Transparency and Scrutiny of Tier Leaders

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Hi all, I am writing this post to share my thoughts on the current lack of transparency of the tier leaders/council on this site (in this case specifically OU, but I assume these issues are also present in other tiers) and how we can go about fixing this issue. For as long as I have been active on this website we have had these problems, but now in gen 8 there is a golden opportunity for a new way of thinking.

The Problem
People in power, specifically OU tier leaders/council members in this post, are chosen without any input from the community - literally 0. These self appointed 'leaders' now have the power to completely shift the game we play with meta-defining changes such as the recent sleep clause unban, and we as the community have no voice to oppose this. The best we can do is make a couple threads complaining and hope they listen to us (though they have no obligation to do so). I am sure if generally respectable and influential users such as Ojama hadn't posted, nothing would have been done at all. Conversely, the council may not be active enough in making changes - for example many users felt we should have had more testing done in SM OU, but there was simply no way that we could make our voices heard. You could argue that making discussion threads should be enough; council members are chosen to represent the best players in the community and they should have the power to over-rule us, right? This argument could maybe have some merit if the council members were chosen fairly... but let us look at the most recent additions, Charmflash and Kratosmana.

Specifically honing in on KratosMana (I have nothing against you personally bro, just making a point), this man has posted a grand total of 0 times in policy review in all of 2018/2019. He has 34 games on the sheet, 5 of them being in 2019 and none at all in 2018. Not to mention he has been tourbanned before. Now I'm sure he's really good at pokemon, but there are plenty of people who are good at pokemon. Why was he chosen over anyone else? Perhaps he has some merit that I'm missing, but unfortunately we can never know the answer because no reasoning was given. Like all council decisions these days, a simple 'Charmflash and Kratosmana are council now!!!' is expected to be enough for the masses. Maybe even this would be enough if the people appointing him were legitimate. But who voted Finchinator to be OUTL? The other members of the council, who are all illegitimate themselves? The council has become an echo chamber, recycling the same old opinions to each other and only appointing those friends who they know have a similar opinion to their own.

Members chosen without real qualifications/drive to post in PR threads leads to a lazy council. This can be seen in numerous council decisions where 2 members post their thoughts on a ban while the others don't even read the thread.

A quick aside on toxicity on this website, which I know has been recognised as an issue recently. Current issues with council decision making result in 3 types of behaviour - 1. vitriol, 2. excessive 'yes-manning', 3. disengagement.
1. When regular people's views are deemed to be second-rate to those of the almighty council, people resort to vitriol because they feel there is no other way to be heard.
2. When only people in with the council clique of ABR and co. have a chance of being heard, it breeds a certain 'yes-man' type of behaviour. People try be friends with those who have power, because what other chance does the common man have of getting power themselves? There is literally 0 way of breaking into the council or other positions without being on friendly terms with those on it already.
3. This may also result in less community engagement, because what's the point of writing my thoughts when they will be ignored anyway?

The Solution
There are many ways to go about fixing this and I welcome you, the reader, to post your own suggestions/general thoughts on this thread below.

I propose to create some sort of independent body which has the power to scrutinise council decisions. Regular smogonites can post their gripes to this body, and if there is enough data to suggest a real problem, the body will mount an independent investigation on the matter. The members of this body would ideally be senior staff who don't have much dealings with the actual tiers themselves. This body will only interfere when things have gone badly wrong within the council so I do not envisage much of an extra workload for those participating, provided other measures are also put in place.

The aforementioned measures include:
1. Give greater reasoning behind decisions. Why is this person chosen to be in the council? What does this person have that someone else doesn't? Why do you think this pokemon deserves to be banned?
2. Activity from everyone in the council. During a suspect thread or other such format for community input, I expect to hear from every single council member, not just one or two. If members become inactive and nothing is done by the council themselves then the independent body can step in, but again, this should really be solved by the council members of their own accord.
3. Anything else you can think of. Why can't we get to a point where council hopefuls have to submit a couple paragraphs stating why they are qualified, and then they are voted on by the wider community? This website is created by the people for the people - we can do anything if there's enough drive behind us.
 
