Do I have to have previous involvement in CAP to discuss, or do I just have to have a general understanding of the meta and process?
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Ask a Simple Question, Get a Simple Answer (CAP V. 3.0 READ THE OP!)
- Thread starter Deck Knight
- Start date
Anyone can participate in any part of the process, however, not everything is slated
The best and most supported ideas are the ones that are usually slated, and those can come from anyone
Feel free to participate, just make sure to read the rules and follow them, depending on the process or part of it some things may be accepted or not.
What does poll-jumping entail, exactly? Is it as rigid as referencing future stages at all? Would it be poll-jumping, for instance, to talk about CAP 37's access to Taunt (an assumed move) when considering its viability as a wallbreaker during the Role Discussion stage? What about mentioning that a specific type would better utilize certain moves, such as a type that gets STAB on a HP-draining move being better at utilizing them, if the concept was draining moves? Is it purely based on assuming things that aren't confirmed - arguing for bug-type because it gets STAB on U-turn?
Poll-Jumping is when you are posting in one step of the CAP process and you make reference to potential decisions that will be made in later steps. For example, if we are in the Typing stage, and you say, “I don’t think we should make this a Flying type, I would prefer we just give it Levitate”. That would be poll-jumping because you are making an argument for an Ability, but we are not in the Ability stage. Meaning you have “jumped ahead of the Typing poll” (which is what concludes the Typing step), and already began discussing the Ability step, even though the Ability step is not even open.
We put this rule in place, because without it, it makes it almost impossible to have a focused discussion. Effectively every stage became a convoluted discussion about every other stage at the same time. And it’s because, everyone knows that all of the characteristics of a Pokémon interact together, so it’s very natural to want to discuss how each aspect will interact with all the other aspects. But there’s simply no way to manage a step-by-step creation process, if you do not effectively force everyone to focus on literally one step at a time. So the rule was not put in place because it isn’t logical to want to discuss everything at once. It’s because we simply cannot manage a project of this size with so many opinions if we do not have control mechanisms to allow us to have an organized process.
Like most rules, it’s hard to put an exact definition on what constitutes poll-jumping or not. And in the past, there have been people that try to lineskate the gray area of the rule. But that’s why we have moderators. And in general, most experienced members of the community are aware that jumping ahead is unhealthy for the project as a whole, so they refrain from doing it, and they typically remind new members when they begin to edge into that sort of discussion. And of course, if it’s necessary, moderators will step in if it comes to that.
We put this rule in place, because without it, it makes it almost impossible to have a focused discussion. Effectively every stage became a convoluted discussion about every other stage at the same time. And it’s because, everyone knows that all of the characteristics of a Pokémon interact together, so it’s very natural to want to discuss how each aspect will interact with all the other aspects. But there’s simply no way to manage a step-by-step creation process, if you do not effectively force everyone to focus on literally one step at a time. So the rule was not put in place because it isn’t logical to want to discuss everything at once. It’s because we simply cannot manage a project of this size with so many opinions if we do not have control mechanisms to allow us to have an organized process.
Like most rules, it’s hard to put an exact definition on what constitutes poll-jumping or not. And in the past, there have been people that try to lineskate the gray area of the rule. But that’s why we have moderators. And in general, most experienced members of the community are aware that jumping ahead is unhealthy for the project as a whole, so they refrain from doing it, and they typically remind new members when they begin to edge into that sort of discussion. And of course, if it’s necessary, moderators will step in if it comes to that.