Bold Voting and Rating/Deviation requirements—A happy medium?

[Jumpman16]

I started this as a reply to my Skymin Suspect thread, but Maniaclyrasist talked to me on Friday about reading my post there about my concerns over possible bias in the Suspect Test process and sharing them, and I told him I'd post a thread about it, so here were are.

First, my original post—AJC had said: "to be honest i still think the voting is full of bias since those who want the last two banned and were able to vote were filled with people who already wanted them gone":

i think ajc raises an interesting and valid point. the undeniable fact is that if you have the standard metagame without any suspects, you are going to have the metagame that people most feel comfortable with because there is, by definition, not one pokemon there that everyone largely agrees may be better suited for ubers. so when you throw a suspect in there, there is the expected unbalance, and those of us who don't like our metagame altered will be more up in arms about ths change than those who are more willing and able to adapt, regardless of how uber the suspect is.

the thing is that you would think this is supposed to work both ways, in that if something were really not affecting OU that much, like DX-S before dual screen, and our "test" were removing it from standard so there are no suspects people would play a DX-S (and suspectless) metagame and largely be like "ok, whatever, maybe this meagame is a little easier but DX-S wasn't really gamebreaking so whatever? comparing it to the DX-S metagame (again, no dual screen), this isnt really uber..." and that would be that.

but one, we don't test things that way because we need the actual reagant present in order to see if there is a reaction, and two, DX-S was rare in that there is currently not one suspect that is OU. everything we're testing is uber, and will fall into the same pitfall as wobbuffet in that "hey what the hell did you do to my metagame, this is different, i dont like different, so i'm voting this uber". there just isn't that much passion to whore the ladder to keep things the way they are compared to banning something, as stated. this could all be avoided if we had a great definition of uber in the first place, since we have always tried to separate "different" in the "metagame shift" sense from "uber", but whatever.

we will probably be talking about this very soon in pr or something

And here is the reply I started in the thread but decided to bring over here (first the quote):

A pokemon who does one or more of the following to an adequate degree:

• overcentralises the OU metagame single-handlingly (not because of other pokemon - so this discludes pokemon that are only used to counter other pokemon e.g. Magneton in ADV for Skarm, who didn't even overcentralise the metagame (I can't think of an example)).

This is one of the more acceptable characteristics of being an uber. However herein lies the main issue with the Suspect Test process—literally every Suspect will overcentralize the metagame at least for the first six weeks or so, maybe longer. This is what has the potential to skew perception towards uber from those who are more sensitive to the "what did you do to my metagame??" phenomenon. The Suspect Test process, being one month, is therefore not unlike a tournament where everyone specializes for whatever is special in the tourney, if anything—the Eon Tourney being a good example of this. If the test period were longer, like three months, then "false overcentralization" would revert back to normal, and real overcentralization would all the better indicate that a pokemon is uber, but obviously a test period of three months is "too long" for a few reasons.

This time issue is a concern because it has proven to work both ways. We needed like 6-7 months for Garchomp to actually become the overcentralizing figure it showed itself to be before it officially became a Suspect, and over three months to see that it was indeed going to stay overcentralizing. It was similar with Deoxys-S, who was merely a good/great pokemon for about 4 months before the Dual Screen set proved that DX-S could both overcentralize and stay overcentralizing for more than just a few weeks. Even Wobbuffet was likely just a "probably uber" before I posted that Tickle Wobbuffet Thread and people like ipl started whoring that to get to #1 on the ladder "easy" (his word, not mine). A longer testing period would make sure that a Suspect actually is overcentralizing and not just the flavor of the literal month, but even though I don't play I really "don't want" to test any Suspect for more than a month because the "lol gen six is out already and we're just on manaphy now" concern is actually valid.

I am going to quote a post from the latest Suspect Test process that underlines what AJC and I are concerned about to a T:

I have cast my vote for Uber. I don't know why this thing was ever allowed in OU and why it has remained for so long.

While Deoxys is very versatile with stats that are strong in almost all areas, the main reason I'm casting my vote for Uber is because it is, in my opinion, the same Pokemon as all of the other Deoxys formes (much like Rotom and Shaymin, none of them have a unique Pokedex for a form). Wherever the highest tiered forme falls is where they all fall. Plus it belongs in the same category as Pokemon such as Mew, Darkrai, etc. as an event legendary not meant to be played in anything but absolute open play since not all people have access to it solely through ingame means.

This post made me "mad" enough to discuss it amongst insidescoopers on IRC. Sure, it's just one vote, but this is honestly some of the worst reasoning imaginable. Same as all the other forms? He would therefore vote Shaymin-L as an uber if SKymin gets voted uber, without any regard to how Shay-L fares in actual competitive battle. The last point is even worse because he conveniently stops at Mew and Darkrai and ignores the fact that Celebi similarly had just a few events for it but we allow it, and likewise for the uber birds, needing a Mystic Ticket from some obscure Nintendo event or XD/Colosseum for Lugia/Ho-oh, respectively.

This all says nothing about how flawed "not all people have access to it solely through ingame means" is when you consider both the advent of Wi-fi and the fact that, if we take Wi-fi out of the equation, there are a ton of pokemon that become less accessible. Even Alakazam and Golem would deserve this reasoning's consideration if you want to go as far as the link/wireless issue, since "why should I have to have friends locally who play pokemon to have access to these pokemon? That's not very accessible." (I am aware of the GTS glitch that allows "link evos" to evolve but my point stands.) I would actually rather him have just posted "I have cast my vote for Uber because I met the requirements" and stopped there...and, further, this is why I and others have cause for concern for the people who essentially have done this in the two votes thus far.

Therefore, I ask you all if we should be striving for some happy medium where both Shoddy Battle Ladder performance and a demonstration of "competitive intelligence" are considered when deciding on Suspects. Would it be better if we required a "bold vote" at the end of a Suspect's Suspet Test, and attributed the "correct" weight to "1650+ rating/60- deviation" if 50/50 isn't fair? I ask because at its base, yes, well-thought out reasoning on one side or another of a Suspect proves mainly that you know how to be convincing with the written word (even though referencing valid and pertinent statistics to prove one's point in writing is pretty much impossible to actually oppose or argue with). But at its own base, the rating and deviation requirements on Shoddy prove that one was willing and able to climb their way up the ladder and little more, 5KR being seriously a perfect example of this. By only using rating/deviation as requirements to vote on Suspects, we may be doing ourselves the same disservice we did by relying on bold votes alone to determine the tiering of Suspect pokemon in the future.

 

[Syberia]

The only "disservice" bold voting did to the voting process was to introduce unnecessary subjectivity. His logic is dumb and is better suited to a different topic (species clause, perhaps), but if someone makes the grade, I don't want to see their argument thrown out based on some petty, pedantic flaw like many of the Deoxys-E ones were. Or because it doesn't follow, to a T, one person's idea of what is "proper logical thought" and what is not.

 

[Jumpman16]

Your "their argument" there...does it refer to his actual argument or to his right to vote? I think you meant the latter, which is a big problem for reasons I already stated.

