Weighted Suspect Votes

[Quite Quiet]

I have rewritten this thread several times trying to express what I wanted to say, but it all ended up missing the point. So, I'm just going to write something short instead.

I want to talk about weighing suspect votes based on your involvement in the tier, rather than treating everyone equally. It makes no sense for someone like me who isn't involved with more than a single tier, to have the same value put to my vote than the actual tier's community. People who has dedicated countless hours of work and are respected, knowledgeable, and/or skilled should be the ones who has the most influence in suspect tests, rather than giving them the same importance as someone who never played the tier before.


The proposal would be to put in some form of objective criteria that increases how much your vote is worth in a suspect test compared to users who just laddered and got reqs when they had never played the tier before. If this is an acceptable proposal, I would like the thread to come to some sort of conclusion what criteria would be the most fitting.

 

[Aberforth]

No.

First of all, how do we scale it? Is someone who just laddered for reqs's vote count as one, TLs count as 5? What about suspect tours, I recently won one I joined on a lark to vote in LC, how much would that be worth? Do we do non-whole numbers of suspect votes (e.g. my vote is worth 1.2 points!)? If no, what about how subjective involvement is? If somebody is posting every hour in a subforum, but their posts are of poor quality, how does that compare to an SPL player who posts infrequently but his posts are always good? I know thats an extreme example, but when two players have a point difference between them and there is subjectively not much difference between them, how do we explain to one of them that their vote is worth less than someone else's?

There is no objective way to go about this, which will simply lead to more circlejerking. Not to mention the PR nightmare it would be, people already think we're too exclusive and ban too much, so you want to make it so that fewer people can have a noticeable effect on the outcome of public suspect tests? Currently whenever someone says "Smogon bans too much" we can honestly say, play get reqs and vote, your vote is valued the same as anyone else's, its an entirely democratic process. Under this system, it would not be democratic.

 

[g]

We did this in PU for Throh and Exeggutor + Vigoroth suspect test and in short it works like this:

• Regular suspect reqs get 1 vote
• Council gets 2 votes
• People who get reqs + show good knowledge of the metagame in the thread get temporary council status and their vote counts twice as much (still one for TC ofc)

I honestly have some reserves on this method but it has worked well in the past especially considering we try hard to pick people from each side.

 

[AM]

I'm gonna have to more or less agree with Pomman here, leaning more towards reason from his first paragraph.

It's just not practical and I, and I'm sure most of the OU council, don't want to be dictating who gets to vote on what based on supposed community input. There's clearly players in OU who don't involve themselves not a single bit in the OU Forum but there tournament record would speak for itself. Where do you draw the line of casting aside somebodys opinion? At least right now you can read the suspect thread, read "Hoopa-U isn't broken look at my 60 calcs of showing how U-Turn hurts it" and know that the guy will still have to get on the ladder and get reqs before he can use his opinion for a more tangible vote. As of right now the idea of suspect tests is that you have some competency in the tier to be having a saying and the only way to show it is through our current ladder system and suspect tours.

As far as the whole "respected, knowledgeable" aspect in terms of suspect influence the majority of suspect tests stem from these respected users anyways. They have a lot of influence in determining outside of its council member what seems legitimately off about the tier without going too crazy trying to just ban every top tier threat, reality of sorts.

I think there's a lot of problems with suspect voting as of now though and TC as a whole (easy to get with somethings always suspected, degraded value as more tiers become official), lack of consistency through all tiers in terms of trying to figure out who should be voting requisite wise, and the fact we're still using laddering as its objective achievement when most of value tournament success more and most times isn't able to represent its metagame. There's a couple more issues but I don't think trying to establish weighted suspect votes is going to be one of them, even if you involve yourself in just one tier.

 

[Anty]

PU had a sort of rotating council where the TL's and council chose voters with high quality posts in NP thread, and their and the council's vote was worth double. This was actually very good as during the PU suspect there were many voters who didn't know the meta at all, but go reqs as the ladder isn't very good. We did this during the exeggutor suspect, and interestingly enough 8 of the council/rotating council voted to ban, and only 1 voted to unban (and 1 voting abstain), but exeggutor was only banned by a 64% majority. Without the weighting it would be a lot closer and in a very similar situation, exeggutor (or a general suspected mon) might have not been banned, which would be outrageous considering the council's overwhelming opinion, and it would be unfair if the tier was potentially made worse by people who don't actively play it.

No.

