lol @ calling PR "elites and their stooges".
Lol @ typing this and following it up with a post as condescending as yours.
lol @ calling PR "elites and their stooges". i have pr access because i laddered, got reqs, and voted 4 times. i know there are at least 200 other users in a same boat. shits really not that hard to get.
if you are really an active contributor to the community at large, you'll have a badge in a manner of weeks or months. from a cursory look at your posting history, i see you've started doing C&C for RBY. yes, this will get you a badge assuming good quality and/or volume of work and nonproblematic behavior in a relatively short period of time, and you, too, can join the smogon elite! getting your first badge has nothing to do with kissing ass and everything to do with contribution.
you mentioned proxy posting so i assume you're aware of how it works, but if you feel that you have a compelling opinion to add to a discussion, you can ask someone that has PR access to post for you. if they think your opinion is compelling and doesn't blatantly shit on people that have contributed 1000x the amount you have to "the community at large" (so, your post above), they'll post it. i don't know what the requirements are for PR access, but i would assume that if you repeatedly show that you have compelling contributions to discussions, you can ask a senior staff member for access.
as for your suggestion about the subforum mirroring PR but being open to unbadged members....if this is the type of post and you are the type of poster that is expected to populate this subforum, i would say that the subforum is going to be pretty uninformed and unproductive. so i wouldn't hold my breath on it happening.
Since you've been through my posting history, I suppose you'll note that the analyses I've written have received absolutely no significant response whatsoever. Literally one person cared enough to give me feedback. Everything else got ignored, a pattern that persists across other RBY analyses, as many are/were languishing in that forum for months without anyone doing anything
When I
research unearthed mechanics in RBY, my findings get ignored and buried for over 2 years before anyone seriously discusses them. When people do discuss them, discussion has unsurprisingly regressed to the point where I might as well have never done anything
Even when I try to help in other ways, like taking on the tedious task of linking every pokemon in the
ORAS Ubers VR thread to their respective analysis, my post gets ignored (I think it's amusing that my bitchy edit hasn't been removed as of yet).
On the flipside, I've hosted tournaments regularly for years, written countless analyses and filled a prominent leadership role for the RBY community on Pokemon Perfect, which has only in recent years lost its mantle as the home of RBY. I daresay that you may scoff at claiming work contributed on another site as being substantial here, but that distinction means little in the context of the RBY community, which has historically migrated between various forums, often being active on several forums simultaneously. It's no exaggeration to say that RBY on Smogon would be nowhere close to what it is today without the work done on Pokemon Perfect, and I've played no small part in helping with that. I apologise for being the one to toot my own horn, but I really feel this is a reasonable representation of my role in the RBY community and accurately reflects the importance of non-Smogon communities within the broader RBY community.
Again, I understand that you may dismiss my past contributions to the community based on the fact that they mostly came on a site other than smogon, but as mentioned, that distinction is totally arbitrary in the context of RBY, and it's not as though I'm asking for a position of authority. I'm merely asking for a reasonable opportunity to voice my opinion, which I believe is of value based on my role within the community. When deprived of that opportunity (especially since contributing on Smogon consistently goes unrewarded and unrecognised), is it really any surprise that it feels like one's voice is being suppressed, and that views of smogon and its bureaucracy become antagonistic?
On a thread that will eventually link back to antagonism, your line of "just ladder for suspect tests, it's ez" is something that really doesn't apply, given that I predominantly play RBY- what suspect tests can I ladder for? I suppose I could pick up tiers for the sake of getting TC badges, but then am I really contributing to the community, or am I just whoring my way to PR access? It's a path I refuse to take, because I'm going to stick to what I'm truly passionate about- RBY (I also have a passing interest in ubers across all gens bar 1 and 4, for reference). The only thing resembling a suspect test that was held recently didn't even offer that kind of opportunity, instead it explicitly excluded prominent members of the community, which was nothing if not antagonistic.
Despite all that, I genuinely do want to contribute my insights and ideas to the competitive pokemon community, and I accept that despite my disgust for smogon, working with it is the only pragmatic possibility for this. Although my post was blatantly trolling, the core idea was a sincere suggestion, and people that well, know me better, know that I am still looking to develop ideas in a constructive manner, not merely to troll.
Obligatory note that this post is meaningless, since I know you're not the person to raise these concerns with, but man I just want to express it anyway