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Do you think we need a set of charateristics like this? Maybe not these characteristics specifically -- but do you think this is a worthwhile thing to do? Why or why not?
How should something like this be used? What should be the general intent of this? Are we just having an interesting discussion in PR? Or should we set our goals on somehow trying to incorporate this sort of thing in Smogon Policy?
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I think we can require every argument about rulemaking to be linked back to the direction laid out here, or linked back to something that itself is an extension of this. For instance the characteristics of uber were designed to be an explanation of what constitutes brokenness, IE a lack of balance. The characteristics, although created before this thread, could be seen as a clarification of how to apply one of the concepts within.
The characteristics of a metagame can remain subjective in terms of their weighting and extent required (like in terms of perhaps too much variety being a bad thing) as long as we keep making metagame decisions by a vote.
For instance, the luck characteristic is one I have argued against a lot. Though I accept there is some level where luck becomes detrimental to the game. I would argue that RBY never met that level of luck (or at least that the amount of luck in RBY is mostly to do with the lack of variety), and so it seems unlikely that any future gen will face it. Uhh.. I am digressing.. The point is that for instance Obi disagrees with me. We will never resolve this issue in a debate, but in a vote, people can decide on their own weighting of charaterstics, and their own benchmarks for characterstics and vote accordingly.
The worrying thing about a vote is that something will be voted for because of short term considerations, and in the longer term it will lead to an objectively poorer metagame (like for instance, changing the tiering of a pokemon just for a change). So yeah, I have changed my mind and decided there needs to be some agreement in terms of some of these characteristics. For instance, we can determine that for stability, voting to unban a pokemon just for a change, while it might be defensible from the variety characteristic should never be allowed. Hmm.. That one is a tough one tbh. It could be that we would never be able to make any changes at all..
I actually need to think about this some more. I will continue post this anyway as one of you might have some thoughts on this issue.
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Do you think these characteristics fully cover the reasonable spectrum of issues that might be addressed in the metagame? Not specifically every issue, but is this level of detail the way to get "complete coverage"?
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Perhaps an issue of practicality? You seem to have sort of included it as part of efficiency, but I think it is more significant than that.
Also I want to say that I agree completely with everything ete has posted. I read your post and had a whole number of things I had wanted to say in response about the specific characteristics themselves, only to find he had beaten me to every one of them.
Have a nice day.