Thanks, MrBlack, for your input. Most newcomers who sign up, and subsequently find CAP wasn't what they were expecting, tend to just drop it without leaving any feedback. So your comments, and the fact that you bothered doing some research are much appreciated.
CAP does have the right to uphold the integrity of the project by encouraging intelligent, well-informed members to post. There is nothing wrong with having high standards, and CAP's goals are made plain to see. However, I do agree that there's a certain elitist fog in the air; but that that can be attributed to the some people's underlying assumption that a competitive appreciation of Pokemon is somehow 'better' than a form of value that isn't competitive-centric (evident in the disdain that drips forth whenever words like "fanboy" are used).
That said, I don't think newcomers necessarily are our target audience anyway. Smogon is replete with competitively minded users who battle regularly on Shoddy, and I don't think I'd be wrong in saying that those are the people we actually want to attract. Does anyone know what the community at large thinks about the CAP project? I don't...but last I heard, (and this was a long time ago) we were viewed as a disorganized, fledgling fanboy project. Obviously this view is no longer warranted, but it seems we're still trying to prove ourselves 'legit' in our occasionally derisive approach to dealing with the less informed newcomers we don't wish to be associated with or defined by.
The last surge of community participation I remember (aside from every art poll) was the EVO project. Whether it was cancelled because of gorm, fanboyism, the mandates of our own creed or whatever, the public enthusiasm was there. I'm not saying we need to try again with EVO, but that if we make it a point for CAP to be something people can get excited about on a widescale again rather than emphasizing it as 'something that is good for your brain', we'd worry less about defending the competitive value of our project because we'd be too busy having fun creating competitive Pokemon with dozens more like-minded individuals.
edit: speaking of which...if there were to be a thread opened asking people what they thought of the CAP project (as a transparent attempt to gauge public opinion) which would be the appropriate forum? Something like that may be closed in Stark, where the majority of Shoddy's users frequent, and it may not garner enough relevant attention in Congregation. Heck, maybe even a Smog article encouraging people to write in their opinions would be cool!