Voting lists for old gens

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
The recent thread here on old gen low tier voting thresholds gives me hope we are professionalizing our old gen tiering process. To continue that process, let me suggest:

All old gens that want to do a suspect decision must create a final voting list at least 1 week (7 full days) prior to voting.

Specifically:
  • Everyone in the voting list should be tagged so they are aware of the vote, when the list is finalized.
  • There does not need to be a Smogon/sitewide policy on what constitutes the list, but may I suggest that qualification means playing at least 3 (tournament) games and winning at least 1? We can't have ridiculously low standards like reaching round 2 of a tournament.
    • One sitewide policy I would support is having at least 2 live tour suspect tournaments to allow for qualification for each old gen low tier vote.
    • There should be a sitewide guideline (optional, not policy), of including several tournaments that most old gen low tiers have (Premier Leagues, Snake Drafts, Cups, and anything else).
    • I doubt there will be an issue of a too small list. But I suggest a minimum of 20 voters or maybe a more flexible number, like four times the number of the old gen low tier council.
  • If anyone on the list does not have a badge, they should be given permission to post in PR or the relevant thread (not sure how this moderation power works), without them needing to ask, just prior to them getting tagged.
  • This list must be approved by an old gen low tier council/leader. I am aware there is no old gen low tier council/leader for most or all old gen low tiers right now. I may make a separate thread to ask for this to further professionalize.
  • Creation of the voting list does not guarantee a vote, particularly if the newly tagged people are against changing the status quo/the vote.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
Just bumping this and tagging Finchinator and TonyFlygon because they expressed interest in how to make voting lists for old gens.

I would like this policy:
  • The voting list must be created at least 7 days prior to posting a voting thread
  • Everyone on the voting list must be tagged and given posting permissions in this forum without them asking
  • There is no site-wide policy on how to create the voting list. However, requirements mean having at least 3 games played and 1 win in the qualifying tournament
    • 3 games played should include activity wins, I don't think it's fair to deny someone reqs because one of their games was an activity win, they have minimal or sometimes no control over that.
  • Should there be a council made to create voting list criteria, the voting list must be at least 4x the size of the council in order to ensure the council can't just decide for themselves
  • Creation of a voting list does not guarantee a vote

This is only one aspect of old gen, low tier voting. There are still unresolved questions, some of which that do not have threads. I don't think we should discuss them in this thread; make a new thread if you want to discuss the following:
  • Who decides if there is an old gen, low tier council?
    • Who composes the council if there is one?
  • What is the voting threshold to change the status quo (Hogg or a policy admin should post a resolution in this thread: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/voting-threshold-for-past-gen-votes.3686591/)
  • Are we comfortable with letting any badged user create a thread to ask for an old gen, low tier suspect, as is currently the status quo? (I am comfortable with this for what it's worth)
  • If Lilburr or Saria happen to be on a voting list (for any vote, including current gen and OU), then should they be allowed to see the votes before they vote? As far as I'm aware, only they can see the vote right now. It might be useful to have a third or fourth moderator to moderate the blind voting forum if and when they qualify for a vote.
 
Hey pokemonisfun, sorry for the late response. Your suggestions are about what I had in mind myself, except for the councils part. I don't believe we need any councils specifically catering to the various past gen lower tiers. I think a more effective way to go about it would be to have tier leadership, which would be the generation the lower tier falls under, be in charge. DPP leadership would handle a DPP UU suspect test, for example. If none of the DPP moderators are comfortable enough with DPP UU, to follow that same example, then they can ask someone like Donphantastic, esche or Tomahawk to oversee the process in their stead, or perhaps simply the person that started the discussion. I'd imagine that more often than not they'd be happy to run point, given that they're invested enough to spark the conversation in the first place. We can entrust tier leadership with either handling or adequately delegating this responsibility.

