Given the importance of this topic not just to the Ubers tier but to Smogon as a whole, I would like to take some time to weigh in on the matter.
First off, I would like to commend the people in charge of the suspect test,
especially the ones in charge of judging the paragraphs. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can screw up the execution of an important public event like a suspect test, but it takes a great deal of moral character and courage to publicly admit personal responsibility for such a high profile screwup in the manner that the Uber TLs did. I want these kinds of people running our tiers, ones who are willing to admit when they are wrong and then make serious efforts to fix those errors, and the willingness of the Uber TLs to do just that far outweighs the magnitude of the mistakes they made during this test. That's not to trivialize the magnitude of the mistakes made, but to emphasize how important this level of honesty and sincerity is to me.
In case it's not abundantly clear, I think we should continue to show the Uber TLs our full support moving forward.
I will admit, I actually thought that the paragraph idea was a great idea when I first read about it, and was hoping that it would produce the results that Fireburn and the other TLs were hoping for. Shadow Tag, like many other uncompetetive elements in pokemon, is not something that one can just throw onto a team willy-nilly and expect it to perform as if it were a broken sweeper. It's power is much more subtle and is not always apparent even to successful ladderers. I have little doubt that a half decent HO player could've easily made a perfectly fine ubers HO team and obtain reqs without losing a single mon to mega gengar or any other trapper, not having a clue as to why they're being suspected in the first place. This isn't just a problem with shadow tag, but with every suspect worthy thing that isn't horribly overused on the ladder. Just look at Deo-S in OU, who was suspected but failed to get banned when Genesect and Mega Luca were dominating the meta but got banned much later when Deosharp became popular. Even in the face of this failure, I applaud the ubers tiering council for being willing to take these risks in order to improve the ubers metagame as well as the suspect process as a whole.
That all being said, I do in fact believe that abolishing the possibility of suspects in Ubers is a tad hasty. Judging from the posts made by the Uber TLs on this topic, there currently is or very soon will be a very heated debate on how to make future tiering decisions. Wouldn't it make more sense to keep suspect tests on the table until
after the TLs have had this discussion? As
Fireburn admitted in his excellent post on the subject, the Shadow Tag suspect was handled quite poorly. It lasted too long, the people in charge of reading the paragraphs and counting votes were personally involved in the suspect debates and heavily invested in its results, and the voting process could have been more transparent and better explained. However, I do not see how a single poorly handled suspect implies a problem with the suspect process as a whole or the very idea of suspect testing. From my understanding (and please call me out on this if I'm wrong), there were 2 suspect tests in ubers during Gen 5 for evasion and OHKO moves, both of which were executed much more cleanly then the most recent Shadow Tag suspect. Given that there has already been two successful suspect tests, I think that it would be wise to not immediately ditch the entire process but instead carefully examine why this one went so poorly and take steps to fix the process in any future suspects.
If we do decide to ever suspect something in Ubers again, I would like to propose a suggestion. It seems pretty obvious that the paragraph requirement is not the best way to determine whether or not any given player is knowledgeable of the suspect. The process is subjective and is vulnerable to bias from even the most well intentioned judges. Furthermore, our tier leaders are first and foremost battlers, not essay writers, and it stands to reason that we should not assume that they have skills that belong to a language arts teacher. Lastly, as stated earlier, it's pretty easy to C/P a well written anti/pro ban argument from the suspect thread, which circumvents the process far too easily for my liking.
Therefore, I propose the following: In future suspects of uncompetitive or underused elements of the metagame, players will be required to submit a reasonably high level replay of a team taking advantage of the abilities of the suspect in question to show that they understand what's going on.
I feel that it will be much easier to make objective (or at least less subjective) criteria to judge replays then it is to judge paragraphs. I also think that the TLs will have a much easier time judging them because they are already skilled battlers who are plenty familiar with analyzing replays at all levels.
Once again, trying different methods to make a healthier metagame is paramount for the growth of the community. I applaud these attempts even when they end in failure because
we still learn from them. Do not take options off the table before you are absolutely certain that they are terrible ideas.
*edit*
Oh yeah, and Go Team Fireburn! Go Team Ubers!