And "proper logical thought" is actually extremely formulaic and mathematical, and much less subjective than you're implying.

 

[Syberia]

Then kindly explain why two different judges reached vastly different conclusions. And if you say it's because they used different criteria, as you have before, then that does nothing except prove bias.

Yes I meant to say "right to vote." Adding subjectivity to any process inherently adds bias.

 

[gengod]

By only using rating/deviation as requirements to vote on Suspects, we may be doing ourselves the same disservice we did by relying on bold votes alone to determine the tiering of Suspect pokemon in the future.

I definitely agree that by continuing with using only rating/deviations as requirements we are doing ourselves a big disservice. It can be seen from the posts in the Garchomp vote and in the Deoxys vote that people's opinions are saturated with bias there is very little objectivity involved.

To be honest i'm not sure the public should even directly be allowed to vote as they are since it isn't very hard to achieve 1650 on the ladder and by viewing some of the posts of the people that voted you can see that some of the reasoning for voting how they did wheter OU or Uber is simply ridiculous.

 

[Bologo]

Well, the public should definitely be able to vote, because after all, they are the ones that are generally playing the game the most.

I'd like to suggest a little bit of a happy medium, though it's just a suggestion, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

Personally, we should go back to the bold voting, but allow those who have the ratings to vote, obviously.

What we COULD do is have 3 or so people rate all of the votes as a level 1 or a level 2. Level 1 would imply that their vote did not make much sense, but their vote still counts for 1 point towards whatever their vote was for. The reason that their vote still counts for 1 point is that they reached the minimum rating, so therefore they still get SOME say in the vote, but not as much since their vote didn't make sense.

Level 2 would imply that they created a good argument for their vote, and they reached the rating, meaning that their vote counts for 2 points.

I don't know how lenient you guys would want to be for these levels, but if you really want to, you can add level 3 if there's some debating guru, but I honestly wouldn't recommend this, since we want to lessen the subjectivity as much as possible. There's always going to be a degree of subjectivity in voting, since everyone has their own reasons for wanting something OU or Uber.

Anyway, at the end of the vote, we would add up the total points for Uber votes and OU votes, and whichever one has the higher amount of points wins. People aren't required to post an explanation, but their vote can be stepped up by an extra point if they do provide a good one, and they aren't losing anything by posting an explanation anyway.

I believe that this way, everyone who can vote can be happy that their votes counted for SOMETHING, but people who can take the time to provide a good explanation will be rewarded by having their vote count foir more.

One again, just a suggestion, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt.

 

[Jumpman16]

Then kindly explain why two different judges reached vastly different conclusions. And if you say it's because they used different criteria, as you have before, then that does nothing except prove bias.

I already addressed this, in this forum no less. I'll explain in case you've read that and just don't understand—Tangerine admitted to "accepting shitty votes" (his words, on IRC) if they made a particular effort to explain. He was working under the assumption that the votes would "even out", assuming there couldn't logically be "50 more weak arguments on one side than the other". When you think about it, that's more bias than anything I may have demonstrated.

Yes I meant to say "right to vote." Adding subjectivity to any process inherently adds bias.

Which is why I have asked you if we should combine the two processes we've used, and to weight them against each other if so. I have publicly bemoaned the subjectivity of the bold voting process about a half dozen times already, but the reason I made this thread is to arrive at a better way of handling the Suspect Test process. Our aim is to hammer down a better method, not to nitpick current and past ones. The current one, though, evidently does little to eliminate the player's own bias, as I showed, and this is a problem.

 

[gengod]

Well, the public should definitely be able to vote, because after all, they are the ones that are generally playing the game the most.

I don't see why that should really matter. If every decision was left up to the public because they "play more" we'd have more trouble on our hands than we have now.

As far as your system for voting goes, its slightly better than what we have now but as Jump pointed out bold voting (of pretty much any kind) doesn't really do anything to eliminate the bias that we are getting in these votes.

 

[maddog]

One of the things I think would help is to force people to explain their reasoning again, and make it more of a dicussion of the people that can actually vote before the actual bold voting occurs. One of the things that kind of bothered me when I was looking through the voting threads was that people weren't forced to explain their reasoning, which means people *could* have voted how they wanted. I don't think I would be crazy to say that people have an idea of how they want to vote, then make the rating, and vote the way they felt beforehand, reguardless of their experience. Also, people that really want something moved to ubers, they would be more motivated to make the rating necessary. I think that forcing people to explain their reasoning and dicusses their experience, I believe that the bold voting process would work better. I do relize that counting the votes does entail bias, but I don't think that they would need to explain in the actual vote, but that the dicussion would help people make a more informed vote.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Ok, whatever we do, bold voting is totally unacceptable. It was a total disaster...

Firstly we dont have an adequate definition of uber. We tried to make one and failed miserably. The current solution allows for a subjective definition. If you have to argue that a pokemon is Uber without knowing what Uber means you are going to struggle.

It's also not clear what exactly needs to be said in order to pass a vote, I could have written more during the vote, but I didnt know I had to.

If we know what needs to be said in order to justify a vote, then people can just rewrite premade responses and still follow whatever reasoning they like. This was more or less what happened on the OU side of the vote last time as you were willing to accept "I saw no evidence of being Deoxys being uber". I know the burden of proof is on the side of Uber, but how can you accept a vote where one side has to prove its worthiness and the otherside can just take all comers.

The vote count is subjective. If I was counting the votes I would not have accepted half of the Uber votes you counted. I also would have counted a large number of the Uber votes you rejected. You accepted stats based arguments when I had been actively encouraging people to avoid stats based arguments during the voting process.

Some other things about the current system:
The deviation doesnt work. People are having to throw matches because if they just keep winning then their deviation doesnt actually reduce. I was meaning to bring this up at some point but I forgot to.

I think the 1650 rating requirement is pretty much perfect though. If anything it may be slightly too high, but I think its doing its job.

But what I really want to say is, if people are biased, does it really matter? I think fivekrunner is in an extremely small minority in terms of the people able to meet the stats requirements. Biases arent totally arbitrary, they may hate Garchomp because it beats their team often, but these are top level players, and that is still a competitive pokemon based justification.

Have a nice day.

 

[Syberia]

I agree with pretty much everything Hipmonlee has to say, as if it wasn't obvious already.

 

[X-Act]

The deviation doesnt work. People are having to throw matches because if they just keep winning then their deviation doesnt actually reduce. I was meaning to bring this up at some point but I forgot to.

Well, that's why I hate shoddy's rating system and why I had suggested to improve it, but whatever: if this is happening you obviously have a point.

The problem is that for the deviation to decrease substantially, you need to play against a player having a deviation lower than yours, and this will become rare when your deviation is around 65. The way the system constant is for shoddybattle means that when the deviation gets to around 65 to 70, it starts to decrease very slowly even if you win against a player with less deviation.