First of all, how do we scale it? Is someone who just laddered for reqs's vote count as one, TLs count as 5? What about suspect tours, I recently won one I joined on a lark to vote in LC, how much would that be worth? Do we do non-whole numbers of suspect votes (e.g. my vote is worth 1.2 points!)? If no, what about how subjective involvement is? If somebody is posting every hour in a subforum, but their posts are of poor quality, how does that compare to an SPL player who posts infrequently but his posts are always good? I know thats an extreme example, but when two players have a point difference between them and there is subjectively not much difference between them, how do we explain to one of them that their vote is worth less than someone else's?

I already explained how PU did it, which I feel worked well. I don't think weighted votes would work without subjective requirements, but with the TL's and council choosing who gets the higher weighted votes, there is a range of opinions. In your situation with the tour player and the low quality poster, then it is fair that the tour player should get a larger weighted vote provided his posts show that he knows the meta so can will make the best choice for it, whereas the low quality poster shouldn't get bigger votes if his arguments are weak and poorly structured. Remember that the posts have to show that the users know the tier, so not just any good poster who doesn't play the tier will get a larger weighted vote. I'm sure any TL would be fine explaining to a user as to why they aren't in the rotating council (or have larger weighted votes), PU had no backlash/drama about it, and ik in the past doubles had a voting system where some of the top players decided who got to vote out of the players who achieved ladder reqs, and it didn't have much drama (in fact I got denied a vote for doubles, I asked stratos about it, and he went through my posts and told me why).

There is no objective way to go about this, which will simply lead to more circlejerking. Not to mention the PR nightmare it would be, people already think we're too exclusive and ban too much, so you want to make it so that fewer people can have a noticeable effect on the outcome of public suspect tests? Currently whenever someone says "Smogon bans too much" we can honestly say, play get reqs and vote, your vote is valued the same as anyone else's, its an entirely democratic process. Under this system, it would not be democratic.

I strongly disagree that it will lead to circle jerking, especcially with the PU way where nobody is denied to vote, and the TL's would want what is best in the tier regardless of who they are friendly with. The last PU suspect had 12 out of 89 voters have double the vote, meaning there was effectively 101 votes which is about half of the usual OU tests, and I don't get your point regarding people who say 'Smogon bans too much', as if they are motivated to vote for that reason and then its only fair that they get a lower weighted vote than people who know and care for the tier. I think the quality of the suspect is more important that being 100% democratic.

 

[Aberforth]

The entire point of voting is to be objective in our tiering. By introducing a subjective element, we are seperating ourselves from a democratic process.

Also, lets not forget that this sort of system could result in mistakes. Many good OU players wanted Mega Metagross banned during its suspect and if they had double or triple the vote I had, it might have, despite Metagross clearly not being banworthy in hindsight.

 

[Quite Quiet]

Saying the tiering system can make "mistakes" is saying that there is a right and wrong to tiering in the first place. I am under the impression that as soon as something is suspected, both ban and no ban are both equally acceptable options. Anything else is personal opinion. If something clearly wasn't banworthy then it should perhaps not be put up for a test in the first place? For the Metagross example, the council did put it up, so a ban shouldn't be "wrong"; it should be a perfectly acceptable result.

People who are uneducated on the topic/new DO get suspect requirements on a regular basis (see: every suspect test this generation) regardless of how much you try to stop them by increasing the COIL and limit games. And people are clearly interested in limiting how much "randoms who don't play the tier" influences suspect tests, or the requirements wouldn't continually increase every test. How is "as long as you play good enough you can vote" any different from "when people trust your opinion your vote matters more" when it comes to being inclusive? The only differing factor being for one you have to actually invest time into a tier.

 

[g]

The entire point of voting is to be objective in our tiering. By introducing a subjective element, we are seperating ourselves from a democratic process.

Also, lets not forget that this sort of system could result in mistakes. Many good OU players wanted Mega Metagross banned during its suspect and if they had double or triple the vote I had, it might have, despite Metagross clearly not being banworthy in hindsight.

if you thing "mistakes" and some tiering opinions are objective (we could delve into a philosophical discussion about this but please let's not) and they can happen then why vote in the first place? In hindsight everything is too easy and since the voting system is not exactly democratic right now as it is, implicit since there are reqs to meet and it is not true that everybody can vote if they are not able to play well enough, i do not get what is different in letting someone get an additional requirement that shows they are clearly more competent than one other, that is why we do not democratically vote to decide who wins at serious films festivals like Cannes and partially why democracy is elective rather than direct (in theory). Objectivity is pretty much ipothetical to me especially in Pokemon and valuing the quite democratic opinion of the most competent ones a bit more than the less competent is for me better than guaranteeing anyone gets an equal say.

