How to handle the Shaymin-S Vote

[Aeolus]

It is now sitting with Uber at 51% and OU at 49%... with 8 votes outstanding. I honestly thought it would be a landslide, but I was obviously wrong. Assuming that the distribution holds, it is my opinion that banning a pokemon with such a slim majority is irresponsible. I want others to express their opinion.

[skarm]

I agree. Perhaps it needs to go to voting again 2-3 months down the road.

[cloud]

yep, if it's not 'more' unanimous then allow for more testing time until a more one-sided consensus can be reached :)

[twash]

I too expected a landslide towards OU, but perhaps the hype of Shaymin-S made opinions.

As skarm said, test it again in a few months. Maybe then the vote will be more..."one sided", so there can be a definitive decision.

At the moment, if all the 8 votes went for Uber, it would give 44.9% OU, and 55.1% Uber. I doubt all 8 votes will go to Uber, but then I guess I was wrong about the landslide.

[TAY]

What is the point of holding a "majority wins" vote if we aren't even going to honor the majority? I'm fine with redoing it later if that's what everyone wants, but obviously we need to define the threshold of victory for one side; we must choose a cutoff point for banning (i.e. 55%, 66%, etc).

What really makes me see this as a bit silly is the fact that we arbitrarily chose that Skymin would be allowed in OU with no prior testing. If Skymin had started out Uber I'm fairly sure we wouldn't have thought twice about the results of the vote. I guess it doesn't make sense to me that we're nullifying this and deciding in favor of the status quo, even though the status quo was arbitrarily chosen to begin with.

[CardsOfTheHeart]

Here's my question:

How much of a majority would be acceptable?

With 118 votes, I would probably accept a margin of 6 votes instead of 4--that would be about a 55-45 margin--but I would rather have a less-arbitrary method of coming up with a good number, if possible.


I only hope that people don't start complaining that the testing is being extended for the wrong reasons.

Wait, I need something cleared up. Assuming the vote stays this close, would we be extending Shaymin-S's testing period or moving on to Lati@s next?

[DougJustDoug**]

Originally Posted by Fat TAY

I guess it doesn't make sense to me that we're nullifying this and deciding in favor of the status quo, even though the status quo was arbitrarily chosen to begin with.

This. (bolding by me)

I totally agree that, in most cases, we should not alter the status quo unless there is a larger margin of victory. I think 60% is about right, maybe go as high as two-thirds (67%). Anything less than that can hardly be considered a convincing mandate for change.

The BIG problem is that the status quo for Skymin was decided somewhat arbitrarily. We could say that the de facto tiering of any new pokemon is OU -- but that's not really true. Arceus is uber, and we all know it. If they make another Arceus-level pokemon, it should be uber from the get-go. So, invariably, we need to do some theorymon on any new pokemon to target a pokemon's initial tiering. With Skymin, I don't think we did any "organized theorymon" to determine the status quo.

Jumpman, correct me if I'm wrong here. I know Skymin was mentioned in various discussions related to the Order of Operations, but I'm not sure how the decision was made to start with Skymin in OU. I think it just kind of "happened". In Shoddy, pokemon have to be explicitly banned. So, if I add a new species to Shoddy -- it will be available on all ladders by default. I think that's what happened with Skymin.

So, now that we have a close vote, it presents an interesting dilemma -- Do we "defend" the status quo, even though it was never explicitly "decided" by anyone?

[Aeroblacktyl]

if we keep 'testing' it, especially in the current ou game, doesn't that kind of just mean....shymin is part of the ou game...it's not like people who think it's uber just going to stop playing since you really can't write it on your 'netbattle info: no shymin'

[tennisace]

Originally Posted by Fat Aeroblacktyl

if we keep 'testing' it, especially in the current ou game, doesn't that kind of just mean....shymin is part of the ou game...it's not like people who think it's uber just going to stop playing since you really can't write it on your 'netbattle info: no shymin'

I said that yesterday in #is, because just leaving it for later in the OU metagame sort of sends the message that "we don't care about the results" to the average user. We know we have good intentions, but the majority of people won't. It would be much easier if we could just remove it completely for the time being, but that means it's uber for now. Basically, we need to solve this now, not later. Maybe extend the testing for two more weeks, and push everything back?

