Shaymin-S Vote

[Freemason]

^I like.

[Huntofthelion]

Reachzero, thats a really good summary of this entire topic.

[Maniaclyrasist]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was something along these lines:

There is not much difference between Syberia's quote and your previous post either.

I can't decide. That's reason enough to vote Uber for me, since it hasn't presented itself as clearly OU.

You see what i'm getting at here?

[Bologo]

I can't decide. That's reason enough to vote Uber for me, since it hasn't presented itself as clearly OU.

Isn't banning something supposed to be the last resort though? Especially if it started off as OU?

[Chou Toshio]

If you buy into the notion of "we are trying to include as many viable pokemon in the standard game as possible," which is at the very core of the justification for testing Lat@s but banning soul dew, than no you can't inverse it like that Maniacalrasist, because the orientation would be clearly set at "OU until proven Uber," not the reverse.

[Antique Roadshow]

Just because you have to think about it doesn't mean it's not Uber. When I was deciding I had reasons for both OU and Uber, but in the end the Uber outweighed the OU. It shouldn't need people to be 100% sure either way, that's just a bad voting system.

Originally Posted by Fat Bologo

Isn't banning something supposed to be the last resort though? Especially if it started off as OU?

It never started as OU, it started as a suspect test.

[Lutra]

Actually it did and still is currently OU because the test is on the standard ladder. If it started off as uber, the test would have been started on the uber ladder. Obviously Smogon made the intial decision to start it off as OU in this case.

[Antique Roadshow]

If we are testing whether is OU or Uber, then it's in the testing stage in between. It will be the same case when we start testing Lati@s. Also, I don't think we should just throw out the vote, since everyone who voted used the vote the way they wanted to, which is how it is supposed to be; It is your vote for a reason. If Uber does win, I think it should be banned for the time being and maybe retested after we do some more suspects, like Manaphy and Lati@s.

[Chou Toshio]

Originally Posted by Fat Antique Roadshow

It never started as OU, it started as a suspect test.

We start with the premise "it's OU," then ban to Uber. Not the other way around. The reason why we're doing the suspect tests now (and why we've had so much argument) is because Ubers were put there before being tested, which we've decided is wrong. You probably won't see Ray or Kyogre as officially OU anytime soon but for lati@s and manaphy, we should have started with the premise that they were OU first (actually in Manaphy's case, we did and it was tested at the start of DP).

[Tangerine]

All I have to say on the matter is this.

If you participated in the suspect test thinking that

lol, 10 bucks says that once this thing's officially OU, everybody will make Skymin-based teams. I honestly feel that the only reason it's usage stats were so low, is cause most of us didn't want to waste our time making a team that would turn obsolete (if voted uber). I am going to lol so hard at the metagame that will ensue if the voting trend stays the same as it is right now.

then you definitely should have no say in the matter at all, considering it is attitude like this that completely undermines the competitive community and this entire prospect of a suspect test to begin with.

You know, just to spite such "lazy players" I really think we should have taken the Colin approach - meaning respond to any such nonsense by saying "well the usage stats does not imply it is broken", which is definitely true. This means that you will probably still have to deal with Wobbuffet and Deoxys E which all of you claim that it is "broken"

Way to be "competitive", guys. I think this entire fiasco which is revealed by all the "reasoning" and bias inherent in a good majority of your posts and the apparent ignorance for Smogon's philosophy and the suspect test in general is just a slap in the face for the staff members who put a ridiculous amount of work into this entire process.

You may think that you are "respecting" your opponent by using such "obviously uber material", but in the process you are disrespecting competitive spirit. Don't even bother trying to apply Sirlin's "soft ban" concept here - it does not apply since Pokemon is a radically different game from a single fighter and that this was a test to see whether or not it was really that broken to begin with.

Congratulations.

[Philip7086]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

All I have to say on the matter is this.

If you participated in the suspect test thinking that

then you definitely should have no say in the matter at all, considering it is attitude like this that completely undermines the competitive community and this entire prospect of a suspect test to begin with.