 

[Bughouse]

No. And quite frankly if I had known PU had already done this, I probably would have made a policy review thread explicitly to question it. This should not be an allowed procedure for any smogon official tiers.

 

[Aberforth]

People who are uneducated on the topic/new DO get suspect requirements on a regular basis (see: every suspect test this generation) regardless of how much you try to stop them by increasing the COIL and limit games. And people are clearly interested in limiting how much "randoms who don't play the tier" influences suspect tests, or the requirements wouldn't continually increase every test. How is "as long as you play good enough you can vote" any different from "when people trust your opinion your vote matters more" when it comes to being inclusive? The only differing factor being for one you have to actually invest time into a tier.

See, I really dont like this line of thought. Its just going to be a fundamental difference here. Yes we can stop people who aren't good enough from being able to vote, however once we start valuing people's votes more than others it means we are tilting our tiering into the hands of a very small minority. At the moment, anyone who is good enough can get reqs and vote and their vote matters just as much as anyone else's and that is the way I significantly prefer it.

Also, lack of prior involvement doesn't mean that someone cannot form an opinion. I briefly mentioned I won reqs in LC, after I did so I pestered a good dozen or so LC players to try and learn as much about the tier as possible, and tried to make the most informed vote I could. The time invested into making my decision was not insignificant, but wouldn't be objectively measurable, and to then turn around and say that the time spend learning the tier to give the best vote doesn't matter and most of the power should go to a minority who probably all have very similar opinions is insulting and tilting the suspect in favour of a result preferred by the staff as opposed to the entire community.

tl;dr - it differs greatly in that one is objective and the other is subjective.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

No. And quite frankly if I had known PU had already done this, I probably would have made a policy review thread explicitly to question it. This should not be an allowed procedure for any smogon official tiers.

That's very prescriptive of you. Care to justify it?

 

[Quite Quiet]

See, I really dont like this line of thought. Its just going to be a fundamental difference here. Yes we can stop people who aren't good enough from being able to vote, however once we start valuing people's votes more than others it means we are tilting our tiering into the hands of a very small minority. At the moment, anyone who is good enough can get reqs and vote and their vote matters just as much as anyone else's and that is the way I significantly prefer it.

I agree, but I don't prefer this. As someone who only does a little of a Singles tier, why should you value my opinion equally on the Doubles OU suspect test to some top-level player? Or any other metagame that I don't play for that matter? Yes, I might go out and actually learn about the suspect test and try and make an informed decision when it comes to voting, but nothing currently encourages this (you matter just as much as anyone else, after all). If there comes a benefit to actually showing that you know what you're talking about, wouldn't more people be interested in actually expending the time it takes to learn and show that they understand the topic at hand, and in turn improving the suspect process? Then you have a legitimate incentive for people to actually make an effort to positively contribute in the suspect tests rather than just ladder and vote.

 

[Aberforth]

I agree, but I don't prefer this. As someone who only does a little of a Singles tier, why should you value my opinion equally on the Doubles OU suspect test to some top-level player? Or any other metagame that I don't play for that matter? Yes, I might go out and actually learn about the suspect test and try and make an informed decision when it comes to voting, but nothing currently encourages this (you matter just as much as anyone else, after all). If there comes a benefit to actually showing that you know what you're talking about, wouldn't more people be interested in actually expending the time it takes to learn and show that they understand the topic at hand, and in turn improving the suspect process? Then you have a legitimate incentive for people to actually make an effort to positively contribute in the suspect tests rather than just ladder and vote.

I dont. I wont take your opinion into consideration, whereas if I see good players have an opinion in a metagame they are good at, I will notice and consider it more. But your opinion has just as much of a right to contribute as mine and anyone else who reaches the objective requirements to vote does.

If the issue is too many people are getting reqs when they're not good enough, increase the reqs. Put in game limits like what RU and OU are doing. Have a subjective paragraph like Doubles did. But dont weigh votes, that is not a good solution from a philosophical level, let alone a practical level.

 

[MZ]

I dont. I wont take your opinion into consideration, whereas if I see good players have an opinion in a metagame they are good at, I will notice and consider it more. But your opinion has just as much of a right to contribute as mine and anyone else who reaches the objective requirements to vote does.

If the issue is too many people are getting reqs when they're not good enough, increase the reqs. Put in game limits like what RU and OU are doing. Have a subjective paragraph like Doubles did. But dont weigh votes, that is not a good solution from a philosophical level, let alone a practical level.

