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EVO 1 - Process Vote
- Thread starter DougJustDoug
- Start date
- Status
+++ for that. It's basically an expansion on my original suggestion. Quite gg.
But if you were to clear that path, then it would be the same as the other one in the beginning, only with a bit of extra work. Essentially, we easily could have done farfetchd for this EVO, but we were the ones who accidentally knocked down that tree in a rush to decide what road to go down on instead of how to safely cross any road. We choose what could be improved instead of deciding the best improvement, and since people are now realizing that and wish to start over, I don't see why not. Plus, if this is some sort of "learning experience" then we should be able to remedy a mistake.
I have always been an opponent of evolving pokemon in the CAP Project. Anyone who has been around this project from the beginning, knows I have been a very vocal critic of evolutions. I have repeated time and again, that an evolution project lacks any sort of inherent competitive goal, and will therefore be a chaotic mess of fanboy concerns. I opposed evolutions in CAP 1 and 2, when we voted on them. When the CAP subforum started, I banned evolutions from regular CAP projects altogether. At that time, I mentioned that if we ever did an evolution, it would be part of a special project and that project would start ONLY IF a manageable creation process could be organized.
I have always felt that evolutions would be fraught with problems of direction and focus. I could see no way to structure an evo project in a way so as to provide meaningful benefits that align with the competitive purpose of the CAP project, and Smogon in general, while still maintaining the essential democratic community foundation of the normal CAP process. Basically, evolutions are just begging to be overrun by flavor issues, fanboy suggestions, and chaotic goals and directions.
But several months ago, after a continual stream of requests from the community, I opened an Evolution Process Workshop thread and asked the community to figure out a process. At that time, I figured one of two things would happen
Number 2 is a key point for you to understand, from my point of view. Even if the community makes a bad process, as long as everyone supports it -- the community can still function in a healthy way. If everyone agrees on a process, then who am I to say it is bad?
When the EVO process thread was opened, I voiced major concerns about the focus of the project. I felt that we needed to do something to ensure the project would be driven by competitive goals. I was particularly worried about how the project was started. For those of you that don't believe me, here's a link to my first post. That was in June.
Shortly after that, the community lost interest in the process thread -- like any thread in the CAP project that requires an ounce of work, organization or documentation. Everyone loves click polls and/or arguing over trivial details of artwork. But the minute we need to roll up our sleeves and actually organize the project -- everyone is conveniently "busy with other things", and expects me or one of the FEW other workhorses on the project to pick up the slack. I wasn't going to do it myself, and the process thread died due to lack of activity.
A few months later, a couple members resumed their hard-on for making an evolution and asked to bump the evo process thread. I allowed it once again -- this time making it clear to the community that I was not going to write the process by myself and then initiate an evo project without community involvement. Because IMO, the first round of process discussion didn't reveal anything new that alleviated my focus concerns, and the lack of community effort indicated to me that people wanted a successful evo project to just magically appear. In reality, most folks just wanted to "skip to the good part" and get to work making Farfetch'd into an OU Samurai Pokegod. I wasn't going to keep bending over backwards to make an evo project, because I honestly did not think it could be a success. But, I agreed to reopen the process discussion, provided it had some legitimate organization and initiative from the community.
Tennisace stepped up and led the discussion, with active help from folks like eric and latinoheat. While I did not agree with many of the proposals in the workshop, I did appreciate the work being put in by Tennis and others. Shortly after the workshop reopened -- I re-posted my original concerns about the lack of competitive focus, and once again stated that I thought the project start would be a big problem. This was in August.
My concerns didn't get addressed the second time around, as the community seemed more interested in deciding whether Tauros and Miltank should be evolved as a pair, and whether pokemon that evolved with a stone should be allowed to evolve again. This sort of crap has always been maddening to me, but it is par for the course whenever the topic of evolution comes up. Evolutions attract SO MUCH extraneous non-competitive nonsense, it's really amazing to me. But there seemed to be some legitimate organization this time around, and I thought perhaps the community had some level of agreement on a process that could work, without it becoming a big mess.