You know, just to spite such "lazy players" I really think we should have taken the Colin approach - meaning respond to any such nonsense by saying "well the usage stats does not imply it is broken", which is definitely true. This means that you will probably still have to deal with Wobbuffet and Deoxys E which all of you claim that it is "broken"

Way to be "competitive", guys. I think this entire fiasco which is revealed by all the "reasoning" and bias inherent in a good majority of your posts and the apparent ignorance for Smogon's philosophy and the suspect test in general is just a slap in the face for the staff members who put a ridiculous amount of work into this entire process.

You may think that you are "respecting" your opponent by using such "obviously uber material", but in the process you are disrespecting competitive spirit. Don't even bother trying to apply Sirlin's "soft ban" concept here - it does not apply since Pokemon is a radically different game from a single fighter and that this was a test to see whether or not it was really that broken to begin with.

Congratulations.

Congratulations, you based your entire post off of a suspect test that does not really even exist. All the testing was done on the standard ladder, meaning many people qualified to vote with no intention of testing whatsoever.

[Tangerine]

Originally Posted by Fat Philip7086

Congratulations, you based your entire post off of a suspect test that does not really even exist. All the testing was done on the standard ladder, meaning many people qualified to vote with no intention of testing whatsoever.

If you had no intentions of testing, why did you even vote? YOu didn't HAVE to vote just because you qualified. If you did not have the intention to participate in the test then you shouldn't have voted.

Did you vote just so you can mess up the entire process? My point still applies directly to all of you

[Philip7086]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

If you had no intentions of testing, why did you even vote? YOu didn't HAVE to vote just because you qualified. If you did not have the intention to participate in the test then you shouldn't have voted.

Did you vote just so you can mess up the entire process? My point still applies directly to all of you

First of all, bias exists in all polling processes, there is no way to eliminate it. However, certain weeding methods could have been put in practice to keep the biased and uninformed votes to a minimum. You can refer to my previous posts for that though. Reiterating things previously said is such a drag, so go at least skim through posts next time you want to jump in and throw your 2 cents.

[Tangerine]

Originally Posted by Fat Philip7086

First of all, bias exists in all polling processes, there is no way to eliminate it. However, certain weeding methods could have been put in practice to keep the biased and uninformed votes to a minimum. You can refer to my previous posts for that though. Reiterating things previously said is such a drag, so go at least skim through posts next time you want to jump in and throw your 2 cents.

I'm not even talking about bias, weeding methods, or anything. You would have known if you actually read my post.

Nice strawman.

[imperfectluck]

Isn't it strawman to just strawman a post without addressing it, though? It's so convenient to just throw around terms like "strawman" when everyone accusing each other of strawman ends up in the real topic being ignored.

SG/Tangerine, each person has a different definition of "the competitiveness" that Smogon espouses. Whatever it is that you say, in the end, it is YOUR OPINION that the other person's opinion is invalid, and thus falls in the category of ad hominem (another nice little term to throw around, no?) There is no possible way to make any kind of "objective" decision when it comes to throwing out any sort of vote, so either we take the good with the bad like the American presidential election, or we throw out the voting process entirely and go with a panel of "elites" making the decision.

[Tangerine]

Originally Posted by Fat imperfectluck

Isn't it strawman to just strawman a post without addressing it, though? It's so convenient to just throw around terms like "strawman" when everyone accusing each other of strawman ends up in the real topic being ignored.

I dont need to address a point that is not relevant to what I'm trying to say unless I want to make something clear, which I'm not going to bother.

SG/Tangerine, each person has a different definition of "the competitiveness" that Smogon espouses. Whatever it is that you say, in the end, it is YOUR OPINION that the other person's opinion is invalid, and thus falls in the category of ad hominem (another nice little term to throw around, no?) There is no possible way to make any kind of "objective" decision when it comes to throwing out any sort of vote, so either we take the good with the bad like the American presidential election, or we throw out the voting process entirely and go with a panel of "elites" making the decision.

