Ubers suspect testing aftermath

[chaos]

Hi all,

Earlier today a suspect test for Ubers concluded. The way the results were interpreted were... controversial to say the least, leading to me overturning the ruling. Just to get this out of the way,

Mega Gengar will not be banned from ubers, and neither will Shadow Tag, just as the community voted.

We do not intend to remove Fireburn from his position, especially given that he is new to this all, having only been appointed less than a month ago. We are instituting new policies to ensure new tier leaders understand what is expected from them. I apologize to anyone who felt they didn't get a say in this suspect test, and I hope it is some consolation that the error was corrected quickly. We'll try to prevent anything like this from happening again.

Why did the Uber tier try suspect testing things?

Ubers is the closest Smogon tier to "anything goes", so this is a reasonable question. The answer is simple: we like to try different things. It's difficult to grow as a community if we stick to the script every generation. This is also the reason that UU works differently than all of the other tiers.

I think it's the consensus of the Smogon Ubers community that the Uber suspect tests were a bad idea, and we will not be doing them anymore.

Is the Showdown outage related to the suspect test?

No, the servers have been under attack for the past week. It's just an unlucky coincidence. If you hear otherwise, you are being rused.

Can I influence test results by raiding Smogon?

Friends from other sites: we are glad you are interested in participating in our community metagames! Unfortunately if you want to influence the outcome of a suspect test, you have to actually *participate in the test*. We look forward to your participation in the next test (although it wont be for Ubers!)

I think there is also the misunderstanding that outrage on other sites had something to do with the decision to overturn: i.e, some people think the story is "Smogon bans Shadow Tag", "<other site> gets mad and raids Smogon", "Smogon unbans Shadow Tag." In reality I overturned the decision because of Smogon community members voicing their complaints on our IRC server; I found that the controversy had reached other sites much later.

 

[Theorymon]

I just want to say this guys: please don't dogpile on Fireburn here. Not only is he new to this, but we're all human, so sometimes we make mistakes! Also, don't bash Melee Mewtwo for similar reasons. His reasons for stepping down actually don't have anything to do with the test. Even if they did though, no one deserves to be ripped apart for a mistake regarding a Pokémon game!

I know this whole Shadow Tag suspect test has been quite an ordeal. This has caused stress and fractures in our fine community for several months now, and it broke my heart seeing us fight so viciously over this test in the suspect thread, and elsewhere in the community.

But now, this dark chapter in Ubers history has come to a close, and what is presented in front of us is an extremely bright future! We got some CRAZY new toys to play with in Ubers, with new megas and the awesome new primal Groudon and Kyogre that you can use WITH Mega Pokémon. I mean, this Friday, we are going to be living in a world where Groudon is one of Kyogre's BEST SWITCH-INS! Who ever thought that'd happen?!

So people, we went through some tough times here in Ubersland... but don't let that get you down! Soon, we are gonna have one HELL of a time with the powerful, but lovable titans of Pokémon once more!

Let this be a thread of healing for this community, because we have fun times ahead! =)

 

[PISTOLERO]

Hello, I got taken out by the flu on Friday and have not seen or read anything on here in four days so I have no idea what is happening. Could someone explain to me, either here or privately via PM, what happened? I saw that there was a small majority for ban in the voting thread a couple of minutes ago, could someone also tell me what "raiding Smogon" means?

P.S. gonna go see if there's a Verlisify video on this right now~

Edit: wow, there isn't! :]

 

[Fixed]

I'm not sure how I feel about not suspecting anything in Ubers anymore... *cough* evasion

 

[Inspirited]

With the Gengarite test, the community changed quite a bit for the worse, and I can't say I am the only one who thinks this either. It only got worse with the Tag suspect, but I am very glad to see we are passed it now. There is still a lot of repair work to be done, but the dark part is over. Like Theorymon, I am very glad this all happened before ORAS came out and its new mons and formes that will turn Ubers inside-out anyhow. now we can all be happy messing about in ORAS without this, or any other suspect looming, which is something I greatly look forward to. I trust that the new policy that comes out of this debacle will make this a much better community to be in.

The Ubers Community is reborn :]​

 

[casklord]

I'm not sure how I feel about not suspecting anything in Ubers anymore... *cough* evasion

Fixed
No more suspect testing just means ordinary players will not have a say if the banning process. Instead tiering staff will be the ones to decide. If evasion becomes uncompetitive it will still be banned but by the staff instead of a suspect test.

 

[apt-get]

Fixed
No more suspect testing just means ordinary players will not have a say if the banning process. Instead tiering staff will be the ones to decide. If evasion becomes uncompetitive it will still be banned but by the staff instead of a suspect test.

That isn't actually what chaos meant: rather, Ubers will not have bans anymore (I think?).

 

[Inspirited]

That isn't actually what chaos meant: rather, Ubers will not have bans anymore (I think?).

After talking with Fireburn, I can almost positively confirm that there will still be bans, they will just be brought up in a different way that hasn't been decided yet.

 

[casklord]

After talking with Fireburn, I can almost positively confirm that there will still be bans, they will just be brought up in a different way that hasn't been decided yet.

