I've talked about this a lot on IRC, but I've been procrastinating on making a PR thread about it. It's a long and complicated issue, and the possible solutions are not clear-cut. But I think it is important to the CAP project, so here goes...If you are not an experienced member of the CAP community, it is strongly recommended that you do not post in this thread.
This thread is intended to contain intelligent discussion and commentary by experienced members of the CAP project regarding CAP policy, process, and rules. As such, the content of this thread will be moderated more strictly than other threads on the forum. The posting rules for Policy Review threads are contained here.
When I organized the CAP forum and project rules, I looked at the good and bad examples set by Cooper (the CAP project founder) and Hyra (the CAP 2 TL), and tried to base the rules on a few fundamental principles that seemed crucial to future project success. I'd like to focus this PR thread on one of those fundamental principles:
I realize that is somewhat vague and subjective, but the Topic Leader is intentionally granted very wide powers to set polling options and interpret voting results. These powers are not granted to make the Topic Leader feel good, or to allow the Topic Leader to overturn polls results on a whim. The powers are granted to protect the project from making broken, stupid, or unimplementable decisions.The community will democratically vote on all aspects of new pokemon creations. However, the process will ensure that there are no bad options available to be chosen.
It is the TL's job to make sure that in every poll, there are no "bad" options. That doesn't mean that all the options are perfect, or wonderful -- but none of them should be "bad". I use quotes on the word "bad" -- because I realize that it is impossible to objectively define a "bad" option.
Popularity does not equal quality. In fact, sometimes in large completely democratic processes -- a severe lack of quality can actually cause an INCREASE in popularity. It's the counter-culture syndrome that kicks in.
If you don't think this happens, then don't bother posting in this thread, because you have your head in the sand."Haha, that option sucks so bad -- I think I'll vote for it just to be funny or different!"
Can a horrible option actually WIN a CAP poll? Probably not. But that's not the problem. The problem is during the earliest polls, when trying to determine a slate of options. In situations where the possibilities are limited, it's not a big deal. But, in situations where there are a huge number of possibilities (like Concept, Art, Stat Spread, Moves, etc) -- the horrible options can actually bubble up and make the slate more easily than other "legitimate" options. In many of these situations where there aren't clear "top" options, the inclusion of a couple of bullshit options in the first click poll -- it can dramatically affect the final results. In those situations, it's entirely possible that a "good" option that has a real chance to win, could be forced out by one or more bullshit counter-culture options that cannot win. Even worse, in this day and age of rigged polls and voting scandals -- we could find that someone successfully engineers a poll such that an intentionally crappy option ACTUALLY WINS.
You may be thinking,
No. You are wrong."Hey Doug, CAP is a democratic project. We have to go with what the community wants."
The community does choose everything. That's true. But, as I mentioned above, the process needs to make sure that the community only has legitimate, high-quality options to choose from. If we do that, then we really should not care what the community chooses. Yes, everyone has preferences, but knowledgeable objective leaders on the project should not fear any option being chosen. If all options are "good" -- then we simply administer the polls and let the community decide by popular vote.
You may be thinking,
It makes the community look bad. Particularly when counter-culture votes push some piece of crap options above high-quality options. It advertises that the CAP process can be manipulated, and it discourages people from working hard to make the best pokemon possible. I don't really care if we make a bad pokemon, per se. But if the creation process is not interesting and engaging for intelligent, hard-working project contributors -- then I have a BIG problem with that. The CAP project should not be a place for people to toss in half-assed contributions for lolz. This is not a place where we celebrate and promote contributions from noobs or idiots, by putting them front-and-center on a CAP poll. That mentality may go over big in Firebot or Trou du Cul -- not the CAP project."What's the harm in all this? So what if there are some bad options in a poll?"
If you look at early CAP projects and read the process guide carefully, you'll notice that we never used to let broad community vote determine ANY slate for CAP polls. The general pattern of the rules is this:
1) A discussion thread allows an open cattle-call for ideas and possible options to be presented and discussed
2) During the discussion, the Topic Leader gets an idea of who are the most intelligent and active participants, and which ideas are most popular amongst the non-idiots in the community.
3) If the aspect of the pokemon requires a submission (stat spread, movepool, etc) -- then the TL rewards a few of the best discussion participants, and asks them to make a submission.
4) If the aspect simply requires 10 options to be pulled into a slate, the Topic Leader uses feedback in the discussion thread to determine which of the high-quality options are most popular amongst knowledgeable, literate, and interested members of the community. The TL picks the top 10 options, and then serves it up to the community to decide the final winner.
For some reason, the last several Topic Leaders have abdicated responsibility for composing high-quality slates of options. Instead of following the general steps above, the Topic Leaders simply open a big bold voting thread, with every possible option or submission in play. They let the community's bold votes determine the top 10. In my opinion, this is a problem. These bold voting threads allow all sorts of dumb shit to get attention. It also causes a degradation in the quality of the discussion threads. It does not encourage intelligent, reasoned discussion, in an effort to "impress" the Topic Leader. Instead, it encourages baseless propaganda and bandwagoning. The discussion thread turns into an "advertising campaign". 2) During the discussion, the Topic Leader gets an idea of who are the most intelligent and active participants, and which ideas are most popular amongst the non-idiots in the community.
