Policy Review Retention Issues

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Imanalt

I'm the coolest girl you'll ever meet
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(approved by jas)

There are problems with CAP, and there have been for a while. While in the past, CAP has been a place for intelligent, informed discussion and debate about pokemon, it has been continually moving away from that over time. One main symptom (and a major cause) is the fact that our retention and recruitment of actually good players is quite poor, resulting in worse discussions. I’m going to focus more on the retention side, because it doesn’t really do any good to recruit if we can’t retain good players. The other major symptom I want to discuss is the burnout rate we have amongst a lot of CAP regulars. The CAP process as it stands now is often intensely frustrating for a lot of people, and I think Pwnemon and Ginganinja’s quitting makes this pretty plain. These are both users who have contributed a lot to the CAP project, and its really painful to see them deciding that CAP is no longer worth it to them.


So I think we need to open the floor to diagnosing this problem, and coming up with solutions. Why is it that we can’t keep good players, and why is our burnout rate right now so high? I would say that a large part of it is the quality of discussion threads, and their, perceived at least, lack of impact on the polls. But fixing this is hard, and so proposals for ways to fix this would be very much welcomed.


Since I do like solutions though, I’m going to lay out my thoughts on the issue. I’m not at all happy with them, so if people have other solutions and diagnoses I really want to hear them, but this should at least give us something to work off of. To me, I feel like there is one pretty unifying problem. A lot of our posters in any thread are, to put it politely, relatively uninformed. Building off an analogy used in the mission statement,

Mission Statement said:
To pose an analogy: "Who knows more about cars—a driver or a mechanic?" Actually, they both know a lot, and they both know different things because of their perspective. A driver knows how to drive cars, and a mechanic knows how to build and fix cars. This project is focused on the knowledge set analogous to the mechanic.


"If you really want to learn about cars, then build one.

If you really want to learn about competitive Pokémon—then build one.”
I think our inherent problem is that we’re like a group of liberal arts students trying to build a car. We have a couple people who mostly know how a car works, and a bunch of people with no clue, and we’re trying to crowdsource ideas on how to go fastest. Obviously if you don’t have the requisite knowledge, your car doesn’t really work, and all you learn is one way not to build a car. You need some amount of understanding ahead of time to actually be able to be in a position where the problems you encounter are solvable, and its working through solvable problems that we learn the most. The lack of knowledge also means that a high percentage of discussers can’t even distinguish between things that any good player would tell you is obviously true, such as greninja being a good pokemon, and things the lower ladder would tell you is true, such as ambipom being a good pokemon. This very quickly leads to burnout of good players, as you end up spending most of your time being more of a tutor than someone who is actually participating in the discussion fully. Interesting discussions can really only be had between people who can agree on basic facts, and that says people must be somewhat closer in skill level to each other than they currently are.


So now the question is, how do we fix it? This is where I really am unhappy, because to me the only way to fix it is some pretty significant changes to our mission statement. Building off the end of last paragraph, we have to narrow the band of skill levels down, which either says alienating the bottom part of the spectrum, or the top. I think by now it should be pretty clear that to me, the solution is catering more towards the top players. How we do this is hard though. One of the big standards of the CAP project has always been that we are very accepting and open to anyone, regardless of skill level. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is possible, because if we do continue to be as accepting of anyone regardless of how low their skill level, we alienate those people who are more high leveled. Basically, there is no way to be fully accepting of all. To this end, I think we have two major solutions:


1) More aggressively moderating posts in competitive discussion for content rather than tone.


One example in a quick look through is from plasmanta’s primary ability thread:

aftermath is a nice ability as it breaks excadrill, gengar, and brelooms sash so it could open up opportunity for gyarados to gain a moxie boost from the weakened pokemon then mega evolve and have a free +1 boost to it's attack. It could also add even more recoil to talonflame's brave bird. (assuming that talon would kill Cap 19 in a weakened state.
There are a couple things wrong with this. First off, he mentions sash excadrill which is most definitely not a set seen in the metagame. Secondly, he demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge of the mechanics he is discussing, as aftermath would not damage gengar, given it does not use contact moves. Finally, he implies that breloom will be defeating plasmanta more than very rarely, which given a typing that resists all of breloom’s moves other than rock tomb, is pretty much wrong.


Another example, same thread:

What we do NOT want is something like Tinted Lens, or any offensive ability really. Gyarados is the sweeper, CAP should provide support by dealing with his threats primarily. For this respect, I'm a big fan of Static. It does a better job of discouraging U-turners than Gooey, Mummy, or Iron Barbs, because the effect, while not always activated, inflicts a permanent and hugely crippling status upon the victim. Slower things can get wrecked by our partner far more easily.
Posts like these are quite frankly demonstrating a lack of understanding. One inherent way offensive teams work is by using offensive pokemon to wear down checks and counters of other offensive things, and this was even covered briefly in the threat list, where it was said that

threat list last post said:
As for what CAP19 should threaten—it should threaten defensive Pokemon and pivots which Gyarados has trouble handling
This pretty clearly implies that plasmanta should be striving to have offensive abilities that help it weaken walls for gyarados, and as such this is a post that just adds almost nothing to any competitive discussion, as it is pretty much factually wrong.


2) Some form of requirement in order to vote.

I really hate doing this, but there is definitely a problem. The results of polls do not really reflect the results of the discussion threads a lot of the time, and this isn’t surprising when we have way more people posting in the poll than the discussion thread (to the point that the two threads often have roughly the same number of posts, such as plasmanta’s ability discussion generating only two more posts than the poll). One good example of votes that really aren’t helpful is malaconda’s nonattacking moves poll.

Allow Glare

Allow Spikes

Disallow Stun Spore

Disallow Thunder Wave

Malaconda is a snake. Hiss…..
This philosophy was not rare, as by my rough count 13 posts in this thread allowed glare, but disallowed stun spore, which is a pretty competitively indefensible position. This is why we need some form of vote management, so we ensure that votes are being placed not because “that sounds cool” or because “is a snake,” but rather for reasons discussed in the discussion thread. How to regulate votes is a very hard question. I do not think it should be too strict, and anyone who participates in the discussion thread reasonably should have a vote. This is where this ties into part 1. If we are moderating for content as I’d like, then almost any allowed post should be sufficient (although a post of just “i agree with x, it helps us beat y” is probably not enough). Also I would say that anyone who is considered a “respected user” could be expected to take the time to pay attention to the discussion and what is going on, even if they don’t contribute to it actively. As such I would allow any badged user to vote.


So yeah, that’s about it. We have had these problems at some level since I’ve joined cap back before necturna, but it’s gotten worse and worse, and that makes sense. With my proposed problem, it would be expected that the problem causes itself to get worse, as chasing away good players will lower the quality of discussion more, and it spirals. So I think we need to review whether at this point some of our stated goals are in opposition to each other, particularly

Mission Statement said:
-The CAP project inspires various interesting discussions about Pokémon, the spirit and mechanics of the game, and most importantly, in-depth analysis of the current competitive metagame.


