C&C Forum Rules & Guidelines

[Rising_Dusk]

Contributions & Corrections (C&C) Rules & Guidelines

Welcome to C&C, often likened to as the lifeblood of Smogon at large. C&C is the forum project that results in every article and analysis, for this generation and for all generations, that goes on-site. It is our goal and duty to maintain the quality of work on-site to the highest possible standards, such that anyone and everyone can use the information there to further their own understanding of competitive Pokemon battling. If this is your first time visiting C&C, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the standard procedure of C&C by reading the General Information announcement before continuing with this thread.

If you want to help C&C out with maintaining Smogon's site, then you should feel welcome to write and submit articles, updates, sets, and even full analyses to their respective sections. If your English is of a high enough quality and your work meets all relevant rules, the C&C forum staff and other intelligent users will look past your post count and see your contribution for what it is worth. If you break the relevant rules, the opposite will likely occur.

You may be very proactive about writing and want to work on something right away. Be careful, however, that just because it can be written does not mean that it is necessary. In order to verify that your writing a specific article or analysis is needed before doing it, please contact one of the relevant C&C moderators or ask in the associated indexing thread for the tier of interest.

With these ideas in mind, please make sure that you do not break any of the following, very fundamental guidelines and policies of C&C. Many of these are discussed in greater detail in the General Information announcement linked to above.

1. Do not write and submit an analysis simply because you feel like it
   While we hope that you will improve the quality of our on-site work, we do not want you writing something simply because you can. Focus your writing on those updates with outdated, incorrect, or nonexistent content. In the case of nonexistent content, contact a moderator first to make sure your work is needed.
2. Avoid overspecialized or gimmick strategies in your writing
   Smogon is a competitive Pokemon website, so all of the content must be relevant to competitive strategies. Strategies that do not accomplish general and important competitive goals are not allowed.
3. Use tolerable English
   C&C will not tolerate malformed speech styles like 'leetspeek' or the like. Additionally, this website is founded in English, so do not submit writing in foreign languages unless specifically instructed and cleared to do so.
4. Give your writing some personality
   This rule may seem strange, but it is very important for people to actually want to read your writing. If no one wants to read it, no one will read it, and it will have been useless. Spice your writing up a bit with varied prose, interesting word choice, and fun analogies; people like to read those. Be mindful to not overdo it, however, as an over-exaggerated writeup is just as painful to read as a bland one.
5. Some things are so obvious they don't really need to be put in a guide
   This rule requires a bit of common sense, but it should be pretty clear. You can explain that "Leftovers adds to the durability of the Pokemon", that's okay. What you want to avoid, however, is writing such as "Leftovers heals 6% HP per turn." Yes, it's clear that we know what Leftovers does, but we only care how it relates to what the Pokemon is doing.
6. Guides and analyses should be concise and well organized
   Some people have a tendency to write walls of text without regard for just how much they're actually writing. Articles and analyses in C&C must be concise, yet informative. Avoid adding unnecessary fluff in your writing, or describing every intricate detail of every Pokemon on Pokemon match-up that exists for your writing's topic. Only focus on the absolute most important parts, and leave the rest out. If an analysis is too long, people are as unlikely to read it as if it were poorly written to begin with.
7. Don't use custom set names
   It's okay if you come up with a 'cool name' for a set that you've designed, but the name in most cases will not be used. Custom set names for sets get added to analyses after the fact if the community at large starts referring to those sets by the custom names. Good examples of this are BritScor and Tinkerbell. These sets were named after the fact, and the community embraced those names long before they were used in the C&C analyses.
8. Use appropriate prefixes for your threads
   When you post a new set in any tier, make sure that you give it the (Quality Control) prefix. When you are writing a new article in the articles section, use the prefix that best describes what you're writing. If you want to write something for an older generation, post it in the Past Generations sub-forum and prefix it with the appropriate generation number. This may seem trivial, but it is absolutely critical for the proper understanding, documentation, and treatment of your work.
9. Do not insult, flame, or otherwise harass another user or his submission(s)
   All standard Smogon rules still apply, but it's important to reiterate this one here. Do not, under any circumstances, insult another user or his or her work. If you do, you will be given a warning and your post will be deleted. Furthermore, if you continue to do this, you will be disallowed from participating in C&C at all.

The moderators and administrators have every right to neglect or reject your guide or analysis for whatever reason, but we obviously won't if we like it. Once you contribute enough to the site through C&C, you may be awarded with the Pre-Contributor Badge

, which is a test badge for unbadged users. If you continue to write a lot exclusively for C&C once you have either the Pre-Contributor Badge or another badge and we approve of the quality and quantity of your work, you may be awarded the Contributor Badge

.

Thanks in advance for any work you do for us. We really appreciate it.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

This has become an announcement, which can be found here. Moving to the archives.