3) If the aspect of the pokemon requires a submission (stat spread, movepool, etc) -- then the TL rewards a few of the best discussion participants, and asks them to make a submission.
4) If the aspect simply requires 10 options to be pulled into a slate, the Topic Leader uses feedback in the discussion thread to determine which of the high-quality options are most popular amongst knowledgeable, literate, and interested members of the community. The TL picks the top 10 options, and then serves it up to the community to decide the final winner.
This trend also removes the need for an intelligent, mature, reasonable Topic Leader on a CAP project. The Topic Leader on a CAP project used to be a true LEADER on the project. Now they are an administrative assistant or secretary for the project. The community values a TL who can reliably count votes, more than a TL that has a sound understanding of CAP principles and metagame knowledge. Topic Leaders do not feel any responsibility to act as a safeguard and protect the community from stupid popularity stunts, and bandwagons for broken or horrible options.
In the first few CAP projects, the early TL's made some famously controversial decisions. In CAP 1, Cooper strongly steered several decisions about Syclant's typing, ability, and moves. At the time, I disagreed with some of his decisions and I applauded others. But, he was the TL and it was his show. In CAP 3, Gothic Togekiss and I removed the front-running ability (remember auto-weather Greenhouse?), because a bandwagon was developing for something that many intelligent members of the community suspected would be completely broken. After a formal weather test later, it turned out to be the right move. But, it was not a unanimously popular decision at the time.
Because the Topic Leader is supposed to exert quite a bit of control over a pokemon, the onus is upon the community to select good Topic Leaders. Currently, I don't think the community or the Topic Leader really feel like the TL has much of an impact on a creation. I think people feel the TL is simply "along for the ride".
I do not prescribe to that school of thought. I think the TL needs to step up and take responsibility for THEIR pokemon, and make sure that it is IMPOSSIBLE for the community to make a horrible decision. They don't do this by overriding polls, or disallowing votes. They do it by setting slates of good options. If the community thinks a TL presents crappy slates, then voice your opinions beforehand in discussion threads, and convince others to join in. You need to sway the TL first, and then when the poll opens, advertise to the casual passerby voter. That was the intended process."If the community chooses a shitty option, it's not the TL's fault."
OK, that ends my rant about strong Topic Leaders. I don't really know how to enforce or encourage this. Maybe the process guide needs different wording? Maybe we need to outlaw certain bold polls and force the TL to choose a slate? I'm not really sure how we can make the Topic Leaders grow some balls and take control of CAP slates. Feel free to post suggestions here.
I'll also mention a completely different approach to solving the problem of slate determination -- caucuses.
A caucus is used in the American political system (and many other countries too) for determining slates of candidates for political office. Yes, technically anyone can run for political office. But, that does not mean that the general public chooses amongst every Tom, Dick, and Harry that wants to throw their hat in the ring. Every major office would have hundreds, if not thousands of candidates, and a general election would be impossible to administer. Therefore, small groups or "caucuses" are appointed to select the candidates. They don't determine the winner, but they DO determine which candidates are presented to the general public in the general election. Presumably, the members of the caucus are knowledgeable, active members of the political system -- and they know what they are doing. In reality in America, the caucus system can be corrupt as hell and do some stupid stuff, but that's not the point. The idea of a caucus is for a small group of knowledgeable people to not decide a poll, but to present a viable slate to the public.
Maybe the CAP project should NOT rely on a single superman Topic Leader to be the wise sage that makes good slates for all CAP polls? Maybe we should figure out a way to make small caucuses that determine slates? If we make caucuses, I would not suggest we have a single caucus for all polls. I think the caucuses should consist of people that are proven to be knowledgeable in the area of the poll for which they are choosing a slate.
For example, we could appoint a few different caucuses -- a Concept Caucus, Stat Spread Caucus, Art Caucus, etc. Each caucus could be restricted to only contain people that have placed in the top 3 of a past CAP project in the area for which they are serving on the caucus. For example, the Stat Spread Caucus would consist of people that have placed in the top 3 of the Stat Spread competition of a past CAP project. With 8 CAP projects under our belt, I think we have plenty of top finishers to populate each caucus. If someone is capable of making the top 3, we can presume that they know something about what it takes to do well in a CAP competition in their given area of expertise.
I can see all sorts of problems trying to organize and administer caucuses. I won't list it all out here. This OP is long enough as it is. I just wanted to throw the idea out there as an alternative solution for making good CAP slates. We don't necessarily need to pin it all on the TL.
I want to hear other opinions on the subject. And I want to shed some light on a growing problem over the past few CAP projects. In CAP 8, it came to a head. I feel that SEVERAL polls had options presented that were completely inappropriate. Some were flavor polls, and some were competitive polls. I don't think any final community decisions were inappropriate. But, I think many of the polls were "bad press" for the CAP project. It made the CAP project look stupid, inexperienced, and uncontrolled. And it needs to stop.