Maybe the deviation requirement should be increased slightly to 65 instead of 60, but in that case I'd increase also the rating requirement slightly to 1655 instead of 1650 (so that the minimum rating range becomes 1590 - 1720 instead of 1590 - 1710). The effect of this is that you'll need less games to reach a deviation of 65 but you'll need to achieve a slightly higher rating to compensate.

This is of course if you people decide to continue using rating/deviations as a means of voting credentials.

 

[Jumpman16]

Ok, whatever we do, bold voting is totally unacceptable. It was a total disaster...

Firstly we dont have an adequate definition of uber. We tried to make one and failed miserably. The current solution allows for a subjective definition. If you have to argue that a pokemon is Uber without knowing what Uber means you are going to struggle.

I agree. If we were to return to bold voting, Tangerine's thread and/or my Portrait of an Uber thread would be revisited in order to hammer down the best definition of uber possible. The reason I haven't bothered keeping my thread going is because obviously the process we've been using for the last three months has not required a definition of uber. Do you not see, though, that this problem is not at all addressed by our current process? We had a person vote Deoxys-S as an uber because it's not very accessible ingame. Is that your idea of an acceptable definition of uber?

Again, this was one person, but what of the fact that, since not everyone is working from the same definition of uber (because there isn't a good one, yet), there is going to be a problem with accepting votes from people voting uber or OU when they don't have to offer any reasoning, and if they do and it's obviously shitty, their votes are counted anyway? You don't think this is a big problem?

It's also not clear what exactly needs to be said in order to pass a vote, I could have written more during the vote, but I didnt know I had to.

For about the fourth time, whatever argument one chose determined how reasoned-out their explanation had to be. A good number of the "unclear reasoning" votes I rejected were under 30 words. Yours was not under 30 words, but I felt that for your argument, the line of reasoning you chose wasn't enough.

And before you start replying to this specific part of my post, understand that I am going to ignore whatever you have to say about your singular vote on DX-S over four months ago being rejected unfairly if it doesn't actually ask me/us to hammer down clearer criteria for the future as well. We've been through this, Hip, for hours. If you want to continue to complain about your personal vote and only your personal vote, we can take it to PM, again, and accomplish little. Or you can add to this topic by suggesting what we can do with the rating/deviation process going forward regarding bias, as I have asked, because even if you are 100% againt the bold voting process, you are missing the point of this thread by ignoring that there is a definite problem with the rating/deviation process that you would have as our only method of addressing Suspects.

If we know what needs to be said in order to justify a vote, then people can just rewrite premade responses and still follow whatever reasoning they like. This was more or less what happened on the OU side of the vote last time as you were willing to accept "I saw no evidence of being Deoxys being uber". I know the burden of proof is on the side of Uber, but how can you accept a vote where one side has to prove its worthiness and the otherside can just take all comers.

Besides the fact that this isn't doing anything but complaining about how I personally processed the votes over four months ago, when I explicitly said the point of this thread is "not to nitpick current and past" methods, "take all comers"? I rejected a ton of votes on both sides, you know that. The "I saw no evidence of being Deoxys being uber" votes were never, ever standalone statements, and they were always backed up by clear reasoning that supported the argument.

And the first two sentences here are actually totally contradictory to the stance you've maintained about the process. How can you say:

If we know what needs to be said in order to justify a vote, then people can just rewrite premade responses and still follow whatever reasoning they like. This was more or less what happened on the OU side of the vote last time

when you literally just said:

It's also not clear what exactly needs to be said in order to pass a vote

That doesn't check out, Hip. That is expressly not what happened if you maintain that the criteria for passing a vote was unclear. Even if there had been golden "premade responses" when Tangerine and I actually tallied the votes, none of the voters knew of them. This blatant inconsistency gives me reason to believe that you're just pissing on the bold voting process any way you can, even if you're going to contradict yourself, and this is not what this thread or this community needs.

Your enduring pessimism has actually managed to give me an idea about making the bold vote process better if we go that route again. Perhaps it would be better if everyone's bold vote were PMed to the appointed vote talliers, so that the voters and votes wouldn't influence others? While it's not as if we actually tally votes until everyone has posted so people don't actually know what the perfect cookie-cutter vote is, this may be better than having it basically be an open discussion...though there is something to be said for having it be in a discussion format, especially since no votes are "good" until we say they are.

The vote count is subjective. If I was counting the votes I would not have accepted half of the Uber votes you counted. I also would have counted a large number of the Uber votes you rejected. You accepted stats based arguments when I had been actively encouraging people to avoid stats based arguments during the voting process.

"Why"? And why should I even have to ask you to expound on why you would reject stats based arguments? I said "valid and pertinent statistics", which does not include sheer pokemon usage statistics but would include something like the referencing of, for example, how many times Heatran carried a Scarf and HP Ice in Skymin's Suspect Test compared to the previous month. Tell me why this is evidence we should be ignoring.

Some other things about the current system:
The deviation doesnt work. People are having to throw matches because if they just keep winning then their deviation doesnt actually reduce. I was meaning to bring this up at some point but I forgot to.

I think the 1650 rating requirement is pretty much perfect though. If anything it may be slightly too high, but I think its doing its job.

ok

But what I really want to say is, if people are biased, does it really matter? I think fivekrunner is in an extremely small minority in terms of the people able to meet the stats requirements. Biases arent totally arbitrary, they may hate Garchomp because it beats their team often, but these are top level players, and that is still a competitive pokemon based justification.

Have a nice day.

Besides the fact that neither you nor anyone else can actually prove how small a minority 5KR is in (his vote still made up over 3% of all the votes on DX-S, by the way), I already told you in July why that justification is shitty. You say "team", in the singular, as though not only do "top level players" just have one single team that they play with, but also that these top level players are incapable of adapting to a new threat to their team, one that further they knew was coming all along since it was plainly indicated as being a Suspect and the next Suspect tested (unlike something like Yachechomp which all players would take a little longer adjusting to). Does this really look like the makeup of a top level player to you?

Anyway, you did suggest some changes to the one process you feel is working, even though I and others like ML and maddog and other I have talked to feel that the voter bias is obvious in more than just a few cases. The issue here is that we had 54 people vote on Garchomp, and a mere 32 on Deoxys-S. We can accept that there is going to be some degree of bias in both tallying votes and the actual voters' bias. But there is much, much less room for error with 32 votes than there is with the over 100 votes we had for DX-S. This is a much more selective process than we had before, and I have shown that "more selective" doesn't necessarily equal "competitively intelligent". For like the fourth time, "this is a problem."

 

[FiveKRunner]

First off, I disagree with Smogon's tiering and Suspect system entirely but that is probably something for another thread. I will, however, say that our entire philosophy on what metagame we should be playing should closely, if not entirely, match the playstyle of national tournaments. I see little point in use in Smogon calling ourselves the "authority of competitive Pokemon" when we only represent a metagame that we and a few other communities play. I could go on further and will if you'd like.

Anyway, there were no guidelines set on reasoning that had to be made in casting our votes. While I can see why you'd be upset at the fact that I voted the way I did, it certainly should not have been unexpected. I want the metagame to be played in the style that I envision, therefore I submitted a vote that would help achieve such a goal.

