Something I would like to see in the future, and if possible in this situation, would be to reveal the votes in the poll, or make a poll with the warning of full disclosure of votes afterwards. The reason for this is that it would give everyone (TDs and community alike) more insight into whats really going on. I think it is easy to assume stuff regarding the results of a poll and subsequently use those assumptions to lean towards either side of a poll. One assumption that I think can be reasonably made in this poll (another poll that comes to mind would be a hypothetical one between 12 vs 14 spots for SPL) is that one side feels much strongly about their side than the other. In this situation, you have one side that is basically at a do-or-die situation. World Cup either has Old Gens or it doesnt, and as such everyone in the Old Gens community has to defend that position. On the other hand, we have Current Gen OU players that perhaps have a minority of people that feel very strongly about CG x 8, a potential big majority that dont care either way (as they get to play regardless, the decision of adding 3 more CG spots doesnt affect them in the slightest) and perhaps another subset of people who prefer multi gen for whatever reason. Revealing the votes would make this apparent, and would give much more validity to the poll result than right now.
To summarize this: Revealing the votes means there are less assumptions being made about the result of a poll, giving it more weight. If 90% of the votes in favor of a 70% supermajority for 14 spots in SPL came from people that play PU, LC, Monotype, RBY (generally "segregated" communities) then you can raise an eyebrow. But if said supermajority had a ton of people from multiple backgrounds (honestly, it is quite easy to notice bias) that also make their voice heard in the thread, then ignoring the poll makes very little sense from the TD's point of view. Summarizing the summary: This means the community can tell if the TDs ignoring such a clear cut result poll comes from a real analysis of the results or for a weak reason (not saying this is happening btw). I personally dont see any con to revealing the votes and a decent amount of pros.
Now moving onto the discussion at hand, I am not gonna reiterate the points made by people already regarding whether multi gen makes disparity between teams bigger or smaller because there have been some good arguments posted. There are two things I havent seen discussed so I will talk about those.
First, something that needs to be taken into account with a switch to full current gen is that you are not asking teams to field 8 solid CG players. Youre asking them to form a team of 12. History has shown that subs are a very underrated part of teams, and having good subs can make a big difference in whether a team succeds of not. Obviously not all subs will play, but I think you can safely assume that 2 of them could see play for each team. So you're at the very least asking for 10 World Cup starting level players per team. Thats double the amount of CG OU players needed for each team when comparing to last year, and almost ten times the amount from SPL. I do not think this will result in a desirable tournament of the highest quality, but thats just my personal opinion on the matter.
Second, I think Earthworm made a good point in his post, but I think Malekith made a great retort that holds a lot of weight and pretty much removes that argument from the table. As an aside, I would like to add that what Earthworm mentioned in his post is not unilateral. This doesn't just happen in full CG OU. Speaking from personal experience, I learned old gens and became a player known for them thanks to my teammates in SPL and World Cup, who basically tutored me back in the day. I wager a LOT of modern old gen players come from a similar background, hell speaking from my team in SPL, I know UD inspired several new players into taking up ADV. So yeah, this argument can go both ways and I would honestly be disappointed if this went away, one of the best part of team tours is getting great insight into tiers and generations you arent proficient in. Its basically the Tutoring program but way less tedious, more fun and with a ton more information (I even learned and became quite decent at RU during this past SPL thanks to my RU playing teammates, so this doesnt only apply for old gens but thats a different thread).
And lastly, this point:
However, in addition to the uneven distribution of players, this also misses the fact that most talented old gen players ALSO play SM at a high level but have to choose between how best to support their team.
I think this point has merit, but I have to disagree with its scope. I wont disagree with you when you say most talented old gen players COULD play SM at a high level, but what is missing out is that most dont care for new gens. And in the event they care, you have to consider most of these "oldies" are at a different stage of life than most of the teenager demographic in Smogon, and that means they have a lot less free time. Even if they wanted to, the amount of effort and time needed to go from 0 knowledge of mechanics / metagame in Gen 7 to a level worthy of World Cup starting proficiency is huge. I just did a quick check on the old gen players from last World Cup and even moving all of the ORAS OU players into SM, of the 64+ players left in the other 4 old gens, I would say over half would have no interest in participating in a full CG OU tournament. Sure, you have players like Ojama, McMeghan, Tamahome, SoulWind, BKC, dice and the ORAS dudes. But you also have people like Fear, Astamatitos, UD, Earthworm, panamaxis, Jabba, Danilo, august, Folgorio, NightFox, babido, AM, Jayde, etc. and thats just the dudes I am sure would not have the time / motivation to learn Gen 7 from scratch. I am sure a ton others can be added to this last group. Basically what I am trying to say is this point overestimates the amount of old gen people that would flood into CG OU, and as such underestimates the amount of new players that might not be up to par that will have to be added to the tournament just to fill up spots.
Disclaimer: I dont have a preference on the format. I think both CG OU and Old Gens have merits and both would be enjoyable, but I feel like some of the points in this thread can be discussed and as such I made this post. If you want my personal opinion on what should be done, I think Ciele outlined it perfectly. If you are backtracking on "The tournaments are set in their format", that means you can backtrack on it later, when it actually becomes an issue. As long as you inform the community on this, I dont think "status quo cementing" is too much of an issue. It might generate some controversy but certainly not as much as the amount youre dealing with now.
Oh and finally, despite the palpable tension in this thread, I would like to thank the TDs for being so communicative right now. In the past, all these posts would stay unanswered for the most part, so seeing this amount of comunication and discussion going on is worth noticing and it speaks that they took the "Issues with the TDs" thread to heart and are working to improve.