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false

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i feel like there has to be some sort of quantifiable contribution linked to the awarding of a council position. it should be the bare minimum that users on council are engaging in the appropriate forum discussions (whether it be meta discussion or policy review) to some extent. currently that is not the case for multiple council members. being on council is a very important position, and a very small show of effort seems like a fair baseline for members who are quite literally in control of the direction of our flagship metagame.

one potential idea i had pertaining to the current council setup was to see if we would consider trying to rotate part of the council; so you keep a smaller, core group of members (perhaps ~4), and only fill out the remaining list on an as-need basis (using some sort of baseline of tour success/community participation (this could even potentially be voted on by community members))

rotating councils are a concept arent new, but as far as i know they haven't quite been done in this particular manner, and i think it has real promise as an idea, and would help solve some of the problems that the community has with the current council setup. it would also help ensure the council is always filled w/ top-tier active/invested/engaged players w/o creating the need for a whole group of users to permanently be performing council duties. for example, blunder's situation in sm would fit well in this kind of framework; when he was active and invested in the tier he was happy to give feedback and help with tiering. however, once he burned out, he sat as an inactive council member before eventually quitting. if we could have a system in place that catches active and engaged players when they are best able to contribute, we wont have to deal w/ replenishing inactive members, and will always ensure a fresh list of new voices to provide tiering/policy input when required. rotating the council like this would also solve one of the problems listed in the op; since currently successful tour/community engaged users would be in the small pool of users able to be added to the rotation it would ensure all council members at any time are well-reasoned, it is much less likely the community would be questioning/confused by a selection (it would also give aspiring users a template to look to if they wish to follow in that path)

another potential benefit would be the ability to enlist the help of some of the less amicable members of the community who probably don't have the confidence of the moderator team to be able to hold down a council spot in the long term. many of those users still have great effect on the direction of the ou tier, and getting their input will surely be beneficial (and since the setting is short term anyway, if they are unable to handle the responsibility then they could still be quickly removed w/o any real problems)
 
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Quite Quiet

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I propose to create some sort of independent body which has the power to scrutinise council decisions. Regular smogonites can post their gripes to this body, and if there is enough data to suggest a real problem, the body will mount an independent investigation on the matter. The members of this body would ideally be senior staff who don't have much dealings with the actual tiers themselves. This body will only interfere when things have gone badly wrong within the council so I do not envisage much of an extra workload for those participating, provided other measures are also put in place.
So your solution to councils not being supervised is to create a council? Who and how would this council be picked? What happens if this council doesn't do its job either? Do we make a council for the council council?

In theory, SS is meant to have an overall eye on things on the site, and there are channels that you can use to direct concerns/complaints/suggestions/etc. about Tier Leaders/Sections/Councils, but it doesn't seem utilized all that much. I could only speculate as to why, but is a thing. Maybe there are some improvements that could be made to the process as a whole, but I don't really understand what adding more people to some separate thing would do, when we could instead improve what's already in place.
 

Tricking

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hi, i agree with the OP, it presents all fair points in theory. there's only an issue: in practice the council system will always be flawed and i do not foresee a way to fix it. it is not possible to get a model of the perfect council member and people are obviously going to disagree with most picks; people currently in the council will keep choosing guys close to them because "they know them better", which is the real reasoning behind (almost) every choice on this site, no matter what the wording is. there are very few people with the courage to pick competent people they don't like and be willing to work with them, but this isn't something to blame, just a matter of fact. and what's more, you can't even say they are wrong because everything in this game is arbitrary; does the community want the best tournament players in the council? ok, sure, who are they? impossible to say, just have a look at how wrong power rankings and predictions turn out to be. the winner of what is considered one of the most prestigious tournaments on smogon wasn't even drafted in snake lolz. does the community want the best and most influential builders to lead a tier? how do you even measure it? by what "large mouths" in this community say? i'm not even sure about what the criteria to become a council member are (ou council has known tournament players, some lower tiers include worse players but great contributors).

