"Council Reqs" for suspect tests

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Tiering councils are expected to be the best players, the most knowledgeable metagamers, and the most involved community members of their tiers and are usually handpicked by their tier leaders for having these qualities. Within the past few years, the idea of "council reqs" has become more and more popular among tiering councils, with the idea that since council members are already proven within their tiers, they shouldn't have to grind through a suspect ladder to achieve full reqs. Instead, council members are usually allowed to play fewer games. This practice is a problem and needs to be eliminated.

The majority of laddering done to get council reqs involves playing the low ladder on a brand new suspect test ladder, which does not represent the actual metagame. A common council requirement for UU and probably other tiers used to be simply playing 30 games, which is barely enough to get the person out of the low ladder on a fresh suspect ladder. Even as requirements have become more complex recently (often involving GXE), the number of non-retarded games needed to get council reqs is still extremely low. For the last UU suspect test, I remember playing a mono-bug dude TWO times, one of them being on game number 32.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many tiers, especially lower tiers, often change rather quickly (due to tier shifts and frequent bans/unbans). This allows council members who are semi-active to inactive even for a couple months to grow quickly out of touch with their tier, and there's hardly any turnover on the councils that I'm familiar with (UU through NU), so it's not like new council members are picked with every suspect test to ensure activity. Council members aren't even required to participate in suspect tests; there is a UU council member right now that to this day hasn't gotten reqs, neither normal nor council, a SINGLE time in gen 7.

Most importantly, why should people, often hand-picked by their friends, not have to demonstrate that they can achieve the same requirements on a ladder as the other voters? If you can't even get normal reqs, then what are you doing on council? It's not that hard for a decent player to get normal reqs, and council reqs are even easier. meeps told me he got his NU council reqs in under 40 minutes and knew of other council members who used bullshit meme teams and still got them easily. I know that some UU council members just load up stall and breeze through their reqs with no thought involved whatsoever and usually only 0-1 instances of encountering the suspected Pokemon. Not trying to call anyone out, but these are some recent ladder runs that have qualified for council reqs:

https://prnt.sc/j4148x
https://prnt.sc/j414gu
https://prnt.sc/j41chn

These are frankly embarrassing GXEs, W/L's, and ELOs and if it weren't council members posting these, I would think the person trying to vote is uninformed or bad.

This lazy and unacceptable practice needs to be removed from the site. Tiering councils are necessary to evaluate when suspects are needed and to lead suspect tests when they happen, but there's no good reason for them to get out of getting reqs that every other voter has to get. I would go a step further and force councils to kick members when they do not participate in a suspect test, but at the very least, the idea of "council reqs" needs to be eliminated.
 

MZ

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This is a good topic to bring up, but it would kinda suck for PU. If you really can get reqs in 40 minutes I guess we've been doing it wrong, but I can instantly list at least 2 members of our council who a. have undisputedly excellent metagame knowledge and b. just don't have the time for reqs. When these people get council reqs, I trust that they're still actively playing and know the meta and there isn't an issue with their knowledge / activity. On the other hand, there is at least one person on the PU council who gets council reqs and isn't super active. Their situation feels entirely separate from the others in that I don't see them actively keeping up with the tier whenever possible or playing it at the highest level like the previous members, and I would be ok with reconsidering this person's inclusion on the council. For that alone I'm glad this thread came up, I agree that the idea of keeping tiering councils active and high quality is quite important. And yes, I'm friends with the people on council, but demoting them until they're able to be more active doesn't seem like an awkward or unreasonable step to put tier leaders in control of unless you're that terrified of cronyism (fwiw I have no idea if this is a much larger issue outside of PU, maybe that changes something). TLs just being more proactive about removing people from council who no longer deserve the position seems like it would also solve this issue, removing council reqs is only one solution. I know it's not common to forcibly demote someone from council unless they're really inactive, but that's just a custom that can change.

e: I wanna be absolutely clear, I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that someone who doesn't have time to make reqs instantly doesn't deserve to be on a tiering council.
 
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If you can spare 40 minutes to get council reqs, you can spare two more hours to get regular reqs.

I don't understand how council reqs even began to exist. While I think letting council members vote without getting reqs is incredibly silly in the first place, the council reqs are basically a poor attempt to make it seem like the council members are actually "qualifying", while still "covering" for their inactivity. As dodmen said, any average player can get council reqs and, with it being this easy to achieve, you might as well just let council members vote without laddering at all. This may just be me, but I think that being on a council means that you truly care for the tiers development, and if you really, really do, you can find those three hours within a two week period to ladder about 60 games or whatever, where 20 of them will most likely be against monotype teams regardless. The 40 minutes spent on getting council reqs would most likely be better spent on writing a post with your arguments and thoughts in the suspect thread, as that post might very well might matter more than a single vote your way.