I don't find an opinion invalid if it is clear that the user put in quite a bit of thought into it and thought of the consequences, whether or not I agree with it or not.

Also, I don't think there is a different definition to what is competitive. Being competitive is playing to win with every tool you have. The only way to show something is broken in a competitive setting is to abuse it. Half these players have shown that they haven't even bothered because they assumed it was uber beforehand. They undermined the entire process =)

Not sure what you're going on about ad hominem since it doesn't apply at all here! Unless you are referring to "user X shouldn't have a voice in this process because he did not participate in the test" but that's actually reasonable and NOT adhominem.

I'm not even talking about biases or anything, I'm not sure what you're getting on about! I am talking about "why are people voting if they did not choose to participate in the test", because clearly there are a ton of users in this thread that chose not to participate because they thought it was uber beforehand before this test.

[imperfectluck]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

I don't find an opinion invalid if it is clear that the user put in quite a bit of thought into it and thought of the consequences, whether or not I agree with it or not.

Let's all make Serene Grace the judge on whether we've put enough effort into defending our own opinions!

Also, I don't think there is a different definition to what is competitive. Being competitive is playing to win with every tool you have. The only way to show something is broken in a competitive setting is to abuse it. Half these players have shown that they haven't even bothered because they assumed it was uber beforehand. They undermined the entire process =)

All the users who refused to use Wobbuffet, including well-known battlers such as goofball and husk, and then ended up voting it uber despite its abysmal statistical usage would like to have a word with you about a different definition of "being competitive."

Not sure what you're going on about ad hominem since it doesn't apply at all here! Unless you are referring to "user X shouldn't have a voice in this process because he did not participate in the test" but that's actually reasonable and NOT adhominem.

John Doe should not have been allowed to vote for George Bush because he doesn't have a clue what George Bush stood for! Therefore his vote is invalid! That sounds very reasonable to me too.

I'm not even talking about biases or anything, I'm not sure what you're getting on about! I am talking about "why are people voting if they did not choose to participate in the test", because clearly there are a ton of users in this thread that chose not to participate because they thought it was uber beforehand before this test.

If they have met the requirements necessary to make a vote in this thread, then they have reached the agreed upon standard of battling necessary to voice their opinions on the matter. Whether or not an ingrained opinion was already present and whether they used Shaymin-S or not, they've surely seen it enough times in action to make a judgement for themselves on its tier status, no matter what that opinion is based on.

[Tangerine]

Let's all make Serene Grace the judge on whether we've put enough effort into defending our own opinions!

So we're resorting to mockery? Excellent way to represent that you are a member of Site Staff =)

All the users who refused to use Wobbuffet, including well-known battlers such as goofball and husk, and then ended up voting it uber despite its abysmal statistical usage would like to have a word with you about a different definition of "being competitive."

The fact that they refused to use Wobbuffet is the actual reason why we even had to deal with the bullshit for months to begin with! If they were "competitive", along with many other "good players", Wobbuffet would have been gone ages ago =)

John Doe should not have been allowed to vote for George Bush because he doesn't have a clue what George Bush stood for! Therefore his vote is invalid! That sounds very reasonable to me too.

You do realize the only reason Democracy works is that it needs people to be educated right? if you're saying we should count people's votes "for the sake of democracy" then you really need a reality check! How seriously are you going to take John Doe in this case?

If they have met the requirements necessary to make a vote in this thread, then they have reached the agreed upon standard of battling necessary to voice their opinions on the matter. Whether or not an ingrained opinion was already present and whether they used Shaymin-S or not, they've surely seen it enough times in action to make a judgement for themselves on its tier status, no matter what that opinion is based on.

Perhaps this is where the site 'handled it badly', as some opinions I have read have been saying. But the point is this - you're shouldn't be voting for the sake of voting but you should be voting because you actually care about the testing process and is an active part of the testing.

[imperfectluck]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

So we're resorting to mockery? Excellent way to represent that you are a member of Site Staff =)

My, my, this coming from a former site staff with an unrivaled reputation for sarcasm. Excellent indeed. Can we both agree that going down this path is pretty pointless?

