The new generation has attracted a lot of attention to Smogon, and new users are flocking to the site left, right and centre, and most seem keen to get stuck in. This should be a reason for celebration - anything which raises the awareness of our site, right?
And yet, I sure I'm not the only person who is getting annoyed by the influx of new users posting in the wrong place. Posting unconstructively. Thinking they know better. Doing it wrong.
The following post on the RMT forums is one of the worst offenders I have come across:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/help-with-an-all-eevee-team.3491461/
It's clear that this post should be in Orange Islands, and even there its appropriateness is debatable. And the RMT forums are awash with this kind of dross at the moment: these threads rival and possibly outnumber actually appropriate posts, which present a team, conform to the guidelines, and, if you're really lucky, the team is half-decent. We do not want stuff like the above post to distract from these good RMTs.
This is a crucial time for the formation of Gen VI OU and other tiers, and the RMT section plays a significant role. For example, if a truckload of RMTs with high ladder positioning all feature one Pokemon, it is worth at least considering that Pokemon for a suspect test. In addition, the great RMTs of the nascent Gen VI OU metagame will establish the common threats, creating a threatlist against which future RMTs are checked. The last thing that RMT raters need is to spend all their time hand-holding newcomers when the metagame is in such a fragile state - raters should be analysing the teams that are worth analysing.
My radical solution? Prevent new users from being able to post new threads on the RMT forums (and any other area of the forums which people deem to be badly affected by this phenomenon). I would have thought that requiring a user to have ten posts and to have had an account for a week would do, though the exact numbers don't matter that much. This would also direct newcomers to battling 101 etc more swiftly, which is a big timesaver when there are a lot of them around.
Incidentally I think that banning first-time users from posting RMTs would be a good idea anyway, new generation or not. I've never seen a good team from a first time user, and RMT is not the place to learn (except by picking up a successful team and using it to see how it works - that's a very good approach that I think we should be encouraging newcomers to take, and I sometimes recommend it in my rates).
Any thoughts?
And yet, I sure I'm not the only person who is getting annoyed by the influx of new users posting in the wrong place. Posting unconstructively. Thinking they know better. Doing it wrong.
The following post on the RMT forums is one of the worst offenders I have come across:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/help-with-an-all-eevee-team.3491461/
It's clear that this post should be in Orange Islands, and even there its appropriateness is debatable. And the RMT forums are awash with this kind of dross at the moment: these threads rival and possibly outnumber actually appropriate posts, which present a team, conform to the guidelines, and, if you're really lucky, the team is half-decent. We do not want stuff like the above post to distract from these good RMTs.
This is a crucial time for the formation of Gen VI OU and other tiers, and the RMT section plays a significant role. For example, if a truckload of RMTs with high ladder positioning all feature one Pokemon, it is worth at least considering that Pokemon for a suspect test. In addition, the great RMTs of the nascent Gen VI OU metagame will establish the common threats, creating a threatlist against which future RMTs are checked. The last thing that RMT raters need is to spend all their time hand-holding newcomers when the metagame is in such a fragile state - raters should be analysing the teams that are worth analysing.
My radical solution? Prevent new users from being able to post new threads on the RMT forums (and any other area of the forums which people deem to be badly affected by this phenomenon). I would have thought that requiring a user to have ten posts and to have had an account for a week would do, though the exact numbers don't matter that much. This would also direct newcomers to battling 101 etc more swiftly, which is a big timesaver when there are a lot of them around.
Incidentally I think that banning first-time users from posting RMTs would be a good idea anyway, new generation or not. I've never seen a good team from a first time user, and RMT is not the place to learn (except by picking up a successful team and using it to see how it works - that's a very good approach that I think we should be encouraging newcomers to take, and I sometimes recommend it in my rates).
Any thoughts?
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