Policy Review Retention Issues

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DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
While this has been said by others already, I would like to speak against any voting restrictions or whitelists. First of all, stricter moderation will inevitably lead to better discussion and better slates. We don't need to restrict bad users from voting on the options, we need to restrict the bad options from being slated in the first place. To weight or restrict voting in any way is against what CAP stands for.

Also I'd like to commend nyttyn on his previous post. There has been a lot of flaming and vitriol over the past few projects (the previous one more than any) and it's driving people away just as significantly as what has been discussed over the past two pages. I've gotten just as many complaints about the flaming and bashing in #cap as I have about bad users "taking over" the channel. If moderators and operators are expected to crack down on posts and comments that drive away veterans, that needs to include flaming others in #cap and even in the forum. Posts and comments whose primary purpose is to personally attack another user need to be eliminated. If this PR is truly about "Retention Issues", then we need to acknowledge and address that normally good users attacking other users is destructive to the community and drives users away.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
is a Top Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I like where this thread ended up. I've always been a proponent of deleting ignorant posts in the forums *and* punishing abusive and arrogant behavior in the channel and on the forums. Unfortunately I'm unable to do much on the 'ignorant posts' front, since I'm not a competitive mod, so maybe sometimes it comes off as me just defending bad posts or ignorant users.

To be honest for a little while I was worried that we as a PRC would be ok with the casual bashing of ignorant users. That would have made me real sad. Thanks for your post on the subject, nyttyn.
 

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
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I'll admit I've been dreading making an actual post in this topic, but for the most part I think the recent shift in the conversation is a good thing.

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when nyttyn visited the CAP PS room. While we don't completely agree on everything, being able to talk to someone about this PR topic has helped be organize my own opinions. I think we pretty much all agree that moderating competitive discussions for noob posts is a good thing.

DougJustDoug said:
It is impossible to be a competitive project if the project does not have the participation of good competitive battlers. In general, competitive battlers do not like to participate in forums dominated by little kids and pokemon noobs who talk endlessly about whether Bulbasaur is cuter than Squirtle, or brag about how amazing Hyper Beam is on Snorlax. You can call competitive battlers elitist or snobs, but the fact remains that most people that play pokemon know very little about the "serious" aspects of battling. It is incredibly annoying for the people that know about competitive battling to hang around with the average pokenoob. So we have to do our best to make a project that is exciting and enticing for knowledgeable battlers, and that means we have to discourage the project from being overrun with fanboys and fanboy concerns.

If you look at the CAP project and most of the participants are pokenerds that don't battle competitively, have no knowledge of competitive battling, and no desire to learn more about competitive battling -- then would you conclude that CAP is a "competitive project"? If you were a typical good competitive player, would you want to jump in and be a part of the project? No. If that was the case, and if you did want to be part of the project, you would not be doing so as a competitive battler. You would participate as a fanboy too and you would do it "Just to have fun".

For individuals and their motivation level, there is nothing wrong with that. But for the project as a whole, it is a terrible influence. If it goes unchecked, the project is doomed.

Unfortunately, when the average new pokemon player comes to Smogon they are somewhat intimidated. All the serious battle strategies, lingo and acronyms, organized tournaments, rules and tiers -- the whole thing is kinda scary to new players. But as they survey the forum listing, they come across a phrase that resonates with them instantly -- "Create. A. Pokemon."
Halleluyah! Something that makes every fan's heart sing -- a place for pokemon fans to make their own pokemon! "OMG, I have the greatest idea for a pokemon! I know so much about Pokemon, I beat the Elite 4 ten times in a row! I will instantly fit right in here!"

Ugh.

So they come in droves. And they don't bother to read rules or learn what the project is all about. They assume they know the game of Pokemon and they dive right into the CAP project. When they see a bunch of competitive mumbo-jumbo being discussed, they bypass that and focus on what they do know about -- which is flavor. And they do this in one of two ways -- they make flavor comments in competitive threads, or they stay out of competitive threads and only post in flavor threads. Both of these tendencies are actually bad for the long-term health of the CAP project. Both forms of participation act as a disincentive for participation from good competitive players. Fanboys either shit up the competitive threads, or they make the competitive threads look like a graveyard of activity -- both of those are bad for CAP.


So here's what we have to do as leaders of the CAP project to keep us on course -- We have to discourage fanboyism and flavor across the board, and play up the competitive aspects of the project as much as possible. I'm basically saying we need to abuse the innocent pokemon nerds, and coddle the smug competitive battlers. It's a harsh statement, I know.