-The CAP project is open to anyone interested in learning more about the underlying fundamentals of competitive Pokémon.
I think, while these are both excellent goals in a vacuum, and while they used to work fine, in the current state of smogon and CAP they can not co-exist fully. I’d love to hear other factors in our problems to what I focused on, and I’d especially love other solutions that don’t suck as much as mine, but I haven’t found them yet, so please suggest some. The one thing I’m concerned about however is that we do have a major problem right now, and so the solution can not be small unless we are absolutely sure it is enough. Major problems are hard to fix.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
is a Top Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I want to nip this in the bud:

In my opinion there is no need for excessive dramatics with respect to CAP going downhill, CAP losing players, valuable people "quitting", and other such overly exaggerated nonsense. If you're going to say things like that please back them up with examples instead of making vague claims that not everyone would agree with. Pwne and ginga are both here to discuss how we can make things better for them.

Despite not being a competitive player myself I have noticed that we had a lack of good posts this time, but I have not noticed a downward trend. For CAP19 it may have simply been a perfect storm of old regulars/mods not having time or interest in this particular concept, DarkSlay disappearing and the remaining regulars not stepping up, and rather choosing to complain about new people who had less experience but who were much more enthusiastic. Let's please not throw the newer people under a bus here.

I would *love* for us to have a more vibrant discussion and attract more active OU players. Obviously, an essential part of learning new things about the OU meta is having a base understanding of what it is like to start with. But we are not in *crisis* for goodness sake, so let's not resort to extremes.

Please use actual evidence-based arguments and logical, reasoned statements when discussing how we can improve. For example, don't ignore the fact that we did quite well this past project in being conservative in our move choices. We rejected many useful controversial moves in the Allow/Disallow stage and in the Movepool Voting stage in the name of being conservative and sticking to our concept.

There is absolutely no need to have a restriction for voting. At the end of the day people will vote for whatever they want, what we need is a strong discussion stage that lays out the facts and arguments well, the voting will fall out of it. Remember that CAP is about the discussion, not the final product. Things that are flat out wrong for the CAP in a competitive sense should be disallowed, so there is no need to worry about that with respect to voting.

I agree that moderation in the threads could be a lot better, and that mod activity in this project was lower than I thought necessary.
 

ginganinja

It's all coming back to me now
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Agreeing pretty heavily with imanalt's analysis here. Polling is to me, the primary reason why CAP has no strong attractiveness for experienced, intelligent players to participate in, simply because certain players are...not experienced.

I'm going to pre-empt Birkal here, because I do know he claimed that a lack of intelligent players posting is an issue to smogon as a whole, and he is quite correct. Both C&C and OU have made it utterly obvious that they want more intelligent posters active in the forums, but I feel that the issue is worse in CAP. In C&C / OU, if I want an opinion on a set, or on the current metagame, I can log onto IRC, and get a solid opinion. In CAP, I could hypothetically do the same (if we had experienced players that actually cared about CAP) but again, it means nothing when unquestionably worse abilities/typings/movepools get majority votes. I can cite examples here, if anyone particularly wants me to, but most of them are pretty painful memories for some CAP vets, so I'll refrain. Most of you already know what they are anyway.

The single, most frustrating thing I find is that CAP prides itself (currently), for creating a CAP for the OU metagame, and get in many posts, I see far too many players posting that have no idea what the OU metagame is or looks like. Imanalt outlined a couple of posts, and I can cite a few more (even from certain CAP veterans) but its seriously troubling seeing support for things that are unquestionably bad. Furthermore, when you have relatively experienced players wading in to "educate", often its drowned out, or flat out ignored in popular voting, which only increases the frustration issue. Why would I (for instance), bother telling people why x isn't a good choice, when people are going to vote for what they like, and vote in favour of an ability that has only terrible posts in support of it, while ignoring good posts in the thread.

This leads me into my next point, that there seems to be a divide as to what CAP stands for. I suspect, there are people out there that want the CAP to succeed at its concept. I have also heard on some occasions from CAP staff, that they "didn't care" if the concept failed, so long as we learnt something. Lastly, I suspect there are people out there that just want to use this program to create a pokemon they think is "cool" regardless as to whether what they vote for is relevant to the concept, or indeed, healthy. We have all seen the fanmon threads being posted in the CAP forums, and I suspect a number of people nominate things that they think are a cool idea "Hey, lets give this thing speed boost, I always liked the idea of something with good bulk and excellent attacking states having speed boost etc". Again, there are examples of people voting or supporting things that were obviously broken but some people thought they were "cool" (again, everyone should know what these examples are), the shiny new toy syndrome actually ends up hurting the voting process.

I'm starting to ramble now, but I just want to highlight a few things quickly.

For CAP19 it may have simply been a perfect storm of old regulars/mods not having time or interest in this particular concept, DarkSlay disappearing and the remaining regulars not stepping up, and rather choosing to complain about new people who had less experience but who were much more enthusiastic.
Fair enough, lets not throw new people under the bus. Some newer posters have outstanding logic, heck, I even dropped a few names in the #cap irc channel as posters new to CAP that had a solid handle on the cap process and the OU metagame, it was very impressive.

On the other hand, as you pointed out, people are going to vote however they like, and currently speaking, there is little incentive to "bother" writing a solid post, because at the end of the day, whatever gets the most votes wins, rather than what had the better arguments. At least with suspect voting in OU, you have to be "good" to have a say, which makes intelligent posts worth attempting in the OU forum, CAP opens it up to everyone, and some people are (forgive me for saying this) clueless. Maybe vote restrictions might not be the best way, but certainly something need to be done to stop poorly thought out options winning polling.

Things that are flat out wrong for the CAP in a competitive sense should be disallowed, so there is no need to worry about that with respect to voting.
Except things such as the still come through. These are usually the more "powerful" options that sneak through, and like it or not, people can and do vote for the most "powerful" option. For instance, I guarantee that if I had slated Speed Boost into the ability poll, it would have won, regardless as to how healthy the ability is or was. Yes, on this occasion I was able to block it, but this won't happen all the time.
 

jas61292

used substitute
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I'm not going to have a big response to the OP right now, as I do not have the time, but I would just like to quickly respond to paintseagull's post.

While I can understand your point of view paintseagull, I think Imanalt has a lot of good points in the OP. I will readily agree with you that CAP 19 was, as you say, a perfect storm, but I think there is a lot more to this than that. I approved of this thread because I think that the climate we have in this community right now is not healthy, and even though I may not fully agree with Imanalt regarding what kind of solutions we need to take, I think that we it is something we absolutely need to talk about. Maybe at the end of the day we won't need any major changes, and maybe this "crisis" is overblown and exaggurated, and all we need is increased focus on the stuff we already have (ie, moderation), but I think it would be foolish to dismiss something that is clearly such a major concern of a sizable and very valuable segment of our community.

That said, I second what you are saying regarding posts in this thread. This is a hot issue, and people should make sure their posts are logical well-reasoned statements. Mud-slinging is not going to help anyone.
 