So, I kicked off EVO 1.
The first submission thread was a joke, with everyone just randomly spewing evo ideas out there. I was actually surprised by some of the badgeholders suggesting evos in this project. Gorm's first suggestion for Farfetch'd was cited by several other members as great reasoning for Farfetch'd. Other badgeholders like Caelum and McGraw specifically quoted Gorm as the reason they were supporting Farfetch'd. In one of Gorm's many defenses of Farfetch'd here was his reasoning:
Even a respected badgeholder, known for his extensive knowledge of metagame battling -- was arguing to evolve Farfetch'd to "make it awesome". Lovely competitive reasoning, IMO...
So, the bandwagon began and everyone piled on. Not that Farfetch'd really needed any help from Gorm. Anyone who has been around CAP for the past year, knew that Farfetch'd winning was a foregone conclusion. Farfetch'd has been pimped so many times in so many past CAP threads, it was already the odds-on favorite to win by a mile. I've never really understood the fascination with a shitty pokemon with boring typing and an ugly sprite -- but I long ago accepted that I am in the minority. Since I never played the RBY games, I've always assumed that the Farfetch'd obsession is an "RBY Thing", and that I'll never "get it". Seeing Farfetch'd quickly gather monstrous support from noobs and badgeholders alike, was no surprise to me or anyone else.
Later in the thread, I was intrigued by the Houndoom suggestion and made a few arguments for it. I was encouraged that a few people cited my arguments as reasons for voting for Houndoom, and there seemed to be some real support for it. There also seemed to be some support for my assertion that "Farfetch'd = CAP6". But, this was all fairly normal CAP vote jockeying. The community divided almost perfectly down the middle between two final options - Farfetch'd and Houndoom. Close polls have become the norm on the CAP project, and it looked like the EVO project would follow suit.
Then Gormenghast pulled a 180, and made his Camerupt thread.
My initial reaction was, "What the fuck is this?!?" I was pretty pissed off that a badgeholder went and posted a new thread, despite the fact that forum rules pretty clearly state that new threads can only be made by the Topic Leader. If it were anyone other than a badgeholder, the thread would not have been locked, it would have been DELETED IMMEDIATELY. I do it all the time when random users make new threads that derail the focus of the community. Rather than leaving a locked thread out there to distract the community -- I delete it, and almost always infract the TC for breaking a fundamental CAP forum rule.
However, here in Smogon, there are certain common courtesies extended to badgeholders. Badgeholders are moderated only in extreme circumstances. But, there are two sides to that coin, in that badgeholders are expected to follow the rules and not put moderators in difficult positions that require moderation. While I did not appreciate Gorm's failure to even read the basic CAP forum rules, he acknowledged in his OP that he might be out of line -- and openly accepted that his thread might be locked. So, I made a post that clearly stated "No." -- and Gorm's response was "Ok."
However, I was intrigued that one of the big supporters for Farfetch'd had reversed field for competitive reasons and was now questioning the fundamental process and direction behind the evo project as a whole. By the time I posted, several other people had already posted in the thread, but no one really made any arguments defending the competitive structure of the project. Everyone's response was pretty much, "Sorry, too late Gorm."
I am frequently a rigid "Process Nazi" and many people have complained about my strict adherence to formal rules in the CAP project. I felt like Gorm was questioning some fundamental issues about CAP policy, and I wanted to know if the rest of the community was prepared to defend the process. I took a step back and said, "I want to see what the community says about this."
The CAP regulars resoundingly told Gorm to STFU and deal with the results of the poll. No one really offered any logical arguments to refute Gorm's position. This didn't surprise me too much, since I never believed in the EVO process to begin with. But, I have always been an ardent believer in the democratic process, so I was relieved that other established members of the CAP community vehemently defended the results of the poll. Finally, X-Act saw the thread and was shocked that the thread was not locked in the first place. He shut it down and I posted a message agreeing with the lock.