I'm not a lower tier player, so this has never affected me, but this is a really silly solution to try to justify the opinion of inactive council members. If anything, at least just let council members vote right away. This at least keeps the public honest, because any idiot can get those council reqs.

Or maybe they're not good enough to get the regular reqs. In which case you should probably be looking for new council members, because if they can't get reqs, they don't belong on a council regardless of tier.
 

AM

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Yeah when I was on council last gen I didn't really get that, the pass to vote and not have to get reqs at least in OU unless this has changed which I doubt. If the council is active and engaging throughout their metagame to have a good foundation of the tier I'm okay with them deciding on suspects, but not with getting easier reqs or in the case of OU no requirement to even ladder unless, again, this changed.

Outside of two discord channels where I associate myself with pals, I don't involve myself in anything smogon related discord wise or mons at this point if council is engaging within their tiers to speak on that. As a former Ou council member Council Reqs are whack and promote, which I'm guilty of, laziness. Get em out here.
 
Rarelyused doesn’t do council reqs and it’s been fine so far. Some members of council don’t have time to ladder incessantly, but they’re still council because they have demonstrated excellent metagame knowledge and contributions to the tier. If you don’t get reqs then you don’t get to vote. Simple as that. Not saying other tiers need to adopt the same methods, but council members should be held to the same standards as anyone else voting. So yea, council reqs don’t really make sense to me in that regard.

Edit: even back when I was on BW RU council, and I suppose reqs were relatively easier than they are now, there wasn’t any council reqs or anything like that. Obviously things have changed since then, but I think it’s important to hold council members to the same standard for voting, at least for public suspect tests.
 

Disjunction

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I get how council reqs kind of came into existence, but I've always felt it was an unfair advantage. The main rationale is that council members should have an easier time getting reqs because they've already proven themselves as positive forces in their respective tiers, at the very least from a competitive sense. However, I can personally think of several other people that I would trust with such a title and yet they aren't given the same privilege. I think the discrepancy between who gets to participate on council and who doesn't shouldn't affect the eligibility on who gets to vote.

Councils, at least for lower tiers, exist for two reasons: to remove blatantly unhealthy elements in times of dramatic change for a tier, and to help decide on the direction of the suspecting process. For this purpose, it makes sense that everyone on council gets along to some degree as it's a position centered primarily around discussion. If your council is constantly in-fighting because of beef or immaturity, it creates a stagnant environment where either discussion dies out entirely or you don't accomplish anything in discussions anyways. So in this sense, a lot of the council member vetting process is determined by a large aspect of (necessary) subjectivity. While it is usually likely that your council will know what they're talking about (save some outliers), it's very unfair to allow them a significant advantage over other people that know what they're talking about as well just because this group gets along better or has healthier discussions together.

This is coming from a council member of many years that has been through many forms of council reqs and regular reqs. Even recently I've taken full advantage of the system because of my personal time constraints with weekly overtime hours and frequent responsibilities coming in between me and my hobby. I still play my tier frequently and just about everyone who interacts with me would probably vouch for the fact that I interact with the tier in some way on the daily. Does that mean I should be able to have access to a ridiculous shortcut on a vote that has an already limited amount of voters? I don't think so and the idea will never sit well with me.
 
Council reqs exists out of lazyness. Once people get in any council they become complacent and lose motivation, and council reqs in theory ensure they remain active in the suspect threads and actually ladder. Ideally you would replace the inactive / demotivated with new competent / motivated people constantly, but it's honestly way more difficult than what it sounds and dodmen himself can confirm that.

UU council reqs at some point were really forgiving but right now are just marginally easier than regular reqs, as you need 80 gxe min to qualify for either and about 30-40 min less of laddering if you are council. But when some people are qualifying without even laddering or with 70~ gxe, the system is getting heavily abused to the point is not worth keeping around.

I understand why council reqs exist and as a former tier leader I have used them, although I didn't vote with council reqs once, but the pros don't out weight the cons. Council reqs shouldn't exist to let people who never ladder or who can't do better than 75~ gxe vote. It also doesn't help that the community feels so strongly against them.

I'm killing council reqs. From this point onward no tier, including OU, will be allowed to use council reqs. Alternatives that aren't giving easier reqs to handpicked users are fine or grinding the ladder are fine, such as tournaments reqs and suspect tours, as they give equal chances to everyone.

The motivation problem need to be addressed, but council reqs are not the way to do it.
 
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