i don't see how the proposal in the OP would actually change anything. like ok, we are making a board with other arbitrary criteria so that council members are required to justify their opinions more, but if i don't agree with something, it's not like cute wordings and prose exercises from council members will change my mind. if they write that kratosmana has been a great tournament player, a great builder, an active player before and after the tourban with fancy adjectives etc, this should NOT be enough to change your initial opinion (the bottom line will always be... yeah he's cool but there are better people to my eyes; he's there because "they know him better" as you said in the OP). in my opinion the council should only choose what to suspect, possibly make a new more challenging and not arbitrary reqs system (to be earned by everyone - tournament players should not get a free pass to vote). i don't really see any criterion that can justify a little group (in which the community has no say) to bypass the community's input in tiering decisions. of course the existence of a council makes initial decisions way faster but... is there even a point? get all quickbans done in a timely fashion and then don't touch anything for years like in SM?

my post leaves a lot of open questions and doubts. i tried to address to some of them, but i'm lost as well. there's some degree of certainty though... there's clearly more than something wrong in how decisions are taken when ojama's post gets so much support and new policy threads spring up like mushrooms.
 
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Since I'm one of those two additions I might as well share some of my insight, I've been enjoying sharing my views in the PR threads so far so why stop here.
This post is obviously just gonna reflect my personal opinion rather than the entire council's but here goes.

First of all I'd like to completely agree with you that the transparency has been pretty lacking and should be improved on. Back in my early smogon days every addition had clear reasoning every time one was made. This is definitely something that needs to get reinstated. Additionally every ban/suspect post needs to be able to clarify why every single Pokemon affected deserves to be. Looking at you Wob. My position has always been that Wob does not deserve to be removed from SS OU (there are screens of this in the smogtours server prior to me joining the council or any thread going up). I didnt want to speak out in favor of Wob because of what the discussion had turned into - our ability to do complex bans vs. pokemon bans only, rather than actual discussion about Wob's viability inside the metagame, but here it is, hopefully none interprets this the wrong way with the additional clarification.

Next up I'd like to remind you that the sleep clauses' removal was in fact not the council's decision but rather entirely on ABR & chaos. Missmanagement of said clause has however already been reversed & lead to ABR's resignation from Tier Leader. I was also the first person to speak out against said clause removal here, particularly the way it got removed. Which ties into your next point, the council being an echo-chamber. This is probably rooted in some truth, but the council themselves have already taken action to counteract this by adding two independent new councilmen to their ranks. My positions on issues have not changed due to this. I'm still of the opinion that Kartana and/or Mega-Mawile require public testing in SM OU. You can read on it here and here. My stance on Dynamax is public here. The only issue I've been completely on board with so far has been the moody clause removal, since it doesnt boost evasion anymore. Many of my believes run contrary to ABR's or the believes of other council members, yet I was reached out to. This doesnt mean that the issues have been resolved but at least I'd like people to acknowledge this fact.

I'm not too knowledgeable on the implication of council councils or other smogon-new power structures, so I will refrain from commenting on that part, but I hope that we as a whole can do a better job explaining the reasoning behind decisions when they are made going forward. Especially at the start of a new generation, where the metagame needs most guidance.
 
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bruno

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I don't usually post in these threads because I don't believe that my english's sufficient enough to truly be able to give my points in here(and still, it probably won't in this post too). Sure I can hold conversations just fine but this always feels like a more formal place of which, almost always, has people posting the same ideas I'd have within minutes in a way better constructed way. I do try my best to keep track of these though.
Could this be seen as another reason behind my position being detrimental? Maybe, but you don't need an a+ grade english to actually know how the metagame has been and I know I can speak to you about that.
I've played sword and shield at least a tad bit every day so far. I've been helping Pokeaim make these videos as well as helping him with the actual teams he uses on his videos. A lot of teams used by other famous youtubers(like this this or this) have often used what I build. This is in no way a form of bragging, but a showcase that I have genuine passion for the current metagame and have at least "influenced" a good portion of it so far, probably more than any other player currently(again, not as a form of brag especially since it's an extremely new metagame) seeing as these teams flood out the ladder and help people think of new ideas. I have tried my best to stay as active as I can on the council so far, and I plan to be active in threads like these to help people out with ideas(if anyone has questions they can PM me at any point and I'll try to do what I can as well) and help develop our metagame all together.
Of course, almost all of this can be done by any other capable player of this site, so I understand the idea behind the thread. I can't personally give you the reasoning behind my pick in particular, but I just wanted to make an honest post with no correlation to the council as to why I could possibly be included within a list of options.
 

chaos

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These self appointed 'leaders' now have the power to completely shift the game we play with meta-defining changes such as the recent sleep clause unban
An extra oversight mechanism would not have fixed this.