But Gorm had picked up some support by that point, and no one had really given him any real arguments other than appeals to authority and history.
I agree with all of the accusations that were flung at Gorm. He has been a total douchebag during this whole thing. He openly insulted the entire CAP project many times, he showed total disregard for any of the work done in the CAP project over the previous year, admitted to not giving a shit about the project or the community, admitted to have never played the CAP metagame, called our metagame crappy despite having never played it, and openly admitting to completely flip-flopping his opinion in the middle of the EVO project. Basically, he said "Fuck you" to everything related to the CAP project. I honestly don't think a person could be any more offensive or unseemly.
But, still, no one really refuted his arguments about the competitive underpinnings of the EVO project. They just said Gorm was being a jerk -- which he was.
Gorm raised the issue to me privately and asked me to restart the EVO poll. I had NO INTENTION of reverting the poll, but I also had no real argument to defend the current process. I consulted with Darkie on the matter. Darkie admitted that he really felt like the whole project was shaky from the beginning.
When I found out that the TL didn't even have confidence in the process, that really changed my attitude on things. Basically this became a referendum on whether this community had any idea about what they wanted out of the EVO project. Despite the fact that I have hated the EVO project from the very start -- I thought the community would line up behind the EVO project, that had taken so many months to come to fruition in the face of delays and objections.
So I agreed to make this quick poll. I honestly thought it would be a landslide victory for "Keep going". I assumed that the 52% of people that voted for Farfetch'd would vote to keep going. Why would they vote to redo it when their favorite option won? I also figured roughly 20% of the community would vote to keep going, just on the principle that a democratic result should not be overturned. So, I was betting that "Keep going" would win with 75% of the community support. The community would have spoken, and supported "their" project -- a project that has never really made sense to me all along.
I also considered the possibility of "Restart" actually winning. If that happened, it would be proof positive that this entire EVO project was not only on shaky footing from a process standpoint, but that the whole community had no clue about what they wanted in the first place. Considering that the main advocate for a restart (Gormenghast) was a totally insulting ass to every person on the project while presenting his arguments -- if the community lined up behind his proposal that would have to mean one of two things:
No matter the results of the poll, it was obvious to me that the whole thing had become very damaging to the community. What started as a process debate -- in a very short time turned into a bloodbath of drama, insults, and contention. So I talked to X-Act about it. We both independently agreed that this EVO project should be canceled immediately. The community morale has taken enough of a beating from this whole affair, and we need to scrap this thing before it causes any further damage. After seeing the discussion in this thread, I am even more convinced that EVO 1 was a huge mistake. We need to kill this thing and bury the body for a while.
So, here's what is going to happen:
EVO 1 is officially cancelled. This is not up for discussion. We've had enough discussion on it. If you've been wondering why I haven't put my foot down before -- well, I'm putting my foot down now. The EVO project is dead until further notice. I don't want to see any more threads about it. This EVO thing has turned out far worse and caused far more damage than I could have ever imagined. I have spoken to others and considered it heavily. This decision is final.
We will complete CAP5 and move on to CAP6. I have a bunch of PR threads ready for community discussion, and we need to playtest Stratagem. We should have plenty to keep us busy and get our minds off this whole EVO mess.
After CAP6 completes, I will consider the possibility of opening a new EVO Process Workshop thread, and we may try to layout a new EVO project framework. The moratorium will give time for this mess to blow over, and possibly allow some lessons to sink in. Also, in the interim, many of the newcomers to the CAP project that have been arguing strongly for a revised EVO process, will have a CAP project under their belt and they will be more familiar with how the CAP community works. This should remove all the contentious "Us vs. Them" mentality that has developed during this EVO shitstorm. If any newcomers or project members are impatient, and don't want to wait and contribute to the CAP community in the meantime, then I politely invite you to get the fuck out of this forum and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
If you want to continue to bitch about all this, then do so on the server or IRC. But, we are not going to shit up the CAP forum with any more of this divisive petty bickering over the EVO project -- which has been a controversial, disorganized, emotionally-charged, pain-in-the-ass for as long as I can remember. The community has suffered enough damage over this stupid thing. I'm putting an end to it right now.