As for the criteria, I agree with you that we shouldn't lock them in down to the very details. We can however set up loose guidelines of what we expect to see in a voter list and its requirements, which is something Hogg and I will work on and hopefully announce in the near future alongside the voting thresholds. This should also eliminate the need of a council, as there would be a system in place to follow. Tier leadership can act as a quality check team to ensure no steps were skipped in preparing the voter list. We'll make sure to provide tier leaders with the necessary knowledge for this, too. Once we figure out the essential steps to take when holding a lower tier past gen suspect test, we can apply that knowledge across the board. Hogg and I intend to provide you with an update soon. Thank you for posting this thread.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
Hey pokemonisfun, sorry for the late response. Your suggestions are about what I had in mind myself, except for the councils part. I don't believe we need any councils specifically catering to the various past gen lower tiers. I think a more effective way to go about it would be to have tier leadership, which would be the generation the lower tier falls under, be in charge. DPP leadership would handle a DPP UU suspect test, for example. If none of the DPP moderators are comfortable enough with DPP UU, to follow that same example, then they can ask someone like Donphantastic, esche or Tomahawk to oversee the process in their stead, or perhaps simply the person that started the discussion. I'd imagine that more often than not they'd be happy to run point, given that they're invested enough to spark the conversation in the first place. We can entrust tier leadership with either handling or adequately delegating this responsibility.

As for the criteria, I agree with you that we shouldn't lock them in down to the very details. We can however set up loose guidelines of what we expect to see in a voter list and its requirements, which is something Hogg and I will work on and hopefully announce in the near future alongside the voting thresholds. This should also eliminate the need of a council, as there would be a system in place to follow. Tier leadership can act as a quality check team to ensure no steps were skipped in preparing the voter list. We'll make sure to provide tier leaders with the necessary knowledge for this, too. Once we figure out the essential steps to take when holding a lower tier past gen suspect test, we can apply that knowledge across the board. Hogg and I intend to provide you with an update soon. Thank you for posting this thread.
Thanks Tony for your thoughts.

Frankly I agree with the council part being unnecessary. I've never delved into the ROA part of our website so I didn't even know there was DPP/ADV/old gen leadership until a few months ago. I suppose using them first would be a reasonable place to start. I just included that council point because Christo posted about a potential council here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/stall-in-sm-uu-was-sm-uu-blissey.3684458/page-2#post-8896244 so I thought it was something to put as a discussion point. Tagging in case I correctly interpreted his post and he wants to defend his idea.

It sounds like you're in the process of making a general guideline/standards to be followed for old gen non OU tiers (I realize I shouldn't call it low tier if Uber is included). Now that I think about it, I don't think there's a single thread that gives the guidelines for current gen non OU tier votes.
Purely as friendly advice, it might at least be a useful thought exercise to ask why we don't have one for CG when you're making one for old gens.

I'm not taking a position on if there should be one for CG (one obvious difference is voting lists are clearly simpler when you have to do a public vote/test) but I would guess thinking about the differences might make you think of things you didn't think of previously for old gen non OU tier standards.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
Considering that I made this thread because so many people were upset at the lack of standards in the Quagsire gen7uu vote, and that Quagsire is supposed to be voted on again (but is not getting any attention in this forum), I bump this again to respectfully request a resolution so the gen7uu Quagsire vote can be made on fair grounds and people won't complain about standards.
 

shiloh

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
Tiering Lead
hi this took a little bit to reply to bc this is not an easy thing to create since there is such a large variance amongst everything this will apply to. after working through it, as expected, there is no real way to have a uniform voting requirement for all old gens that can be blanket applied to all. ou's are vastly different from lower tiers, some lower tier old gen playerbases are huge, some are small, etc. the variance of tours as well, amongst all the tiers, is something to keep in mind. what was created was two separate "guidelines", one for old gen ou's, and one for old gen lower tiers, because there is no way to have something that will apply to both easily.

old gen ous

for these, for the most part, the guidelines already exist and the councils / ogc leader knows what they are doing when it comes to this. it is a lot easier to tier the old gen ous as they have official team tournaments (spl), official tournaments (classic), and the ribbon qualification system at the end of the year as well. additionally with ou's, there is the option for them to have a ladder similar to current gens since they have a more active playerbase for the most part, and ladder reqs are not impossible to obtain.