I am sure if generally respectable and influential users such as Ojama hadn't posted, nothing would have been done at all.
The only thing that post did was cause me to set alerts for this forum and commit to modding it for a few weeks. The sleep clause issue is not closed.

Perhaps he has some merit that I'm missing, but unfortunately we can never know the answer because no reasoning was given.
Decisions should definitely have good reasoning behind them, I intend to be a hardass about this in this generation.

But who voted Finchinator to be OUTL?
TL picks have constraints that the general public are not aware of/not qualified to speak on. These will always be picked by the SS, although it helps a lot if the community likes the pick too.

The members of this body would ideally be senior staff who don't have much dealings with the actual tiers themselves. This body will only interfere when things have gone badly wrong within the council so I do not envisage much of an extra workload for those participating, provided other measures are also put in place.
This is already how it works. Feel free to post in this forum with clear & succinct reasoning if you feel a leader/council/etc decision was in error.

2. Activity from everyone in the council. During a suspect thread or other such format for community input, I expect to hear from every single council member, not just one or two.
Sounds reasonable enough. I'll talk it over with the staff.
 

Diophantine

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Posting on behalf of watermess because he asked and doesn't have a badge.
I have just taken the time to read this post fully and I have to say it is extremely well written and flags an incredibly valid point. As a government and politics college student I find the scrutiny of the smogon world very, very interesting. I will go into some of the intricacies of different political models below and their importance in our societys below as some of these speak volumes in ragardes to lycan’s post above. But before I do, S/o to the 1 True Lycan Diophantine and Cam for bringing it to my attention and offering to proxy post on my behalf (since I havent voted in enough suspects to earn my badge yet). So without futher ado I will get straight into it.

So firstly, the issue at hand is that council members and even tier leaders can be chosen with no input from the community and of course, as lycan so eleoquently pointed out, “these self appointed leaders now have the power to completely shift the game we play” using examples of the recent sleep clause unban and lack of suspects in SM OU to illustrate that point. And it is clear that by this post, as well as things I have heard from friends and even just the sheer number of reactions to lycan’s post that users felt there is simply no way that we can make our voices heard and importantly linking to this hold a council accountable for the ongoings and decisions made in a teir.

So the smogon councils are undemocratic “big deal what difference does it make” I hear you say? Well in many modern democracies the way a government is held accountable for their actions is through direct democracy (decisions made by the people) and is commonly is exercised through a general election vote or referendums (suspect test would be an example of this but hilariously these can only be called by the council anyway) and this is what allows the people to ensure the government are doing their job right (since a government must listen to them to continue being in power) and also prevents corruption from being able to take a hold. But I digress, bringing it back to the question above, making smogon teirs more democratic by implementing an additional clause of direct democracy into the mix it would at least allow us to hold a council accountable and motivate them to be active in listening to the player base and in the kindest possible way “do their job propperly”.

Hopefully my “gobbledygook” was at least entertaining for you all, it sure was to me and hopefully this concept will be considered as I do belive that by keeping the council accountable somehow (does not really matter too much as long as it works) then it should facilitate a healthier community since teir leaders will hopefully want to listen to us, and so this gifts us a stronger voice when requesting things such as for suspect tests.

Yours

H3nz (watermess)

chaos edit: this can stay because I wanted to reply to it, but in the future i won't reply to proxy posts & they will be deleted per the PR rules.
 