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
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Has anyone given a thought to WONDER SKIN? For those who don't know what it does, it basically halves the accuracy of status moves by 50% when used against this mon.
Suddenly Twave, roar, taunt, whirlwind, SPORE, all have have 50% accuracy, WOW has a laughable 38% acc. This is a defensive ability that aids in setting-up without being too defensive. Just my 2cents.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/cap-6-part-4-primary-ability-discussion.3487306/#post-4801502
So, this is more out of curiosity, but what about Adaptability? It certainly isn't as useful for this CAP's purpose as Intimidate, but it does provide extra power once BD is set up and, with the generally low base-power moves provided by CAP's typing, it could prove to be helpful. I mean, we have Meteor Mash and Brave Bird (potentially) as high-power attacking options, but outside of those, CAP's usable STAB moves don't rise above 80 (except for Acrobatics, whose success relies on an item slot.) I wonder if the extra power provided by Adaptability would be beneficial to CAPmon and Belly Drum, boosting his low-power moves, or if it would make Belly Drum an inferior choice to plain attacking sets? I certainly don't think it will over-power CAPmon or change the concept, it just might provide a useful alternative to Intimidate should a player decide to choose a more offensive (and risky) ability option.

I apologize if this has already been discussed elsewhere - if it has been, I overlooked it.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...bility-discussion.3488262/page-3#post-4843201
At the risk of being too OP, I would like to give Heatproof a try, since it not only neutralizes our Fire weakness, but also reduces the damage from burns.

An ability I feel could potentially be more OP, on the other hand, is Volt Absorb. Not only does it drastically reduce the number of checks and counters CAP6 has, but it can heal us back up for another go. Unless, of course, we determine that that's what we want to have happen
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/cap-6-part-4-primary-ability-discussion.3487306/#post-4801383
Magicbounce
It has advantages over defensive pokemon by preventing most phasing and status attempts but brings nothing to counter offensive threats
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/cap-6-part-4-primary-ability-discussion.3487306/#post-4801451
One ability I think may be good is Marvel Scale. This ability can prevent the CAP6 from getting more dance when it is already statuses. It can prevent the CAP from being weakened too much by attacks and status at the same time.

Alternatively, Water Veil is able to prevent Burns 100% of the time, allowing CAP6 to have immunity to all damaging status.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/cap-6-part-4-primary-ability-discussion.3487306/#post-4801637

On the other hand, as you pointed out, people are going to vote however they like, and currently speaking, there is little incentive to "bother" writing a solid post, because at the end of the day, whatever gets the most votes wins, rather than what had the better arguments. At least with suspect voting in OU, you have to be "good" to have a say, which makes intelligent posts worth attempting in the OU forum, CAP opens it up to everyone, and some people are (forgive me for saying this) clueless. Maybe vote restrictions might not be the best way, but certainly something need to be done to stop poorly thought out options winning polling.
This. This is the problem right now. There is not nearly enough quality control for the serious parts of CAP right now (yet, somewhat amusingly, we are obsessed with quality control for names). I could literally make this entire post just quotes from the past few projects, and it would have so much content that nobody would bother to read the entire thing. That alone should speak volumes of the problem in CAP right now - since everyone can post, even if it's blabbering thoughts that have zero merit and show a complete lack of understanding of the metagame or competitive pokemon as a whole, threads get bogged down in a quagmire of poor posts, and half of the actual good posts have to be dedicated to attempting, often in vain, to explain to the voters why all these bad ideas are bad ideas.
Winston Churchill said:
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
That's another problem at the moment - since anyone can vote, CAP isn't about trying to have a competitive discussion anymore. It's all about trying to game the system, trying to convince the voters that they shouldn't vote in a stupid manner. Which is why I heavily agree that there should be a requirement of at least one post that actually adds to the discussion to vote (and no, having a badge shouldn't count as voting, badged users can be kind of silly too.). This way, we can ensure both that A. People don't have to attempt to game the system to get people to vote the right way, and instead can focus on competitive discussion, and B. That people who are voting are voting with actual competitive basis, and not...well, hiss, glare, snake.

I'm not saying we entirely ostracize new users. Instead, I think we should start to take the same approach as we do with the PRC - encourage people to lurk more, and wait until they are confident in their metagame knowledge to dive into the competitive side of CAP. It's hardly as if we're lacking for non-competitive stages - between name, pokedex, flavor ability, discussion on movepool flavor, and to some extent art, people have plenty to vote on and contribute to that doesn't require metagame knowledge.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
we can't afford to mince words in this thread so i'm not going to. i'm going to be as respectful as i can but i'm not going to beat around the bush.

Despite not being a competitive player myself I have noticed that we had a lack of good posts this time, but I have not noticed a downward trend. For CAP19 it may have simply been a perfect storm of old regulars/mods not having time or interest in this particular concept, DarkSlay disappearing and the remaining regulars not stepping up, and rather choosing to complain about new people who had less experience but who were much more enthusiastic. Let's please not throw the newer people under a bus here.
The downward trend has been here for a long time, it's not unique to CAP19, no cap has had notable participation from good players since Malaconda. If you didn't notice a real downward trend, that is due to you not being a competitive player so you don't recognize it when it's happening.

paintseagull said:
Please use actual evidence-based arguments and logical, reasoned statements when discussing how we can improve. For example, don't ignore the fact that we did quite well this past project in being conservative in our move choices. We rejected many useful controversial moves in the Allow/Disallow stage and in the Movepool Voting stage in the name of being conservative and sticking to our concept.
Basically all of the polls went exactly my way. I wanted elec/poison, I wanted storm drain, I wanted 100 speed, and I wanted basically the exact movepool we got. And yet I'm quitting if nothing changes, because the process sucked.

i'd like to point out things that i learned from running a CAP in the doubles forum. if you want to check it out, it's here: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-cap-project-thread-stage-8-stat-limits.3519485/. Basically i thought that I could run a CAP, but if i changed some of the culture problems that I had with normal CAP—tone policing, tl;dr, bad mods—while still running it like a normal CAP, it could succeed. A disclaimer: Doubles was quite possibly the worst community where you could run this experiment. It's small and it's heavily IRC-based (more so than the rest of Smogon). I was like the only mod, and I probably fucked up moderating the typing discussion. But it's also the only community I had available to me. I'm going to limit my conclusions to things I think are still relevant to CAP.

Basically what I saw is that something about the Create-A-Pokemon project just naturally attracts the most idiotic people. The project started out more or less fine, but it was going to hell in a handbasket by Typing discussion. Some of the worst doubles players, like Qazoo306, Moudou, Skore, Fangame10, and LightningLuxray became the only people posting in the thread at all. We even got unfixable, who doesn't play Doubles at all, and some person named Asterei whose every post is in the Doubles CAP thread despite having never played doubles. Meanwhile, all of the good users were too mortified to even try and post in the desolate hellish wasteland of a nuclear apocalypse that was the thread and instead just joked about it on IRC. All of the votes were going the right way, and I'm confident that had I kept it alive, all of the future votes would have as well (because good users turned out to vote), but the discussion was absolutely atrocious so I axed it.

So the idea is that changing culture probably isn't enough to save CAP. There are too many dumbasses on Smogon nowadays, and they'll always flood CAP because CAP has a ring that attracts dumbasses, no matter how hostile we are to them, unless we delete their posts.

Another point which deserves consideration is that our current moderation staff probably aren't the best for the job imanalt wants them to take on.
(During Cawmodore) Very high Atk / Speed. It outruns Alakazam, and can KO with Gear Grind through Focus Sash, which I think is very important to avoid its fast Thunder Wave.
I wouldn't trust this person to be able to weed out who has and doesn't have competitive knowledge.

edit @ below:
We're not all selected for immediate competitive knowledge.
exactly the problem: none are.
 
