Approved by myself
After participating in CAP Policy for years now, I think it's time we update our policies regarding access to the PRC Forum. While the current set of rules that makes everyone submit a PRC application after each process technically works, I think this is a very archaic system that we can improve, and doing so could greatly increase participation on this forum without sacrificing any quality.
I think there are various ways to approach this problem, but after thinking about this for a while, I think the following proposal is our best choice: Make the CAP Policy Review Forum open to every badged member of Smogon. I know that this would massively increase the amount of people with the ability to post here and realistically I don't expect 90% of these users to even realize they now can post here, but I think that is what makes the most sense to me. Posts like this shows us that even people outside of CAP can still give us very valuable feedback thanks to their experience in other parts of the forum and currently we might be missing on many more great post like that one.
While Smogon is a huge community and CAP is just a small fraction of it, I think it would be very reasonable to expect badged members to follow the rules and don't make stupid posts in an important place like here. The main Smogon Policy Review already works like this and as far as I know people usually behave well in that forum. Even if a few individual badgeholders prove to be problematic we should still be able to moderate them and if they're really persistent, we could always rebuke their individual access. I think this would greatly improve the accessibility of CAP Policy Review and the feedback given to users that perhaps aren't that involved in CAP but have experience in other areas can be very valuable.
Even with this new system, I think it would still be important to keep a PRC Applications thread open for unbadged users, as there are many new contributors that might want to participate and can provide very valuable points. I also think it would still be a good habit for experienced users to post their applications to show the newer users how it's done, although this should never be a requirement for them.
I think being more open with PRC access would be greatly beneficial for CAP as a whole and would greatly improve the PRC forum by letting more qualified people participate without having to jump through all the hoops necessary now. I'm also very interested in seeing if other people can think of other possible changes, as I still think there might still be more room for improvement.
After participating in CAP Policy for years now, I think it's time we update our policies regarding access to the PRC Forum. While the current set of rules that makes everyone submit a PRC application after each process technically works, I think this is a very archaic system that we can improve, and doing so could greatly increase participation on this forum without sacrificing any quality.
I think there are various ways to approach this problem, but after thinking about this for a while, I think the following proposal is our best choice: Make the CAP Policy Review Forum open to every badged member of Smogon. I know that this would massively increase the amount of people with the ability to post here and realistically I don't expect 90% of these users to even realize they now can post here, but I think that is what makes the most sense to me. Posts like this shows us that even people outside of CAP can still give us very valuable feedback thanks to their experience in other parts of the forum and currently we might be missing on many more great post like that one.
While Smogon is a huge community and CAP is just a small fraction of it, I think it would be very reasonable to expect badged members to follow the rules and don't make stupid posts in an important place like here. The main Smogon Policy Review already works like this and as far as I know people usually behave well in that forum. Even if a few individual badgeholders prove to be problematic we should still be able to moderate them and if they're really persistent, we could always rebuke their individual access. I think this would greatly improve the accessibility of CAP Policy Review and the feedback given to users that perhaps aren't that involved in CAP but have experience in other areas can be very valuable.
Even with this new system, I think it would still be important to keep a PRC Applications thread open for unbadged users, as there are many new contributors that might want to participate and can provide very valuable points. I also think it would still be a good habit for experienced users to post their applications to show the newer users how it's done, although this should never be a requirement for them.
I think being more open with PRC access would be greatly beneficial for CAP as a whole and would greatly improve the PRC forum by letting more qualified people participate without having to jump through all the hoops necessary now. I'm also very interested in seeing if other people can think of other possible changes, as I still think there might still be more room for improvement.