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chaos

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Decisions need to be well-justified in our philosophical framework, I'm not interested in processes that could overturn that. I think it is useful for the public to have a way to indicate that councils are not doing their job, but as I/QQ stated there's already a mechanism for that. To the extent that there is an issue it will probably need to be solved by having more activity from leadership in areas that are not their own, or having a leader promoted specifically for this job.

sheer number of reactions
I've seen plenty of poorly argued posts get tons of reacts because they are written provocatively. In general I use reacts as an indicator that something should be looked into. But sometimes when I look into an issue I find out that many people who are angry & reacting do not even understand what the topic of discussion is, such as the recent Wobb dust-up.
 
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"These self appointed 'leaders' now have the power to completely shift the game we play with meta-defining changes such as the recent sleep clause unban"

If anything, I feel like the sleep clause fiasco was an example of the opposite. A council member did something he shouldn't have, the community was rightfully upset, and the change was reversed because the council still has to answer to senior staff / chaos / whoever

Tricking makes excellent points on how smogon just works. Yes people pick who they know well, this has been the case for moderator picks, tournament director picks, and so on. Its just how smogon is run and I'm not sure if there's a good way to change that. Singling out Kratosmana when Charmflash was also added to the council seems a bit silly to me since charmflash is THE example of someone who "isnt an ABR cronie" (not that kratosmana is but yea).

I agree that the council should be more transparent about why they add members. It would be nice for the community to know that Kratosmana, one of the more "quiet" tournament players, has been actively playing ss, building for various youtubers, and directly shaping and influencing the meta. It would also be nice to know that the reason charmflash was added (which should be obvious) is because of all his recent tournament accolades and active participation in discussion threads.

I just disagree with the implication that the council has no obligation or responsibility to the community (and those who arent a part of the council). They still have to answer to SS and those that run the site as mentioned by QQ and chaos.

I also dont see how another council to scrutinize the decisions of the council would work... who would even be on this??? Those that "have the qualifications" but arent in the council?

Smogon was never a democracy and it shouldnt be one. It's just not feasible. But there is definitely oversight.

Agreed with the other points regarding council member activity, posts in suspect threads, etc.
 

kumiko

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I really don't understand your proposal. For one, there already is a governing independent body; it's senior staff. You could have, you know, talked to them about it. But, like, you want a council to govern over a council? Who is this going to consist of? People who play OU but aren't on council? Well there's probably a reason they aren't, or they're worthy candidates and should just be added to the council. If it's just smogons higher ups, we already have that in place.

I was the one who brought up adding new members, because I wanted to reduce potential biases we may have when conducting suspect tests. 7 is far more ideal of a number than 5, in my opinion. We all have thrown out names for a while and I brought up Charmflash and KratosMana last week, to which both met both council and SS approval. We run pretty much every decision by some SS entity because that's how things work. They oversee stuff. But back to the point: I wanted to add them because they both have very differing opinions on matters than the rest of us. I was trying to make it LESS like an echo chamber by adding people who would disagree with us. We didn't have to add anyone, but I pushed for adding more to minimize bias.

People on the outside have a very easy time to look within and think that things are being done wrong, but nothing is as clearly black and white as people make it out to be. There are individuals who are good, but have personality problems. There are dudes who are good, but do not understand how tiering works. There are dudes who are good, but do really stupid things. I'm sure one of the reasons this thread was made was because there was someone you thought should be council but didn't get it. There are reasons for that.

re: Council activity; we require all members to write up something to say about their opinions in the second post of all suspect threads. We've done this for a few tests, but forgot for the Zygarde one. I will try to remember to ensure this happens for future tests, because it should happen. The council typically works together when writing up the original post of a suspect, and also are required to write something for the second post. After that, frequently people will feel they're just repeating the same arguments and wasting their time. I have felt that way often. Very frequently this will happen with threads in PR as well. Someone will say what I think before I get the chance to, and so I just leave a like and don't waste time making a post. Being council isn't a paid job, we aren't going to invest a lot of our time to respond to every post or actively post on every page of the suspect thread. Obviously, we cannot have a silent member, but I don't believe we have that.
 
