This post is a clarifying point, since some/all of the senators seem to think that the people clamoring about the use of "fun" are strawmanning the word ("hold yourself to a higher standard of argument please" was the tipping point; this seems pretty elitist and I wouldn't have posted this had that line not appeared in Flare's post). I certainly am not strawmanning, and reading the arguments of others, I don't think many people are. My problem is not with the use of the word fun. My problem is with statements like this:
And before you come back with "but that's subjective!" The way you interpret what is ban-worthy is just as subjective, so don't bother.
The problem is mainly the admission that "we don't have objective standards for banning, so we're each using our own subjective ones instead." I said this in my last post, but if there isn't even a claim to objectivity, then it starts making no sense to have a council/senate at all.
Yes, the standards that you choose will be arbitrary and subjective. This is true in any field for any subject. Common philosophical question: is it better to save the lives of 5 people by killing one through action or, by inaction, save the 1 and let the 5 die? The answer to the question depends on subjective standards--but once those standards have been set, the answer is objective as inferred from the standards.
If your standards are that quantity of life is always most important and action matters as much as inaction, then you choose the 5 people. If your standards are that life has immeasurable individual value and so can't be summed or multiplied/divided and that inaction isn't as important as action, then you choose the 1 person.
The standards that you set are necessarily subjective. What's not subjective are the inferences that you can make once you have those standards. This applies for everything from what kind of sandwich should I eat today (standard: do I value my current mood over long-term health benefits?) to what kind of stance should I take on abortion (standard: am I religious? what does life mean to me?).
Throughout the long period that I played gen IV OU (and a bit of UU), I was fine with things like the Salamence council. I thought, based on the discussions that I read (IRC logs were posted, as well), that people were trying to establish an objective standard by which to ban it. While I disagreed with Salamence's ban, I was fine with it; it seemed fair because of the way the offensive characteristics were being talked about.
What's changed? It isn't strawmanning of the word fun; it's comprised of other things, like the senate's asking us for our opinions earlier, Flare's post, etc. Here are some of the things that the senate has posted before in this topic that illustrate my problems with how subjectivity has been treated so far, as well as why the word "fun" has been such a big deal:
By Heysup:
This is especially important because with something so subjective such as this (banning something simply because people don't "like it") we absolutely need some sort of community consensus otherwise we're just a couple people voting and that's too small a sample size to take into account the whole communities opinion on an issue that we aren't necessarily "more qualified" to make due to the lack of reasoning.
If it was a competitive ban,
Here Heysup seems to confirm fully what I've just been saying, yet this was later ignored with the reasoning, "oh, never mind, it is a competitive ban actually. It's all competitive reasoning, but we're still being subjective, so we still want community opinion."
By kokoloko:
Not only is it a lot more fun, but it also brings benefits on the competitive level
Use of the word "fun" as distinct from "competitive"--obviously this has been covered, but you can see how we got the impressions we've gotten, no? It seems that you're using fun in two different ways throughout the posts on this forum.
FlareBiltz:
Now, that's a pretty inflammatory sentence and it could be strawmanned with rebuttals like "well I think togekiss makes the metagame less fun so let's ban that", but ultimately that's the reason we're even having this conversation - we want to make things more fun for our playerbase. Given that, this is what we need to decide: Will our playerbase have more fun with sand stream in the metagame but with sand veil gone, or will it have more fun with the playstyle as a whole gone?
In this PM, which Flare posted twice, he begins by limiting his definition of "fun" so that it can't be stretched/misconstrued. But the definition he gives is basically the question: what will the community/playerbase enjoy more?
No matter how experienced the senators are with this metagame, I think that I as a person and member of the playerbase would know better what I want than the senators would. Telling me or any other player otherwise, or telling people that they don't know what they want, is *insert word that expresses dissatisfaction without being rude here.*
So if the question really is, "what will the community/playerbase have more fun with?" then the answer is: probably the scenario that 7 people out of many dozens don't vote on their own for.
And other examples.
As a tournament host and fighting game competitor, I also want to note that when we make decisions like these (stage choices, number of matches, things like that) in the fighting game community at large, we base our decisions on only the highest level of play. What effect will a decision have on the balance at the highest level? We do try to establish a standard on the basis of which we can have discussions. With this standard in place, it makes sense to only allow people familiar with high-level play in on the discussion (and even then, most FG communities don't have a council system--anyone who is able to play on that level can partake). Before this notion of subjectivity was brought to the table, the same thing made sense for Pokemon.
Finally, let it be said that I'm not clamoring for a reversal of the decision. There are always other tiers, and failing that, always other hobbies. As kokoloko said, Pokemon is about having fun. When it starts to stop seeming fun, then of course you just move on. This is simple and easy, and no one should get incredibly worked up over this.
The debate dried up a long time ago; a decision was made. But at the very least, I'd like the Senate to understand where we're coming from. As a low-post-count member who hasn't gone on IRC, though, I'll count this as my last post on the topic. If the logic hasn't hit home yet, then we are at an impasse.