This post made me "mad" enough to discuss it amongst insidescoopers on IRC. Sure, it's just one vote, but this is honestly some of the worst reasoning imaginable. Same as all the other forms? He would therefore vote Shaymin-L as an uber if SKymin gets voted uber, without any regard to how Shay-L fares in actual competitive battle. The last point is even worse because he conveniently stops at Mew and Darkrai and ignores the fact that Celebi similarly had just a few events for it but we allow it, and likewise for the uber birds, needing a Mystic Ticket from some obscure Nintendo event or XD/Colosseum for Lugia/Ho-oh, respectively.

This all says nothing about how flawed "not all people have access to it solely through ingame means" is when you consider both the advent of Wi-fi and the fact that, if we take Wi-fi out of the equation, there are a ton of pokemon that become less accessible. Even Alakazam and Golem would deserve this reasoning's consideration if you want to go as far as the link/wireless issue, since "why should I have to have friends locally who play pokemon to have access to these pokemon? That's not very accessible." (I am aware of the GTS glitch that allows "link evos" to evolve but my point stands.) I would actually rather him have just posted "I have cast my vote for Uber because I met the requirements" and stopped there...and, further, this is why I and others have cause for concern for the people who essentially have done this in the two votes thus far.

Alot of this has to do with how I feel we should be playing the game, on which I might make a separate thread. For starters, I only listed Mew and Darkrai because I was only mentioning a couple of Pokemon to give people an idea of what I was thinking. You say I stop at these two Pokemon, yet neglect the fact that I say "etc." after them, which implied that the other event legendaries fall into this (Celebi, Jirachi, Deoxys, Manaphy, Shaymin). You bring up Celebi and act as if I had I said I was fine with us using it but my opinion on that is quite the opposite. It should also be banned from a standard metagame, along with other Ubers as designated by Nintendo. While I'm sure you disagree with the entire system, it's hard to deny the fact that it would make Smogon more competitive on the national level when tournaments come around, which is what I feel our goal should be.

Also, your entire point on trade evolutions is not a valid point. The event Pokemon that I feel should be banned are not obtainable in any way through Pokemon RPGs. At least trade evolutions, trade item evolutions, and other of the like CAN be obtained through some sort of means possible at any time. Event Pokemon are one shot deals and if you didn't get them when you had the chance, you may never have the chance again. By assuming that I feel trade evolutions shouldn't be played, you basically also assuming that I feel version exclusive Pokemon (Mismagius, Skuntank, Dialga, etc.) shouldn't be played since they can only be obtained through trading also. Trading has always been an integral part of Pokemon but when replicating a metagame, these event legendaries don't put everyone on a level playing field, which again comes back to the argument of being competitive on a national level.

Therefore, I ask you all if we should be striving for some happy medium where both Shoddy Battle Ladder performance and a demonstration of "competitive intelligence" are considered when deciding on Suspects. Would it be better if we required a "bold vote" at the end of a Suspect's Suspet Test, and attributed the "correct" weight to "1650+ rating/60- deviation" if 50/50 isn't fair? I ask because at its base, yes, well-thought out reasoning on one side or another of a Suspect proves mainly that you know how to be convincing with the written word (even though referencing valid and pertinent statistics to prove one's point in writing is pretty much impossible to actually oppose or argue with). But at its own base, the rating and deviation requirements on Shoddy prove that one was willing and able to climb their way up the ladder and little more, 5KR being seriously a perfect example of this. By only using rating/deviation as requirements to vote on Suspects, we may be doing ourselves the same disservice we did by relying on bold votes alone to determine the tiering of Suspect pokemon in the future.

Like I said earlier, I feel that the tiering and suspect sytems are seriously flawed. I guess I do agree with you in the respect that something needs to be changed. What I feel needs to be changed though is that the entire suspect system and balanced metagame mentality needs to be discarded.

Bold voting will do absolutely nothing for this community except alientate community members from deciding what game they want to play create more resentment from the outside. We saw the Garchomp vote create even more hostility towards Smogon and are likely to see it in future bannings and allowances of certain Pokemon.

To be honest i'm not sure the public should even directly be allowed to vote as they are since it isn't very hard to achieve 1650 on the ladder and by viewing some of the posts of the people that voted you can see that some of the reasoning for voting how they did wheter OU or Uber is simply ridiculous.

And this is sort of elitist mentality is exactly why we are resented. This would ultimately be the worst choice possible and I can only hope that it doesn't come to this. A select few are already running the show and deciding what game we should all play, month by month. If you're going to pick a game, choose it and leave it. Monthly changes in a system based entirely on clout will not go over well with the community at large. What's more many of these people at the top have very little exposure to the metagame. What really drives this point home is the fact that only a few of the site staff and NONE of the moderators achieved the rating needed to be Deoxys voters and yet you're suggesting that the power be turned over to them.

Deciding which votes to count and which to throw out in a bold voting system would work in much the same way. Such a system would simply attempt to mask who holds the power to vote. Jump illustrates this point perfectly in saying the following quote:

I ask because at its base, yes, well-thought out reasoning on one side or another of a Suspect proves mainly that you know how to be convincing with the written word (even though referencing valid and pertinent statistics to prove one's point in writing is pretty much impossible to actually oppose or argue with).

In my opinion, you're saying that whatever viewpoint you've reached on what the statistics show determines what votes you'll accept and reject. As I've found this is simply relying on "theorymon" to reach your conclusion, especially since it's often based on assumptions. I think that this quote illustrates what I'm getting at pretty well:

Because apparently 3 layers of Spikes, 2 layers of Toxic Spikes and 1 layer of Stealth Rocks are up whenever I suggest a Garchomp counter. Also a sandstorm is brewing and Garchomp has the following moveset : Draco Meteor/Fire Blast/Outrage/Swords Dance/Earthquake/Dragon Claw/Fire Fang/Crunch/Stone Edge.

As Hipmonlee stated, bold votes for either side are pure verbatim. Anyone who knows how to paraphrase can create an argument so this method does little to show for a voter's competitive knowledge. I could do this in future votes to hide my true motives for voting and it would go unnoticed. Besides, no amazing new reasoning for changing a Pokemon's tier is unearthed in bold voting, it's just restated response after response.


Another point I'd like to make about the Suspect system that I'm surprised you haven't noticed is that it's pretty much made to be a joke. I was one of a very, very select few who met the requirements for the Deoxys voting during every single stage where Doug announced who would be eligible to vote. Because of this, I'm correct in saying that it was nearly impossible to get a vote on the Suspect ladder any time other than a week leading up to the final vote. Too many users see the deadline approaching and want to gain the ability to vote. They manage to work their way up the ladder, reaching the required ratings in sometimes as little as 3 hours (trust me, this has been said by multiple users). This is not nearly adequate exposure to make an educated vote on the tier status of a Pokemon. I still can't believe that the sytem is being used.