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Birkal

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I really don't understand your proposal. For one, there already is a governing independent body; it's senior staff. You could have, you know, talked to them about it. But, like, you want a council to govern over a council? Who is this going to consist of? People who play OU but aren't on council? Well there's probably a reason they aren't, or they're worthy candidates and should just be added to the council. If it's just smogons higher ups, we already have that in place.
To help educate newer badge members: the Senior Staff Requests subforum is a resource for everyone to contact all of senior staff simultaneously. I understand the want to post something publicly in this Policy Review forum to broaden the discussion. Nothing wrong with that! But for future reference, should anyone with a badge reading this wish to contact a “governing body” on Smogon for whatever reason, SS Requests is a great place to do that.
 
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The fact that senior staff have a say in appointing tier leaders is certainly news to me, and I'm sure it is news to other people as well so thanks for clearing that up. That being said, the main point of the post was to highlight the lack of transparency in the council. New council members are announced without any reasoning given (there is still no reasoning in the announcement post at the time of writing). Worse than that though is the lack of public engagement from council members for almost a year now. Here's a quick timeline.

2 September 2017: Dugtrio suspect. Good engagement from all council members.
16 Dec 2018: Zygarde suspect announced. The only council members to post in the whole thread were ABR and Finchinator. Charmflash posted but he was not a council member at the time.
15 September 2019: Aim makes 'State of Sun and Moon OU' thread which results in multiple calls to suspect Kartana/Mawile. ABR, Finchinator, Bro Fist, and Charmflash (not council member) post but no one else.

Do you see the trend? Dugtrio suspect and before were fine, but look at after. Nothing done for over a year with no community engagement during that time. Minimal council input even for the zygarde suspect. More inactivity til September of this year, where again some members stayed completely silent. Do you realise some of these council members have not said a word about policy since September 2017? Even if the metagame is perfect in your opinion, the least you could do is take the time to speak to the smogon users who you apparently represent. Let's go into more detail about the Kartana banning thread. There were vast periods of inactivity when no council member could be bothered to post, and ultimately the thread was left hanging. Every council member (who could be bothered to post) stated they were open to the idea of Kartana/Mawile being suspected, but then I guess they all went to sleep because nothing happened. At the very least you could have made a wrap up post stating you had considered it and a suspect is not right. But nope: 'I personally would not mind seeing Mawile or even Kartana tested' words from the mouth of the last council member who posted in that thread.

So, since my independent body for scrutiny was apparently shot down, I have another idea. Council members must give their thoughts on where the metagame is and what they are currently deliberating on a monthly basis (or some other agreed upon time period), similar to how the OU viability thread has a slate for discussion. This will prevent those periods of inactivity mentioned above, and will make it exceedingly obvious which council members are active and which aren't. It can be argued that members could just post their thoughts in the ou metagame discussion thread, but I think we all know how much they currently do that. We need something separate to that which we can point to. Again, this is just an idea. Let's not allow this to stray away from the core principle: we need active council members who give reasoning for all decisions. I hope no one disagrees with that point at least.
 

chaos

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The fact that senior staff have a say in appointing tier leaders is certainly news to me, and I'm sure it is news to other people as well so thanks for clearing that up.
If we don't already have a thread that describes how this process works then we should find someone to write one. A lot of us are busy with Gen 8 preparations, though.

New council members are announced without any reasoning given (there is still no reasoning in the announcement post at the time of writing).
I already agreed with you on this point, I'm not sure why you are continuing to post about it.

Worse than that though is the lack of public engagement from council members for almost a year now.
Ditto.

Council members must give their thoughts on where the metagame is and what they are currently deliberating on a monthly basis
We have been talking about having an internal check-in every few months.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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I feel obligated to explain myself, since I was implicitly called out as not having posted in any of those threads.

I do not shy away from making policy or metagame posts in general; you can check my history for evidence of that. But I have a tendency to obsess with minutiae, constantly revise, and end up never posting as a result. I have, in fact, been working on a response to this thread for the last six hours. To this point, I have found my opinions better conveyed through editing the posts of others. Specifically, some of ABR's and Finch's posts (more often on the BW council) contain my wording or sentiment that I felt better represented the positions expressed in their posts. This is true even if we don't completely agree on the issue; for example, Finch paraphrased some arguments I supplied as a defense for preserving Dynamax.