But here's the harsh truth -- pokemon "fan knowledge" is pretty much worthless to us. It has almost no value, because it is so easy to come by. How much work does it take to learn enough about pokemon to argue if Dragon pokemon look cooler than Dark pokemon? How hard is it to find someone capable of writing a Pokedex entry? How many people feel they have enough pokemon expertise to come up with a good name for a pokemon? Pokemon fan knowledge is worth jack shit here at CAP. Because there is no defensible "skill" to it, and there is no way to distinguish between people that are "good" at pokemon flavor and who is "bad" at pokemon flavor.

Competitive knowledge, on the other hand, is very valuable at CAP and is generally hard to come by. It's not hard to come by in Smogon, but it can be hard to attract to the CAP project if we allow the project to be dominated by users obsessing over flavor. We don't want CAP members interested only in flavor -- we want people with expert knowledge and skills to participate in CAP, and for THOSE PEOPLE, we want to provide a place for them to indulge their fan interests. Does that make sense?

The focus of the CAP project is experimentation with competitive battling, and alongside that we provide a small outlet for our fan interests. The fanboy aspects of CAP are just an "added bonus" for the competitive players we want to involve here. Unfortunately, the fan stuff tends to overshadow everything, and it is the primary attraction for a HUGE number of CAP participants. But don't confuse popularity with focus. The CAP project is not designed to be a fanboy project, and we will never succumb to the constant onslaught of fan influence. If we really want a fan project, then we are doing this entirely the wrong way, and we are doing it in the wrong place here at Smogon.

Don't get me wrong, we are ALL fans of pokemon and we all probably got started in the CAP project due to a keen interest in the flavor aspects of the project. Whether you were intrigued by the cool artwork, you got hooked by a prevo thread, or you made a noobish post about some ridiculous typing you would like to see in the real game -- almost every "serious CAP veteran" probably started in CAP as a flavor-loving fanboy. I know I did. And there's nothing wrong with that. But we need to transition that initial fanboy hook into a deeper interest in serious competitive pokemon. Even if CAP participants never get into battling seriously, they need to understand and appreciate that CAP is primarily driven by competitive goals. If participants don't make that transition, then we should not cater to their desire for CAP to be a home for pokemon fans only interested in flavor.

From the very beginnings of the CAP project, we have had to defend our legitimacy as a worthwhile competitive endeavor. And despite our history, our organization, our rules, and our process -- we still get a constant stream of pokemon noobs that wander into the CAP project and assume we are just making "kewl pogeymanzz". These people litter our competitive threads with idiotic flavor comments and suggestions. They spam the art threads with "OMG that is so awesome!!!" comments, but don't even bother to look at the damage calcs when voting for stat spreads. They are the regular joe pokemon players of the world, and they will forever be the bane of our existence.
The above quote is from a certain sticky, written two years ago (before I even joined CAP). The issue of noob clutter hardly seems to be a new problem. I went and bolded a few relevant parts, since I find it impracticable to ask all of you to read the whole thing; the rest is left in normal text in case you wanted further context or whatnot. The point is, it is clear this topic has been noted in the past, and if we really want to change things then moderating bad noob posts is inevitable.

Of course, the point of moderating noob posts is not to mock or flame them. It is to preserve the competitive integrity of discussions. What seems to be under-explored, however is the issue of what can be done to bring the inevitable group of noobs up to a baseline of competitive knowledge. We don't want nooby statements to prevent good competitive battlers from joining, but I also don't think we want to turn off new users from making a bad post, being reprimanded, and being discouraged to ever shown their face in CAP again. People have mentioned in this thread that there should be a clear distinction between deleting posts and actually reprimanding users, and I agree with this sentiment. However, it is still unclear on how to get users the knowledge they need to be good participants in discussion. Currently, the phrase "lurk more" is something used a lot, and even that has been criticized... My question is, rather than saying lurk more, why can't we say something more like "practice OU"? Essentially CAP is designed with the OU environment in mind, so if we want people to do well in competitive discussions, it makes more sense to advise new players to play the tier in question rather then tell them to lurk more.