Yeah if something broken is released in ORAS bans will definately be needed. And i alao agree with no suspect testing for ubers. As even i who am pretty bad at ubers managed to get and go well above reqs to vote.

 

[QueenOfHax]

One thing that needs to be said about this ordeal is this: the longer the suspect test period is, the higher the chance something will go wrong. The most controversial suspects have all ended up becoming huge dramafests because as time passed people started getting second thoughts and in the end it all boiled down not to "which side has the more convincing argument" but to "which side has the better used car salesman marketing skills" so to speak.

 

[Toshhy]

I intrepret it as this, no pokemon (forms and mega included) will be banned. Evasion, Sleep and Moody are clauses put in place because they are inherently uncompetitive. If Shadow Tag was to be banned, it would remove certain Pokemon (and/or megas and forms) entirely from play which would violate what the Uber tier is all about (using any Pokemon).

 

[Picollo]

finnaly the Pokemon Community returns to the old "Uber= Everything goes" Mentality. I was quite concerned, that a small Group was overdeciding the Majoritys feelings, although even this small Group is part of the Community at all.

When you make a democratic Process, the result is completly open and there should be no restrictions on "how a vote is counted or not". I mean , everybody who did registrate for Regs had atleast some experience with the Uber Metagame and find an own logic if Stag should be banned or not. There is no RIGHT or WRONG. We are all Humans with different experiences....

 

[SparksBlade]

so (hopefully) evasion will be banned by tiering staff! The biggest curiosity i(and many others) had is what would happen to MGar, but maybe we'll never know :)

 

[Majickary]

Well Ubers isn't exactly the most "anything goes" format, that's Hackmons :)

I'm happy with this decision. The suspect test turned out to be rather dubious in my opinion. Three mods read the paragraphs, of whom two are pro-ban and the last neutral. Three times as many no-ban votes are disallowed over those that are pro-ban, before the pro-ban side winning by three votes, or 2.6%, with the threshold for ban drawn at 50% instead of 66%. My paragraph was rejected, yet I touched on many of the points that were given as the sole reason for no ban by some of the accepted paragraphs.

Overall I agree the suspect test was more fractious and divisive than it should've been, but what's done is done. Looking forward to the new metagame, lol @ Groudon being one of the best switch ins to Kyogre.

 

[PISTOLERO]

Well Ubers isn't exactly the most "anything goes" format, that's Hackmons :)

I'm happy with this decision. The suspect test turned out to be rather dubious in my opinion. Three mods read the paragraphs, of whom two are pro-ban and the last neutral. Three times as many no-ban votes are disallowed over those that are pro-ban, before the pro-ban side winning by three votes, or 2.6%, with the threshold for ban drawn at 50% instead of 66%. My paragraph was rejected, yet I touched on many of the points that were given as the sole reason for no ban by some of the accepted paragraphs.

Overall I agree the suspect test was more fractious and divisive than it should've been, but what's done is done. Looking forward to the new metagame, lol @ Groudon being one of the best switch ins to Kyogre.

Hello, could you not accuse Fireburn and Melee Mewtwo of rigging the result, that is incredibly rude and you should think twice before insulting leading ubers players, one of whom is the tier leader, again.

The reqson your vote was thrown out was probably because you didn't understand the criteria of rhis suapect test and/or ripped off an anti-ban user`s posts and repeated them.

On another note, go Team Fireburn!

 

[Majickary]

I didn't accuse Fireburn and Melee Mewtwo of rigging the result. I just said it's suspicious. It's also impossible to rip off another user's posts since the posts are hidden (it's also incredibly rude that you're essentially accusing me of plagiarism). I'd post my paragraph here, but it's an episode of the past that I'd like to stay in the past. For the same reason if a mod wants to delete these posts I'll understand.

I may not have liked the entire affair, but I support chaos's decision to keep Fireburn as the tier leader. Mistakes happen. They have to happen before one can not make those mistakes. Go Team Fireburn!

 

[truedrew]

I didn't accuse Fireburn and Melee Mewtwo of rigging the result. I just said it's suspicious. It's also impossible to rip off another user's posts since the posts are hidden (it's also incredibly rude that you're essentially accusing me of plagiarism). I'd post my paragraph here, but it's an episode of the past that I'd like to stay in the past. For the same reason if a mod wants to delete these posts I'll understand.

I may not have liked the entire affair, but I support chaos's decision to keep Fireburn as the tier leader. Mistakes happen. They have to happen before one can not make those mistakes. Go Team Fireburn!

Posts hidden my ass i would get an email update when someone replied to the thread and i can provide screenies
Maybe it was a glitch /etc but i did get a few updates of peoples votes so yeah had a fair idea in advance about what the result would be not anybodies fault just a glitch in the system



http://prntscr.com/57lule

 

[Grey Waves]

Hold on, I'm confused. According to the voting thread, "Ban" received 30 votes, whilst "No ban" received 27. This shows that the Ubers community (or at least, those who voted) were in favour of a Shadow Tag ban, so why did Chaos reverse the decision? It doesn't make sense.

