Hello, friends! I am here today to apply for
solely the Topic Leader (TL) position for CAP5. For those of you who do not know me, I'm Birkal! Message me sometime; I'd love to chat =)
I'll be perfectly frank in this nomination post: I have been torn on whether or not to apply for Topic Leadership for CAP5. It's not that I doubt my abilities as a leader or as a valuable CAP contributor. Rather, my heart lies in doing what is ultimately best for the CAP project. I've been fumbling around with the debate of, "Would me applying be what's best for CAP?" for quite some time now. Ultimately, this is a community project, and you all are accustomed to choosing what's best for CAP; you all do it on a daily basis with your votes! So therefore, I will leave the decision of my involvement with CAP5 in your capable hands. I am confident that I can lead CAP5, but I also have no problem with stepping out of the limelight to let the other excellent candidates run the show. I will let you decide which path is best for CAP.
Let me explain what I have to offer. First of all, I highly value the competitive aspect of CAP and wish to increase the amount of competitive players and voters that participate in the project. I'm pretty in tune with the competitive community here on Smogon; I'm a moderator of the Overused forum, I'm an assistant manager in Smogon Premier League, I'm a leader (&) on Pokemon Showdown!, and I keep up with competitive The Smog articles (where I also lead). Furthermore, I'm on IRC daily for multiple hours every day, so it's incredibly easy to get a hold of me for discussions and debates. I hope to incorporate all of these traits to better serve the role of Topic Leader and increase competitive participation in CAP.
In terms of my CAP involvement, I'm quite a "late comer" when it comes to joining up with the project; I started contributing during CAP2 (Necturna). To make up for it, I've read through nearly every thread in the CAP forum (including the Process Archive) to bring myself up to speed as much as possible. Furthermore, I've been lurking the CAP process for years; I started looking at the Create-A-Pokemon forum since Arghonaut. I've served as a CAP moderator since Mollux, which includes running Policy Review threads, quality controlling CAP analyses, updating the CAP website, and making executive decisions.
In actual process threads, I'd consider Concept Submission to be my strong suit. I've been submitting concepts for the past three CAPs; I took fifth with
Boot to the Head during CAP3 and second with
Perfect Nemesis during CAP4. If you look through past threads, you'll find that I'm most active in Concept Submissions (providing feedback) and Concept Assessment. Furthermore, I give constructive criticisms frequently on IRC if people ask for it. In terms of other involvement, I tend to prefer ability and typing threads; I a large part of why Aurumoth was almost Bug/Dragon (took second) and why Necturna was nearly Poison/Dragon (also second). To round things out, I have never submitted a movepool or stat spread, but I actively provide feedback during those stages on notable submissions. I always find that those who make submissions during those stages do incredible work, so I tend to delegate myself to commenting and correcting.
Finally, I'd like to talk about the philosophy I'd have if I was elected as Topic Leader for CAP5. I don't have an agenda and I'm very open to a wide variety of concepts. The concepts I personally enjoy most are the "gimmick" ones; Necturna had one of my favorite concepts. However, I think it is important to note the current state of the OU metagame. We're at a crux where Drizzle (and auto-weather in general) looms over us. I don't have a concrete opinion whether or not these abilities belong in Overused, but they are certainly a hot topic for competitive battlers. I think now might be an optimal time to explore the role of auto-weather's role in the Overused metagame, especially before BW2 becomes finalized during the release of X and Y. Again, I'm open to any and all concept submissions (and would therefore slate a wide variety of them), but I think that exploring the current metagame might yield some excellent information and learning at this particular moment in Pokemon history.
I am incredibly excited to begin work on CAP5. Although the recent Policy Review threads were valuable and necessary, it pales in comparison to the joy of making a Pokemon with you guys. I will be ecstatic to work alongside all of you, whether I serve as our Topic Leader or as a community member. Thanks for reading!
Also, if elected as TL, I will try to make my posts shorter than this application post.