[DM]

I'm with Doug: a 2/3 majority sends a clear message. In the meantime, leaving it OU will help preface another vote (if necessary).

[Bologo]

Originally Posted by Fat tennisace

I said that yesterday in #is, because just leaving it for later in the OU metagame sort of sends the message that "we don't care about the results" to the average user. We know we have good intentions, but the majority of people won't. It would be much easier if we could just remove it completely for the time being, but that means it's uber for now. Basically, we need to solve this now, not later. Maybe extend the testing for two more weeks, and push everything back?

Why not just have another vote for it while we also vote for Latios/Latias? That way, with Latios/Latias in the picture, we can see just how uber the thing is with two surefire checks in the metagame.

The simplest solution is to just have 3 votes instead of 2 that time. We may have to make the testing a little longer for that one though (one month is obviously too short if we're testing two pokemon, with Skymin being tested again, it should like 6 weeks at the minimum or something).

[Colonel M]

While I am posting here, I am aware that I'm sort of being borderline with the whole voting statements. The reason I bring it up here is because its to prevent the rest of the community from being bashed around publicly and in here I can address my statement without worrying a whole lot about it. So let me start off by saying that there are a few options to consider, but we must look further into what could be the "possible" outcome:

- If we allow the testing to continue for 2-3 weeks, how would we handle this? Would we allow new people that have reached the deviation and ranking to be accepted in the voting process while someone who was already accepted knocked off because they failed in making the requirements later? In other words: would we allow new voters and / or would we disallow old voters that don't meet the requirements at that point.

There is another thing that is irking me as well as (possibly) other people. I completely stand by our voting system and how the community should participate. This by far I agree on. It's the people that have this "questionable" opinions that make me think over and over if the people basically rushed onto the ladder, obtained the ranking, only to have a decision of banning a Pokemon for the "just because" factor or for cases of OU. While it may not be noticable if people post: "Voted Uber" or "I voted OU", I'm talking about posts such as this. For now I will keep these "anonymous" for names but if you really want to see who posted them then all you have to do is peek at the topic:

Voted uber for obvious reasons.

OU by far.

Okay, so I really was going to vote OU, but after seeing Skymin take out my 6 cm rachi more then once with pure luck, I decided Uber. I also wanted to vote the opposite of TAY.

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.

Voted Uber

*waits for someone who voted OU to lose a major tourney to skymin via hax and use profane sentences to express their anger when they lost to luck

I voted Uber since Shaymin of all forms is banned from Nintendo's official tournaments.

I'm sorry if I sound biased because I agree why it can be both Uber and OU. The reason I pick more on these is because some of these people's mentalities are... ridiculous. Some you may argue AREN'T as ridiculous and I understand there will always be an idiot here and there casting their vote for themselves (elections IRL are good examples of this when you didn't vote Kerry because he was Catholic or a bad Catholic. Screw it I can't remember but it was one of those two).

The point I'm trying to get across is this: the deviation and rating are fine as is but... why can't we turn down voters? Especially if some of these specific people have voted for "stupid reasons"? Not that I am personally trying to be rude, but these people do affect our metagame and could possibly corrupt it by doing so.

Sorry, I just wanted to vent this out a little bit.

As for the real situation, I feel that an extra 2-3 weeks is perhaps the best thing to do. The only problem I have with "re-votes" is while it may sway some voters to change their mind, it could turn out to be the inevitable. It is just confusing to me a little bit. The problem I have with the 2/3 mentality is it could be rather difficult to obtain such a thing in some cases such as this. We could be having to vote for months on end until we reach a conclusion of things and it could create criticism.

I apologize if I sound vague, harsh, or possibly idiotic in my post, but I wanted to post about it I guess. Here's what I would agree to, though others would probably disagree with me:

- Allow an extension of 2-3 weeks. A month maximum.
- Allow all old voters (this also can be argued out if the votes were dumb but I'm pretty sure we would simply allow all the old ones).
- POSSIBLY allow new voters into the mix. Though it causes more voters into the mix, it would seem (to me anyway) the "fair" way to do this.
- For a minimum I'd consider 55 or 56%. Something around 55 preferably. This should be the minimum to "enforce" the decision.

And by the way, I am in no way bashing our voting system by stating about the mentality of some voters due to the fact that I find our system to be the most effective. That, and there will obviously be flaws in any system anyway.