This isn't an attempt to hide from scrutiny. I am not afraid to be held accountable for my positions and understand if people want to hear them straight from my mouth. I frequently post publicly about my thoughts on the metagame in the official Smogon Tournaments Discord, my DMs are open, and I'll post in these threads when I think I can supply perspective that hasn't already been covered. But we have to be fair and start isolating posts into actual issues that the council can digest. To use this thread as an example, it started with an accusation of cronyism, which I was in the middle of writing a response to (to be included below), and now it's about the handling of SM tiering and general transparency. I'm not invalidating any of these issues, but we need to discuss them separately and not conflate them so they're not so overwhelming to address.

I'll leave the response to the thread's initial concerns below; I think it's still relevant.

On the council as an echo chamber and representation:

The OP only mentions ABR once, so those unfamiliar with the current landscape of Smogon policy might be confused why I'm going to bring this up as a talking point, but it's because there's a running narrative across the community that ABR exerts unfair influence across policy in both tiering and tournaments, in both legislative and cultural contexts. I think this quote sums up the sentiment nicely:

[12:43 PM]Roro:council = abr trophy wives
[12:44 PM]Roro:all useless!
[12:44 PM]Roro:@Finchinator
[12:44 PM]Roro:everyone open to a suspect
[12:44 PM]Roro:abr comes and say "no"
[12:44 PM]Roro:ok daddy

This is the reason why some of the responses to this thread mention ABR by name. This is the reason why Ojama's post on Sleep Clause called out ABR specifically. Even with Finch assuming the role of TL, the narrative has evolved from "ABR robs individual council members of their own agency" to "ABR stacks the council with yes-men to get his policy measures across". Understanding that this is a narrative that currently exists right now is important to understanding part of what is prompting all these discussions.

I'm not going to mount an argument against this narrative; what people think about it is beyond the scope of my purview. What is within my capacity to do is continually reframe and evolve my way of thinking about policy. But if everything is framed around whether or not ABR is pushing it forward, then nobody is actually concretizing which policies/parties are being disenfranchised and whether or not they should be given more representation. I want this to be cleared up, and so I pose the following question: What in terms of specific policies, decisions, or perspectives fundamentally distinguishes these disenfranchised groups from the current makeup of the council, to the point where it appears to the public that we have assembled nothing more than an echo chamber for ABR's or anyone else's opinions?
 

Platinum God n1n1

the real n1n1
is a Tiering Contributor
i feel like there has to be some sort of quantifiable contribution linked to the awarding of a council position.
TL picks have constraints that the general public are not aware of/not qualified to speak on. These will always be picked by the SS, although it helps a lot if the community likes the pick too.

I think there should be some bare minimum requirements for being TL that should be made public. Making some basic requirements public will solve a lot of the trust issues which is why these type of complaints arise in the first place

Also there should be some basic requirements for anyone on who is on a council. And the requirements set by SS should be made public.
I would expect to see something like this:
  1. Participation in a circuit tour in the last X months
  2. Has Tiering Contributor badge (not grayed)
  3. X number of meaningful post on smogon in the last X months (more than just "in" or "gg")

If you cannot meet these basic requirements you don't have any business on council. Yet I'm sure there are a few people who dont meet these requirement but stay on council due to their friendship with TLs

This wouldn't solve some of the problems that OP made about Councils becoming an Echo Chamber and out-casting members of the community who publicly challenging them. But it would be a good step in ensuring the council is qualified and in building better trust between council and the community
 

chaos

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I think there should be some bare minimum requirements for being TL that should be made public. Making some basic requirements public will solve a lot of the trust issues which is why these type of complaints arise in the first place
This sounds like make-work. I think our current TLs satisfy any "bare minimum requirements" you could think of. If you think a TL isn't qualified feel free to send me a succinct, well-argued PM.

Also there should be some basic requirements for anyone on who is on a council. And the requirements set by SS should be made public.
I would expect to see something like this:
I am less interested in this idea than having concrete reasoning for picks.
 

chaos

is a Site Content Manageris a Battle Simulator Administratoris a Programmeris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis an Administratoris a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Researcher Alumnus
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I expect posts from this point on to directly engage with the measures I have suggested, and only if they are deemed inadequate.
 