I have always felt that evolutions would be fraught with problems of direction and focus. I could see no way to structure an evo project in a way so as to provide meaningful benefits that align with the competitive purpose of the CAP project, and Smogon in general, while still maintaining the essential democratic community foundation of the normal CAP process. Basically, evolutions are just begging to be overrun by flavor issues, fanboy suggestions, and chaotic goals and directions.
But several months ago, after a continual stream of requests from the community, I opened an Evolution Process Workshop thread and asked the community to figure out a process. At that time, I figured one of two things would happen
1) The community would actually come up with something really good and workable
OR
2) They would at least reach an agreement on a flawed process
OR
2) They would at least reach an agreement on a flawed process
Number 2 is a key point for you to understand, from my point of view. Even if the community makes a bad process, as long as everyone supports it -- the community can still function in a healthy way. If everyone agrees on a process, then who am I to say it is bad?
When the EVO process thread was opened, I voiced major concerns about the focus of the project. I felt that we needed to do something to ensure the project would be driven by competitive goals. I was particularly worried about how the project was started. For those of you that don't believe me, here's a link to my first post. That was in June.
Shortly after that, the community lost interest in the process thread -- like any thread in the CAP project that requires an ounce of work, organization or documentation. Everyone loves click polls and/or arguing over trivial details of artwork. But the minute we need to roll up our sleeves and actually organize the project -- everyone is conveniently "busy with other things", and expects me or one of the FEW other workhorses on the project to pick up the slack. I wasn't going to do it myself, and the process thread died due to lack of activity.
A few months later, a couple members resumed their hard-on for making an evolution and asked to bump the evo process thread. I allowed it once again -- this time making it clear to the community that I was not going to write the process by myself and then initiate an evo project without community involvement. Because IMO, the first round of process discussion didn't reveal anything new that alleviated my focus concerns, and the lack of community effort indicated to me that people wanted a successful evo project to just magically appear. In reality, most folks just wanted to "skip to the good part" and get to work making Farfetch'd into an OU Samurai Pokegod. I wasn't going to keep bending over backwards to make an evo project, because I honestly did not think it could be a success. But, I agreed to reopen the process discussion, provided it had some legitimate organization and initiative from the community.
Tennisace stepped up and led the discussion, with active help from folks like eric and latinoheat. While I did not agree with many of the proposals in the workshop, I did appreciate the work being put in by Tennis and others. Shortly after the workshop reopened -- I re-posted my original concerns about the lack of competitive focus, and once again stated that I thought the project start would be a big problem. This was in August.
My concerns didn't get addressed the second time around, as the community seemed more interested in deciding whether Tauros and Miltank should be evolved as a pair, and whether pokemon that evolved with a stone should be allowed to evolve again. This sort of crap has always been maddening to me, but it is par for the course whenever the topic of evolution comes up. Evolutions attract SO MUCH extraneous non-competitive nonsense, it's really amazing to me. But there seemed to be some legitimate organization this time around, and I thought perhaps the community had some level of agreement on a process that could work, without it becoming a big mess.
So, I kicked off EVO 1.
The first submission thread was a joke, with everyone just randomly spewing evo ideas out there. I was actually surprised by some of the badgeholders suggesting evos in this project. Gorm's first suggestion for Farfetch'd was cited by several other members as great reasoning for Farfetch'd. Other badgeholders like Caelum and McGraw specifically quoted Gorm as the reason they were supporting Farfetch'd. In one of Gorm's many defenses of Farfetch'd here was his reasoning:
Gormenghast said:
Even a respected badgeholder, known for his extensive knowledge of metagame battling -- was arguing to evolve Farfetch'd to "make it awesome". Lovely competitive reasoning, IMO...