So we can disqualify people for not being good enough with their paragraph but we can't allow more people to vote and count the people who are better extra? I don't see how these are that different, and if anything the second one gets more community input while both options still put the vote more in the hands of people who are experienced with the tier. I don't really favor either one, but not sure why this is that different, which is kinda why we tried it out in the first place.
e: actually, to expand, I voted on mence. I knew enough about dubs to make a good enough paragraph. But in the case of a far more controversial suspect like if they decided to do jirachi or something, I wouldn't have an issue with someone like kamikaze's vote counting for more because he clearly has more in depth experience with the meta. At the same time, I still get my vote which I had to ladder for.

 

[Aberforth]

In the realtime chat I conceded that the paragraphs was a bad idea. I just personally enjoy it.

And I am fundamentally opposed to people having more of a vote than any other group of people. The requirements are there for a reason, if someone meets them, they have a full fledged vote, end of (for me).

 

[toshimelonhead]

This sounds like Animal Farm, where all votes are equal, but some votes are more equal than others. The only suspect test I remember using weighted votes was for Politoed on PO, where they used some ridiculous logarithmic formula to weight votes based on Elo. That does not work with our suspect testing process. If you can meet the requirements, your vote should count the same as anyone else who got reqs. The best players in any tier influence other suspect testing voters. They have the experience to persuade other voters who may have earned reqs, but are unsure of their decision even after laddering. It doesn't even have to be a well thought out essay; CBB's drawing of Specs pushing Hoopa over the edge explains exactly why we're testing it. Players not as familiar with OU don't have that same influence if they can't explain their decision as well. Tier leaders and top players have enough soft power where they do not necessarily need hard power to rig the vote.

 

[Magnemite]

If I recall correctly, I'm the one who first had the idea to give council members a "double" vote for PU suspect tests, and my main reasoning behind it came from the fact that for all of PU's non-official history, players who were actively invested in the tier were the only ones able to vote. It made sense to continue this in some way, as I really thought that people who clearly cared about the tier had more of a say than people who did not care about it as much.

Really, when you think about it, being on the council means you've satisfied an "additional" requirement, and under that circumstance, some people's votes counting more than others sounds a lot less objectionable. I will concede that having a subjective posting requirement to get a double vote like we did for Vigoroth / Exeggutor is a bit much, but I do still think that letting people who have proven themselves to be valuable long-standing contributors to the tier to the point where they're chosen to be on the council have a larger vote isn't a bad idea, especially when you consider the fact that each of their votes makes up a very small portion of the vote if it is weighted the same as 90 other people's. Obviously being part of the council naturally gives you more of a say than not, as you have a hand in choosing the suspects and people will listen to you more, and as such I don't think a double vote for council members is at all necessary, but I still don't think it does any harm.

This is backed up by the fact that not one "regular" voter in either of the official PU suspect tests complained about other people's votes having more weight than their own (and yes, it was made clear in the thread that this was the case). Any claims that it would be a "PR nightmare" if this was more widely adopted are seriously overblown.

 

[scene]

I'd imagine PU's userbase is a little more malleable and mature than, say, OU's, so what's a neat idea over there isn't guaranteed to work elsewhere.

 

[Genesis7]

Although this isn't a bad idea at all, I think that we are on a website that has built itself from community effort, by implementing something like this you will inevitably alienate those who you discern as "bottom of the barrel". It's also notable to mention that most of the users on this website are either A: non-english speaking, or B: just want to play the suspect and vote and do not care about whether or not their thoughts are expressed in a mostly arbitrary suspect thread.

The PU suspect also ignores the fact that a good portion of lower tier councils are not really good at the game in a traditional sense, a lot of them find themselves in a position of power because of their work on projects in their respective subforum and a lot of times C and C. I could give an example of someone like l0ckjaw on here, a younger kid who doesn't speak english very well but is one of the best PU players in my opinion, if you look at his suspect posts and compare them to a council member's, he's going to look like he's horrible at this game but that isn't the case

I think this thread poses a very good hypothetical though, I would sort of rebut this and pose my own. Give higher weight to those with greater GXEs on the ladder, these are the ones who have a great enough metagame knowledge to build a team that drives through the ladder even when the suspected Pokemon is banned on said ladder. This will have an especially high degree of effectiveness in lower tiers where generally good players with little metagame knowledge tend to hover around the 75-78 GXE range and metagame specialists crack the 80 GXE level.

