Proposal RE: Council Member Expectations & Accountability

[Finchinator]

I personally think we should try to codify council member guidelines both for CG tiers and OGC sometime early in 2025. This would be a good step in accomplishing a lot of what is discussed here.

I do not think any guidelines need to be firmly enforced at least initially as circumstances pop up and we can use our best judgment, but this way we are encouraging the ideas in this thread, pointing people in the right direction, and entering an age with greater transparency and participation in the tiering process from those on councils.

In general, some things we should encourage:

• Participating in a good amount (left purposefully vague for now) of suspects in your tier
• Showing some sign of metagame activity during non-suspect periods
  • Playing tournaments in the metagame
  • Posting about the metagame on the forums during tiering discussions
• Engaging in internal council discussions whenever they come up
• Posting in larger policy discussions that pertain to the metagame (like PR threads)

Obviously OGC council members have fewer opportunities for suspect or tournament participation while certain CG tiers like Ubers are subject to less tiering action by nature, so perhaps some specifications can be made for each applicable metagame's circumstances. Star does a good job introducing some rough parameters for suspect tests that we should consider here, but I am sure a lot of people both on councils and on the outside looking in have feedback on specifics. I also think that if you miss a couple of suspects, but are actively posting or regularly playing in high-level tournaments in a CG tier, then there is probably some leeway to be had.

If councilmen are going to dictate what we quickban or suspect and play an instrumental role in shaping tiering policy, then it feels best to have a mechanism like this in place for our playerbases, who are impacted by all of these things. I hope we can begin to get more specific in feedback and find some guidelines as we get into 2025.

 

[Finchinator]

I think we should look to codify something now/soon, especially with SPL ending now/soon. Don’t want this forgotten about.

It actually feels like there has been some positive turnover or discussions in some CG councils, but it would be good to have something codified anyway.

Having in writing a list of participations we encourage for current members or things to do as potential stepping stones for future council members, while perhaps leaving a little gray area, feels like a good step. I know I am going to encourage my entire council to either post and/or participate in the upcoming OU suspect if possible. I think other tier leaders are doing the same. The visibility and accountability components for playerbases is what matters most.

What is really catching wind lately is people claiming that OGC members do not represent the current metagames too well though — this actually feels like the biggest thing here to me as someone who is front-and-center in BW. It is super easy for inertia to kick in and people to coast once they have a spot on an OGC. But these metagames have turnover with time and there are more opportunities than ever to engage with old generations, so it feels like there shouldn’t be many excuses for inactivity anymore. I have had a lot of complaints about BW council, for example, and I am sure there are others in other generations, too.

In general, some things we should encourage:

• Participating in a good amount (left purposefully vague for now) of suspects in your tier
• Showing some sign of metagame activity during non-suspect periods
  • Playing tournaments in the metagame
  • Posting about the metagame on the forums during tiering discussions
• Engaging in internal council discussions whenever they come up
• Posting in larger policy discussions that pertain to the metagame (like PR threads)

I was hoping to get feedback on this with my last post, maybe have some dialogue on specifics for OGC members since that’s a different hand of cards entirely to CG, and am still pretty open minded in general. I may draw up a formal proposal in this thread and tag tiering admins once it’s done to see what they think at some point.

 

[Finchely]

Was gonna make a post on this but then i sort of forgot. Here's my thoughts on the matter:

PR THREAD: Council Member Accountability
It's been a month probably more than a month since the OP, and everyone has agreed that this is a good idea and something should be done, yet we have yet to see any actual hard guidelines. Part of the reason for this is that it's unrealistic to apply the same standard to every tier just because activity and circumstances and whatnot differ so much from tier to tier.

In the second most recent post offering a solution to this issue, Finchinator said:

I do not think any guidelines need to be firmly enforced at least initially as circumstances pop up and we can use our best judgment, but this way we are encouraging the ideas in this thread, pointing people in the right direction, and entering an age with greater transparency and participation in the tiering process from those on councils.

I slightly disagree with this approach. I apologize in advance for my bluntness (I do not mean any ill will), but I think that continuing to move forward without having decided on any objective methods of reviewing council member effectiveness, and instead only effectively reminding communities to use their best judgment is naive. While this approach can and to an extent has worked thus far, in the absence of actual guidelines, this reminder will eventually fade from memory and issues will once again arise. Furthermore, objective guidelines cause less room for interpretation, and thus smoother discussions on council member performance. Another reason that I think that written guidelines are needed, are to manage expectations and add weight to the position of a council member. Being a member of a tiering council often is not just some casual gig to be tacked onto an achievement list, it's a collection of responsibilities that one should be fully aware of before signing on.

I won't claim to be an oracle capable of providing the perfect solution that the collected people here were unable to provide. I don't think there is a single person capable of doing that, since their perspective will be limited by the number of tiers they've played. Which is why I think that there should be a committee of sorts, with multiple people actively trying to come up with a solution

By doing this, it's possible to better cover every perspective found throughout Smogon. From now on I'll just describe my personal takes on how I think the guidelines should be set up. From there, tiers can be seperated into groups of "high", "medium", and "low" activity. Here is where TL judgment can be brought in for determining which tiers reside in which categories, but objective metrics can be used too such as number of ladder games, tournament activity, and amount of tiering action. By having separate categories, it's possible to have flexibility across tiers, while still retaining specificity for each tier. When it comes to the actual guidelines, I think this is the place where things ought to be the most relaxed.