[X-Act]

I'd like to say something about this. Something escaped my thought processes: the 1655/65 criteria were set for a clean-slate ladder. There were quite a few people who already amply qualified to be voters for Skymin even before the Skymin test commenced. This means that it could have happened that some of the voters voted without having the necessary information about Skymin in the first place, which could have compromised the votes.

I'm not saying that this happened; I'm saying that this might have happened.

[Bass]

I personally believe that regardless of the outcome (That is, even in the even that OU wins), neither side will have a statistically significant lead. I personally think 60% - 40% is good enough, but I think we should be careful about how we apply this. If OU ended up winning by a small margin, then we will still should act as though the community has not taken a clear enough position to decide where Shaymin-S truly belongs, so we should then proceed to continue testing it until one side pulls within an acceptable margin of victory.

However, some of the posts in this thread have given me a concern that we have been testing this the wrong way. Doug mentioned that with pokemon like Arceus, we didn't need to even question its status as an uber when DP came out. But with "limbo" or "suspect" pokemon that we cannot consider uber nor OU without testing, our current approach is to allow them in standard play unless/until they are deemed uber. In my opinion, I don't think we should allow pokemon that are questionable in standard until the community comes to an agreement that they belong in OU instead of ubers.

I might be going a little off topic, but since I feel we will have to be keep testing until the community comes to an agreement, I think that needs to be addressed alongside the votes themselves. During our last suspect test, we did not use a suspect ladder but instead just allowed the suspect (Shaymin-S) into standard play. I personally think having one ladder that allowed suspects alongside the standard ladder would be healthier for the metagame.

With Deoxys-E, vote totals were extremely close for the first votes, but in the somewhat lengthy period between the first vote and the second, we had to put up with a pokemon that we now clearly consider uber in the standard metagame. The second and more recent vote was a landslide in "uber" with more people having a clear understanding on what effect Deoxys-E had on the metagame.

And that is probably why the Shaymin-S vote is so close. Both sides have given some rather ridiculous or unsubstantiated reasons for their vote, and it could be that we haven't adequately tested it for long enough. For example, when several OU voters stated that the sub-seed set was manageable, Maniac argued that the Specs set was much harder to deal with. October statistics show that less than 7% of all Skymin could have possibly used Choice Specs. This number might go up in November, but my point is we need more testing to occur, no matter which side wins.

[Anti]

Originally Posted by Fat TAY

What is the point of holding a "majority wins" vote if we aren't even going to honor the majority?

You wanted a vote. You got one.

[Great Sage**]

A reform I was thinking about is that an option must win by a 2/3 supermajority in order to change a Pokemon's current status. For example, 2/3 of voters must vote Uber in order to ban an OU Pokemon. This would not invalidate the Garchomp and Deoxys-S votes.

EDIT: so yeah I basically agree with Doug

[darkie]

I think that if the last 8 votes leave it as Uber winning, we should enact a test ladder similar to the Deoxys-S suspect ladder.

With Skymin being tested as an OU, more "testing" isn't going to do much to sway people's minds. If we go about the testing in a different way, I believe that people might be more compelled to change their minds. It would make the test more complete.

edit: I agree with Bass. :)

[SoT]

The only real "solution" that won't upset either crowd would probably just make another Suspect Test with Shaymin-S banned, the people who want to play without Shaymin can play on the Suspect, while the people who still want Shaymin allowed in the metagame could still enjoy having that as an option.

However, I do agree with TAY on both of the things he brought up in his post, what's the point of having a vote when the winning side doesn't get what it requested. That's going against the whole process it seems.

[Hipmonlee]

I think there is a pretty simple solution to this.

Firstly, we go with whatever is decided in the vote for the OU ladder. We have given people a chance to vote and we have to accept the outcome even if we dont like it.

What we can do to fix this problem, is say that since the vote was so close, we will have another round of suspect testing for Shaymin immediately after this one. We can admit that the lack of a suspect ladder for the first Shaymin test was a failed concept, and wont be repeated (I think we pretty much all agree with this?)

It just means that we have a month with a Shaymin decision that wasnt agreed with a convincing margin. Not really a big deal. And it means we avoid giving the appearance of just overturning the majority vote without any justification.