So what do these voters base their votes on? Personal gain, preconceived notions, and bias. I don't see why my vote was singled out when in fact nearly everyone else is voting in a similar manner. I had 50 times the exposure they had and the fact that my competitive battling intelect is being questioned as opposed to theirs makes me laugh.


In the end, the entire shaping of the metagame, especially through the Suspect system, is futile. Everyone in this community says they want a metagame with less centralization but does anyone really know what this entails? In fact, in our very first Suspect vote, the voters chose to vote for a metagame with MORE centralization by banning Garchomp. The Suspect ladder without him had a smaller OU pool than the Standard ladder which included him. Like it or not, Garchomp did alot of good for this metagame. So what does Smogon do to fool people into thinking that the Suspect system is working and working well?

Change the tiering system so that the standard tier is intentionally large.
"Omg guys, OU grew to like 50 Pokemon this month! Banning Garchomp was great!"

Regardless, introducing and banning Pokemon from the standard metagame every month or so is not going to do us any good. I fear that D/P will be remembered as the metagame without any true tiers, with constant shifting and manipulation of statistics. A Suspectless metagame is impossible to reach. Every metagame had a core group of Pokemon that dominated and I don't see why we're trying to force this generation to be any different. If anything, the community needs to decide on a metagame (preferably one that emulates the style of play used in national tournaments) and stick with it. It will then evolve as needed to deal with the core group of highly used Pokemon, who will still remain highlly used since they are just that. What I feel is a problem is that too many people feel that a Suspectless metagame is one in which they can counter everything, which was NOT the intent of D/P. D/P was created as an offensive metagame that rewards those who think outside the box and can come up with a moveset and surprise nearly an entire team. You're not going to be able to counter everything and until people realize this, the method for determine what Pokemon will be allowed in our standard metagame will remain a problem.

 

[gengod]

Originally Posted by Maniaclyrasist
To be honest i'm not sure the public should even directly be allowed to vote as they are since it isn't very hard to achieve 1650 on the ladder and by viewing some of the posts of the people that voted you can see that some of the reasoning for voting how they did wheter OU or Uber is simply ridiculous.

And this is sort of elitist mentality is exactly why we are resented. This would ultimately be the worst choice possible and I can only hope that it doesn't come to this. A select few are already running the show and deciding what game we should all play, month by month. If you're going to pick a game, choose it and leave it. Monthly changes in a system based entirely on clout will not go over well with the community at large.

Keep in mind I said the public should not be allowed to vote as they are, I do not mean that the public should not be involved the process entirely. The fact remains that voting how we are right now is almost totally absent of any objectivity and the majority of the reasoning behind most of the publics vote have been lined with subjectivity. For example if we look at your reasoning for voting Deoxys-S Uber it had absolutely nothing to do with how we actually go about determining tiers and was catered to your own personal views about how tiers and the metagame "should" be determined.

What's more many of these people at the top have very little exposure to the metagame. What really drives this point home is the fact that only a few of the site staff and NONE of the moderators achieved the rating needed to be Deoxys voters and yet you're suggesting that the power be turned over to them.

I'm not exactly sure what you are even basing this on. Just because we don't have our names all over the leaderboards or if you don't constantly see us playing doesn't mean we don't have any exposure to the Metagame and as far as your comment about moderators not achieving voting requirements I suggest you go an take a look at the people that actually voted on both the Garchomp and the Deoxys-S polls before saying something so blatantly false as that.

 

[Mekkah]

The Suspect ladder without him had a smaller OU pool than the Standard ladder which included him. Like it or not, Garchomp did alot of good for this metagame. So what does Smogon do to fool people into thinking that the Suspect system is working and working well?

The Suspect ladder had less different people playing, who obviously use less different Pokemon than if more people had been playing. To say the metagame itself is more centralized is one step ahead of your back-up.

 

[Cynthia]

As a general note, I think the people who should determine the tiers are the people that actually play D/P. This seems like common sense to me, but if all your battling experience comes from Netbattle/ADV and you've barely touched D/P your opinion is outdated and irrelevant.

To avoid this conflict, having a voting system based on merit (achieving a certain ladder rating) is the most fair way to determine this. This also removes the subjectivity of bold voting, which led to a lot of issues. What is considered a good argument and what is not is up for debate nearly all the time, and as said before one could just paraphrase a previous argument to get a vote. Hell, even a pure majority vote has its benefits over bold voting.

 

[RBG]

Ummmm.....Nintendo does a double battle system for their tournaments. Do you know of an online Double Battle Simulator we can use?

And the people who determine tiers do play D/P. Aeolus and Jumpman16 did not vote, they just manage the process. X-Act does not determine the tiers. We the players do based on the Pokemon we use, he just turns those numbers into tiers

 

[FiveKRunner]

The fact remains that voting how we are right now is almost totally absent of any objectivity and the majority of the reasoning behind most of the publics vote have been lined with subjectivity.

The majority of the reasoning behind public votes (even in PM form) will be pure verbatim, nothing but the same lines rephrased over and over in an attempt to make it appear that you know what you're talking about, regardless of whether or not you truly do. As I said before, there is no value to bold voting, as nothing really comes out of you expressing a reasoning other than someone determining whether or not your reasoning is of worth. It's adding more bias to an already biased and broken system.

I'm not exactly sure what you are even basing this on. Just because we don't have our names all over the leaderboards or if you don't constantly see us playing doesn't mean we don't have any exposure to the Metagame and as far as your comment about moderators not achieving voting requirements I suggest you go an take a look at the people that actually voted on both the Garchomp and the Deoxys-S polls before saying something so blatantly false as that.

Then what exposure does one have to make a decision on a Suspect if you didn't battle during the Suspect period? If you're not on the ratings list (as broken a system as it is), you should NOT be able to vote, regardless of your position in the community.

As far as I'm concerned the Garchomp test was a one shot deal. A few more mods showed interest in that vote but didn't follow up for Deoxys, which leaves the impression on me that they don't even care for the Suspect system. Interest in voting declined greatly, 41% in fact, for the Deoxys test. For the record, I suspect it to rise for Shaymin but only because one ladder is being used and people will vote just because they happen to meet the requirements (they really only ladder to get on the leaderboard).

The Suspect ladder had less different people playing, who obviously use less different Pokemon than if more people had been playing. To say the metagame itself is more centralized is one step ahead of your back-up.

We've seen the effects of time on a certain tier list, it always shrinks. Odds are even with a large user base, the Suspect ladder OU list still would've shrunk, leaving us with about the same number of Pokemon in OU that came out of the testing period.

Ummmm.....Nintendo does a double battle system for their tournaments. Do you know of an online Double Battle Simulator we can use?

And the people who determine tiers do play D/P. Aeolus and Jumpman16 did not vote, they just manage the process. X-Act does not determine the tiers. We the players do based on the Pokemon we use, he just turns those numbers into tiers

With all of the work being put into Competitor, it seems like a 2v2 battle generator shouldn't be too hard to develop. After all, they started with RBY, so it seems like they're going all out on it. If, after all of this time, 2v2 isn't included, I'm going to be thoroughly disappointed. Besides, if Smogon did truly want to be known as the authority on Pokemon, it would take the time to develop the simulator and change its playstyle to that of the national tournaments.

