- pokemon "fan knowledge" is pretty much worthless to us. It has almost no value, because it is so easy to come by. How much work does it take to learn enough about pokemon to argue if Dragon pokemon look cooler than Dark pokemon? How hard is it to find someone capable of writing a Pokedex entry? How many people feel they have enough pokemon expertise to come up with a good name for a pokemon? Pokemon fan knowledge is worth jack shit here at CAP. Because there is no defensible "skill" to it, and there is no way to distinguish between people that are "good" at pokemon flavor and who is "bad" at pokemon flavor.
Competitive knowledge, on the other hand, is very valuable at CAP and is generally hard to come by. It's not hard to come by in Smogon, but it can be hard to attract to the CAP project if we allow the project to be dominated by users obsessing over flavor. We don't want CAP members interested only in flavor -- we want people with expert knowledge and skills to participate in CAP, and for THOSE PEOPLE, we want to provide a place for them to indulge their fan interests. Does that make sense?
The focus of the CAP project is experimentation with competitive battling, and alongside that we provide a small outlet for our fan interests. The fanboy aspects of CAP are just an "added bonus" for the competitive players we want to involve here. Unfortunately, the fan stuff tends to overshadow everything, and it is the primary attraction for a HUGE number of CAP participants. But don't confuse popularity with focus. The CAP project is not designed to be a fanboy project, and we will never succumb to the constant onslaught of fan influence. If we really want a fan project, then we are doing this entirely the wrong way, and we are doing it in the wrong place here at Smogon.
Don't get me wrong, we are ALL fans of pokemon and we all probably got started in the CAP project due to a keen interest in the flavor aspects of the project. Whether you were intrigued by the cool artwork, you got hooked by a prevo thread, or you made a noobish post about some ridiculous typing you would like to see in the real game -- almost every "serious CAP veteran" probably started in CAP as a flavor-loving fanboy. I know I did. And there's nothing wrong with that. But we need to transition that initial fanboy hook into a deeper interest in serious competitive pokemon. Even if CAP participants never get into battling seriously, they need to understand and appreciate that CAP is primarily driven by competitive goals. If participants don't make that transition, then we should not cater to their desire for CAP to be a home for pokemon fans only interested in flavor.
From the very beginnings of the CAP project, we have had to defend our legitimacy as a worthwhile competitive endeavor. And despite our history, our organization, our rules, and our process -- we still get a constant stream of pokemon noobs that wander into the CAP project and assume we are just making "kewl pogeymanzz". These people litter our competitive threads with idiotic flavor comments and suggestions. They spam the art threads with "OMG that is so awesome!!!" comments, but don't even bother to look at the damage calcs when voting for stat spreads. They are the regular joe pokemon players of the world, and they will forever be the bane of our existence.