The fact that they refused to use Wobbuffet is the actual reason why we even had to deal with the bullshit for months to begin with! If they were "competitive", along with many other "good players", Wobbuffet would have been gone ages ago =)

Actually, I prefer to think of the reason for "having to deal with the bullshit" as a few select individuals deciding by themselves to unban Wobbuffet. Also keep in mind that when Wobbuffet was first unbanned by Colin on Shoddy, there was no Suspect Test in place to poll the status for Wobbuffet, which is why it dragged on for months.

You do realize the only reason Democracy works is that it needs people to be educated right? if you're saying we should count people's votes "for the sake of democracy" then you really need a reality check! How seriously are you going to take John Doe in this case?

When John Doe is a battler that met the requirements asked for by the Smogon staff, why not?

Perhaps this is where the site 'handled it badly', as some opinions I have read have been saying. But the point is this - you're shouldn't be voting for the sake of voting but you should be voting because you actually care about the testing process and is an active part of the testing.

If people voted just for the sake of voting, then far more registered voters would vote than how many registered voters actually vote in reality. 119 people bothered to "register to vote," and 114 (as of now) have showed up to vote, quite the impressive 96%. I think that shows that some said 96% of eligible voters care enough to have an opinion on the matter. How can you just say that "people don't actually care" about the result, when one can simply ignore the whole Suspect Test process going on about them and not register themselves to vote? Alts notwithstanding and so forth, out of the 244 registered accounts eligible to vote in this particular Suspect Test, 119 people checked in, and those that chose not to check in are the ones who actually "don't care."

[david stone]

Originally Posted by Fat imperfectluck

I wish you wouldn't bring that up, Obi, considering the landslide "uber" vote for Wobbuffet and Wobbuffet's consistently low performance ratings in "usage." Deoxys-E on the second time voting it wasn't near the top of the usage rankings either, except for leading where it showed consistently rising dominance.

I think my point stands for itself.

[Tangerine]

Actually, I prefer to think of the reason for "having to deal with the bullshit" as a few select individuals deciding by themselves to unban Wobbuffet. Also keep in mind that when Wobbuffet was first unbanned by Colin on Shoddy, there was no Suspect Test in place to poll the status for Wobbuffet, which is why it dragged on for months.

You can justify it all you want, but I'm sure if you guys abused it all throughout the ladder even Colin would have banned Wobbuffet.

Usage stats don't lie, after all! Telling someone who doesn't play the game that "it is broken" isn't going to change his mind, but backing it up with actual data (usage stats) will. Just because there was no formal process people started to whine and moan? Really? There was tournaments testing it, threads asking for opinions, and of course, the second that it gets unbanned after they make the decisions, "thats when the players start whining". They didnt' just "unban" it out of no reason, they unbanned it because the players failed to speak up.

When John Doe is a battler that met the requirements asked for by the Smogon staff, why not?

Sure, and the US Citizen who has no respect towards the constitution and the government and the voting process and undermines everything can also "vote".

If people voted just for the sake of voting, then far more registered voters would vote than how many registered voters actually vote in reality. 119 people bothered to "register to vote," and 114 (as of now) have showed up to vote, quite the impressive 96%. I think that shows that some said 96% of eligible voters care enough to have an opinion on the matter. How can you just say that "people don't actually care" about the result, when one can simply ignore the whole Suspect Test process going on about them and not register themselves to vote? Alts notwithstanding and so forth, out of the 244 registered accounts eligible to vote in this particular Suspect Test, 119 people checked in, and those that chose not to check in are the ones who actually "don't care."

Are you kidding me or are you just trying that hard to find something to babble on about? People are voting here for the sake of voting - they haven't participated in the 'test' at all - they decided that they would see it as uber and refused to use it before the test.

I dont know why - is there something magical about the term "limbo" or "suspect" or "tested" that makes all of you stray away from actually... testing it, treating it like a suspect, or something that we haven't "quite decided yet"? I mean if the line of reasoning is "Hey he's not OU so I'm not going to use him but once he is OU I will abuse him", then why not just replace "OU" with "suspect" and "problem solved"? It is this petty mentality that you players have that undermines this entire process.