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So the idea is that changing culture probably isn't enough to save CAP. There are too many dumbasses on Smogon nowadays, and they'll always flood CAP because CAP has a ring that attracts dumbasses, no matter how hostile we are to them, unless we delete their posts.
I think this hits the nail on the head as far as what the problem is. A solid portion of the problem is that people aren't actually here to create Pokemon for OU, but rather to create the Pokemon they want to play in OU. Honestly, I think most of the problems CAP suffers from come from the name "Create-A-Pokemon". That inherently sound like a project where you get to create your own super-duper Pokemon to play and stomp those silly meta players because you're special. As an example, here's one of the latest posts to the PRC applicants thread.

Hello there.

Im not known much on Smogon or Showdown, but I am EXTREMELY impressed with the work that people contribute to the CAP Project and I have been interested for a while. Im Frontier Brain TJ or you may have seen Frontier Boss TJ (my second account). I have been playing Pokemon religiously for 7 years. I know everything about it inside out back to front with inverted colours... okay maybe I'm exaggerating a bit but you know what I mean. I want to join CAP because I have some creative and cool ideas that I just NEED to contribute. (I know that this is kind of irrelevant but my 2 favorite CAP Pokemon so far are Tomohawk and Malaconda) Before you finish reading this I want to tell you that I cannot draw very well, but I'm sure someone on the CAP Team can so I will try my hardest to describe it to you.

Thanks for reading my application and I hope that we can work together on some amazing Pokemon! Cheers!

Also here are some ideas I already have for some CAP pokemon, they need some work but i think they will be great http://pastebin.com/VijkNM3R
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/cap-20-prc-applications.3520633/

Not only did this man have absolutely no clue what on earth this thread was actually for despite it being in the OP, but he finished off his post with his own idea for custom pokemon. If he had read the rules, the OP, or pretty much anything on the forum at all, he would have known this was not the place for this. He posted here exclusively because he read "Create-A-Pokemon" as the subforum title, and then "Application" in the thread title. This is an easy example where the name of the project doesn't completely convey enough about what the project actually does to keep uninformed players away.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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I wanted to provide some historical context. There are many users who have contributed to CAP well but no longer do. Many of them just aren't on Smogon at all anymore, and that's a different class of users than we should be worried about. What we actually care about are the users who are still on Smogon but don't do CAP. So I started to make a list of good users who still participate elsewhere on Smogon but do not participate in CAP anymore. Many of these had their CAP heyday before I joined the project, so I apologize for any inaccurate inclusions or exclusions I make:

Mario With Lasers
tennisace
Gothic Togekiss
Aldaron
Frosty
Mekkah
darkie
LonelyNess
Elevator Music
Plus
TheMantyke
Coronis
Stellar
Arcticblast
Kevin Garrett
Namso (formerly Fuzznip)
Matthew
zarator
v
billymills
Engineer Pikachu
Jibaku
RBG
locopoke
Oglemi
reyscarface
Stathakis
Fusxfaranto
Lady Salamence
SJCrew
DTC
Theorymon
HD
Molk
Texas Cloverleaf
PttP

Considering the fact that I can't possibly track everyone down, and that this list was made in like 45 mins, I'd say that it's been a substantial issue for a long time. It's definitely reached its peak though now because there always used to be more good users to fill the place of ones who left. That isn't happening anymore.

Even motherf*ing Earthworm had 32 posts in the CAP process archive. Being a good (or even top) competitive player is not mutually exclusive with posting in CAP in history, but it basically is today. PttP was the last good tournament player left actively participating in CAP and he has left (for many reasons, some of which are his fault, but that's beside the point that he was the only one).

Put plainly, CAP used to be a breeding ground of site leaders. Just look at that list of users. Doug and Birkal rose to importance mostly through CAP as well. It isn't that kind of forum anymore. Doug was considering an IS thread for a while, but that never happened. I'm very annoyed by that. The people I've listed above are the people I want to hear from. Why did they invest as much time in CAP as they did before and why don't they now?

I fear this thread otherwise will just become a collective bitchfest by imanalt, nyttyn, Pwnemon, ginganinja, and me (and maybe a few others?), which has already happened numerous times on IRC. The result of those complaints has mostly been passive resistance (though several mods are actively resistant to criticism, understandable since most of the people complaining are tactless).

I have my own suspicions as to the answers to the question I asked above (about why people don't participate anymore) but I don't want to put words in other people's mouths. I'd like a few of them to post responses, but since this is in PRC not IS, that will be more annoying to do.

HI BILLY MAYS HERE
I can't post but I can edit other people's posts because of whacky permissions. Here are my thoughts:

[00:50:52] <&Mekkah> i stopped cause i got bored
[00:51:01] <&Mekkah> i have tried almost everything on smogon once
[00:51:26] <&Mekkah> but looking at what people said about cap now i'd not really be tempted to come back
 
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jas61292

used substitute
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I'd like a few of them to post responses, but since this is in PRC not IS, that will be more annoying to do.
Just a reminder to everyone, CAP PRC rules allow for people not on the PRC to have moderators post things on their behalf if they have something relevant to say. So, if any of those people you listed, or any other who you left off, do want to share their personal views on this issue, I encourage them to send me or one of the other mods a PM. We are not going to stop relevant voices being heard just cause they have not participated here in a while. If someone has something to say that can help us moving forward, I want to hear it, regardless of who it is coming from.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
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Yes, the legendary T-Wave Alakazam which is slashed on the site's own strategy dex, which would have been capable of hampering a Cawmodore sweep (by breaking Sash before Thunder Wave could hit, this was before Volt Absorb). I'm sure I've committed a more grievous competitive sin than that you can dig up, but this isn't a personal vent thread.

I'll have a full post later, but look Pwnemon, I get you're angry and think the staff is part of the problem, but guess what? We're not all selected for immediate competitive knowledge. Some of us have been selected for project experience, specific moderator abilities (like paint on Art Polls/Rules) and general maturity.

Maybe you should cool it with the personal attacks on people you need to convince.
 

Ununhexium

I closed my eyes and I slipped away...
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1) More aggressively moderating posts in competitive discussion for content rather than tone.
I've been thinking of this myself. In my opinion, a big part of the reason we do not have way too many good users in the first place, is that they think of CAP like a "lol fanboy noob" project, much because of this reason. The lower the quality, the lower the (better) players' opinions of CAP. The project's sort of "definition" of what constitutes a good post, in my opinion, is far too lenient, and more of a "you're not rude" than a "you're a good poster". That is not to say, however, that we should only mod for quality and not tone. We don't want people to be turned off by constantly rude or offensive posting. Anyways, for retention, I remember the various leaders of the past project complaining that there were not enough good posts or enough posts in general to conduct a good discussion or create a good post as a section leader. So basically, I think that poor posting quality is both keeping people away and causing others to leave the project.