 

[Lemonade]

If you want to talk democratic process, how about weighted vote (House) and unweighted vote (Senate).

 

[oversway]

There's a difference in that PU just doesn't get as much attention as other tiers. Doubling the votes of just the council will have less an impact then allowing anyone deemed involved enough with the tier to have their votes doubled in value, since it would take less votes from non-council members to even the vote, from an experimental viewpoint. As mentioned previously it's difficult to measure if someone is 'involved enough' with a tier to qualify for double votes, which was demonstrated in the recent changing of TC requirements, which got rid of the subjective part. How are you going to judge if a player has played the tier before? Going through all their posts and replays? I doubt tier leaders want to go through each subforum post and judge whether a certain individual has qualified, so to say, for the extra vote. And let's face it, the whole point of suspect laddering is so you can base your decision off of that, so I don't see how someone who spent the time to get reqs could be labeled as 'uneducated' or otherwise lacking the experience to vote.

I don't see why suspect tests should objectively cater to those who are more involved with the community, when the decision affects everyone. Many players specialize in multiple tiers, and even in major tournaments, players play in tiers other than what they are known for. Implementing this would only serve to alienate tiering decisions from the vast majority of voters. imo part of what makes tiering interesting is its flexibility which weighted votes would detract from.

If you want to talk democratic process, how about weighted vote (House) and unweighted vote (Senate).

that's based on population so decisions would still be made by a relative majority

 

[atomicllamas]

I've considered weighting council votes for RU in the past (like RU did) as well as changing it to blarajan's system of letting people get reqs and nominate the suspect (also how can you have a problem with the old PU system but not complain about the old LC one Bughouse ????). I haven't gone through with either, cause I don't think the first one gives enough credit to other RU players who aren't just laddering for "muh TC" and the council's votes almost always reflect the general populations anyways (when its lopsided ban, the council is too, when its split down the middle the council was too (Tyrantrum)). I didn't end up switching to the LC one because I selecting the rotating council members without being biased towards your own thoughts is probably not entirely possible, although this system with a larger council, and more ways to earn rotating spots rather than just posting seems pretty interesting to me.

The PU suspect also ignores the fact that a good portion of lower tier councils are not really good at the game in a traditional sense, a lot of them find themselves in a position of power because of their work on projects in their respective subforum and a lot of times C and C. I could give an example of someone like l0ckjaw on here, a younger kid who doesn't speak english very well but is one of the best PU players in my opinion, if you look at his suspect posts and compare them to a council member's, he's going to look like he's horrible at this game but that isn't the case

I don't know whether to be mildly annoyed that the "lower tier players are bad xD" meme made it into yet another serious discussion thread, or laugh at the fact that someone who has exactly 0 accomplishments to show they are, "good at the game in a traditional sense," is the one making that statement.

That being said, there are a couple factors that I look at when selecting council members (I assume this is true of other TL's but I guess I don't speak for them). One of which is how good they are at RU (yes believe it or not everyone on the RU council is actually pretty good at Pokemon). The second of which is contribution to the community, this can be in the competitive forum, in C&C, on IRC, or in the PS! room. The final thing is intelligence / intelligent posting , you can be the best pokemon player in the world but if your reasoning for a vote is "well I have never had an issue with it personally" or "this mon can OHKO _____ with a choice band, ban xD" they really aren't qualified to be on council. Basically being good at Pokemon is not the equivalent of being "good at tiering" (although I'd probably argue being bad at Pokemon makes someone "bad at tiering").

This is why I don't think giving council members a weighted vote is a completely ridiculous concept if other tiers wanted to do that (as long as its not a ridiculous), as they've proven to be at least adequately good at pokemon, on top of being invested in the meta game (contributions), and being able to think intelligently about tiering decisions. That's also why I don't think weighting by GXE makes much sense. I'm sure l0ckjaw is great at PU, but that doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about. As another example, if I laddered for an LC suspect test, I am about 99% sure I would have a better GXE than macle (no offense intended, I'm actually just the bomb at lc ;p), but I am in know way more qualified to offer an opinion about the LC meta game than macle is, he's far more invested in the tier and probably has thought more about any decision he's gonna make.

So yeah TL;DR: the main concern I have with weighting votes is that there is no (good) way to objectively determine whose vote deserves more weight, but I think concerns about people voting in tiers they don't give a fuck about is valid (especially for lower tiers, because "muh TC"). And I would be open to a good alternative.

