This is entirely wrong, first of all. There is a thread posted recently that can be seen
here and I would like to quote a portion of it:
I would like to
open this thread up to general discussion of the current metagame and any potential votes should they occur.
i didn't think this thread was open to the general public (and it isn't necessarily, anyway, because it's not in a forum non-badged users or those without permission can write in). actually, i didn't even click on it until right before i made my post, because of its title:
"Post-SPL 9 BW OU Exit Survey". it's not the sort of thing that sounds like it's going to encourage wider community participation: it sounds like something intended solely for people who just finished spl, hence the phrase "exit survey". the title heavily implies that it's something off-limits from smogon's general user base, and none of its actual content except the de-contextualized last line convinces me otherwise.
even disregarding the diction in that thread that gives it an air of exclusivity, there was no public post anywhere on smogon that informed people that a dugtrio suspect would occur. so, no, there really was no venue to discuss this suspect test ahead of time. how is one supposed to discuss a suspect test they don't even know exists? sure, i have anti-dugtrio ban arguments, but i wouldn't have raised them in a thread where i wasn't even aware such a thing was on the table. now if i want my say as someone who didn't meet the qualifications for this vote, i need to scramble to construct an argument in this thread without knowing whether or not half the people involved have already cast their unchangeable votes on the topic. you haven't constructed a reasonable forum for open discussion of a dugtrio suspect at all.
On top of this, it is not like there are threads for discussion on many other votes for old generations, I feel like your expectations of the past generation tiering system are unrealistic. The system for past generation tiering decisions have always been exclusive, drawing on qualifications from all BW (or other generations, see: DPP Sand Veil for example of this) tournaments.
that's because there aren't many other other votes for old generations. the only old gens tier that has carried out discussion in policy review that prompted votes about banning pokemon over the last several years is bw ou. there are some clauses attempting to resolve generally minor issues people have proposed, yes, but all those had discussion threads about them and many were less contentious than banning pokemon from an old gen. you're claiming that there's some precedent in old gens for suspecting stuff the way you're suspecting it now, but there really isn't much of one at all.
There is currently no infrastructure to support completely democratic suspect tests and it is not exactly realistic to expect one given the nature of old generation playerbases/tournaments/participation.
i'm not advocating for completely democratic suspect tests. i think preventing
some unqualified players from voting is ideal. all i want is a less exclusive suspect testing process where more users get to voice their opinions beforehand and more users have the opportunity to vote.
There is ample precedent across Smogon for non-democratic tiering (UU defaults to council decisions for certain votes, every tier has the option for preliminary quick bans, etc.), so I do not see it being an issue here, too, especially considering the relatively small playerbase and sample sizes of past generation metagames relative to newer generation metagames.
yes, there's ample precedent on smogon for completely non-democratic tiering, but not for non-democratic, retroactive old gens tiering. when you deny a sizable number of players a vote in a past gen, it's much more serious than a preliminary quick ban or a tiering decision in one of a current gen's lower tiers. the current generation is more malleable than past gens — council members change, bans are more likely to be reconsidered, the tier isn't quite settled yet. In the current gen, the general playerbase may not have the capacity to make the correct decision for the tier, because there's a much more legitimate case that fewer people understand it well enough to do so. in bw, everything you suspect retroactively goes against the implicit assumption among a very experienced playerbase in a slowly aging metagame that those things were okay enough in the tier to not warrant a suspect test in the first place. tiering decisions in old gens also are much less likely to be reconsidered and possibly overturned later; they hold more permanence. now, i'm not saying we should never suspect things in bw ou or other old gens — just that current gen tiering and retroactive tiering are too different for current gen tiering to create a non-democratic precedent that applies well to old gen tiering.
Those are beyond outdated and I posted recently in an attempt to revive them saying that Dugtrio, Ninetales, and other related Pokemon should move up significantly. That post can be found
here and if you are going to use this thread as a source, then perhaps you should be up to date with it yourself, too.
oh, i've been paying attention to the bw vr thread. i paid enough attention to notice that you only nominated it for a rank, when i said it probably wouldn't ever find a place in a+ rank in my initial post (let alone s, which i know in some tiers is at least a prerequisite for the possibility of something getting suspected). i also noticed that there weren't many posts supporting that, nor was there very much other discussion about dugtrio rising at all. should dugtrio rise significantly? yes, probably, and a number of users that liked your post may agree with that specific nomination. nothing you said here, however, invalidates my original statement (which was really more of a passing comment than an argument in the first place) that it isn't likely ever to get to share the same rank as many other pokemon that are very dominant forces in the metagame.