In the future we can follow this same scenario whenever there isnt a better than two thirds majority on a suspect test, or whatever figure we decide is best.

Have a nice day.

[Maniaclyrasist]

Originally Posted by Fat TAY

What is the point of holding a "majority wins" vote if we aren't even going to honor the majority?

I agree with this.

Going with the majority vote for now seems fine. It is going to be retested again anyway in Stage 3 and testing it again right now might not even lead to any significantly different outcome.

[JabbaTheGriffin*]

Agreeing with TAY and Maniac. Due to the system it'll eventually be retested anyway. Just wait until then and let's get started with Lati@s.

[CardsOfTheHeart]

...and if the voting ends in a tie, we'll leave Skymin where it is and move on to Lati@s, correct? (making sure all our bases are covered)

[Jumpman16**]

"agreeing with jabba and tay". look guys, i made stage three of the suspect test process for a reason, after jabba's brilliant stages one and two was missing the necessary "reconsideration" stage.

Stage 3: Analysis of all the Suspects in the standard metagame with the knowledge of which are considered Uber and OU in a Suspect-free metagame.

if skymin goes uber by just one vote, it should be given a stage 2 uber tag. if it's ou by one vote, it should stay in ou. we need to move on. people kept asking me whether or not i thought skymin was uber and i never gave an answer because i honestly don't care, at all.

we have decided that the rating/deviation process is how this is going to be decided. that is that. just because we were unable to come up with a better process (if there is one, which there may not be) doesn't mean we get to second guess ourselves after the fact because votes didn't go the way we expected them to. to sway on this regardless of which way the vote goes would undermine the entire process and the integrity of smogon's decisions on competitive battle in general. as i have posted in PR, any kind of majority assumes a suspect was properly tiered in the first place, which is something we can be sure about on exactly none of the suspects by definition:

Any Pokémon, move or clause that respectively may benefit competitive standard or uber battle if moved or implemented elsewhere.

this directly implies that a pokemon, move or clause may not have been initially placed or observed in the best interests of competitive pokemon, for whatever reason (need for tiers asap, etc). right now, we are trying to fix any such misplacements and precedents. if it is a lack of agreement with my definition of suspect, that's fine, post here so we can hammer down a more accurate one. if it is inherently a lack of faith in the suspect test stages that is at the heart of everyone's concern, that's fine, and you can post in the order or operations thread to raise these specific concerns formally. otherwise, we need to move on and trust the processes we've come up with and agreed to, regardless of the results we may get.

[maddog]

I think that with such a close vote, that it would be as Aeolus said, irresponsible to call the vote either way. I have a suggestion though. Why don't we make a thread in Policy Review, and have the staff members and the other PR members discuss Shaymin-S, and try to work something out? Obviously with such a close vote we really shouldn't call it either way (even if one wins by a few votes). I think we should make a clean topic in PR and really talk about our experiences with Shaymin-S. One of the issues I have with the voting is once you made the rating, you don't really have to post your reasoning. Even though I agree that what we did before with Jump/ Tangerine was imperfect also, I really think forcing people to explain themselves would make them have an intelligent reason to vote the way they did. Colonel M pointed this out better than really anybody could have, does some of the reasons people gave worry anybody else? I figure that discussing it in PR would be a good start to deciding what to do with this, and besides, isn't that what Policy Review was made for anyway?

[Caelum]

Yes, we could go with a simple majority and wait till Stage 3, but I hope we realize that this vote determines the metagame for approximately the next 9 - 11 months. That's quite a bit of time.

Due to the closeness of the vote (whether uber or OU wins) I honestly believe no decision should be made, leave it OU, and reexamine it later on. I don't think something this close should be viewed as valid. In particular with complete garbage like these two votes, which if thrown out, leaves it 55 - 55.

Originally Posted by Fat stone_cold22

Okay, so I really was going to vote OU, but after seeing Skymin take out my 6 cm rachi more then once with pure luck, I decided Uber. I also wanted to vote the opposite of TAY.

Originally Posted by Fat FiveKRunner

I voted Uber since Shaymin of all forms is banned from Nintendo's official tournaments.

I just feel uncomfortable making any decision when I see reasons like these in such a close vote, maybe that's outside the scope of this discussion though.

Also, if no one reaches the 59 mark it should stay the default status of OU.