 

[SketchUp]

Hold on, I'm confused. According to the voting thread, "Ban" received 30 votes, whilst "No ban" received 27. This shows that the Ubers community (or at least, those who voted) were in favour of a Shadow Tag ban, so why did Chaos reverse the decision? It doesn't make sense.

Around 50 votes were not accepted because the reasoning behind the vote was not good enough in the opinion of the Ubers council
If those 50 votes would count, Shadow Tag would not be banned (it would be like 45-60 for not ban) so it is very weird that Shadow Tag was actually banned because around half of the votes did not count

 

[boo836]

I'm just going to apologize because earlier I guess I was implying that there was a strong intent to rig the test, which honestly isn't really that fair to Fireburn or MM. Rather, I meant to just criticise their handling of the test because hey, we all make mistakes.

I realize I'm not influential here by any means, but i was definitely one of the users posting the most inflammatory comments, which probably did fuel a lot of the current sentiment towards the test.

For that, I apologize.

If policy changes are needed, i'll gladly offer any help I can give. While I'm not really an ubers player anymore (nor influential as i have stated previously), I'll still help if need be.

 

[boltsandbombers]

Hold on, I'm confused. According to the voting thread, "Ban" received 30 votes, whilst "No ban" received 27. This shows that the Ubers community (or at least, those who voted) were in favour of a Shadow Tag ban, so why did Chaos reverse the decision? It doesn't make sense.

I think it was partially because a lot of votes were rejected by the council and if that didn't happen the outcome would have been different. Also I heard that a lot of people were complaining about it, so chaos thought it was worth reversing it.

 

[a fairy]

Posts hidden my ass i would get an email update when someone replied to the thread and i can provide screenies
Maybe it was a glitch /etc but i did get a few updates of peoples votes so yeah had a fair idea in advance about what the result would be not anybodies fault just a glitch in the system



http://prntscr.com/57lule

I guarantee you this is not an intended function of said systems.

 

[Disaster Area]

I know this might seem out of line and that I'm probably gonna get myself in more trouble because that's my talent, esepcially since i'm bound to type something disagreeable but either way.. I totally agree with Theorymon and WreckDra about how it's affected the community.. I was glad to not be directly a part of it by the end, just because of how chaotic everything sort of went. Personally I think Fireburn will make a fantastic tier leader, and I feel that things should not have gotten out of hand with the way that it was handled before. The blame does lie to an extent with Hugendugen, but I am very empathetic that a lot of real life has affected how he's handled the tier; I want this comment to be acknowledged with respect to my awareness of this situation, that I still felt that it was handled poorly. However I feel that this has more or less already been acknowledged, so it is more of a commentary upon the past situation, than a criticism of the future. As it is this is why I am very welcoming to seeing Fireburn taking lead of the tier. He strikes me as someone who's both very aware of the history of the tier, the previous generation's metagames, conscious of player attitudes and the way that the tiers work, and yet is also still reasonably in touch with the current ubers playerbase, at more or less every level. Furthermore, he has (I am assuming, but I think it is a wise and correct assumption) the time and the desire to play the current and future generation 6 ubers tier. Whilst I'm sure some of the decisions to come will not be met with perfect agreement from the community (it never is, and ubers is in a pretty wack state right now), I feel that he will do a good job of tempering the balance between the competitive needs of the community, fostering its place in tournament settings, but also highly conscious of the ubers philosophy.

With due respect to the suspect discussion that we've had, although I feel that (1) it shouldn't have been handled by a suspect test, (2) laddering requirements shouldn't have been so low, and (3) the idea that we might be allowed to see the rejected vote be under serious consideration. I feel with (1) that with suspect testing generally having a very notorious history, combined with this being a highly controversial issue. I feel that perhaps the actual discussion element of itself was inherently quite productive, but the laddering and voting perhaps inappropriate, and, as is now being discussed already for the future, some other system should be used to handle it.

 

[shrang]

Hold on, I'm confused. According to the voting thread, "Ban" received 30 votes, whilst "No ban" received 27. This shows that the Ubers community (or at least, those who voted) were in favour of a Shadow Tag ban, so why did Chaos reverse the decision? It doesn't make sense.

Mega Gengar will not be banned from ubers, and neither will Shadow Tag, just as the community voted.

Yes, anti-ban actually did have more votes than ban (even with all the rejected paragraphs). Chaos implied that in his post.

 

[steve_man]

Hold on, I'm confused. According to the voting thread, "Ban" received 30 votes, whilst "No ban" received 27. This shows that the Ubers community (or at least, those who voted) were in favour of a Shadow Tag ban, so why did Chaos reverse the decision? It doesn't make sense.

Yeah but they rejected 43 anti-ban votes and only 18 ban votes. The most BULLSHIT thing about this suspect test was the paragraph / reasoning part. Every other suspect test just has you put your vote in, no paragraph necessary. I asked if they could provide some guidelines as to what would be accepted / rejected, but was ignored. The tier leaders being able to reject your vote for reasons you don't know until AFTER you voted made this whole thing rigged. I'm glad the community as a whole voted for anti-ban (before rejections) but the fact that there were 61 rejections all together means that the tier leaders have failed in providing information to the general public in order to manipulate their own agenda.