 

[blarajan]

I didn't really have a weighted system atomicllamas so it's not really a comparison; the weights were in how many votes it counted as for TC. The old system for LC was for the people to ladder and upon getting the necessary ladder ranking, to vote on what became a suspect. Everyone's vote here counted the same. People that were able to vote on the suspect received 1/2 votes for TC. However, after that the community discussed the suspect. From the discussions (among the pool of people that voted for what to suspect), I chose 4-5 people for the rotating council. Only members of the council and that round's rotating council got to vote. There were no weighted suspect votes. I simply limited the number of people who could vote.

 

[Genesis7]

I've considered weighting council votes for RU in the past (like RU did) as well as changing it to blarajan's system of letting people get reqs and nominate the suspect (also how can you have a problem with the old PU system but not complain about the old LC one Bughouse ????). I haven't gone through with either, cause I don't think the first one gives enough credit to other RU players who aren't just laddering for "muh TC" and the council's votes almost always reflect the general populations anyways (when its lopsided ban, the council is too, when its split down the middle the council was too (Tyrantrum)). I didn't end up switching to the LC one because I selecting the rotating council members without being biased towards your own thoughts is probably not entirely possible, although this system with a larger council, and more ways to earn rotating spots rather than just posting seems pretty interesting to me.


I don't know whether to be mildly annoyed that the "lower tier players are bad xD" meme made it into yet another serious discussion thread, or laugh at the fact that someone who has exactly 0 accomplishments to show they are, "good at the game in a traditional sense," is the one making that statement.

That being said, there are a couple factors that I look at when selecting council members (I assume this is true of other TL's but I guess I don't speak for them). One of which is how good they are at RU (yes believe it or not everyone on the RU council is actually pretty good at Pokemon). The second of which is contribution to the community, this can be in the competitive forum, in C&C, on IRC, or in the PS! room. The final thing is intelligence / intelligent posting , you can be the best pokemon player in the world but if your reasoning for a vote is "well I have never had an issue with it personally" or "this mon can OHKO _____ with a choice band, ban xD" they really aren't qualified to be on council. Basically being good at Pokemon is not the equivalent of being "good at tiering" (although I'd probably argue being bad at Pokemon makes someone "bad at tiering").

This is why I don't think giving council members a weighted vote is a completely ridiculous concept if other tiers wanted to do that (as long as its not a ridiculous), as they've proven to be at least adequately good at pokemon, on top of being invested in the meta game (contributions), and being able to think intelligently about tiering decisions. That's also why I don't think weighting by GXE makes much sense. I'm sure l0ckjaw is great at PU, but that doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about. As another example, if I laddered for an LC suspect test, I am about 99% sure I would have a better GXE than macle (no offense intended, I'm actually just the bomb at lc ;p), but I am in know way more qualified to offer an opinion about the LC meta game than macle is, he's far more invested in the tier and probably has thought more about any decision he's gonna make.

So yeah TL;DR: the main concern I have with weighting votes is that there is no (good) way to objectively determine whose vote deserves more weight, but I think concerns about people voting in tiers they don't give a fuck about is valid (especially for lower tiers, because "muh TC"). And I would be open to a good alternative.

Don't get why you feel the need to be antagonistic, you seem quite petty by calling me out when I made a generalized statement that I think most of the community would agree with. My point in that paragraph was that it does not make sense to give a council member's vote a higher weight because of their non-playing credentials. It's irrelevant whether or not the pedestrian voter is better than the council member or not, obviously this is usually not the case, but one's position on a council should not affect the weight of their democratic vote. The point here is, the good majority of your voting population could not care less whether or not their post in the suspect thread gets a bunch of likes or if they get appointed to some online council, the point of suspect tests is so that the community can all give their opinion as to whether the suspect should be banned or not, I love the above comparison of Animal Farm, by weighting council member's or "good player's" votes more than a newcomer's you're literally making up who you think is above anyone else. This completely defeats the purpose of this testing scheme. At least by weighting the votes based on skill on that particular test we can see who is most qualified to make a decision on that given suspect.

Also I just want to point out that I don't feel that lower tier councils or players are bad, I just feel that OU has more to choose from so they will obviously have a stronger council player-wise and maybe don't have to rely as much on non-tournament successful players (although even for them this hasn't always been the case). I would say the exact same thing if the OU council wanted to weight votes in this way.

 

[atomicllamas]

blarajan they weren't weighted but one group of voters got to pick the suspect and one group of voters got to pick the suspect and voted on the suspect, it was weighted very heavily towards the latter group I'd say (not that it was a bad system).