You misunderstood what I meant. I know that we vote on what Pokemon are moved up to Uber. I'm referring to the proposed system, where a select group determines where each Pokemon falls into a tier since apparently a few people should be given the power to choose what we all play.

 

[Jumpman16]

First off, I disagree with Smogon's tiering and Suspect system entirely but that is probably something for another thread. I will, however, say that our entire philosophy on what metagame we should be playing should closely, if not entirely, match the playstyle of national tournaments. I see little point in use in Smogon calling ourselves the "authority of competitive Pokemon" when we only represent a metagame that we and a few other communities play. I could go on further and will if you'd like.

Do it in another thread if you feel you have to. It's not as if you need my blessing, especially if this is something you evidently feel so strongly about.

Anyway, there were no guidelines set on reasoning that had to be made in casting our votes. While I can see why you'd be upset at the fact that I voted the way I did, it certainly should not have been unexpected. I want the metagame to be played in the style that I envision, therefore I submitted a vote that would help achieve such a goal.

I know there weren't guidelines set on reasoning, which is part of the reason I made this thread. You think it is ok to have voted in the style you envision, and I am going to tell you why you are off base.

Alot of this has to do with how I feel we should be playing the game, on which I might make a separate thread. For starters, I only listed Mew and Darkrai because I was only mentioning a couple of Pokemon to give people an idea of what I was thinking. You say I stop at these two Pokemon, yet neglect the fact that I say "etc." after them, which implied that the other event legendaries fall into this (Celebi, Jirachi, Deoxys, Manaphy, Shaymin). You bring up Celebi and act as if I had I said I was fine with us using it but my opinion on that is quite the opposite. It should also be banned from a standard metagame, along with other Ubers as designated by Nintendo. While I'm sure you disagree with the entire system, it's hard to deny the fact that it would make Smogon more competitive on the national level when tournaments come around, which is what I feel our goal should be.

You are forgetting one extremely crucial detail. You, 5KR, have joined the competitive battling community called Smogon. Smogon has never aligned with Nintendo's designated ubers. We have our own philosophy, from which I quote this:

The "OU metagame" is in no ways perfect, but it should be pointed out that 99% of multiplayer games are often plagued by imbalance and the resulting "tiers", and it is fortunate that Pokémon's detailed depth, combined with the intelligent minds of its players, working to prevent various abuses, is capable of producing a diverse and enjoyable arena.

I reference this because it evidently is not clear to you that, by joining this community, and posting here, you announce a de facto agreement with or at least acceptance of the community you chose to join. If you feel the way you do about our how we regard event legendaries, why haven't you said anything before now, being a Policy Review poster for some time now? But, more importantly, take this question literally: why do you play here? Why do you constantly play on our server if you feel so strongly that our entire system is out of wack, but not say anything at all except passively in your vote?

Besides that, you say that following Nintendo's system would make "Smogon more competitive on the national level when tournaments come around". Why would we care about that when we have our own battle simulator, which is what we make our tiers for? And even if we could care about it, is it so unreasonable to actually voice your opinion on it here, especially since you personally can because you have been granted access here, so that maybe we could hear you out? The way I see it, there could very easily be a "Nintendo Metagame" ladder implemented on Shoddy, it would just be up to everyone else to play it if they want to. It's not as if their metagame is totally stupid, it just wouldn't be as competitive on the Shoddy battle level, on which no one can deny a good chunk of competitive battle is played.

And just so I'm clear...if I am not able to "change your mind" on this, you would, assuming you reach the requirements for every subsequent Suspect Test, vote Wobbufet, Garchomp, Latios, Latias and Ho-oh as OU, and DX-S, Darkrai, Manaphy, Skymin, Mew as uber, and vote that way literally no matter what? And not only that, if you were deciding the tiering of all pokemon for Smogon's competitive battling server, you would have Kyogre, Rayquaza, Groudon, Palkia, Dialga, Giratina, Lugia, and Mewtwo in standard play, correct?

Also, your entire point on trade evolutions is not a valid point. The event Pokemon that I feel should be banned are not obtainable in any way through Pokemon RPGs. At least trade evolutions, trade item evolutions, and other of the like CAN be obtained through some sort of means possible at any time. Event Pokemon are one shot deals and if you didn't get them when you had the chance, you may never have the chance again. By assuming that I feel trade evolutions shouldn't be played, you basically also assuming that I feel version exclusive Pokemon (Mismagius, Skuntank, Dialga, etc.) shouldn't be played since they can only be obtained through trading also. Trading has always been an integral part of Pokemon but when replicating a metagame, these event legendaries don't put everyone on a level playing field, which again comes back to the argument of being competitive on a national level.

I didn't assume you felt trade evolutions shouldn't be played. I drew the comparison because as far as your "not accessible" is concerned, it applies. I don't have friends IRL that still play pokemon (not ones I haven't met through this forum, anyway). Before Wi-fi, the trade evolutions were as accessible to me as...an Action Replay, since I would have to buy something else to get the pokemon I needed. I actually have a legit Mew from the September 30, 2006 Toys R Us event, two of them, in fact, and someone gave me a legit Impish Celebi as well. Your "accessibility" argument fails when you realize that everything is accessible now with Wi-fi and cloning. Maybe Darkrai less so because the GTS trick doesn't work there, but I can sure clone my Mew and Celebi on Emerald, Pal Park them over, and trade them to anyone I want. Hell, that's the very purpose of our Wi-fi forum and the WTC chaos has in the works.

Like I said earlier, I feel that the tiering and suspect sytems are seriously flawed. I guess I do agree with you in the respect that something needs to be changed. What I feel needs to be changed though is that the entire suspect system and balanced metagame mentality needs to be discarded.

A balanced metagame aligns directly with our philosophy, as shown above. If you don't like it...well, there's a few ways I can end this sentence, but I'll go with the less contentious "make a thread about it and see what everyone else thinks".

Bold voting will do absolutely nothing for this community except alientate community members from deciding what game they want to play create more resentment from the outside. We saw the Garchomp vote create even more hostility towards Smogon and are likely to see it in future bannings and allowances of certain Pokemon.

I'm sorry but lol, do you think we care about those angry tirades and rants besides the comedic value they gave us? None of the people who made those Youtube videos have even the slightest idea of our philosophy and how we have regarded pokemon for years and years. We're not concerned about them.

And this is sort of elitist mentality is exactly why we are resented. This would ultimately be the worst choice possible and I can only hope that it doesn't come to this. A select few are already running the show and deciding what game we should all play, month by month. If you're going to pick a game, choose it and leave it. Monthly changes in a system based entirely on clout will not go over well with the community at large. What's more many of these people at the top have very little exposure to the metagame. What really drives this point home is the fact that only a few of the site staff and NONE of the moderators achieved the rating needed to be Deoxys voters and yet you're suggesting that the power be turned over to them.