[MythTrainerInfinity]

I think we are looking like a bunch of idiots arguing in this thread. I frequently check back to see if anyone who hasn't voted has and if they left any reasons why and I am sure many other people do too.

There are several threads in Stark, a number of you have PR access, and is this really the place to debate? When people see this thread what will they think? That Smogon can not get their act together and that they have to resort to debating in one of their vote threads? We are a community that can analyze and come up with better ways to deal with things. If someone who hasn't voted yet sees this debate I think it might discourage them to state their reasons why they voted the way they did. Come on guys we can do better :/

[Imran]

Well having said that MTI, I think that posting in this thread shows exactly what you don't want people to think on Smogon. We can see here that there are many people who have voted without bothing to note the effect on Skymin in our Metagame at all, what we call the most competitive Metagame. To bring up particulars, 5KRunner think the most "competitive metagame" is one in which you can prepare for official Nintendo turnaments, this is not valid reasoning for Smogon's philosophy as first of all, Smogon has nothing to do with Double Battles, and second of all most of us agre that Nintendo's tiers aren't as competitive as our tiers, not as inclusive I might say. We also have someone here who believes that banning something because of a 0.12% chance is fair grounds to ban something to Uber.

Much as I'd love to think that we are, this vote has proved that there are many of us who cannot analyse as well as we think "the community as a whole" can.

[imperfectluck]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

You can justify it all you want, but I'm sure if you guys abused it all throughout the ladder even Colin would have banned Wobbuffet.

Usage stats don't lie, after all! Telling someone who doesn't play the game that "it is broken" isn't going to change his mind, but backing it up with actual data (usage stats) will. Just because there was no formal process people started to whine and moan? Really? There was tournaments testing it, threads asking for opinions, and of course, the second that it gets unbanned after they make the decisions, "thats when the players start whining". They didnt' just "unban" it out of no reason, they unbanned it because the players failed to speak up.

A few things: whether or not Colin decides to ban Wobbuffet has nothing to do with Smogon, he is free to do whatever he likes. And to quote a question I once posed to Colin, "if Garchomp was used on 100% of all teams" if Colin would have considered that usage overcentralizing, he responded no because usage does not correlate with overcentralization (keep in mind this is Colin's definition.)

"Just because there was no formal process" people whined and moaned because maybe the general public wasn't kept well informed about the whole process. Yes there was a tournament hosted by Colin, with an opinion thread - restricted only to 'those that played in the tournament' as I recall, I think the majority of the general public was quite uninformed about the impending plans to unban Wobbuffet at the time (including myself, I consider myself an active Shoddy user but I don't use the Shoddybattle forums all that much.)

And no, usage stats don't lie, but Pokemon is NOT a game of pure statistics, it is also a psychological game that involves things such as "prediction" that no mathematical model will ever perfectly emulate. And just because there are statistics, they can still be interpreted different ways by different people, I can point to 4 of the top most used Pokemon right now, Heatran, Scizor, Zapdos, and Blissey as all rising to dominance in order to keep Shaymin-S in check while others can point out how maybe the top Pokemon are all working to counter each other right now. What good are usage stats if there's nobody to give interpretations of what the usage stats mean?

Sure, and the US Citizen who has no respect towards the constitution and the government and the voting process and undermines everything can also "vote".

As a certain philosopher named Voltaire once said, "I may not agree with your views, sir, but I will defend to the death your right to have those views" or some such. Democracy is not possible without allowing EVERYBODY their voice in the matter. Or, if you just want to throw democracy out the window, that's fine too. Just be straight up about it.

Are you kidding me or are you just trying that hard to find something to babble on about? People are voting here for the sake of voting - they haven't participated in the 'test' at all - they decided that they would see it as uber and refused to use it before the test.

To quote Obi, "I think my point stands for itself."