So, the bandwagon began and everyone piled on. Not that Farfetch'd really needed any help from Gorm. Anyone who has been around CAP for the past year, knew that Farfetch'd winning was a foregone conclusion. Farfetch'd has been pimped so many times in so many past CAP threads, it was already the odds-on favorite to win by a mile. I've never really understood the fascination with a shitty pokemon with boring typing and an ugly sprite -- but I long ago accepted that I am in the minority. Since I never played the RBY games, I've always assumed that the Farfetch'd obsession is an "RBY Thing", and that I'll never "get it". Seeing Farfetch'd quickly gather monstrous support from noobs and badgeholders alike, was no surprise to me or anyone else.
Later in the thread, I was intrigued by the Houndoom suggestion and made a few arguments for it. I was encouraged that a few people cited my arguments as reasons for voting for Houndoom, and there seemed to be some real support for it. There also seemed to be some support for my assertion that "Farfetch'd = CAP6". But, this was all fairly normal CAP vote jockeying. The community divided almost perfectly down the middle between two final options - Farfetch'd and Houndoom. Close polls have become the norm on the CAP project, and it looked like the EVO project would follow suit.
Then Gormenghast pulled a 180, and made his Camerupt thread.
My initial reaction was, "What the fuck is this?!?" I was pretty pissed off that a badgeholder went and posted a new thread, despite the fact that forum rules pretty clearly state that new threads can only be made by the Topic Leader. If it were anyone other than a badgeholder, the thread would not have been locked, it would have been DELETED IMMEDIATELY. I do it all the time when random users make new threads that derail the focus of the community. Rather than leaving a locked thread out there to distract the community -- I delete it, and almost always infract the TC for breaking a fundamental CAP forum rule.
However, here in Smogon, there are certain common courtesies extended to badgeholders. Badgeholders are moderated only in extreme circumstances. But, there are two sides to that coin, in that badgeholders are expected to follow the rules and not put moderators in difficult positions that require moderation. While I did not appreciate Gorm's failure to even read the basic CAP forum rules, he acknowledged in his OP that he might be out of line -- and openly accepted that his thread might be locked. So, I made a post that clearly stated "No." -- and Gorm's response was "Ok."
However, I was intrigued that one of the big supporters for Farfetch'd had reversed field for competitive reasons and was now questioning the fundamental process and direction behind the evo project as a whole. By the time I posted, several other people had already posted in the thread, but no one really made any arguments defending the competitive structure of the project. Everyone's response was pretty much, "Sorry, too late Gorm."
I am frequently a rigid "Process Nazi" and many people have complained about my strict adherence to formal rules in the CAP project. I felt like Gorm was questioning some fundamental issues about CAP policy, and I wanted to know if the rest of the community was prepared to defend the process. I took a step back and said, "I want to see what the community says about this."
The CAP regulars resoundingly told Gorm to STFU and deal with the results of the poll. No one really offered any logical arguments to refute Gorm's position. This didn't surprise me too much, since I never believed in the EVO process to begin with. But, I have always been an ardent believer in the democratic process, so I was relieved that other established members of the CAP community vehemently defended the results of the poll. Finally, X-Act saw the thread and was shocked that the thread was not locked in the first place. He shut it down and I posted a message agreeing with the lock.
But Gorm had picked up some support by that point, and no one had really given him any real arguments other than appeals to authority and history.
I agree with all of the accusations that were flung at Gorm. He has been a total douchebag during this whole thing. He openly insulted the entire CAP project many times, he showed total disregard for any of the work done in the CAP project over the previous year, admitted to not giving a shit about the project or the community, admitted to have never played the CAP metagame, called our metagame crappy despite having never played it, and openly admitting to completely flip-flopping his opinion in the middle of the EVO project. Basically, he said "Fuck you" to everything related to the CAP project. I honestly don't think a person could be any more offensive or unseemly.
But, still, no one really refuted his arguments about the competitive underpinnings of the EVO project. They just said Gorm was being a jerk -- which he was.