that being said, what most ou's have been doing is great, and i do not think they need anything written out for them. the main tournaments they should look to include are all the ones mentioned before, spl / classic / ribbon, as well as setting up a ladder for voters to qualify if applicable. there are plenty of good examples of ou's making tiering lists, and at this point i believe everyone on the councils knows what they are doing. if they have more questions they can just pm me.

but also its important when talking about ou, i do not think these rules are as important for ou tiers to follow. for one, they have a more set hierarchy and leadership with a set council + the ogc leader, and just have a bigger playerbase to draw from and make a list off of. while they can follow those guildelines, there are also other ways for them to do it, and as long as the ogc leadership / tiering admin signs off on it, it should be fine. a good example is the rby counter vote, where the council set up a system that they believed to be most fair when creating a voting pool. there was some drama here w/ some people on council wanting to include other websites, but that was handled, and in the future can easily be dealt with by having lists like this approved beforehand.

old gen lower tiers

now for the more complex part, lower tiers. with these they lack a large active playerbase at times, unlike ou tiers, and that can cause some issues when it comes to them being tiered. for the most part with these guidelines, these are who should be included at a minimum, and there can be other tours used / other forms of qualification used (tho i cant think of any rn), and it should be at the discretion of the tl / whoever they put in charge of running it.

Qualifications
notes: all of the following should be taking qualifiers based off of the past 3 years. i.e. if you played sm uu in spl 2 years ago you would qualify, but not if you played it 4 years ago, etc. this can be made longer if needed, but should get approved first, 3 years is being used as it is the
  • Team Tournaments: Players should have played at least 3 games, with at least 1 win.
    • Official Tournaments - Mainly SCL
    • XPLs - This should also include the RoA Forum tours if they include the gen. So SMPL can be used for SM RU qualification, etc.
    • XWCoPs - If applicable
    • Other Forum Team Tours - Snakes / Most Wanted / etc.
  • Individuals
    • Classic Cups - Semis and up
      • Playoffs should not be included by default, since there is no guarantee they have the tier knowledge
    • Slam Cups - As stated before, only within the last 3 years. Quarters and up.
    • Other - Forum tours for the tier, etc
this is a very rough list, and it should be enough for most tiers. however, as said earlier, tier leaders do have the discretion to make edits, but ideally they should let me / whoever the tiering admin is know beforehand. if tier leaders wanted more voters / to drum up more discussion, something like a single elim individual hosted in the forum could help, and can easily be included as well. these qualifications are better used as a starting point, though they will work perfectly fine if used as the list.

the main thing to keep in mind is ideally keeping it within 3 years past, as that is around the shelf life of a generation, and anything further is probably to alien / foreign.

in terms of other questions w/r/t old gen lower tier voting:
  1. TLs should tag all voters in the OP of the thread, as well as make a Smogon PM with them where they can request PR access if they do not have it and want to discuss, and also to make sure they see it.
  2. Current gen TLs are the official "leaders" of these tiers, but its fine for them to appoint someone else to run the vote if they do not have the im / do not feel they are qualified in the gen.
  3. Threads should remain open for 2 weeks at a minimum, and this should be stated in the OP.
  4. If the TLs / person in charge is making a list with other qualifications other than the ones listed above, they should shoot the Tiering Admin / a Tiering Council member a PM to get it approved.
  5. If the vote is fairly contentious, and if there is community support for it, TLs should return at minimum 6 months with a new thread and potentially have a revote if needed.
  6. Ideally the voter list should be included in the OP, as they are generally the ones that should also be discussing in the thread, but if when the OP is created, there is doubt that a vote is necessary, its fine to include it in a future post, but there should be a 2 week period from when the voter list is posted and the vote, unless an exception has to be made.
once again, most of these are just here so there is some guidelines / some standards, but if TLs / whoever is running it want to do it some other way, in most cases it should be fine. as long as they get approval from the tiering team / public support as well, id imagine most of what was listed prior can be changed to best benefit whichever tier is voting.

