How to handle the Shaymin-S Vote

[Blue Kirby]

Well, it still doesn't really provide an issue to what I was talking about. Just because an account that isn't "registered" per se is used to battle, does that mean the user did not gain any experience with the suspect?

[CardsOfTheHeart]

That issue is most likely solved by requiring a minimum number of battles on one account to ensure that someone has acquired a certain amount of experience with a suspect. If accounts are registered for the testing process, then that will result in fewer accounts to monitor the number of battles on, saving us some work.

[Blue Kirby]

So long as we state that in future cases, I guess that would work out. It doesn't really solve the issue at hand though, does it?

[CardsOfTheHeart]

No, it doesn't. It should reduce the chances of this happening again, though.

As for this vote, it's easy to say that it started off on the wrong foot. That allowed voters of... (sigh) how do i put this... "questionable ability" to influence the process. That said, I'm not willing to undermine the entire process by rejecting the vote.
'But some voters undermined the process with their reasoning!'
So? It's partly our fault for allowing it to happen in the first place.

We are learning from our mistakes, however, and this mistake should be corrected in Stage 3 with a properly-conducted test. I'm ready to just bite the bullet on this one and move on. As cheesy as it may be, I believe that the saying "two wrongs don't make a right" does apply in this case. It doesn't feel right to me to invalidate this vote.

[Hipmonlee]

If its possible then yeah, it would be great to see that.

Have a nice day.

[Ancien Régime]

it would render the entire last month with respect to skymin worthless. it would render x-act's mathematical analysis of 1655 rating/65 deviations worthless. it would render the efforts of the community worthless, both from the "competing on the ladder for a month" perspective that the more diligent and process-respectful battlers demonstrated, and, to a lesser extent, the "i want to give the reasoning i've thought up even though i dont have to because this is how much i care" perspective. to waver on whatever the decision of the final vote is would be to slap basically everyone in the face.

I say this with trepidation, because there was a lot of work put into this process...but right now, I have trouble seeing "letting the community decide" as anything other than inherently unworkable.

Originally Posted by Fat Jumpman16

the community is largely comprised of people who don't really know shit about the game and/or smogon's philosophy.

It is evident that most people will vote according to preconcieved biases, faulty information, and pure emotion. Even with the filter of ladder rank (which I don't think is much of a filter at all - you don't neccesarily have to understand pokemon in-depth to be a successful player, and vice versa), we still have people giving votes based on idiotic stuff like "shaymin-s flinched my jirachi 12 times".

Yes, it does throw away months of effort, which is why I say this with trepidation. It may be better to just allow this vote, and then bring up the issue later. But I do think that from here on out, the tiering of Smogon must be left only to the most knowlegeable and intelligent members.