And as a last sidenote, I think I might be one of the few who doesn't particularly want to see likes abolished. Yes, we have likes being given to competitively uninformed statements, but if such statements are being moderated, then the likes attached will inherently fade. Beyond that, there have been concerns about likes creating a bandwagon effect in flavor discussions. As someone who submits art, I personally find it beneficial to see the number of likes my designs are generating, as it gives me both motivation and a general idea if I need to change something. I'm going to be blunt and say that the majority of the time the comments I see in art threads aren't actually substantive, and the number of likes personally give me a better idea on if my design needs tweaking. Likes in general, in both competitive and flavor components, offer a way to reward good posts. If we are going to start removing bad posts in competitive discussions, then at least bad posts really can't be liked anymore. Flavor bandwagoning is possibly more of an issue, but can we ascertain that likes in flavor discussions are really impacting the results of flavor polls (as opposed to users just liking and voting for something based on the designs/flavor itself)? For me, my biggest worry about disabling likes is that it would encourage people to repeat ideas in competitive discussions; if we can't like a statement, the only way to show our support for the idea within the thread itself is to directly reply and say so (which is more time consuming for people with lives outside of the internet, and might make others have to read a bunch of "I agree with this and this" statements that don't actually add to the conversation). That said, I'm all for discouraging/"banning" likes in polls. Your own vote in polls clearly shows what you support and liking another user's vote is almost like sharing your opinion multiple times.
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
Before this thread gets out of hand, we need to refocus on what this thread is about: retaining users that are currently frustrated with the project. There are two groups of users who are currently frustrated with CAP culture: competitive players who don't want to deal with bad users and good, but not necessarily competitive, users who are tired of all of the negativity and userbashing that occurs in the forum and on IRC. We need to retain both of those groups. The end goal is to have nobody leave. More importantly, there is no reason why both groups can't get what they want.

This thread has mostly been about retaining competitive users who are frustrated with having to explain everything about OU to everyone in the thread and then losing the poll anyway. We have talked about this constantly and have made good progress in that area. I can't find anyone who disagrees with tighter moderation, not slating options only supported by poor reasoning, and direct communication with moderators to more tightly police threads. Basically, everything they have asked for. There is absolutely no reason for competitive users to be mad in any way, shape, or form unless you think the CAP moderators are so incompetent that they cannot identify bad posts and so egotistical that they won't listen to users that can. If you honestly believe that, all I can say to you is "give us a chance". I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the moderators will do a great job of policing future CAP threads for ignorant posts.

The second group, users who are frustrated with all the IRC negativity, have had essentially zero voice in this thread. That group has been brushed aside and told to "get thicker skin" or "lighten up its irc" simply because they haven't been as vociferous as the former group. There are numerous good users who are extremely frustrated with other good users endlessly bashing less knowledgeable users because it inexplicably strokes their egos. If the attacking in #cap was actual constructive criticism, nobody would mind it. But IRC SOps are leaving/reducing their activity in the channel because they're sick of thirty minutes of circle-jerking among good, competitive users every time a less knowledgeable user makes a bad post. When the good users are called out for constantly bashing those worse users some respond with extremely poor strawmen such as "are you saying we should tell them they're doing a good job" or "are you saying we should ignore their terrible posts".

There is absolutely no doubt that CAP, starting with the next project, will be better for competitive users. There will be fewer, ideally zero, posts that show complete ignorance of the OU metagame. TLT members will not have to slate options proposed by bad posts. If the other PRC thread goes over well, we'll have better, more competitively cognizant concepts. But still, good competitive users are fighting tooth and nail to preserve their right to be an asshole and laugh at users who think #cap isn't for bashing users dumber than them.

All I'm saying is that competitive users need to listen to other frustrated users, like nyttyn and paintseagull, who are upset with IRC culture especially because we have spent ten days and fifty-six posts giving you everything you have asked for.
 
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Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
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We're done here.

Bottom Line:

1. Stricter Thread Moderation
- Competitive Thread OPs will be updated with the following:
  • A basic level of competence is expected in this stage. Posts will be heavily moderated, and any that showcase a lack of understanding of either competitive play or the metagame will be removed. (Example: While Thunder Wave is a good move, and Clefable is a good pokemon, Thunder Wave is never seen in competitive Clefable OU sets).
  • Contributors are encouraged to PM moderators via forum or IRC regarding postings they consider not meeting this standard to ensure competitive competence is maintained within the threads.
2. Forum / IRC PM sketchy posts to mods to ensure competitive quality remains high. (reiteration of 1.)
3. Breakout PRC topics for Updating the Newcomer's Guide and Disabling Likes as they are separate topics considering their relevance to flavor steps.
4. IRC Policy will remain generally open, however grievances on posts are expected to be PM'd to staff, subsequently removed from the forum, and then forgotten rather than piled on endlessly as has been happening. If you want to bash, get a life. If you want to tutor, take your opportunity.
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
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In case there was any confusion, Doug and I chatted about this conversation being "prematurely" closed. We apologize for failing to notate a thread leader earlier (as per our new PRC regulations), but we have assigned the task to Deck Knight. That being said, if there are any discussions that were cut off too early that you'd like to address that is not listed in the above post, please contact me or another CAP moderator to approve a new thread; it shouldn't be an issue to get it approved. Thanks for your understanding.
 
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