2) Some form of requirement in order to vote.
I completely agree with this proposal. If suspect testing can do it, why can't we? There should definitely be a requirement. Similar to how suspect testing requires a paragraph to allow for a vote, we should have a sort of "Voter Identification Thread" where you link your posts or something in that section of the CAP's creation in order to be able to vote. However, as I fear that would take a long time to carry out, perhaps you could link your posts with your vote so a mod (I'd really hate to create more work for you but I feel it is necessary) could delete all of the illegal ballots then review the posts to decide whether or not the user was qualified enough to vote. Heck, I have also been guilty of "uninformed voting" during the Volkraken typing poll, where I voted for Water / Fire simply because I wanted a Water / Fire type! That is to say, it shouldn't be too strict as that could deter newer users.

I'm sorry if I got a bit off topic, but I would definitely like to see this put into effect, because I think the knowledge of the CAP of the people voting is too low.
 

Oglemi

Borf
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How and why I started CAP:

CAP was one of the very first places I started on Smogon. I made an account almost 5 years ago because I noticed some analyses written by Heysup had a lot of grammar errors in them and R_D had provided a link to the Small Changes thread for corrections. I sat in that thread until I was satisfied but I still didn't have much interest in Smogon on a larger scale. However, CAP piqued my interest when something was posted about it on the front page. It was so cool that people were creating a Pokemon that you could actually play with. I thought that this was the coolest thing I'd ever heard of.

I lurked hardcore for the tailend of Cyclohm where I rooted super hard for Scicky's design to win and I think I voted in the art polls only. After that I kinda left due to the break in between CAPs but I happened to come back as Colossoil was halfway through the process. So I dove into the CAP forum and I participated in nearly every aspect of the process that I could. I created a movepool and submitted it, I gave what I thought to be constructive criticism for the flavor aspects, particularly the art, which to be frank is the most exciting part of the process and the major reason for me to contribute. You want to see the design become something awesome to look at and also to use.

I made a point to really get into CAP during Krillowat. I created a Concept, the idea for Mini-Arceus, which unbeknownst to me became a major point of contention on the CAP server and IRC since I almost never went to the server outside of playtest and never on IRC. But it was super exciting knowing that I had made something that had caused some drama right at the start of the process lol. I participated in nearly every part of the process after that, even submitting art that ended up getting infracted by Wyverii (it's quite terrible, I'm sure most have seen it). I really liked being a part of the voting and discussion process.

Why I left CAP:

Majorly, the break in between CAPs is what initially drove me away. I think it was after Krillowat that there was like a 6 month break before the next one started, and I missed too much of the process to really get into the next again like I had with Colossoil. I was also doing other things for Smogon at the time, I had really gotten into C&C and was focusing almost all of my time there.

After that, there was a ton of rule changes to the process that kept me from really getting back into the discussion aspect of the process again. We no longer had a central leader with a vision for the CAP, particularly after bmb's CAP. There were a ton of restrictions placed on what your posts could look like, how to make submissions, how often you could post, and the like. This just is all very counterproductive to the participation aspect that I had once enjoyed.

I still do vote frequently in CAPs mostly due to the nostalgia. I like to read up on what the CAP is trying to do and voting in ways that I feel best fit the goals. But I no longer participate in the discussion at all mostly due to the above. That, and the current crowd that participates in CAP just aren't fun people. They get vastly too angry over arguments, they make extremely long tl;dr posts that aren't worth reading (like this post 9.9), and the community just seems so uninviting and exclusive.

Points of Improvement I think could help:


1) Disable likes

I think likes have ruined a /lot/ of the community aspect of CAP. One of the best parts about participating and reading through CAP was seeing all the support and critique posts, particularly for artists but for other submissions as well. Now with likes you no longer get those posts, instead everyone just uses likes to show their support.

Unfortunately, likes come with another further detriment, and that's giving an "objective" view on which poll options have the most support before the polls even happen. This I feel is terrible to the process because it feels like poll-jumping, which is expressly against the rules. People can see exactly which ones are most popular, and they probably feel a less need to vote for the options they feel probably don't have a chance to win and instead focus on the major ones that they think will be able to beat the most popular.

2) CAP Needs a Goal

What is the goal of CAP? From what I remember the initial goal was to create a Pokemon to see how it affects the current metagame and learn about the metagame from that.

Right now I don't see that goal being met, or even really expressed anywhere. Right now it feels like the goal is: Does the current Pokemon meet the concept? To me, that's only a small part of the CAP process.

There really is no focus on what happens to the CAP after the process is complete. There is no debriefing on if the Pokemon met the concept or not, nor how it actually affected the metagame. Looking through the CAP forum quickly, I don't see any threads dedicated to something like this. Right now it feels like we create the Pokemon, and move on immediately to the next one. I like the faster pace in between CAPs don't get me wrong, but it feels like the current CAPs are just being created and thrown into the CAP pile.

3) CAP Needs a Drive

One of the most fun aspects about CAP was having someone "in charge" that was going to see us through the project from start to finish and be super excited about the process the whole way through. Beej, Plus, and Magmortified were really really good about this. They made the process fun, and to me it felt like they wanted to see us meet the end goal.

I understand the need to remove the central focus from one person, particularly after R_D's and reach's CAP where it felt like they were barely involved with the process at all. But, I feel now there is no central driving engine behind the process. Too many people are placed in a position to move the discussion in a direction that is not always cohesive. It's also really jarring moving between processes where the tone of the first post is totally different from the prior process thread.

I don't think bringing back the strong TL model is the solution to solving this "problem", but I don't think delineating the process among a group of about 10 individuals is a good solution either. I think if you had a strong TL team sort of model, I think that could help bring back some of the drive that's currently missing from CAP.

4) Relax Art/Flavor Rules

I cannot stress this enough. One of the best parts of CAP was seeing the rivalry between the various artists to get their submission seen and voted for in the upcoming polls. Limitations on the amount of posts and how often you can do it just stifles this and makes the process significantly more boring.

While I understand the desire to not run into a situation with Malaconda with dy8 and Yilx again, I think that could have been remedied with simple deletions for "flooding" or something similar because I think it did get out of hand. That said, the atmosphere for that poll was really exciting and I really wanted with all of my might for Yilx to win that one. Even look at the poll numbers for that one, 318 votes for that poll compared to the most recent 152. That's less than half the amount.

Another aspect of loosening the rules for flavor processes is not being able to make final submissions immediately for Dex or Name entries. I find this just unnecessary and I'm wholly ignorant on the reasoning behind it though I'm sure it was justified. I just find it extremely inconvenient, and when users like Jibaku and franky are getting infracted for not following that rule (from what I can gather looking at the moderation for the thread, I really didn't see anything trollish about their submissions) for Cawmadore I feel something is amiss. If people mistakenly submit a final submission but want to change something I think it'd be easier to just tell them too bad than to tell people too bad for actually following the rules to the tee but submitting it too early. It's this kind of redtape that I think could be removed to create a more relaxed atmosphere.

5) Mods need to be chill, but without mercy

Speaking of relaxed, from what I can gather with the people that have an issue with the current state of CAP and what I feel myself is that the current moderation team comes off as too uptight or unapproachable. Now this can be fixed with an easy perception change by removing a lot of the stifling rules I detailed above.

