if the discord discussion in #spl shows us anything, it's time to re-think how we approach suspect testing and the role the ou council should play in the tiering process. i will try to make this short, mostly in point-by-point format as something (imo obviously) needs to be done quickly about this issue. this thread will also function as a partial response to mannat's IS post about tiering philosophy.
what should our tiering philosophy be?
this section is not an attempt to emulate smogon's objectives of tiering, but moreso a response to the concern of users that tiering has become politicized. by the politicization of tiering, i mean that public relations has superseded our process in the most competitive tiering method possible.
1. tiering should be conducted by the 'best-suited' players, preferably in the form of a council. people who do not actively play, actively offer theory in PR/IS, and do not actively meet a set criteria should not have input in the tiering process.
2. public relations is secondary, if not completely irrelevant to the goal of smogon's competitive aspect. we should be indifferent to the public response of suspect tests, unless such a response comes from our own community.
3. tiering should essentially be a dictatorship of tournament players. there is no reason to pretend we are inferior to ladder heroes, or that they are entitled to a certain opinion.
4. requirements for discussion in tiering should be heightened. specifically, requirements for posting in PR should be heightened.
what should the ou council be?
1. the ou council should serve as a representational mechanism of the player base, not by vote or decree, but by general sentiment of the community in which it operates. in the past, i had argued that the ou council should be an authoritarian coalition of players which can essentially ignore the outside perspective of the community. i believed, in part, that suspect tests had become obsolete due to the decay in skill from those willing to participate in them. i do not believe this anymore. i instead believe that the ou council should be a proactive committee of members which serves the community's best interest at all times. the ou council by definition gets discretion in suspecting things, but should not be permitted to ignore community sentiment when it is expressed by a large percentage of players. there is no reason why the council should reject suspect tests nearly entirely for an almost 2-year period.
2. the ou council should be mandated to individually post each user's thoughts on a potential suspect when a problem pokemon/ability/item/mechanic reaches a certain threshold. their posts should explain why they agree to suspect, or disagree the suspecting of a subject in explicit detail. doesn't need to be long, doesn't need to be complex, just a simple explanation during the discussion process.
3. the latter point should not be a final say on whether a suspect should be held. if there is reasonable demand for a suspect test found in the playerbase, then that test should occur regardless. the reasoning behind the posting of user's thoughts is to explicate their opinion publicly; silence on behalf of tiering leaders does not help anybody.
4. re: perpetuation of the ou council: membership of the ou council should still be primarily conducted by the council, but it should also include community input. want to stop puppets from being placed on the council? open it up to the community. players should be nominated by the council (a set number should be determined), and then voted upon by a base in a similar manner to a suspect. just do ou reqs or something.
5. the ou council should not be authoritarian, and it should not be reactionary. the purpose of proactive tiering is to generate a stable, just metagame through the proactive effort of its members. a crisis should not have to occur before anything is done. s&m should be the shining example of how not to tier a metagame.
6. the ou council should not be indifferent to community sentiment.
7. the ou council's power should probably be reduced in general. this is just a corollary to past points, as indicated by the increased importance of community sentiment. i don't even know if the term 'ou leader' should exist anymore at this point. the council should guide the metagame and actively update the community on how the metagame is developing, and what issues they are discussing. have finch write up a 'minutes' report or something of that nature to describe what the council is currently thinking. then, open up those minutes to discussion in PR. this prevents the council from being reactionary, and presents more opportunity of the community to engage.
what should the suspect process be?
1. re: liberality of suspect tests: the suspect testing process should not be entirely liberal, as i believe that community sentiment has sometimes been drastically incorrect. however, i do believe that the lockdown of suspect testing has been inimical to the development of the metagame as of late. suspect tests should not occur in the same rate that lowers tiers enjoy, but should be brought about after a minimal threshold for public opinion has been reached. there is such a thing as too liberal testing, as the council was created as a measure to prevent incorrect tiering decisions made on a whim. however, the infrequency of suspect tests in the last gen is very worrying., when obvious problems exist within the metagame.
2. re: community input: the tournament community should receive priority in suspect testing matters. not only are we organized, we are clearly better than the rest of the playerbase and have genuine interaction with the mechanisms behind tiering. public opinion is harder to quantify, but should also be used as a medium unto which suspect testing should be gauged off of. informal measures should be implemented into surveying the tournament community's input upon potential suspects, and vague analysis of the PS! playerbase should be used to support that notion. the community needs more input into when and how suspects will be brought about.
3. the criteria for which a suspect is brought about should be changed. most suspect tests result in bans, this is a fact that cannot be ignored. this brings up another issue: the council is only suspecting pokemon which it believes will be banned through suspect testing, or have a near 100% outcome. there is no longer much subjectivity in suspect testing, suspect testing has merely become a rubber-stamp in which the community must partake. decreasing the threshold for suspect tests would increase the number of tests, and introduce a more liberal framework under which suspect tests can be considered. the requirements for a suspect should still be high, but they should not be so high that the only possible outcome of a suspect is a pokemon's banning. reyscarface put this quite nicely: currently we are in a state where suspect tests are just illusions and performative practices on a foregone conclusion.
4. re: how do we decide how much community input is enough to warrant a suspect?: not sure how this can, or will be quantified at the moment. aside from voting on suspects, the process of testing on smogon has always been one of sentiment, not referendum. not tiering leader can know the exact % of a community which wants something banned, as not all the capable members will participate in its suspect, nor be present for initial discussions. for every potential suspect pokemon, a thread should be made tagging all recent tournament players (conducted in a similar manner to how old gen votes work, in which the voting pool comes from tour, spl, wcop, etc) and ask for their input on the potential suspect. there is no reason for suspect tests to be so abstract and conservative when we possess obviously mechanisms for gauging some form of public opinion. who cares about the public playerbase for the time being, they're pretty irrelevant in this phase anyway.
zing
what should our tiering philosophy be?
this section is not an attempt to emulate smogon's objectives of tiering, but moreso a response to the concern of users that tiering has become politicized. by the politicization of tiering, i mean that public relations has superseded our process in the most competitive tiering method possible.
