Meta-PokéBase Q&A
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I've actually been really on the fence about the State of the RMT. I do really think it needs more organization and needs some kind of change to really flourish. MrKijani raised a number of good points I agreed with about having crap teams. I've made suggestions before, but have come up with a more refined plan. Most people I talk to on this site, whether it be an older user or a new one, really don't seem to like the RMT...it just seems like it's on life support, really.

On one hand, the responsibility rests in part on the user making the post to do basic research using the site here to at least know basic dos and don'ts of moveset building, hence why I shouldn't see a special Rampardos set on a suggestion for an Ubers team. Anyone who's looked up how stats work on this site should know why running a special moveset on a Rampardos is a poor choice. There comes a point where a team can be so poor that to suggest things for it requires a complete overhaul of what the person posted, meaning the person answering is making the team more than the one asking.

On the other hand, we still are a site and the RMT is there specifically to help people improve, so it's not as simple as turning people away because they aren't up to snuff. They're still making posts, and simply telling them to do more research clearly hasn't been very effective, not to mention a lot of these posts don't break any of the rules, but simply aren't very good teams. We can't just say "make sure your team isn't crappy" because that is extremely subjective even though we all know crappy teams when we see them, and it leads to inconsistencies in hiding. so I think a new strategy is in order.

I think my suggestion can address both the needs of more advanced players that are tired of seeing the RMT flooded with mediocre posts as well as the newer users tired of getting turned away from feedback and getting better.

I suggest we implement a method similar to the flagging system that lets us denote posts (not users, but individual posts) by skills of "beginner," "intermediate," or "advanced." If you want, you can even change them to "trainer," "gym leader," and "elite four" as a nod to the Pokemon Academy from Pokemon Stadium 2. :P That way, when people are on the RMT, they can filter out posts that are outside of their interested skill level.

One of the biggest issues I've seen on the RMT is that people are of different skill levels asking and answering, so we can use this to cut the searching down dramatically. All the posts still have to meet the rules to be approved, of course. All three of the below examples are in different "improve my Ubers" posts I just made up.

Beginner:

These are posts are the "barely legal" posts. It could have something like:

Shedinja @ Focus Sash
Ability: Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Gentle Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Shadow Sneak
- X-Scissor
- Toxic

If I had 5 other sets like this with reasoning, this technically doesn't break any of our site's rules. That said, this is still a really poor set, but nothing that can't be corrected with a simple explanation of what makes it so poor.

Intermediate:

Groudon @ Leftovers
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 HP
Adamant Nature
Ability: Drought
- Hammer Arm
- Fire Punch
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake

In this set, the moves are kind of viable. Nothing violates basic teambuilding logic, although this set could be way better. Someone could bring up the fact that Ho-oh (barring a roost) shuts down this set and can capitalize on Groudon's drought to try and force a burn on it with Sacred Fire if not outright kill it from STAB and weather boost. Someone might say "change up your EVs" or something similar.

Advanced

Yveltal @ Life Orb
Ability: Dark Aura
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Taunt
- Dark Pulse
- Oblivion Wing

On a competitive team, this moveset holds up fine. Someone might say something to the effect of "you need to change EVs to 2HKO [pokemon]," "need a counter to Arceus-Poison," or "change life orb to [item]" or something.

Any user Editor or higher would be able to shift the difficulty of the post, since it wouldn't make as much sense to judge their own quality if they were a beginner. It would look like the image below so that people searching can quickly filter the posts down. I figure the simplest way to do this is to make tags for users and retag improperly tagged posts and then add in a few more labels that run an instant search by tag and can also add in more for specific teams (Ubers, OU, etc) but we'd also want a way that's simple and looks appealing just for good UI and make sure this method actually gets used. I don't know many people that actually use the tags, after all. I wouldn't think the spoiler tag system you used to fade out certain posts would be good because we'll need that for new game posts as new games are released. Do it that way, and we can include a sort= prompt.

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In short:

  • Unanswered Posts would be hidden after 30 days (or whatever acceptable time). to cut down on stagnant posts. There's nothing stopping you from reposting the same team. When a team is hidden for this reason, it will be pasted to the person's wall if they still need it. Exceptions go to posts with X amount of upvotes for others to try and build off of.

  • A person can have no more than X amount of unanswered posts (make an exception for posts that have answers on them or have more than X amount of upvotes) at a time. Set whatever number you feel works well. Perhaps set a smaller amount for new users or something to cut down on people just here to make a team and expect it to be handled by every user on the site. I'm not completely as acquainted with what this site uses, but I don't recall if the users can have posting restrictions set by number of questions.

  • Sort out posts by "Beginner," "Intermediate," or "advanced." Anyone Editor or higher can manually change the posts to different level.

  • Create (or allow other users to create and upload) a series of teambuilding basics to get new people up to snuff, drive up more site viewership, and strengthen our online presence. Currently, Smogon obviously dominates a lot of the competitive play, but I still feel there are a lot of people willing to improve that also don't want to deal with Smogon's community that we can capitalize on and still have them making sets that aren't piles of crap.

by
With this tags would finally have a purpose in RMT :3
Listen I see your point of view it's a good stand, but having said that if someone wants to grow as a player and be better at Team Building then they got to get helpful feedback. As well as the fact that of how you used Shedinja  as a beginner's  team set, I have used a Shedinja almost similar to that of the one you posted and have either gotten 1-2HKOs or just Swept teams after 1 or 2 Hone Claws. So all in all I hope you reconsider your somewhat biased position.
I'm aware of that. That's why I suggested this whole thing to begin with...I'm saying we shouldn't ignore people who aren't as skilled. Did you even read this? My point of view is that we need to organize the site to better cater to the site, not to get rid of newer users. My whole suggestion here was made specifically to avoid that.