However, this can be further fixed by making #cap more of a cool hangout. You're going to have to forgive me for saying this but the current #cap channel is just a nerd fest, and really not the cool kind. It really isn't that fun to read and I personally don't find the current CAP team people I'd want to talk to about non-CAP stuff. For example, R_D and Plus and Beej were cool to talk to about anything irl but I just don't feel that from most of the current CAP crew. I currently don't go to the CAP Room on PS but from what I gather things are a bit better there. The people in charge really do make CAP and image in this case is very important.

When I say "without mercy" I mean that the CAP team can put out an air of a relaxed atmosphere, but they need to crack down without mercy when people break the rules. If people are being a nuisance or making something unenjoyable but not breaking any specific rules, in #cap for example, they need to be booted out. The atmosphere is one of the best parts of participating in CAP and if someone is ruining that for someone else they need to be dealt with. This also applies to the CAP process itself for discussions, if someone is just being a clod and using poor arguments they need to be removed. I would never allow someone to post something wholly incorrect or argumentatively flawed in C&C trying to the get the OP to change something, and the same should be said for CAP.

6) Fix tl;dr issue

Now, this is a part of the culture aspect that will be the hardest to change. Particularly if the best CAP contributors are all guilty of doing so.

However, the tl;dr issue is an actual issue, not just a perception issue. It is extremely hard to participate in discussions when people go off on extremely long tangents, relevant or not, or repeat themselves in their own post. It makes everything extremely uninviting. The top CAP contributors need to really really practice at being concise in their posts. I'm going to call out jas, bmb, and DJD in particular here because I don't think I've ever seen them make a post that was less than 3 paragraphs long. Ever. You have to be able to say things without circling your own argument. Here, umbreon dan, v, yllnath, magmortified, plus, etc were all really good about making a point and making it concise and moving the discussion along. Right now it feels like discussions just get bogged down by a ton of white noise from a ton of tl;dr posts trying to compete with each other to become the most tl;dr.

7) Fix competitiveness issue

This issue I think will come in time if there is a culture shift in the current state of CAP. However, you aren't just going to get the best "tournament" players involved in CAP because it just doesn't interest them. Instead, the better thing to do would be to cultivate the current CAP crowd and make them better competitive players. I think this can be accomplished by getting people interested in laddering and learning about how the current CAP affects the metagame, which points back to my issue of giving CAP a goal.



/me awaits flames
 

ginganinja

It's all coming back to me now
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Yes, the legendary T-Wave Alakazam which is slashed on the site's own strategy dex, which would have been capable of hampering a Cawmodore sweep (by breaking Sash before Thunder Wave could hit, this was before Volt Absorb)
Nitpicking, but as a QC member, and as a member of the OU staff, I believe you might be incorrect here.

The last update for Zam was in August 12th, 2012, and contained no slash for T-Wave anywhere on Zam. Your comments came a year later, were for a BW2 metagame (rather than for XY). I talked to a variety of people just in case T-Wave Zam was a thing that I was unaware of, and found no mention of it among any high ranking player I talked to, nor on the usage statistics.

By all means call Pwnmon out if you want, but I wouldn't do it in this specific example, because the set you mentioned did not exist and even if hypothetically speaking it did, you are wasting a pokemon just to T-Wave Caw (even if it lacked VA by then, best case scenario the +6 Caw attacks Zam, you T-Wave it, it Bullet Punches you to death, and then the next pokemon you bring in, its just not a worthy trade period). This is really just a clarification post, since pwnmons example remains entirely valid, although Deck Knight does have a point that knowledge of the OU metagame is not essential in the duties of a CAP mod, and thats something I am personally O.K with.
 
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Birkal

We have the technology.
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There are plenty of opinions being brought up in this thread that are worthwhile to explore. That being said, we're falling subject to one of the most common pitfalls of Internet forum communities: posting our own agenda without actually listening. Remember folks, imanalt is currently leading this thread. He was given approval by the CAP moderators to post the initial post. Could he have phrased guiding questions more blatantly? Certainly. But that doesn't excuse the Policy Review Committee for unleashing whatever is on their mind and veering off course. If you wanna talk about deleting off-topic posts in CAP central, we need to start with ourselves. Let's stay on point.


Again, there are lots of topics to address here. Let's start with the most basic, which is arguably at the heart of all of this: CAP's democratic philosophy. imanalt's post does a good job of introducing this topic. As demonstrated by the CAP Mission Statement here, we currently define ourselves as very democratic. We give every user a chance to submit, vote, and contribute at nearly every stage of the process. What imanalt (and others) are suggesting is that we break from this trend. Perhaps we want to move in a direction where being a competitively knowledgeable player gives you more clout in the final creation, no? I'm fine with heading in whatever direction the Policy Review Committee can agree upon, so let's discuss the options.

I don't care what this looks like practically at the moment. There are numerous routes we could take, from giving good contributors more voting power to disabling new users from voting. What matters is this question: should every Smogon user have equal say in CAP? If we indeed find it important that every user deserves the same vote and voice as everyone else, then we can move forward with implementing some of Oglemi's (and other) recommendations. If we find that we'd rather give some contributors more say in the process, then let's change our philosophy and make tweaks as necessary.

While I don't want to bias this original question, I should note that my preference is to have a meld of these philosophies. I like that CAP has the freedom to allow every user to leave their fingerprints on a creation; it keeps us humble and inclusive. That being said, we can do a better job of providing more opportunities for competitive folks to have a direct say in the outcome of the project. I have a proposal for how to do this coming to the PRC hopefully in a day or two. Stay tuned!


tl;dr -- Cool down, read the OP, and address the defining question that imanalt is proposing: should every Smogon user have equal say in CAP?
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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CAP absolutely must stay open to everyone in at least some respect. I'm the classic case of a user who was terrible but got better. I was ICBB for half of Voodoom and frankly just didn't get it. Now I'm a pritty snoeflak and two-time TLT.

Users can get better - or at least they could in the past. I haven't seen that kind of growth as much recently. I'm curious if people have any thoughts as to why this is.
 

Bull Of Heaven

99 Pounders / 4'3" Feet
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I'm not saying I could never be convinced to support voting restrictions, but it would take an overwhelming justification for them. People love to talk about the "original purpose" of CAP as a way to study the metagame, but what it really was originally was a way for an inclusive group of people to come together and add something to the game that they love. I know that I was drawn to CAP by the feeling of having participated just by casting a few votes, and of being part of that larger community, and I'm sure the same is true of many others. In the end, it's a way for people to be creative and have fun, though I'm certainly not saying that it's bad to be guided by other purposes. This is literally our oldest and most stable tradition, and it would be a terrible shame to restrict it (i.e. lose it in some cases). Also there's that thing about how CAP has gotten new contributors in Smogon; it's an excellent starting point on the site, and that would be partially lost with voting restrictions.

Saying that "suspect tests do this so we can too" isn't nearly an adequate argument for restrictions; suspect tests are completely different in both spirit and purpose. Suspect tests are a way to regulate the separate end that is playing an enjoyable metagame. In CAP, creating the Pokemon is the enjoyable end. Suspect testing is more analogous to participating in PRC discussions, while saying that there should be voting restrictions seems comparable to saying that there should be a restriction on who can play on the OU ladder, which I hope we can agree would be absurd. In case it's unclear, I think you also get a lot of the same harms if some people get more say than others, beyond the quality control that we're already supposed to have in the TLT.

