Implemented The State of Old Gen Lower Tiers

[Kiyo]

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the majority of the active playerbase wants the ability to make some changes, but that there’s still a strong sentiment from many that changes should only occur in exceptional circumstances.

So let the many be the ones to decide what an acceptable/exceptional circumstance is. Let the SMOGON community vote, not the few who play the tier. Seems like thats what people want to use PR for already. It's a cry for help from the rest of the site where issues go to die.

rant

Speaking specifically in terms of modern NU (something that suffers from small playerbase issues similar to oldgens) there are too many suspect threads that turn into echo chambers. We're really good at presenting one sided intros for suspect threads, people don't discuss, but instead reveal how they are going to be voting and why, arguments are misreprented or lazily researched, facts dont get checked, moderators and badged users opinions are defaulted to regardless of how good their argument is, using the right sprites, colors, and joke structure is more important than the content of your post.

Why does the community playing the tier need to be the one voting on the suspect? Certainly they should be the ones suggesting potential bans, discussing and presenting ideas about what problematic elements are, why they exist, justifying reasons for "x" to go/stay etc. But what if the people who have the most to gain/lose by voting should be the last ones to vote. A strong opinion from a user with 7 badges can easily sway a suspect in such a small community. I think the most pragmatic solution is not to look at how individual communities do things, but how the site functions as a whole.

A small community is still capable of presenting two reasonable sides of an argument and having intelligent discussion. What if we pulled people from other areas of the site to do the actual voting. Make the Tiering Council's job to nominate things for bans, provide logical arguments for and against said ban, then pass that slate onto 50 random voters. Make it like jury duty, if you vote in a suspect test you can expect to have your name put into a hat for the next old gen vote. Or pull from tournament results if we really want to keep this elitist culture. It would be a step in the right direction at least.


I suggest increasing the number of voters, improving the quality of and representation for dissenting opinions, and moving towards a more impartial voting base.

 

[eden]

The echo chamber problem is not unique to your tier: circle jerking is what passes for social discourse on this site. That doesn't have much to do with the issue at hand: the people who will actually be affected by their tier being changed - should have the most say in whether that happens or not. You don't want people with zero stake in the tier arbitrarily swaying votes.

Why would you want people from other parts of the site who literally in all likelihood don't care, to vote on potential permanent changes which affect people that play those tiers in tour? Doesn't really make any sense to me, sorry. Impartial and most likely misinformed users looking from the outside, probably making their choices on the basis of sweeping generalizations, without any actual non-perfunctory experience with the tier in question isn't the way to move forward here in my opinion.

Since you bring up jury duty: I think the way jury duty is setup is a complete joke - by the way the problem of "people being swayed" happens there too! When you have 12 people doing jury duty chosen at random - after excluding people with no personal stake of course from the pool - it might surprise you that all 12 of them are probably not "evaluating things objectively": in practice histrionics/emotional appeals/appealing to their personal values holds more sway than cold hard facts, unless the facts are extremely damning. It's more about theater than about truth. Doesn't sound very objective to me.

Not to mention post hearing the facts since we have no insight as to their thought process(because they are chosen at random): who's to say the right decision came out of the process? At best you go for a redo if there's doubt as to the end result being correct...in which case you go through the same process again, at worst a tier is permanently changed because we wanted to give people who couldn't care less a voice in the decision making process. We have no context as to their knowledge viz-a-viz the subject matter at hand or whether they have any qualification to even chime in on the case(being uninformed/misinformed/or not having the necessary background to weigh in on subject in any relevant way: is Pretty Bad for trying to ensure due process!).

We also obviously can't ensure they actually pay ANY attention to points raised in front of them because they're randomly picked - otherwise known as we have no idea of whether they actually are able to intelligently use information presented to them in a particular setting, or whether they even engage with the process in the first place!

So to act like this process is inherently objective, and something to be emulated when trying to search for objectivity in decision making - is straight up wrong. At best its an exercise in optics to give people the illusion, that the voice of the people's been heard - makes it look like there are more stakeholders than there actually are.

To drag this back from the tangent this went on: it's pretty easy to see why this is definitely not how you want to make potentially final decisions. Especially not when we have the liberty of choosing who exactly should be weighing in on them. Elitism is a buzzword thrown around to express dissatisfaction with how small groups with selective membership decide upon courses of action - however: to make appropriate decisions some degree of elitism in choosing your membership is inevitable, and even desirable to ensure that the correct decision is made by people who are qualified to make them.

You bring up the issue of echo chambers swaying votes within your tier? The exact same thing's going to happen even if you bring outsiders into the decision making process. People who don't play the tier much will give a quick read to the VRs and people with a lot of badges/who are mods etc. heavily influencing the vote will happen again. The people who are most affected by a decision should always be the ones who have the largest say in the outcome. Not some outsiders looking in, for their once a year sojourn to some tier they don't actually play.

 

[Hogg]

Just so that there’s an official policy ruling: we will be implementing the proposal from my previous post. The tier lock will be lifted for old gen lower tiers. If issues arise that require tiering changes in an old gen lower tier, a Policy Review thread should be created where the issue can be discussed. If there is significant support, we can move forward with a vote, using tournament results from official circuits and subforum team tours to generate voter lists.

Thanks all for your discussion on this.