The alternative is letting people like you vote, with your own agendas, when you have not demonstrated you have any real alignment with Smogon or its philosophy, where our mods and Site Staff by definition have.

And a select few are not running the show...why do you think we're even doing the Suspect Test process instead of just having badged members vote? You do realize that your vote was actually allowed, when probably every single badged member would have rejected it in an instant, right?

Deciding which votes to count and which to throw out in a bold voting system would work in much the same way. Such a system would simply attempt to mask who holds the power to vote. Jump illustrates this point perfectly in saying the following quote:

In my opinion, you're saying that whatever viewpoint you've reached on what the statistics show determines what votes you'll accept and reject. As I've found this is simply relying on "theorymon" to reach your conclusion, especially since it's often based on assumptions. I think that this quote illustrates what I'm getting at pretty well:

How would it be theorymon when I would be calling on statistics from actual practice which is the exact opposite? I don't think you understand what I meant, at least I hope not.

As Hipmonlee stated, bold votes for either side are pure verbatim. Anyone who knows how to paraphrase can create an argument so this method does little to show for a voter's competitive knowledge. I could do this in future votes to hide my true motives for voting and it would go unnoticed. Besides, no amazing new reasoning for changing a Pokemon's tier is unearthed in bold voting, it's just restated response after response.

Which is why I suggested that the voters PM the selected talliers...or are you just going to piss on old processes without suggesting new ones like Syberia and Hip did for the most part?

Another point I'd like to make about the Suspect system that I'm surprised you haven't noticed is that it's pretty much made to be a joke. I was one of a very, very select few who met the requirements for the Deoxys voting during every single stage where Doug announced who would be eligible to vote. Because of this, I'm correct in saying that it was nearly impossible to get a vote on the Suspect ladder any time other than a week leading up to the final vote. Too many users see the deadline approaching and want to gain the ability to vote. They manage to work their way up the ladder, reaching the required ratings in sometimes as little as 3 hours (trust me, this has been said by multiple users). This is not nearly adequate exposure to make an educated vote on the tier status of a Pokemon. I still can't believe that the sytem is being used.

This is as much the community's fault as not using Tickle Wobuffet, even after I begged you guys to do so for pages and pages in a thread I had to make April 1 (well before Smogon had its own server) because the girl who was whoring the ladder with it was too lazy to post it after three weeks. And even after she said she would post the set herself when I told her it needed to be posted since Wobby was a mere 47th in usage at the time and wasn't being banned. Don't blame the people who made the process when the community has demonstrated time and time again that it is too lazy to do anything with the power we give them to make changes to competitive pokemon. If anything, this indicates that you guys really don't care and that little to nothing will make you care, and that maybe Maniac is right to suggest that the public shouldn't vote. I can't believe you're blaming the system when we make these tests a month long to give you all enough time to achieve the required numbers. That's like a kid waiting till the last weekend to write his final paper whose topic he'd known all month then complaining in the final hours that he feels rushed.

So what do these voters base their votes on? Personal gain, preconceived notions, and bias. I don't see why my vote was singled out when in fact nearly everyone else is voting in a similar manner. I had 50 times the exposure they had and the fact that my competitive battling intelect is being questioned as opposed to theirs makes me laugh.

Your vote was single out because it contained absolutely no mention of anything pertaining to competitive pokemon as we play it on Shoddy and have for years. (Though to be fair, I would be just as defensive as you are being now if the roles were reversed.) Your competitive battling intellect is being questioned because the reasoning behind your vote is completely devoid of anything that could even remotely be construed as "competitive intellect". You cannot even begin to deny this. You may think I'm just taking a cheap shot at you by saying this, but reread your vote and tell me if you honestly think that a 10-year-old who has never even heard of Shoddy Battle is incapable of giving the reasoning you did.

In the end, the entire shaping of the metagame, especially through the Suspect system, is futile. Everyone in this community says they want a metagame with less centralization but does anyone really know what this entails? In fact, in our very first Suspect vote, the voters chose to vote for a metagame with MORE centralization by banning Garchomp. The Suspect ladder without him had a smaller OU pool than the Standard ladder which included him. Like it or not, Garchomp did alot of good for this metagame. So what does Smogon do to fool people into thinking that the Suspect system is working and working well?

Change the tiering system so that the standard tier is intentionally large.
"Omg guys, OU grew to like 50 Pokemon this month! Banning Garchomp was great!"

We threw the word "centralization" out the window because we realized it was as hard to define as "uber" like six months ago, at least here in PR. You literally don't know what you're talking about.

Regardless, introducing and banning Pokemon from the standard metagame every month or so is not going to do us any good. I fear that D/P will be remembered as the metagame without any true tiers, with constant shifting and manipulation of statistics. A Suspectless metagame is impossible to reach. Every metagame had a core group of Pokemon that dominated and I don't see why we're trying to force this generation to be any different. If anything, the community needs to decide on a metagame (preferably one that emulates the style of play used in national tournaments) and stick with it. It will then evolve as needed to deal with the core group of highly used Pokemon, who will still remain highlly used since they are just that. What I feel is a problem is that too many people feel that a Suspectless metagame is one in which they can counter everything, which was NOT the intent of D/P. D/P was created as an offensive metagame that rewards those who think outside the box and can come up with a moveset and surprise nearly an entire team. You're not going to be able to counter everything and until people realize this, the method for determine what Pokemon will be allowed in our standard metagame will remain a problem.

Who said anything about "countering everything"? This has been warned against in Surgo's Treatise for almost two years now, well before DP even hit the states. Garchomp was banned in large part because of how easily it can sweep a team in common battle conditions with little to no risk to itself or its team. Advance didn't really have one pokemon that dominated—Tyranitar came close at the end with the advent of CB Tyra to add to what Boah did to stall, but the dominiating threats in Advance were team-based: stall in 2004 and Baton Pass teams from 2006 on.

Besides, even if you were right, your "I don't see why we're trying to force this generation to be any different" is quickly answered by a "we're trying to get things right". Nobody complained about Legendary EVs until this year either, but we did the right thing there and we are doing the right thing by analyzing how pokemon that may or may not be suited for standard actually fare in standard. Maybe not everyone is content to just sit on their butt and wait for things to happen.

 

[Mekkah]

_______________________________________
everything under this line is on-topic and relevant again

So it seems the problem with bold voting is bias. The obvious abstract solution would be: eliminate bias. Force people to compare the metagame with and without the suspect, without having in the back of their minds whether they think it's uber or not.

Oh wait, that's pretty impossible right? Kinda. But just to throw a possibility out there that at least brings us closer: force voters to compare the metagame with and without the suspect in their reasoning. They can use their own standards for which metagame they would rather play. Basically, this way, people vote for the metagame they want.