I'll save some thoughts on this other point for later, since it isn't really what we're talking about right now, but I think we should also take a look at how we actually want to define things like "competitively knowledgeable" and "the metagame". If we want to keep CAP as relevant as possible, it makes sense to me to weigh knowledge of what people tend to see on the ladder at least as highly as knowledge of what's considered viable in high-level tournaments, if not more so. I guess we'll cross this bridge when we get to it.
 

Empress

We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.
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Birkal proposes a great driving question in his paragraph. Should all Smogonites have an equal say in CAP? Well, the answer is yes and no.

Judging by the propositions brought forth in the OP, it appears that imanalt is looking at turning the CAP environment into something similar to a suspect test environment, which appears to be a viable option. Suspect Tests, like CAP, do tend to attract shitty posters, it must be said. For CAP, it's the name- with a name like "Create-A-Pokémon", people fail to realize that the ultimate goal of the project is not to actually create Pokémon, but to learn about the OU metagame. Because of that, many inexperienced players will attempt to get involved in CAP just for the sake of making something cool, when in reality they don't know what they're doing. For Suspect Tests, it's the fact that some less-experienced battlers use shitty arguments to explain why a suspect should be banned or not.

Though I respect Bull of Heaven's opinion that comparing CAP and Suspect Tests is like comparing apples to oranges, both ultimately have a similar goal: to create an enjoyable metagame. Suspect Tests accomplish this by determining whether certain Pokémon are hindering a balanced metagame, while CAP accomplishes this by learning what goes into the competitive metagame, often helping it achieve balance in the process.

As for why Srk1214 has noticed that bad players often stay bad in CAP as of late? Well, it all boils down to the fact that the mods were, for lack of a better word, asleep during this process. If the mods are unable to right the ship, then they're allowing the bad posters to continue with what they're doing. If a CAP frequenter proves that they are not knowledgeable about the OU metagame, then they shouldn't have equal say in the discussions. However, instead of simply using them as punching bags and ignoring them, a more viable option would be to act as mentors to them. The democracy of CAP is what attracts so many users, even if it attracts the wrong ones. If we up the modding of the project, it makes it much smoother, but at the same time would turn prospective users away, and thus decrease activity here. Nonetheless, by working alongside the users as mentors as opposed to slapping them with an infraction and calling it a day, we can help them gain a better knowledge of OU, and thus encourage them to stay as they learn and share what we have taught them.

As for voting restrictions, while creating a whitelist of sorts appears to be a knee-jerk reaction on paper, it is actually a viable option for us. CAP voters in the past have proven that they don't know what they're voting for, as evidenced during polls such as CAP 19's concept. Such a whitelist should not turn away prospective voters, either. Why do people participate in Suspect Test discussions and battles? Because they want to prove that they are experienced and wise enough to be placed on the whitelist. Therefore, a whitelist would provide incentive for the new users to contribute intelligently so they can cast their (presumably) well-informed votes.

Thus, the proposals in the OP would definitely work. With more aggressive forum moderation, we can allow everyone to get their thoughts down on a topic as we sort through the best-reasoned posts, and subsequently provide mentoring to those who give less-reasoned ones. As such, we'd be combining the roles of a mod and a mentor into one. And with voting restrictions, we are encouraging people to prove that they are knowledgeable about the project. And if they are not wise yet, then all they need to do is request a mentor who can help guide them along the steps of the project. Just like a Suspect Test: Do you want the TC Badge, or to get that suspect banned? The only way to contribute to that is to participate, and to know what you're doing. Same for CAP: Do you want a certain typing/ability/etc. to be slated or to win the poll? Once again, participate often and participate intelligently, and the more-active mods will help you out if your posting isn't up to par yet. Just like Oglemi said, "Chill but without mercy" is the way to go. We don't want to scare prospective CAPpers away, but we do want them to be positive influences if they are to stay.

So, to answer Birkal's question one more time: Yes and no. Back to my analogy: anyone can attempt a Suspect Test, but only those who qualify can get to vote. I envision CAP taking the same route, and it remains democratic because everyone still gets a chance to get their ideas down. But unlike Suspect Tests, where we often just infract shitty arguments, we absolutely cannot do that here if we want to keep CAP alive. It's better to be a tutor than a police officer here.

A little help goes a long way- I got a lot of help during the CAP 18 process from you guys. I started out as your typical shitty user, I'll admit, but I got better as I lurked more and understood that the point isn't just to make Pokémon. Heck, the only reason I voted for Water/Fire was because it sounded cool at the time, and I voted for Contrary because I wanted Contrary Overheat. But because I got help along the way, I've become a more mature user on the forums as well as IRL. I returned the favor by acting as a mini-mentor to P3DS when it came time for the CAP 19 stat stage. I helped him improve his spread submission, and now he's on his way to becoming a regular here.

While this sounds like a drastic change, the fact of the matter is that CAP will still be open to the public, and it will always be that way. But with these rules in place, we will be improving the public instead of ostracizing them. Then maybe, with the continuing influx of new blood and the efforts to turn said new blood into positive influences on the discussions, we can get CAP back on the right track.

TL;DR version: Up the modding by mentoring, create a voting whitelist, yes and no to Birkal's question.
 
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ginganinja

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Should every Smogon user have equal say in CAP?
Ugh, Birkal and I had like a 3 sentence "discussion" right after he posted this, when I argued pretty heavily for "no"...but after reading previous cap threads, specifically the ones where terrible decisions were made (like the entire Aurumoth process), I have come to the conclusion that its both badged users (CAP vets and the like) as well as 'randoms', or "new people" that make terrible posts. This isn't a post in support of either option about the other, I guess I'm just saying that currently, I couldn't support a move to limit newer posters, if the argument was solely based on past histories of terrible posting (when the evidence is there that experienced cap members can write cancer posts as well), and I would potentially need further reasoning to support it.
 
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ginganinja

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Double Posting because I can

[17:20] <reyscarface> wanna fix cap
[17:20] <reyscarface> heres how u fix cap
[17:20] <reyscarface> you have a council of people
[17:20] <reyscarface> who are subjectively evaluating posters
[17:20] <reyscarface> the shitty posters have their vote worth half a vote
[17:20] <reyscarface> the extremely shitty posters
[17:20] <reyscarface> are worth one fourth of a vote
[17:20] <reyscarface> good posters
[17:20] <reyscarface> are worth double vote
[17:20] <reyscarface> excellent ones are worth 4
 

DetroitLolcat

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We do not need to exclude people from participating in CAP, we need to exclude bad ideas from dominating CAP. Before every project, we elect a TL and TLT to guide discussion and cull bad ideas. At the end of each discussion, they post a slate of options for users to vote on. If objectively bad abilities/moves/stat spreads winning is the problem, then our slating system is flawed. If we are more aggressive with refusing to slate bad options, then the users who submitted those options will have two choices: leave or learn enough about the metagame to submit something better.