You want to know what holds weight? The aforementioned exit survey that was sent out to SPL players, in which over half of the respondents said that Dugtrio was suspect worthy and/or banworthy.
i mean, i'd like to believe that holds weight. certainly it doesn't seem like awful criteria to factor in the opinions of some of the tier's ostensible best players. but what about everyone else? just because a player went positive in spl or didn't get subbed out for 5 games doesn't mean they're more qualified than all the rest of the playerbase to make such a serious tiering decision. there were lots of people in spl with great knowledge of bw who didn't play the tier that much in the tour. there are lots of people who didn't make the draft who are well-informed about the tier's current state and deserve a say in this matter. as i said before, your criteria for what constitutes a competent voter here is simply too narrow.
As a council, we value recency. The metagame is still actively played and changing, as clearly shown by recent high-level tournament matches, and we don't believe people should qualify solely based on legacy (i.e: tournament games played in the same tier, but a very different metagame fairly long ago).
i never said people should qualify based on legacy or knowledge of less current bw metagames. this really feels more like a strawman than anything else.
excluding actual council members from having an auto-vote -- I am not voting in this test and the same can be said for Jirachee, Eo Ut Mortus, and M Dragon, who are all members of the council. While we may all be competent in BW OU and informed enough to vote, we did not meet the criteria, so it would not be fair for us to vote when others earned it throughout recent tournaments.
i feel like this illustrates one of my earlier points pretty nicely, actually. you all are
competent in BW OU and informed enough to vote
so you should all get to vote. half of you didn't even really have a chance to make the criteria because you managed in spl instead of playing. why potentially skew the vote by omitting the opinions of people like you four with insanely deep understanding of the tier just because you didn't play bw ou much/at all in spl? i don't think this vote is something you should earn through two recent tournaments.
Assuming you mean the OP of the BW OU VR,
no, i meant the op of this dugtrio vote thread. putting literally anything in this op to justify why this action is being taken now would help people unfamiliar with the bw ou metagame better understand your decision and equip them with better tools to argue for/against it in this thread. it also would've avoided offending players like me who felt like they were getting smacked with something out of nowhere that they weren't considered qualified enough to be privy to.
As for the other side of the coin -- the burden of having to explain why we are voting on Dugtrio, that ties back in with the exit survey that we had with SPL players.
the exit survey that nobody except the bw ou council knew the results of before today doesn't constitute a valid explanation of your course of action to the entire community. i'm assuming you didn't notify the survey's participants that you were definitely planning to suspect dugtrio, either, based on their responses, so that doesn't even constitute a valid explanation to them.
However, you can also add in the fact that whenever it was brought up on Discord, especially in public chats such as the Smogon Tournaments server, Dugtrio was clearly seen as controversial and the BW council tended to echo these sentiments in our own personal assessments of the situation, making this vote more than warranted.
okay, but i still felt blindsided by this. i'm not active in the channels where this sort of thing is often discussed, as i'm sure many people reading this thread aren't, so that still isn't enough of a justification for posting this thread with so little context on smogon for it.
I think that these tests almost have to be "elitest" in a sense to be effective/properly representative.
i think a suspect test can't be effective without properly representing its tier's community. also, this suspect test has such strict limitations on who can vote that i strongly disagree that it properly represents the bw player base. therefore, this suspect test isn't effective. you're picking a minority of bw players to represent a majority of them, a minority chosen based on very narrow criteria and a nebulous definition of "recency". this may sound similar to the way most suspect tests are carried out with ladders — a competent minority carrying out decisions that affect the majority. there are two key differences between this and other suspect tests, though. first, the requirements for other suspect tests are far less strict; far more people can qualify for the ability to vote. secondly, people are (at least mostly) aware of the requirements for these suspects before they happen. perhaps if i had known dugtrio would be suspected ahead of time and that i could only vote if i did well in smogon tour or spl, i would have tried harder to get picked up in spl and carved out time on my weekends specifically for playing smogon tour. but i didn't even have that opportunity. this extreme exclusion definitely feels elitist, and every negative connotation that word has is in this case justified.
There will be future opportunities for the larger playerbase to participate in tiering decisions with the advent of the BW circuit, too.
this sounds like it could be a step in the right direction, though. can you tell me more about it? of what will this circuit consist? who all will get to vote because of it?