Gorm raised the issue to me privately and asked me to restart the EVO poll. I had NO INTENTION of reverting the poll, but I also had no real argument to defend the current process. I consulted with Darkie on the matter. Darkie admitted that he really felt like the whole project was shaky from the beginning.
When I found out that the TL didn't even have confidence in the process, that really changed my attitude on things. Basically this became a referendum on whether this community had any idea about what they wanted out of the EVO project. Despite the fact that I have hated the EVO project from the very start -- I thought the community would line up behind the EVO project, that had taken so many months to come to fruition in the face of delays and objections.
So I agreed to make this quick poll. I honestly thought it would be a landslide victory for "Keep going". I assumed that the 52% of people that voted for Farfetch'd would vote to keep going. Why would they vote to redo it when their favorite option won? I also figured roughly 20% of the community would vote to keep going, just on the principle that a democratic result should not be overturned. So, I was betting that "Keep going" would win with 75% of the community support. The community would have spoken, and supported "their" project -- a project that has never really made sense to me all along.
I also considered the possibility of "Restart" actually winning. If that happened, it would be proof positive that this entire EVO project was not only on shaky footing from a process standpoint, but that the whole community had no clue about what they wanted in the first place. Considering that the main advocate for a restart (Gormenghast) was a totally insulting ass to every person on the project while presenting his arguments -- if the community lined up behind his proposal that would have to mean one of two things:
1) The entire community is completely mindless sheep that worship anyone with even the smallest scrap of perceived popularity -- like some lovesick schoolgirl that develops a deeper crush on the popular guy every time he treats her like shit. I have a hard time believing that one. Gorm is respected within Smogon, but he doesn't have THAT much clout. He's not an Admin or anything. He holds a single Team Rater badge and is well-known for his battling knowledge and skill. If people roll over for that while being insulted to your face, then I pity you.
OR
2) Gorm's reasoning struck a chord, and the community realized that it had no clue about the project's competitive goals and/or direction. This one seemed to be the more likely explanation to justify a community vote to restart. The entire community is completely in disarray regarding the EVO project and they were voting in an almost completely arbitrary manner first time around. Based on my previous misgivings about the EVO project lacking a competitive compass -- a vote to restart would confirm my suspicion that the EVO project is a complete and total clusterfuck from the ground up.
OR
2) Gorm's reasoning struck a chord, and the community realized that it had no clue about the project's competitive goals and/or direction. This one seemed to be the more likely explanation to justify a community vote to restart. The entire community is completely in disarray regarding the EVO project and they were voting in an almost completely arbitrary manner first time around. Based on my previous misgivings about the EVO project lacking a competitive compass -- a vote to restart would confirm my suspicion that the EVO project is a complete and total clusterfuck from the ground up.
No matter the results of the poll, it was obvious to me that the whole thing had become very damaging to the community. What started as a process debate -- in a very short time turned into a bloodbath of drama, insults, and contention. So I talked to X-Act about it. We both independently agreed that this EVO project should be canceled immediately. The community morale has taken enough of a beating from this whole affair, and we need to scrap this thing before it causes any further damage. After seeing the discussion in this thread, I am even more convinced that EVO 1 was a huge mistake. We need to kill this thing and bury the body for a while.
So, here's what is going to happen:
EVO 1 is officially cancelled. This is not up for discussion. We've had enough discussion on it. If you've been wondering why I haven't put my foot down before -- well, I'm putting my foot down now. The EVO project is dead until further notice. I don't want to see any more threads about it. This EVO thing has turned out far worse and caused far more damage than I could have ever imagined. I have spoken to others and considered it heavily. This decision is final.
We will complete CAP5 and move on to CAP6. I have a bunch of PR threads ready for community discussion, and we need to playtest Stratagem. We should have plenty to keep us busy and get our minds off this whole EVO mess.