More assertive leadership from the elected project leaders (not necessarily the mods) is what we need. The mods are chosen for a multitude of reasons: knowledge of CAP and its policy, ability to get along with other users, competitive knowledge, etc. That's because the moderators are more around to weed out rule-breakers and resolve conflicts than manage the specifics of the project. Unlike other sections on Smogon where the moderators are the faces of the subforum, CAP has a TL and TLT that are the face of the subforum for the duration of the project and it's them - not the mods - who are entrusted with leading discussions and culling bad ideas. Maybe the mods can do more to delete bad posts. But the TLT can do a lot more by ignoring bad posts. Although every user is treated equally in CAP, all users and all ideas are not created equal! If something is popular but clearly not worth slating, don't slate it and explain why.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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We do not need to exclude people from participating in CAP, we need to exclude bad ideas from dominating CAP. Before every project, we elect a TL and TLT to guide discussion and cull bad ideas. At the end of each discussion, they post a slate of options for users to vote on. If objectively bad abilities/moves/stat spreads winning is the problem, then our slating system is flawed. If we are more aggressive with refusing to slate bad options, then the users who submitted those options will have two choices: leave or learn enough about the metagame to submit something better.

More assertive leadership from the elected project leaders (not necessarily the mods) is what we need. The mods are chosen for a multitude of reasons: knowledge of CAP and its policy, ability to get along with other users, competitive knowledge, etc. That's because the moderators are more around to weed out rule-breakers and resolve conflicts than manage the specifics of the project. Unlike other sections on Smogon where the moderators are the faces of the subforum, CAP has a TL and TLT that are the face of the subforum for the duration of the project and it's them - not the mods - who are entrusted with leading discussions and culling bad ideas. Maybe the mods can do more to delete bad posts. But the TLT can do a lot more by ignoring bad posts. Although every user is treated equally in CAP, all users and all ideas are not created equal! If something is popular but clearly not worth slating, don't slate it and explain why.
I would just like to stress that there is more than simply the voting results. CAP is supposedly about the journey. Plasmanta had objectively good results from each of the competitive steps. That doesn't mean that the participation was good and that the process worked. The discussion threads were terrible.
 

ginganinja

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But the TLT can do a lot more by ignoring bad posts.
Doesn't matter how you ignore them, they will win polls. Lets face it, if I didn't bother posting how bad Volt Absorb was (sadly I did), nothing would have changed...so its obviously not the solution. Agreeing that the discussion threads are terrible.
 

DetroitLolcat

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Doesn't matter how you ignore them, they will win polls. Lets face it, if I didn't bother posting how bad Volt Absorb was (sadly I did), nothing would have changed...so its obviously not the solution. Agreeing that the discussion threads are terrible.
Things don't win polls if they don't make polls. The TL and TLT are under no obligation to slate Volt Absorb if they think it is bad for the project or only supported by unintelligent posts. The Ability Leader doesn't have to look at 10 bad posts supporting Volt Absorb for every good post opposing it and feel forced to slate it. The Ability Leader should look at the thread, realize the Volt Absorb crowd has no idea what they're talking about, and not put it on the poll.

More aggressive slating will fix polling issues, but I agree it will not fix discussions. That's a much tougher issue to tackle and not the focus of my previous post (or this one).
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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To the point of more aggressive slating, I would support the removal of likes. I have actively resisted considering them when I've slated but that implies to me it's probably affected someone before. Not everyone has perfect conviction to ignore likes if they are ill-informed. At first I just wanted likes disabled on flavor steps, but the more I've looked back at CAP the more influential likes seem to be. Especially concepts. Those correlate pretty heavily with what gets liked.
 

jas61292

used substitute
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Things don't win polls if they don't make polls. The TL and TLT are under no obligation to slate Volt Absorb if they think it is bad for the project or only supported by unintelligent posts. The Ability Leader doesn't have to look at 10 bad posts supporting Volt Absorb for every good post opposing it and feel forced to slate it. The Ability Leader should look at the thread, realize the Volt Absorb crowd has no idea what they're talking about, and not put it on the poll.

More aggressive slating will fix polling issues, but I agree it will not fix discussions. That's a much tougher issue to tackle and not the focus of my previous post (or this one).
I agree with this. Really, both DetroitLolcat and srk1214 are right, in my opinion, but as DLC pointed out here, they were really looking at two different sides of the issue, and I believe that if we want to fix both, then we have to look into solutions for both. Fixing problems with polls will not change discussions, and while I believe that fixing problems with discussions will certainly help fix any issues with polls, I do not think that it can necessarily do everything we want it to do by itself.

Anyways, let me get into my own views on some of what has been talked about so far. First off, I would like to address the question that Birkal proposed in his post: "should every Smogon user have equal say in CAP?" While I don't necessarily agree with what wh0sy0urpapa said on this issue, I myself will also give an answer of "yes and no."

First, let me cover the "no" part. It is my belief that in some aspects of CAP, users need to earn their say. When I say this, I am not talking about polls. I am talking about discussions. In my opinion, if a user does not show competence in discussions, then they should not have a say in the discussions. That is to say, posts that show incompetence should be deleted. It is not the right of any Smogon member to promote their opinion if they cannot back it up with logic and facts. I don't think this is a new concept, but I do think it is something that we have never really enforced. I fully agree with some of the sentiment in this thread that we should be stepping up our moderation of discussion threads. I am willing to admit that I have always been hesitant moderating things that, while bad, are not against any rules. But, I will be happy to get over those reservations if that is what we as a PRC think needs to be done. After all, a deletion and an infraction are not necessarily the same thing, and just because a post someone makes is bad does not mean we want to scare them off for good. A lot of our great users started out as shitty posters. We don't need shitty posters gone, just the shitty posts. Posters can learn and grow, but a post will always stay the same.

With that said, I think we may want to go beyond simple increases in moderation. If a user is continually making awful posts, I don't think saying "moderators delete them" is a good solution or one that is fair or easy for us moderators. While it may seem a bit extreme to some people, I would not be opposed to some sort of temporary ban from the CAP forum for such offenders. I have no idea how feasible that is, but to me it seems like a much better solution to say to a consistently terrible poster "you clearly don't understand CAP/OU/whatever well enough to participate, so you are going to have to sit out the rest of this project," rather than handing out dozens of deletions, FSRs and Lurk Mores.

Going back to the original question, however, the "yes" part of my answer was with respect to polls. Being an open democracy is one of the most valuable aspects of CAP to me personally, and I have absolutely no interest in changing that. While there are definitely some proposals I have heard about changing the polling process (such as blind voting) have merit, I would not be able to support any changes that would take away the natural right of all Smogon members to vote in CAP polls. However, note that I said "all" before "Smogon members," in conjunction with my previous paragraph, I would not be opposed to measures that would allow the revoking of voting rights from specific individuals that show incompetence. This, of course, would not effect most voters, including those who never post in discussions, but I believe it could be a step in the right direction. I do not think voting should ever be seen as a privilege that one should have to earn, but rather, it should be a right that all members have. However, like so many other "rights" we have here, this right should be able to be taken away if the situation calls for it.


Anyways, there are a lot more ideas around in this thread, but I agree with Birkal that we should focus on this one for now. I will have plenty more to say later, especially on a lot of the things brought up by Oglemi, but I believe we should really hash out what we believe on this original question first before going any further.
 
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