also to avoid any confusion, these are the "official" old gen lower tiers, and the only ones these guidelines apply to.
  • GSC UU
  • ADV UU
  • ADV NU
  • DPP UU
  • DPP NU
  • BW UU
  • BW RU
  • BW NU
  • ORAS UU
  • ORAS RU
  • ORAS NU
  • ORAS PU
  • SM UU
  • SM RU
  • SM NU
  • SM PU
 
Last edited:

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
hi this took a little bit to reply to bc this is not an easy thing to create since there is such a large variance amongst everything this will apply to. after working through it, as expected, there is no real way to have a uniform voting requirement for all old gens that can be blanket applied to all. ou's are vastly different from lower tiers, some lower tier old gen playerbases are huge, some are small, etc. the variance of tours as well, amongst all the tiers, is something to keep in mind. what was created was two separate "guidelines", one for old gen ou's, and one for old gen lower tiers, because there is no way to have something that will apply to both easily.

old gen ous

for these, for the most part, the guidelines already exist and the councils / ogc leader knows what they are doing when it comes to this. it is a lot easier to tier the old gen ous as they have official team tournaments (spl), official tournaments (classic), and the ribbon qualification system at the end of the year as well. additionally with ou's, there is the option for them to have a ladder similar to current gens since they have a more active playerbase for the most part, and ladder reqs are not impossible to obtain.

that being said, what most ou's have been doing is great, and i do not think they need anything written out for them. the main tournaments they should look to include are all the ones mentioned before, spl / classic / ribbon, as well as setting up a ladder for voters to qualify if applicable. there are plenty of good examples of ou's making tiering lists, and at this point i believe everyone on the councils knows what they are doing. if they have more questions they can just pm me.

but also its important when talking about ou, i do not think these rules are as important for ou tiers to follow. for one, they have a more set hierarchy and leadership with a set council + the ogc leader, and just have a bigger playerbase to draw from and make a list off of. while they can follow those guildelines, there are also other ways for them to do it, and as long as the ogc leadership / tiering admin signs off on it, it should be fine. a good example is the rby counter vote, where the council set up a system that they believed to be most fair when creating a voting pool. there was some drama here w/ some people on council wanting to include other websites, but that was handled, and in the future can easily be dealt with by having lists like this approved beforehand.

old gen lower tiers

now for the more complex part, lower tiers. with these they lack a large active playerbase at times, unlike ou tiers, and that can cause some issues when it comes to them being tiered. for the most part with these guidelines, these are who should be included at a minimum, and there can be other tours used / other forms of qualification used (tho i cant think of any rn), and it should be at the discretion of the tl / whoever they put in charge of running it.

Qualifications
notes: all of the following should be taking qualifiers based off of the past 3 years. i.e. if you played sm uu in spl 2 years ago you would qualify, but not if you played it 4 years ago, etc. this can be made longer if needed, but should get approved first, 3 years is being used as it is the
  • Team Tournaments: Players should have played at least 3 games, with at least 1 win.
    • Official Tournaments - Mainly SCL
    • XPLs - This should also include the RoA Forum tours if they include the gen. So SMPL can be used for SM RU qualification, etc.
    • XWCoPs - If applicable
    • Other Forum Team Tours - Snakes / Most Wanted / etc.
  • Individuals
    • Classic Cups - Semis and up
      • Playoffs should not be included by default, since there is no guarantee they have the tier knowledge
    • Slam Cups - As stated before, only within the last 3 years. Quarters and up.
    • Other - Forum tours for the tier, etc
this is a very rough list, and it should be enough for most tiers. however, as said earlier, tier leaders do have the discretion to make edits, but ideally they should let me / whoever the tiering admin is know beforehand. if tier leaders wanted more voters / to drum up more discussion, something like a single elim individual hosted in the forum could help, and can easily be included as well. these qualifications are better used as a starting point, though they will work perfectly fine if used as the list.