1. tiering should be conducted by the 'best-suited' players, preferably in the form of a council. people who do not actively play, actively offer theory in PR/IS, and do not actively meet a set criteria should not have input in the tiering process.
2. public relations is secondary, if not completely irrelevant to the goal of smogon's competitive aspect. we should be indifferent to the public response of suspect tests, unless such a response comes from our own community.
3. tiering should essentially be a dictatorship of tournament players. there is no reason to pretend we are inferior to ladder heroes, or that they are entitled to a certain opinion.
4. requirements for discussion in tiering should be heightened. specifically, requirements for posting in PR should be heightened.
what should the ou council be?
1. the ou council should serve as a representational mechanism of the player base, not by vote or decree, but by general sentiment of the community in which it operates. in the past, i had argued that the ou council should be an authoritarian coalition of players which can essentially ignore the outside perspective of the community. i believed, in part, that suspect tests had become obsolete due to the decay in skill from those willing to participate in them. i do not believe this anymore. i instead believe that the ou council should be a proactive committee of members which serves the community's best interest at all times. the ou council by definition gets discretion in suspecting things, but should not be permitted to ignore community sentiment when it is expressed by a large percentage of players. there is no reason why the council should reject suspect tests nearly entirely for an almost 2-year period.
2. the ou council should be mandated to individually post each user's thoughts on a potential suspect when a problem pokemon/ability/item/mechanic reaches a certain threshold. their posts should explain why they agree to suspect, or disagree the suspecting of a subject in explicit detail. doesn't need to be long, doesn't need to be complex, just a simple explanation during the discussion process.
3. the latter point should not be a final say on whether a suspect should be held. if there is reasonable demand for a suspect test found in the playerbase, then that test should occur regardless. the reasoning behind the posting of user's thoughts is to explicate their opinion publicly; silence on behalf of tiering leaders does not help anybody.
4. re: perpetuation of the ou council: membership of the ou council should still be primarily conducted by the council, but it should also include community input. want to stop puppets from being placed on the council? open it up to the community. players should be nominated by the council (a set number should be determined), and then voted upon by a base in a similar manner to a suspect. just do ou reqs or something.
5. the ou council should not be authoritarian, and it should not be reactionary. the purpose of proactive tiering is to generate a stable, just metagame through the proactive effort of its members. a crisis should not have to occur before anything is done. s&m should be the shining example of how not to tier a metagame.
6. the ou council should not be indifferent to community sentiment.
7. the ou council's power should probably be reduced in general. this is just a corollary to past points, as indicated by the increased importance of community sentiment. i don't even know if the term 'ou leader' should exist anymore at this point. the council should guide the metagame and actively update the community on how the metagame is developing, and what issues they are discussing. have finch write up a 'minutes' report or something of that nature to describe what the council is currently thinking. then, open up those minutes to discussion in PR. this prevents the council from being reactionary, and presents more opportunity of the community to engage.
what should the suspect process be?
1. re: liberality of suspect tests: the suspect testing process should not be entirely liberal, as i believe that community sentiment has sometimes been drastically incorrect. however, i do believe that the lockdown of suspect testing has been inimical to the development of the metagame as of late. suspect tests should not occur in the same rate that lowers tiers enjoy, but should be brought about after a minimal threshold for public opinion has been reached. there is such a thing as too liberal testing, as the council was created as a measure to prevent incorrect tiering decisions made on a whim. however, the infrequency of suspect tests in the last gen is very worrying., when obvious problems exist within the metagame.
2. re: community input: the tournament community should receive priority in suspect testing matters. not only are we organized, we are clearly better than the rest of the playerbase and have genuine interaction with the mechanisms behind tiering. public opinion is harder to quantify, but should also be used as a medium unto which suspect testing should be gauged off of. informal measures should be implemented into surveying the tournament community's input upon potential suspects, and vague analysis of the PS! playerbase should be used to support that notion. the community needs more input into when and how suspects will be brought about.
3. the criteria for which a suspect is brought about should be changed. most suspect tests result in bans, this is a fact that cannot be ignored. this brings up another issue: the council is only suspecting pokemon which it believes will be banned through suspect testing, or have a near 100% outcome. there is no longer much subjectivity in suspect testing, suspect testing has merely become a rubber-stamp in which the community must partake. decreasing the threshold for suspect tests would increase the number of tests, and introduce a more liberal framework under which suspect tests can be considered. the requirements for a suspect should still be high, but they should not be so high that the only possible outcome of a suspect is a pokemon's banning. reyscarface put this quite nicely: currently we are in a state where suspect tests are just illusions and performative practices on a foregone conclusion.
4. re: how do we decide how much community input is enough to warrant a suspect?: not sure how this can, or will be quantified at the moment. aside from voting on suspects, the process of testing on smogon has always been one of sentiment, not referendum. not tiering leader can know the exact % of a community which wants something banned, as not all the capable members will participate in its suspect, nor be present for initial discussions. for every potential suspect pokemon, a thread should be made tagging all recent tournament players (conducted in a similar manner to how old gen votes work, in which the voting pool comes from tour, spl, wcop, etc) and ask for their input on the potential suspect. there is no reason for suspect tests to be so abstract and conservative when we possess obviously mechanisms for gauging some form of public opinion. who cares about the public playerbase for the time being, they're pretty irrelevant in this phase anyway.
zing