After CAP6 completes, I will consider the possibility of opening a new EVO Process Workshop thread, and we may try to layout a new EVO project framework. The moratorium will give time for this mess to blow over, and possibly allow some lessons to sink in. Also, in the interim, many of the newcomers to the CAP project that have been arguing strongly for a revised EVO process, will have a CAP project under their belt and they will be more familiar with how the CAP community works. This should remove all the contentious "Us vs. Them" mentality that has developed during this EVO shitstorm. If any newcomers or project members are impatient, and don't want to wait and contribute to the CAP community in the meantime, then I politely invite you to get the fuck out of this forum and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
If you want to continue to bitch about all this, then do so on the server or IRC. But, we are not going to shit up the CAP forum with any more of this divisive petty bickering over the EVO project -- which has been a controversial, disorganized, emotionally-charged, pain-in-the-ass for as long as I can remember. The community has suffered enough damage over this stupid thing. I'm putting an end to it right now.
Doug told us mods to feel free to add something to this, so here I am.
To be honest, I was very casual about this whole EVO project. In the beginning, at around June, I suggested a few things... then I lost interest... until last Sunday.
Last Sunday me and my fiancee took her parents to a buffet lunch for their 30th wedding anniversary... then we went to her home and watched the final F1 race on TV, then we watched a few Prison Break episodes on DVD. It was very fun and all, but that meant that I didn't know that a revolution has started here...!
When I returned home at around 9:30pm (my time) I logged on and saw Gorm's post. My initial reaction to it was 'what the hell is this thread?'. And that's exactly what I posted, but didn't lock the thread. Then, after considering that CAP was always a democratic process, I decided to lock it.
Yesterday, when I arrived at work, I logged on here and saw a few mindless posts about "Farfetch'd should be Fighting/Flying and should have xx/xx/xx/xx/xx/xx stats." I was really annoyed by all the poll-jumping that I saw, so I posted that EVO1 has really started on a bad footing. Then I saw Doug's PM that he had sent to me while I was sleeping. I told him that it was unfortunate that darkie (the TL) wasn't present, and that if this thing continues, I'd consider scrapping the EVO project.
Doug later PMed me back that he was considering the same thing, and that he now has reinforced his opinion to scratch the EVO project since I arrived independently at the same conclusion.
I then decided to post a few things to Gorm about his very apparent lack of knowledge about CAP as a whole: the process, the metagame, etc. I especially challenged his belief that nothing good was coming out of CAP for the Smogon community. This was something that really hurt me, as I personally use CAP to research things about Pokemon that I then use for the unmodified metagame too (the stats ratings being one of them).
Later last night, I decided to pay a visit to the CAP server on shoddy, and gorm was there. He kinda apologised for the "CAP contributing nothing to Smogon" comment, and was urging people to change the EVO project's process so that it is metagame-oriented. Personally I agreed with this, but then told him that he shouldn't expect a Camerupt evo having 600BST, that there are basically rules for evolving a Pokemon that nobody has posted about. I showed him, however, that a Camerupt evo having around 540BST would be quite viable too. At the back of my mind, however, I knew that the EVO project is probably going to be scrapped... and so it turned out.
I hope that everyone realises that the EVO project scrap (or should I say freeze) is for the best of the community, not only the CAP one, but the Smogon one as a whole. What Gorm did was to challenge the democratic idea of CAP, saying basically that the 'idiot' shouldn't have the same say as the 'intelligent poster'. While this might work for the rest of the Smogon forums, what makes you an 'intelligent poster' in CAP? Most arguments in CAP involve theorymon, and, of course, theorymon isn't always right. So you might think that your argument is 'intelligent' when, in fact, you'd be horribly wrong... and vice-versa. That's why the democratic process works in CAP. I have had many instances where I thought I was right and defended my arguments, sometimes aggressively, here, and I lost the polls. I moved on, though. If the majority didn't like my idea, it doesn't mean that my idea was wrong, but it does send a message to me that, hey, maybe I was wrong after all. And, who knows, maybe the other guy's idea that won might be better than mine after all. In short, there's no way to prove that your opinion is right here, no matter what your credentials are, until the final Pokemon is completely created and is playtested.
