I think the fundamental issue lying in the UnderUsed Council system is the lack of community interaction in the tiering/banning process. Unlike the suspect testing in the other tiers, the Koko method relies on the decisions on a handpicked council, which could either be biased based on favoritism on Koko's part (kind of unlikely) or playstyle bias to some degree (which may sound like a ridiculous claim but can definitely be a potential bias factor). Either way, I don't know how long it will take for Smogon to implement a PS Ranking link to your smogon account, but when it does happen I suggest decision via Elo and/or Glicko.
To be blunt, Elo is a considerable factor for determining a player's raw ranking in a metagame and Glicko (from what I know from Chess Glicko rating) determines how skilled the person is in the metagame (differentiates People who rip teams from Team Showcase to climb from actual good players). By using these two factors, you can create a threshold for a voting pool. You can use this group created by this threshold to discuss and vote on potential suspects in the metagame. This creates two things:
1) A goal for ladder climbers to achieve
2) A larger sample size/voting pool to reduce potential bias
Regarding the first point, I personally feel that UU kind of lacks a goal for players to achieve other than to continue climbing. Whereas suspect tests encourage players to get past a certain ladder qualifications to vote, UU has none of that competitive climbing (Beating
kokoloko 's and
hilarious ' ladder rankings is an admirable goal don't get me wrong ;) ). By installing this kind of laddering function, it's make laddering in UU more.
The second point comes from a statistical view. Considering how large the UU playerbase is (which is pretty substantial) and how many players sit at a high ladder ranking, I honestly think that 11 really good UU players is hardly a large enough sample size to make a decision. By increasing the sample size from "Council" to "Top Ladder Players + Council", you have a larger pool of players who achieve and maintain high ladder ranking through different playstyles (e.g.
hilarious ' use of stall and
kokoloko 's and someone else's use of Rain Offense). By having multiple viewpoints regarding top-tier play, you have a better voting pool that can reduce decision or playstyle preference bias in a smaller sample size.
Now, I know this kind of sounds like Suspect Testing, but there are a couple of amendments that makes it different.
1) Players who achieve the ranking are put in the voting pool unless below.
2) Inactivity on the ladder, failure to vote in to consecutive voting rounds, or falling below a certain position on the UU ladder* (such as a super-bad tilt) are removed unless they can redeem themselves.
*This part is slightly up for debate since the way the ladder functions may call for readjustments for qualifications (i.e. ladder inflation)
For very high-level players (e.g. top 20 UU ladder), this shouldn't affect you at all, but this method allows for ladderers who are at the cutoff and are in risk of dropping to cultivate better battling techniques and strive for a better understanding of the metagame. This pool of top ladderers serve as a decision committee for retests and potential bans. Through discussion, they (theoretically) can discuss potentially broken Pokemon that should be brought to the Council's attention. Furthermore, the council still reserves the power to call for a ban discussion on an element of a metagame (i.e. a Shadow Tag), but the decision comes down to a vote session from both the top ladder players as well as the Council. For example, if hilarious says that U-Turn should be banned, it's just merely a discussion point and has no real impact. However, if one of the council members calls for a suspect on U-Turn, a council + top-ladder playerbase vote ensues. I know that voting is a major hassle to everybody, both for voters and those who have to tally up the votes, but I'm sure some solution might come to light. For retests and tri-monthly drop bans, this becomes less convoluted as the "suspect" stage is essentially the week it's released from BL, so all that To emphasize council authority, council member votes are worth 2 while the others are worth 1.
It's definitely not perfect, but it's a very viable method once Smogon finds a way to synchronize PS! alts with Smogon user accounts. I've defended the Smogon method multiple times when people say that Smogon rules are a dictatorship. Simply put, Smogon "does not ban Pokemon; the community agrees on whether or not it should be banned or not". After being anti-Koko method for quite a while, I can see what Koko is trying to attempt with the banning of potentially broken Pokemon, but in the process UnderUsed has deviated a bit from the original intention of Smogon and competitive battling in general. By putting some of the decision power back into the community, UnderUsed can still achieve Kokoloko's goal for a more streamlined process in dealing with broken shit while still making the community feel that they are being proactive in the tier.
Also, this heavily relies on the fact PS! stats and Smogon account synchronization, so please don't post arguments on feasibility. And for those who are wondering about this, if you go to anyone's profile, the last tab says "PS! rank".
