Future of SPL & SCL Power Rankings

[Finchinator]

Approved by TDs and Article staff

The Power Rankings have been a staple of tournament culture dating back to SPL V when reyscarface created the article. We just hit the tenth ever SPL Power Rankings and this is accompanied by four for SSD and two for SCL, bringing us to sixteen total. The article began here with focused, but minimal, content, but it has evolved to the most recent edition here with detailed, but sometimes lengthy, content throughout. Here is an index of every official Power Rankings article:

• SPL V Power Rankings (reyscarface)
• SPL VI Power Rankings (reyscarface)
• SPL VII Power Rankings (reyscarface and dice)
• SPL VIII Power Rankings (Finchinator and TDK)
• SSD I Power Rankings (Finchinator)
• SPL IX Power Rankings (reyscarface)
• SSD II Power Rankings (Finchinator and shiloh)
• SPL X Power Rankings (Finchinator and shiloh)
• SSD III Power Rankings (-Tsunami- and TonyFlygon)
• SPL XI Power Rankings (Finchinator)
• SSD IV Power Rankings (Finchinator)
• SPL XII Power Rankings (Finchinator and shiloh)
• SCL I Power Rankings (Finchinator)
• SPL XIII Power Rankings (Finchinator)
• SCL II Power Rankings (Finchinator)
• SPL XIV Power Rankings (Finchinator)

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The article has evolved with what is accessible to the community in a sense. We have become privy to more information with more tournaments and replays than ever before, so naturally the article has had more to pull from than ever before. I am very glad that so many people enjoy the articles over the years, but it also mandates an increasingly professional, almost job-like workload from a volunteer while being condensed to a week (in which we normally want all of the data and writing done by Friday or early Saturday the latest). This does not even get into the impacts this time crunch may have on GP, HTML, art, and other key cogs in the machine that is Power Rankings generation. I cannot speak on their behalf, but I know it must not be easy just from drawing off of my own experience putting it all together.

Ultimately, I cannot dedicate myself to producing another edition of the Power Rankings standalone if the status quo holds. And when I began to discuss this on discord a few weeks ago, troubleshooting began as the Power Rankings are too much of a fixture in our culture to be outright removed. However, I cannot justify dedicating so many hours each day after I work full time and have many other obligations, especially not when a lot of the work is done despite people behaving increasingly thankless and rude (yes, this is a shot and I do not care that this is not the right place).

Ultimately, I do not intend to run the Power Rankings alone again, especially not if they are formatted the same as the past editions due to the sheer workload. If the workload is dwarfed, I likely will reconsider. I also would not wish this much work in such a short period of time on anyone else in the community.

If someone is qualified and feels a strong desire to take this on regularly, be my guest and speak up here -- I will even do it alongside you come SCL to show you the ropes, but we have asked before and there have been no takers. I also think some sort of committee that allocates tasks could work if they time things up well, but no attempt to do this over the last five years has ever amounted to much either -- again, people should use this thread to speak up if they feel strongly about this!!!

This leads me to another thought: should the Power Rankings article be changed in terms of content or format?

I find the method rankings are obtained and the process behind it all to be mostly fine and this only takes 1-2 days to compile, which is easy enough, but the content is what I want to discuss the most. Should the Power Rankings article be as long as it is? Should each player get a full paragraph and each team get a very long blurb of its own atop the article? What, if anything, do you guys find expendable? What, if anything, do you think should be added (potentially in conjunction with a subtraction) to the article?

There are so many different components and sections to each Power Rankings article that there are bound to be a wide array of opinions, so let's hear them all! I think it is important that we open a dialogue about what the community wants out of this article and how it can be best tailored for both our contributors and our invested readers. Please leave your thoughts on the above questions and anything else related in this thread.

 

[z0mOG]

I've been a participant of every SPL and SSD/SCL since SPL 8, not to mention a participant in ranking and even writing for many PR articles, and as a bi-annual power ranking enjoyer, I feel it would be a huge detriment to the tournaments to take any substance away from this tradition. Power rankings are one of the few ways pre-tournament hype is present, and I strongly feel it'd be a mistake to make any changes that are going to de-hype SPL and SCL more than they already have been trending to (more a fault of discord than anything).

It really boils down to a man-hour problem in my eyes -- I believe the solution is just to make the article more wholly collaborative than rely on one main Finchinator to dole out the work while also taking on the responsibility of writing, finding rankers, submitting it to QC, etc. The tournament hosts should be in charge of organizing a team and assigning writing sections (ex. guy A for team blurbs 1-5, guy B for team blurbs 6-10, guy C for OU writeups 1-5, etc.) before the draft even happens, and you could frankly knock out all of the ranking, writing, and QC in about one day each. Will the substance of the blurb sections be written more inconsistently with ~10 unique writers rather than ~2? Yes. Is that really a bad thing for a *community ranking*? Not necessarily. However, cutting the amount of substance in half would be pretty hard to refute as outright worse.

 

[Tony]

I also think some sort of committee that allocates tasks could work if they time things up well, but no attempt to do this over the last five years has ever amounted to much either

what about the td team? this is an integral part of tournaments and like z0mog said it's something people enjoy and get hyped about ahead of the tournament actually starting. the td team doesn't have to partake in actually producing the article, but should be responsible for rounding up the people that will, in my opinion.

perhaps we could make use of a submission form, like the ones that were used to find future tds or tournament hosts, in order to find interested and motivated people to help write sections of the article. with a head writer - like finch has been many times - in place, you can have someone functioning as a sounding board to ensure section writers are providing fun and insightful text that also matches the overall tone of the article. writing rooms for tv shows function similarly, for example. i'm convinced we have plenty of capable writers in this community that would be happy to contribute to the article. they just need to be asked to!

 

[Finchinator]

Given the above, it seems best to not fundamentally alter or lessen the Power Rankings article.

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I do not intend to do the Power Rankings for the upcoming Smogon Championship League. I do not have the ability to sacrifice so much spare time the week before the tournament begins, unfortunately. There is a chance I will return for SPL depending on the specific timing and community need.

If someone else has interest, message me on discord. It ultimately will be up to the great people in charge of articles, who have been amazing every year when working with me, but I will be happy to point you in the right direction and offer some assistance. I may be able to help with some data and definitely with some writing, but I cannot commit as many spare hours as I have in such a short stretch of time.