I really hope that any person that decides to contribute to CAP (being badge-holders or not) keeps the above paragraph, and especially the bolded part, in mind.
That's all I'm going to say about this. Sorry if it's a bit long.
To be honest, I was very casual about this whole EVO project. In the beginning, at around June, I suggested a few things... then I lost interest... until last Sunday.
Last Sunday me and my fiancee took her parents to a buffet lunch for their 30th wedding anniversary... then we went to her home and watched the final F1 race on TV, then we watched a few Prison Break episodes on DVD. It was very fun and all, but that meant that I didn't know that a revolution has started here...!
When I returned home at around 9:30pm (my time) I logged on and saw Gorm's post. My initial reaction to it was 'what the hell is this thread?'. And that's exactly what I posted, but didn't lock the thread. Then, after considering that CAP was always a democratic process, I decided to lock it.
Yesterday, when I arrived at work, I logged on here and saw a few mindless posts about "Farfetch'd should be Fighting/Flying and should have xx/xx/xx/xx/xx/xx stats." I was really annoyed by all the poll-jumping that I saw, so I posted that EVO1 has really started on a bad footing. Then I saw Doug's PM that he had sent to me while I was sleeping. I told him that it was unfortunate that darkie (the TL) wasn't present, and that if this thing continues, I'd consider scrapping the EVO project.
Doug later PMed me back that he was considering the same thing, and that he now has reinforced his opinion to scratch the EVO project since I arrived independently at the same conclusion.
I then decided to post a few things to Gorm about his very apparent lack of knowledge about CAP as a whole: the process, the metagame, etc. I especially challenged his belief that nothing good was coming out of CAP for the Smogon community. This was something that really hurt me, as I personally use CAP to research things about Pokemon that I then use for the unmodified metagame too (the stats ratings being one of them).
Later last night, I decided to pay a visit to the CAP server on shoddy, and gorm was there. He kinda apologised for the "CAP contributing nothing to Smogon" comment, and was urging people to change the EVO project's process so that it is metagame-oriented. Personally I agreed with this, but then told him that he shouldn't expect a Camerupt evo having 600BST, that there are basically rules for evolving a Pokemon that nobody has posted about. I showed him, however, that a Camerupt evo having around 540BST would be quite viable too. At the back of my mind, however, I knew that the EVO project is probably going to be scrapped... and so it turned out.
I hope that everyone realises that the EVO project scrap (or should I say freeze) is for the best of the community, not only the CAP one, but the Smogon one as a whole. What Gorm did was to challenge the democratic idea of CAP, saying basically that the 'idiot' shouldn't have the same say as the 'intelligent poster'. While this might work for the rest of the Smogon forums, what makes you an 'intelligent poster' in CAP? Most arguments in CAP involve theorymon, and, of course, theorymon isn't always right. So you might think that your argument is 'intelligent' when, in fact, you'd be horribly wrong... and vice-versa. That's why the democratic process works in CAP. I have had many instances where I thought I was right and defended my arguments, sometimes aggressively, here, and I lost the polls. I moved on, though. If the majority didn't like my idea, it doesn't mean that my idea was wrong, but it does send a message to me that, hey, maybe I was wrong after all. And, who knows, maybe the other guy's idea that won might be better than mine after all. In short, there's no way to prove that your opinion is right here, no matter what your credentials are, until the final Pokemon is completely created and is playtested.
I really hope that any person that decides to contribute to CAP (being badge-holders or not) keeps the above paragraph, and especially the bolded part, in mind.
That's all I'm going to say about this. Sorry if it's a bit long.
I would totally have supported Gorm's ideas if he had not been a total douchebag when bringing up his ideas, or if he even brought it up when the process was being discussed rather than when it had already started. Admittedly not having played the CAP metagame didn't help his case either.
But that's it. He was right to a huge extent and showed the process needed more work. I agree with the cancel.
But that's it. He was right to a huge extent and showed the process needed more work. I agree with the cancel.
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