I don't entirely agree with The Hitman's posts, but I do think that he brings up an important discussion point that hasn't been touched upon recently in RU, namely the propensity of bans in suspect tests and the role of the community during the test. I've had some thoughts about these things drifting around my head for a while, so now seems like a good time to air them.
I feel like a systemic problem with the suspecting process is that, in some ways, there are more incentives for the common player from a ban than from a decision not to ban. Pokemon as a game does not receive regular updates, and to some degree that means the metagame is entirely dependent by it's natural subtle change over time. The closest thing we have is usage drops/rises, and every time one comes around you can almost hear the prayers of consistent players for 'drops'. I think it's natural for players to want more immediate changes dropped/removed in their tiers to add a little bit of new life every now and again. Unfortunately, this is tied towards banning a Pokemon too - by removing a strong Pokemon from the tier, it changes the dynamics of play and shifts the metagame more rapidly. It's not unreasonable to suspect that some of these pro-ban votes may be directly related to a desire for this change. To reveal a little bit of my own 'evil', when I was less experienced I always secretly hoped the suspect process would result in bans because I wanted the 'freshness' that it would provide. Obviously I know believe that impulse to be unhealthy, and fortunately I wasn't good enough/dedicated enough to vote in suspect tests during that time. I don't think I need to explain why this isn't a healthy reason for justifying a suspect ban - it's independent of the tiers balance. But it's a factor I definitely can see impacting the suspect results regardless of the suspect in question - it's an implicit and, in all honesty, possibly subconscious bias among players weak and strong. Whilst it could be that all of those Pokemon were in fact meriting a ban, this could be a potential explanation in part for why this is the case.
If we assume that there are unhealthy factors that impact the suspect votes negatively, it's natural to want to remove these voters. Those who actively engage and are accepted into the greater RU community generally speaking know the active presences on the forums and trust them to make educated decisions, even if they disagree with those decisions. As they should. However, there is an impulse to place blame on the nebulous community of 'lurkers' of whom often determine suspect tests. It's easy to blame this group for the problems with suspect votes and claim that they are uneducated or are voting for weak reasons such as the aforementioned one. But the majority of voters are genuinely voting for what they think is the truth, even if their reasoning isn't particularly strong. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I don't think hardly anyone is voting maliciously or selfishly on a conscious level. However, I still see people complaining about this group of 'lurkers' instead of trying to address the problem directly and engage the voting base.
I obviously lack the statistics, but I think it seems likely that most lurkers who qualify for suspect tests check the forums and would probably use it's resources for teambuilding. I feel as though the role of the np: thread is dualfold - it's a general common area for metagame discussion and during suspect season the center for suspect discussion in particular. I wouldn't be surprised if most voters read through the suspect thread and the arguments before voting. But when your suspect thread is only two pages long, there really isn't much for somebody not initiated into the community to look at. I suppose that was what irked me looking back at this suspect - people expressed some well formulated arguments in the thread, but compared to the voting base it was very little. Also, a collection of individual arguments isn't the same as a discussion in which users interact with other users and argue over strong/weak points in the argument. Maybe this points to the fact that there was widespread agreement that Durant was broken this time, but if we acknowledge that the situation was even remotely gray than surely there should be discussion?
I'm not trying to call the community out - that would be the pot calling the kettle black. However, I do think that if the community wants to be sure that it's suspect tests are educated, it ideally should have a public utility where everyone chips in and interacts with each other that isn't irc or PS chat (The former is ideal but honestly not as accessible/known for most as the forums whereas the latter is active but perhaps too informal). For experienced players, this means more wading through similar and perhaps boring discussion about suspects and brokenness, but maybe it's something that has to be sacrificed for general health of the community. I realize this is a tall order, as there are constraints in that RU doesn't have as large a player base and that likes make it really (perhaps too) easy to just agree with something tacitly and save the time of writing it up one's self. But as a whole, the more intelligent discussion during a suspect test in all media (especially this thread) and the more tolerant the community is to outside opinions, the more people will want to engage and the remaining lurkers will have more information to sift through if they so chose (which most probably will, at least a bit). The recent suspect threads have mostly been "here's my opinion" and a little bit less of "here's how I, with my opinion, interpret other people's opinions (respectfully) and leverage them with my own". This doesn't mean that every post in the forum must address another person's argument or even brokenness itself, but it certainly would help those that do.
I suppose this all boils down to 'there may be implicit biases in the suspect process itself that help explain the frequency of bans, the best (or at least a very good) way to improve the average voter's arguments in suspect tests is to provide as much public discussion as possible, especially for those new or uninitiated into the community'.
Only a slightly different note, I was wondering if the RU council would be willing to provide a little bit more than a few paragraphs explaining the suspect going forward for the future. I do think the RU council has been doing a great job with suspect nomination/matters pertaining to RU from the outside, don't get me wrong. And I understand that a formal log of proceedings is asking for way to much, but something like a formal irc/maybe even PS discussion discussing the rationale for the suspect/ the suspect (or even just the metagame) itself between the council and the community couldn't hurt/might be useful for some people. I realize that this requires a lot of organization, might have attendance problems, and might be seen as influencing the vote too much, so it may be completely unfeasible, so consider this more a suggestion rather than 'complete openness or riot' type of thing - I just think that if it does work or something similar could work, it could be cool.