Stats should be provided about what is more and less common to aid the reasoning.

imo, votes should not be neglected for any reason other than if people are not comparing these two metagames.

just posted because jump's cresselia will strangle me if i dont

 

[Fishin]

The majority of the reasoning behind public votes (even in PM form) will be pure verbatim, nothing but the same lines rephrased over and over in an attempt to make it appear that you know what you're talking about, regardless of whether or not you truly do. As I said before, there is no value to bold voting, as nothing really comes out of you expressing a reasoning other than someone determining whether or not your reasoning is of worth. It's adding more bias to an already biased and broken system.

This sums up most of my feelings on why bold voting is a bad idea. There are a few other problems, though - firstly, bold voting means that anyone that can come up with/copy an argument that sounds reasonable can vote, whether or not they play the game. Letting someone that doesn't play the game at all vote is a bit silly, in my opinion - sort of like letting someone from another country vote for the president of the USA. And while having a rating requirement doesn't mean 100% of the voters are going to be intelligent, it does a decent job of weeding out a lot of people that would likely vote without having a firm grip on the metagame. And even if someone is voting for a bad reason, bold voting doesn't do anything to stop that - all they have to do is reword someone else's vote reasoning, and they're in.

The system we have now isn't perfect, but it does a pretty good job and is a hell of a lot better than bold voting.

 

[Hipmonlee]

This blatant inconsistency gives me reason to believe that you're just pissing on the bold voting process any way you can, even if you're going to contradict yourself, and this is not what this thread or this community needs.

That statement was not inconsistant, and your suggestion I was just pissing on the bold voting process rather than actually saying anything relevant is unacceptable. Bold voting is a terrible idea, and before my post it was supported by everyone except Syberia. It is entirely constructive to point out flaws.

As for the inconsistency (which you may or may not want to read but I feel I have to defend since you called me out on it), the point was that last time most of the arguments on both sides of the debate were rehashing the points made by prominent members. It just happened that on one side of the debate you accepted those arguments and on the other side you rejected them.

A vote in PM doesnt really resolve any issues, I mean, surely we have to have some kind of debate, and people can just pluck their responses from that.

Ultimately I dont know how you can prevent someone from voting based on noncompetitive reasoning. I am pretty sure that bold voting is a bad way of going about it, and if the argument is supporting bold voting, then I have to argue against it. I want a good outcome.

I also dont believe that uncompetitive justifications are really worth the effort to stop.. At least, not by any means so far suggested.. I mean, there is so much work involved with it at every point, for something that I dont believe is really having a big impact on the votes..

Have a nice day.

 

[Jumpman16]

fishin i already posted twice about how i am open to the notion of votes being PMed to talliers. this would virtually do away with the ability to copy good reasoning, even though as the old bold vote threads went, nobody knew what tangerine and i were going to consider good votes anyway. i know i've posted a lot of words in this thread but please try to read my threads in full before posting in the future, thanks.

regardless, Aeolus, Mekkah myself and a few others talked for a good while in #insidescoop about all this, and we have come to a general consensus that bold voting does more harm than good. we all agree that there is some degree of bias in both methods but that attempting to judge other votes is kind of problematic. first, let me say for the seventh ("half a dozen" + 1) time that i never liked the process, even if it may come across otherwise. second, i can't help but feel that if three talliers were on the same page and if voting was blind that we could greatly reduce bias, but i am not stubborn enough to keep suggesting it. remember that i posted this thread for input like aeo and mekk gave me, and that i don't ever "mandate" without coming to you guys first!

so that said, here are the new Suspect Test Voting requirements:

1655 Rating
65 Deviation

There's just no reason to disagree with X-Act, so yeah. Most important though, we are going to strive for 75-100 voters to essentially decrease variance there. There's no way 32 votes are enough even if everyone has a perfect understanding of what "uber" means and accepts our philosophy for competitive pokemon.

 

[Jumpman16]

That statement was not inconsistant, and your suggestion I was just pissing on the bold voting process rather than actually saying anything relevant is unacceptable. Bold voting is a terrible idea, and before my post it was supported by everyone except Syberia. It is entirely constructive to point out flaws.

Not if you don't suggest how we can fix the flaws. I'm not saying you didn't at least attempt to, but Syberia definitely didn't. And besides that, in response to his second post, I explicitly said "our aim is to hammer down a better method, not to nitpick current and past ones." You either largely missed this or ignored it, regardless of how constructive you think it is to just "point out flaws".

As for the inconsistency (which you may or may not want to read but I feel I have to defend since you called me out on it), the point was that last time most of the arguments on both sides of the debate were rehashing the points made by prominent members. It just happened that on one side of the debate you accepted those arguments and on the other side you rejected them.

You were being inconsistent in stating that voters knew what needed to be said in order to justify a vote and could make prewritten responses, but also saying that it wasn't clear what exactly needed to be said in order to pass a vote. It cannot logically be both. Address that point or concede that it is an inconsistancy and drop it.

And Hip, how many times have I told you that you are going to have to point out bias to me? Didn't I explicitly say in that thread, after the fourth time you and Tang accused me of bias, that I would infract the next person to accuse me of that without pointing to evidence? Are you just daring me to infract you because you're a Super Mod and you're being subtle about this or something? Seriously, why do you keep brining this up, on IRC and on the forums, when it is entirely a personal matter you should be PMing me about if you actually care?

Besides, who cares now anyway but you? The process, if used again, would be fined-tuned to reduce bias from any tallier, but you don't even hint that that's why you're bring it up. You certainly never once have said Tangerine demonstrated bias when he certainly did and admitted to such. But that all is over and under the bridge, which is the entire reason why I said to PM me about it if you really wanted to talk about it again because it is so unbelievably off-topic what I personally did four months ago that it's insulting to everyone here.

A vote in PM doesnt really resolve any issues, I mean, surely we have to have some kind of debate, and people can just pluck their responses from that.

We do? Why?

And for the third time, what makes you think everyone will know what to plagiarize? I'm sure everyone thought the "Deoxys kills offense" argument would fly on its own, when in actuality others stated that their teams should have been tailored in such a way that deals with a prominent threat.

Ultimately I dont know how you can prevent someone from voting based on noncompetitive reasoning. I am pretty sure that bold voting is a bad way of going about it, and if the argument is supporting bold voting, then I have to argue against it. I want a good outcome.

If you want a good outcome, suggest a good alternative to the problem I have clearly underlined, instead of just picking at old wounds. How can you say you don't know why I wouldn't want to accept 5KR's vote but then, instead of suggesting a better idea (or even acknowledging that his reasoning literally have nothong to do with competitive pokemon), you decide to further bash bold voting? You're not adding anything by doing that, I don't know how many times I have to repeat it.

I also dont believe that uncompetitive justifications are really worth the effort to stop.. At least, not by any means so far suggested.. I mean, there is so much work involved with it at every point, for something that I dont believe is really having a big impact on the votes..

Have a nice day.

Are you going to suggest any means? Everyone in this thread but you and Syberia who has expressed opposition to a current or past method has at least suggested something new. I don't care if you don't actually agree with me that new suggestions are needed. The fact is that you are not doing what I have asked about three times now, and this is my thread. If you aren't going to or don't want to stay on topic, don't post. It's that simple.