Obviously I don't have a problem with Smogon starting its own server and using whatever method it wants to make decisions on it. However, if there was a clear opposition to banning event moves in the topic, do you really think I would have gone ahead and banned them?
If that is the argument you're going with, it begs the question: "hasn't there been 'clear opposition' to Wobbuffet for the last five months?" Since you know the answer to that, and you also know what you've done (or haven't done) in spite of the answer to that, then logically the only answer to your question is "yes, I do".
Any change in the game upsets people, so once these changes take place, it isn't as easy as just reversing them when a number of people complain (because there are people who oppose event moves for various reasons, such as their own personal difficulty of getting them in the game, and these people actually make up a large portion of the non-Smogon users of our server; however, they had to contend with event moves before, so they weren't complaining). Complaining before the changes take place actually would have prevented me from banning event moves, but it doesn't matter now anyway.
I don't really buy into the whole "it's too late" idea here, and going one step further, doesn't this imply that you are inherently opposed to reversing changes if they prove unpopular? Say Nintendo made it evident tomorrow that all Natures of the Tickle Wynaut Egg were given out and gave the list of possible IVs...would you be more or less opposed to rebanning it, assuming that this set makes Wobbuffet more powerful than it was when you unbanned it (because it does) and therefore that more people would complain about it than otherwise? I would think that one would want to be receptive to new information as it avails itself...and the information that avails itself to us in practice is very much included in the definition of "new information".
As for Deoxys-S and Wobbuffet, I assume you mean they were "unbanned" without discussion (your post says "banned"), but this isn't true. In the case of Deoxys-S, there was even on a thread on the forum, which we plugged in big red letters multiple times a day, for a week, and I even linked to it on a few posts on Smogon. The server averages 150+ people so it is hard to believe that this was not enough exposure. The result is that the people who did respond in the
topic agreed that it should be standard (except for one person who didn't even play his battles in the tournament and just posted a theoretical set). As with event moves, all of the people opposed to Deoxys-S only came out of the woodwork after we unbanned him, even though they had seen the red letters just like everybody else, and had had plenty of time to comment in the discussion topic. The worst part is that since this took place before we developed a reputation for not caring what people think, so people didn't even have that as an excuse for not responding.
The issue here is that you feel that your forums are, or, at the very least, were representative of the opinion of a large portion of the competitive pokemon battling community. As wonderful as your forums and your simulator and you may be, this just isn't true, and it
certainly wasn't true on January 12, the date that topic was created. Smogon is the site that is most representative of the competitive battling community, because we have specialized in this since 2004, longer and more intensively than any other site. If you wanted a more accurate answer to the question, it would have been better to post a thread here rather than just link to it.
And for posterity, this is a quote from IggyBot, member of the Policy Review taken from that thread in January 15:
Just remember that what Obi said is true though, Deoxys-E will perform better in regular battles since in this tournament, people were prepared specifically for it.
This very much seems to be the case, and goes back to the practice/new information I referenced in the paragraph before this.
As for Wobbuffet, since our previous approach was found to be ignored by everybody who complained, we just discussed Wobbuffet in the main chat, for quite some time. A few people also used Wobbuffet in unrated battles to stimulate discussion on it. Although this process didn't generate any threads I can link to, it did involve community consultation, and it was felt it would be more difficult to ignore than a thread advertised continually. Apparently we were wrong.
You were wrong to assume that the people who were most vocal this past winter in the main chat of your server were made up of those most used to competitive battle and the discussions surrounding it. I am not trying to knock the members of the Official Server who spoke in the chat most this past winter, but there is an unbelievable difference in the quality of discussion you found there this past winter and what you would have found in Stark Mountain. I don't know how much attention you paid to Stark Mountain this past winter so I can't speak for you, but I can speak for myself, having witnessed both. It's night and day, and while I'm aware that "most people would agree with me" is an assumption, it's a pretty safe one to make, especially with hindsight being 20/20 and all (referring to your "apparently we were wrong").
As for the IV-Nature mechanics, that is just an issue of game mechanics and I don't understand why it would even be up for discussion. We don't have a topic here to vote on whether Substitute should block Rapid Spin. It did in NetBattle (which was wrong) and it doesn't in Shoddy Battle (which is correct). VIL has told me that he preferred the NetBattle way even though it is wrong. Perhaps we should have a poll!
Ignoring what you mean by "we", that's an ad verecundiam argument and you know it. Maybe VIL's a retard...or, to not counter an appeal to authority with an ad hominem, maybe Sub blocking Rapid Spin suited his style or best team very well. Regardless, it is up for discussion for the reason I literally underlined: there's virtually no way that a simulator can get it exactly right and even know that we did without Nintendo releasing a comprehensive list.
I'm sorry for sidetracking the topic here, and as I said, I don't have any opposition to the processes that Smogon wants to use to make decisions on its own server. I don't think you are being fair to our history of listening to opinions though. (For what it's worth I also provided some reasons why a vote was just a hasty solution and would not solve foundational issues in correspondence with Hipmonlee and I would have joined a bigger discussion if I knew one were taking place, but I probably wasn't welcome anyway, since this does concern Smogon, after all.)
Ok, how do you know that you wouldn't have been welcomed into our inner circle (Inside Scoop) if you demonstrated that you actually wanted to be a part of it? You're as guilty of this as is AA (even if he has much less of a reason to be), so don't even try making
us out to be the guilty party.
My main objection to a vote is that it doesn't require new reasons to be introduced: multiple people with the same reasoning get counted more than once, rather than us having an exchange of reasons. For example, to take the case of Arceus, originally I was tempted to side with all of the people who wanted it to stay (which included AA, by the way), and if we had held a vote, it would not have been removed to the Extended Game Clause, but instead we had an exchange of reasons and it was evident that the only side with good arguments with banning Arceus—so that's what we did. I suspect the real reason topics like the event moves topic were completely ignored is that people didn't have any reasons to contribute, or at least couldn't be bothered to write them out.
"I agree with you entirely."