Platinum God n1n1

the real n1n1
is a Tiering Contributor
I am less interested in this idea than having concrete reasoning for picks.
Why can't you have both?

There are only half a dozen, more or less, people on council. Setting some simple activity requirements still leave many dozens of people to choose from for council.

The fact there are/have been council members who are afk for months with out participating in tours or posting on the forums should be concerning. These requirements are not much to ask for and would hold them accountable
 

chaos

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I already said we were considering a periodic internal check-in. I don't have time to rehash the same points over and over. If you feel this is inadequate then you need to directly argue against it as I stated in the post above.
 

Platinum God n1n1

the real n1n1
is a Tiering Contributor
I already said we were considering a periodic internal check-in. I don't have time to rehash the same points over and over. If you feel this is inadequate then you need to directly argue against it as I stated in the post above.
"considering a periodic internal check-in" is so vague there is nothing to argue about.
With out any details on what is being considered you are leaving me to assume what it means
  1. its completely subjective. There should be some objective qualifications for someone to be on council based on tour and forum activity.
  2. it is non transparent. Couple months down the line there will be another thread like this complaining about how the council is an echo-chamber and such. Not asking for every detail to be made public but more transparency would go a long way.
If the "periodic internal check-in" is not objective and transparent then, yes it is inadequate
 

chaos

is a Site Content Manageris a Battle Simulator Administratoris a Programmeris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis an Administratoris a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Researcher Alumnus
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There are going to be echo-chamber complaints regardless which is why I am primarily focused on finding something I personally think is implementable & will move the needle. Right now there is not a periodic, formal process for evaluating councils. I think the most important thing is to establish such a process & ensure it is reliable. I don't want to commit to objective standards beforehand because I don't know what kind of things we will learn in a review process & what criteria are reasonable. I don't want to commit to any non-trivial degree of transparency beforehand because it is extra work and everyone in the staff already has a full plate. These things can potentially come after.
 
Last edited:

Hogg

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I just wanted to provide an update on this.

As was previously mentioned, we have an internal vetting process for tier leaders. Tier leaders are expected to name any potential successors well in advance so that if anything unexpected happens there is no leadership vacuum. Before someone is promoted to tier leader, there is a staff thread similar to the badge nomination thread where we review their records and discuss the promotion. While we always try to respect a TL’s thoughts regarding co-leaders and replacements, we don’t allow them to just promote people without oversight. And if the prospective tier leader is not already a moderator in the respective forum, we also require a public badge nomination for their moderator duties.

What we have not had is a similar process for council nominations. Up until this point, we have allowed tier leadership the freedom to select council members without oversight, only intervening if people actively raised concerns. While I think this system has largely worked alright, people have brought up legitimate concerns with the process, and so we’ve revised our policy.

First, all council nominations must go through a similar internal vetting process as tier leaders. While council members don’t need to meet the same rigorous standards that tier leaders do, they still can wield a significant influence over metagames as a whole, so we will require that any promotion to council be nominated and reviewed internally by staff and other community leaders before being approved.

Second, all tiers will be required to have a public thread listing the council and announcing any nominations or changes. Tier leaders will be expected to keep this thread visible and up to date, and must include an explanation of the qualifications of any new council members and the reasons for their promotion. We’ve also already implemented a thread in the Announcements forum where leadership must update with the results of every council vote and public suspect test, including how council members voted, to further increase transparency.

Finally, while this is not specific to this issue, as tiering admin I’ve implemented a quarterly review process starting this gen. This is something we were discussing independently of this thread, but basically every quarter Finch, Tony and I will be reviewing every tier, talking to prominent contributors, reviewing councils, checking forum and ladder activity, reviewing tiering decisions, etc. from the previous quarter. While we generally keep up to date with tiering activity as it happens, I’m hoping that this more formal review process will help us make sure everything is running smoothly and avoid some of the potential issues folks have brought up here and in other recent PR threads.
 
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