the main thing to keep in mind is ideally keeping it within 3 years past, as that is around the shelf life of a generation, and anything further is probably to alien / foreign.

in terms of other questions w/r/t old gen lower tier voting:
  1. TLs should tag all voters in the OP of the thread, as well as make a Smogon PM with them where they can request PR access if they do not have it and want to discuss, and also to make sure they see it.
  2. Current gen TLs are the official "leaders" of these tiers, but its fine for them to appoint someone else to run the vote if they do not have the im / do not feel they are qualified in the gen.
  3. Threads should remain open for 2 weeks at a minimum, and this should be stated in the OP.
  4. If the TLs / person in charge is making a list with other qualifications other than the ones listed above, they should shoot the Tiering Admin / a Tiering Council member a PM to get it approved.
  5. If the vote is fairly contentious, and if there is community support for it, TLs should return at minimum 6 months with a new thread and potentially have a revote if needed.
  6. Ideally the voter list should be included in the OP, as they are generally the ones that should also be discussing in the thread, but if when the OP is created, there is doubt that a vote is necessary, its fine to include it in a future post, but there should be a 2 week period from when the voter list is posted and the vote, unless an exception has to be made.
once again, most of these are just here so there is some guidelines / some standards, but if TLs / whoever is running it want to do it some other way, in most cases it should be fine. as long as they get approval from the tiering team / public support as well, id imagine most of what was listed prior can be changed to best benefit whichever tier is voting.

also to avoid any confusion, these are the "official" old gen lower tiers, and the only ones these guidelines apply to.
  • GSC UU
  • ADV UU
  • ADV NU
  • DPP UU
  • DPP NU
  • BW UU
  • BW RU
  • BW NU
  • ORAS UU
  • ORAS RU
  • ORAS NU
  • ORAS PU
  • SM UU
  • SM RU
  • SM NU
  • SM PU
Thanks
What would the voting % threshold be for the new vote. This feels important.
 

shiloh

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
Tiering Lead
Thanks
What would the voting % threshold be for the new vote. This feels important.
for old generations the threshold should always be minimum 60%, TLs can choose to go higher if needed, but 60% should be the minimum since it should take more than a simple majority to change the older generations.

also the prior list does include in ubers / lc / mono just forgot to include them bc i grabbed the list of official usage based old generations.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
for old generations the threshold should always be minimum 60%, TLs can choose to go higher if needed, but 60% should be the minimum since it should take more than a simple majority to change the older generations.

also the prior list does include in ubers / lc / mono just forgot to include them bc i grabbed the list of official usage based old generations.
Thank you again.

To be frank, I'm asking because of Quagsire in gen7uu.

What I wanted to know is -->Quagsire was UU at the end of gen7uu being current gen --> it was banned by 60%+ majority but was "contentious" as your guidelines put it so it will face a revote -->do we need 60% to ban or unban Quagsire? (perhaps you can frame this in changing the status quo or not

To me, it just seemed unfair to need 2 supermajority votes to do 1 tiering action.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
Thank you again.

To be frank, I'm asking because of Quagsire in gen7uu.

What I wanted to know is -->Quagsire was UU at the end of gen7uu being current gen --> it was banned by 60%+ majority but was "contentious" as your guidelines put it so it will face a revote -->do we need 60% to ban or unban Quagsire? (perhaps you can frame this in changing the status quo or not

To me, it just seemed unfair to need 2 supermajority votes to do 1 tiering action.

shiloh

Also can you post rules about when it's allowable to use a non Smogon tournament for suspects.

For reference, this is an old one that used it: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/adv-sand-veil-test.3672150/#post-8637982

Some criteria I suggest: 1) it has to be an old gen, 2) the person in charge of test (Tier Leader or person TL delegates) has to be aware and agree, 3) the tournament has to follow Smogon rules (no banned users, the tournament must be played in the same format as the suspect it's qualifying for).

Maybe some other things might be important. I just think process is very important.

Thanks.
 

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