Suspect Discussion Threads - Do They Change People's Opinions?

[Disaster Area]

<Piex> I think I've got an idea for an article
<Piex> it would be me interviewing like hugen + kokoloko + ou's tier leader asking essentially
<Piex> do suspect test threads
<Piex> change people's opinions on the suspected pokemon?
<Piex> cos personally my initial feeling is that they won't
<Piex> I'd want to ask those 3 since
<Piex> hugen's conducting one right now in ubers, and can see how it's panning out currently, and ubers has very little history of suspect testing
<Piex> OU are conducting one right now, go through them almost periodically, and are smogon's central tier
<BumAtWork> it could be a good read
<Piex> and koko since UU has to cope with several suspect tests and retesting of pokemon and OU's drops and suchlike
<Piex> :)
<BumAtWork> but I cannot guarantee that it'd be you hosting it
<Piex> oka
<Piex> welll I'm just glad to contribute anything :)
<BumAtWork> seeing as interviews need to be done by someone they're comfortable talking to or know fairly well
<Piex> even if it's just the idea
<Piex> yeah okay
<Antemortem> seems like a very linear question
<BumAtWork> although to be fair
<BumAtWork> if the suspect test has no chance of swaying someone's opinion
<BumAtWork> why bother to do one
<BumAtWork> it'd just emphasize what people already knew
<Antemortem> indeed, and you kind of expect them to answer a particular way with that question
<BumAtWork> which for several suspect tests haven't been the case
<BumAtWork> Mega Kanga has been suspected in Doubles twice and it's still there
<Piex> yeah actually that's become an in joke that you havve to keep it there so that you have something to suspect
<Piex> ah well this idea just came into my head last night when I couldn't sleep
<Piex> after having been involved watching uberscast and keeping up with the suspect discussion, the first one where I understand everything that's going on etc. and have a clearly-formed opinion
<Piex> and I could see that there was only like 1 person posting who wasn't already like hard-wired to one side of the arguement
<Piex> so that's why I was kinda curious to ask such a thing
<BumAtWork> no harm done in posting the idea
<BumAtWork> although you might get quicker response here :M
<Piex> yeah I did ge a response from you :)
<Piex> seems clear that I'm not the best one to actually carry out the article (I mean maybe in terms of compiling I could help but I don't have any experience so maybe not)
<Piex> so yeah what should I do with it too give it a sensible shot at being done, should it appear to be an usable idea
<Antemortem> I believe you could post it here
<Antemortem> http://www.smogon.com/forums/forums/article-approvals.216/

In summary:
My article involves interviewing Kokoloko+HugenDugen+The OU Tier Leader (As Bummer suggested in the IRC log, not by me) about whether suspect discussions affect people's opinions of the suspected pokemon.

 

[skylight]

i like it Piexplode sorry for the late response!! Flora Toast++ Vacate give your thoughts too imo!

 

[Flora]

It's an interesting idea. It doesn't really conflict with my interviews (I don't think I've touched upon suspect discussions very much, if at all), so another viewpoint and more information from high leveled people would be cool!

So how is it going to work out if we were to approve this? You said you're not the best one to carry out this article. Are you going to find someone else to finish the job or do you want us to do that? We don't usually order people to do an article because we expect the OP of these threads to be writing the article alongside any other possible people they name if they are coauthoring. But we can make an exception here. You can also still try to do it, and if it's really not working, someone else could possibly take it over midway or something.

 

[Disaster Area]

I was just on holiday for 2 weeks and then been a bit busy otherwise.. however I'm now more or less available now :)
If someone would volunteer themselves to do at least one of the interviews, that might be very helpful. Still, I've seen how these tend to look and I feel I could include the 3 interviews more or less in full and then a couple of paragraphs of discussion to discuss the points made and then a conclsion, with the interviewer(s) helping me once I've got a draft version ready for their input.

 

[Flora]

What do you plan to include in the interviews? Are you going to straight up ask "Do suspect discussion threads change people's opinions?" and see what you get? Answers could be like "Yes." lol, but that would be the super lazy way. "Yes, people read through the thread and discover new information that they didn't know before, which changes their opinions." Then that could go a little more in-depth with examples. Having views of a person who doesn't have their opinion changed and one who does would help out too. Hmm, the neutral / didn't really care about topic guy who turns toward another side may be something to consider.

Our next issue is coming soonish, so this article would be approved for after that issue, meeeaning we got a lot of time to organize this. :)

 

[Disaster Area]

Yeah we have to make the questions loaded in a way that it expects longer answers.. hmm. Not totally sure what I would ask, probably first some contextual stuff about suspect discussions, e.g. what ones are there currently in your tier kinda stuff, and maybe looking at a couple of them and discussing how they worked out, whether a lot of people's opinions changed, why their opinions did or didn't change (in the leader's opinion)

 

[skylight]

okay Piexplode let's go for this. I want you to write up the WIP thread, and list the questions you could ask and we'll get the writers to give you feedback on questions in the workshop thread, then you can go ahead and interview them and so on.

 

[Disaster Area]

Where do I write up the WIP thread?

Also it's been discussed it might be better having someone else interview, even if I write the questions, due to the interviewees being more comfortable speaking to someone more familiar.