I dont know why - is there something magical about the term "limbo" or "suspect" or "tested" that makes all of you stray away from actually... testing it, treating it like a suspect, or something that we haven't "quite decided yet"? I mean if the line of reasoning is "Hey he's not OU so I'm not going to use him but once he is OU I will abuse him", then why not just replace "OU" with "suspect" and "problem solved"? It is this petty mentality that you players have that undermines this entire process.

It's easy to see the disdain you have for our community members that put in the time, whether they used Shaymin-S or not, to get such a good record on the standard ladder. Maybe we should enforce a rule that on Suspect Ladders from now on, you absolutely must use the Pokemon in order to qualify to have experience, yes! As I already said, playing against the Pokemon in question also counts as experience. You do not need to actually use Shaymin-S to know how Shaymin-S affects your team.

One last tangent, I'd like to post a segment of a pm from another user who has no access to posting in this forum.

You could probably note that a straw man argument requires that one of the two stances being compared is easier to disprove than the other, which is not the case in that thread and thus a straw man cannot exist.

[Tangerine]

You could probably note that a straw man argument requires that one of the two stances being compared is easier to disprove than the other, which is not the case in that thread and thus a straw man cannot exist.

Originally Posted by Fat Philip7086

First of all, bias exists in all polling processes, there is no way to eliminate it. However, certain weeding methods could have been put in practice to keep the biased and uninformed votes to a minimum. You can refer to my previous posts for that though. Reiterating things previously said is such a drag, so go at least skim through posts next time you want to jump in and throw your 2 cents.

Nice try, but it's a strawman considering my post is ranting about how the community is uncompetitive and lazy and not about biased/weeding out votes.

And no, usage stats don't lie, but Pokemon is NOT a game of pure statistics, it is also a psychological game that involves things such as "prediction" that no mathematical model will ever perfectly emulate. And just because there are statistics, they can still be interpreted different ways by different people, I can point to 4 of the top most used Pokemon right now, Heatran, Scizor, Zapdos, and Blissey as all rising to dominance in order to keep Shaymin-S in check while others can point out how maybe the top Pokemon are all working to counter each other right now. What good are usage stats if there's nobody to give interpretations of what the usage stats mean?

It's a game of statistical management. It is a game of how you manage statistics. Don't try to overcomplicate it by saying it has some "magical" properties to it. If chess can be programmed to beat grandmasters then I'm sure people can emulate a game like Pokemon.

And I'm pretty sure I'm one of the users who tried to make use of the usage stats so "you're whining at the wrong person"

"Just because there was no formal process" people whined and moaned because maybe the general public wasn't kept well informed about the whole process. Yes there was a tournament hosted by Colin, with an opinion thread - restricted only to 'those that played in the tournament' as I recall, I think the majority of the general public was quite uninformed about the impending plans to unban Wobbuffet at the time (including myself, I consider myself an active Shoddy user but I don't use the Shoddybattle forums all that much.)

Giddie. It was up on the Shoddy connecting message iirc.

As a certain philosopher named Voltaire once said, "I may not agree with your views, sir, but I will defend to the death your right to have those views" or some such. Democracy is not possible without allowing EVERYBODY their voice in the matter. Or, if you just want to throw democracy out the window, that's fine too. Just be straight up about it.

Yeah and I bet Voltaire said that to a misinformed little child who obviously have no idea what they are talking about.

Democracy requires education. Something that is obviously lacking nowadays I'm afraid :(

To quote Obi, "I think my point stands for itself."

And my response to you is "what point" because you really don't have one =)

It's easy to see the disdain you have for our community members that put in the time, whether they used Shaymin-S or not, to get such a good record on the standard ladder. Maybe we should enforce a rule that on Suspect Ladders from now on, you absolutely must use the Pokemon in order to qualify to have experience, yes! As I already said, playing against the Pokemon in question also counts as experience. You do not need to actually use Shaymin-S to know how Shaymin-S affects your team.

Then if Shaymin S is "uber" as everyone else is saying they wouldn't have such good records!

Just saying =)