The Shedinja set isn't listed on Beginners because it's a bad pokemon, it's listed there because that is a terrible setup for it. (as vague as "gotten 1-2HKOs or just Swept teams after 1 or 2 Hone Claws" is) You completely overlook the fact that it is using Shadow Ball when it is a physically inclined pokemon and the fact that it has a special defense based nature when its HP Stat and ability makes that completely useless. "Beginner" has nothing to do with how viable the pokemon is or what tier the person is asking questions for. You can make a very poor moveset for any pokemon, and I intentionally made a poor Shedinja moveset as the example of a beginner post.

So all in all, I hope you actually read this post before answering (which you shouldn't even be doing since this is directed at Pokemaster) and reconsider your somewhat biased position.
Possible tags?
"Beginner"
"Intermediate"
"Advanced"
I love this :P. The only small thing that I have a problem with is that 'Beginner', Intermediate' and 'Advanced' can be a little vague. It can be hard to decide whether you feel confident enough to move into a higher section. using myself as an example, around the end of Gen 5 I had good/great scores in 5 major ladders on PS!, and I knew what made great  team building and predicting, which would have put me into 'Advanced' at the time (not anymore, I suck :p). However, I would by no means consider myself has Advanced, and I would have lost to pretty much any other 'Advanced' player. I'm just asking for some sorta clarification on what the crossover point is, or are we relying completely on sense and decision making?

Other than that, I'm loving this :P. Could I also request that Experts in particular pull a little more weight around on RMt, fixing team presentation and giving knowledge ;P?
Not good at giving knowledge but I'll spruce up some teams.
I really like this idea. RMT definitely needs some changes made to it, and this is probably the best idea I have seen for it yet. With that being said, like some of the other comments have said, the exact definition of beginner, intermediate, and advanced needs to be clearer to avoid confusion. I'm not sure how that could be done, though...
I can't make an exact cut and dry definition of it though. It's at the discretion of the people that can change it. Pretty much everyone who can do stuff like that already has enough experience to know how new someone is to multiplayer/competitive play.

Beginner is a post that doesn't break the rules, but stands absolutely no chance in a standard competitive match, where it's clear the person is new to the game.

Intermediate is for teams that have a chance competitively, but need a bit more tweaking, has poor coverage, or is kind of in the beginning stages of competitive play.

Advanced is a team that holds up competitively and is already pretty solid (those "unanswerable" posts people keep raving about.
This is the best idea I've seen so far. The RMT needs a lot of changes to it, and this is one that should be done.
I love this apart from the thing where old posts without votes get deleted. I honestly think it'd be better if they were just moved to another different section, since deleting them would just confuse and potentially annoy people.
Changing it to a forum type thing might also help, it would encourage more discussion.
or they could make the classifications youngster, rising star and elite trainer as a nod to X Y
If we were to move them to a different section, we'd still eventually be left with the same problem,  just in a different place.
Yeah, I guess we'll just have to see where discretion and change it from there if necessary :P. Okay then, perfect post
The only small problem I have with this is that it can create some rifts among the users.
Possibly like showing off how good they're teams are since they are in the advanced group or something.
if someone is as petty as to spite someone in a higher tier based on skill, then they should 1.) get over themselves and 2.) get better at the damn game. We'll be happy to help them get better, but if they get all pissy about it, it's not our problem/fault.  

Anyway, it can be used as a sort of archive. People in Beg can look at Tnter and see what they do wrong, and Inter look at Adv to see how they can improve (going straight from Beg to Adv is both unwise and unlikely)
Bumping to make sure it doesn't get swallowed up by other posts.
Same as above.
PX forgot -.-
I'll do that part.
Maybe also add some mandatory tags as to the type of team.  Would help sort the crap a LOT better.

Example categories (these aren't the actual tag names, but categories):
Tier/Type of team (OU, LC, mono, wifi, rec, tcg, etc.)
Gen/Game (X/Y, six or VI, V, etc.)

REQUIRING a simple system of tagging like this would certainly help the organization on the RMT some.

Also, I agree with everything on the post - GJ, DT.

(also, remove the "suggestions" or similar tags - ridiculously redundant, as it is already on the RMT, but not especially important.)  
("suggestions," "team," and "improvements" are the top 3 tags on the RMT, lol.  a lot of the top tags are also not really helpful to categorizing the question. "pokemon-team" - like, seriously?)
Goosebump.
bump. RMT is still dying...
Plz make this hapen
This is a great idea, please make this happen
It's so hard to see all of the crap teams that you can't even rate becasue it would require a complete re-make of the team.
It's so hard to see all of the crap teams that you can't even rate becasue it would require a complete re-make of the team.
Could you do it where each user has a skill level?

That would save a lot of work for the editors having to assess every single post.  They could either have someone know the user and rank them or check out some of their teams.

I don't know if this is what your suggesting or if it would even work, but thought I'd mention it!
This is where having a reputation system over a points system would come in handy
The points system would be a lot to change, but maybe have a reputation system just for RMT or something like that.
Honestly, not enough teams are being posted right now for that to be a problem, Parz. If the post count doubles or something silly like that then maybe, but then we can just request to spread the privilege to Experts (or handpick them, if using points to get a good privilege is too much to ask).

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