Meta-PokéBase Q&A
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An hour ago I was investigating a question to figure out why someone was asking about an old Gen moveset for the current Gen. I noticed that some moveset questions are disorganized because some really good old Gen answers were upvoted a lot, and some more recent good moveset answers were upvoted but less than the old Gen. This means that sometimes old Gen sets are displayed above new Gen, and with more votes. There are lots of reasons why it happens, some being the changing popularity of Pokemon between Gens and the introduction of Megas.

For us, this means scrolling down and using our Pokemon-Know-How to determine which sets are appropriate for the Generation (and sometimes Mega) we are playing. Unfortunately for others with less experience, it means trusting the answer with the most votes.

It may seem like an insignificant problem now, but for every Generation and game version that is added the problem will get messier, and more new players will be posting outdated movesets. It's a lot easier to set up a few Generation tabs (or something that fulfills the same purpose) and reorganize the answers now, than doing so in Gen 8 when Super-Mega-Evolution is introduced!

I get that reorganizing the answers is a big project and I don't mean to increase the workload of whoever does this sort of thing (:p). I know not to expect change right away so don't answer with the "he's busy" sort of thing. Just worth discussing whether or not you experts think it's worth doing....

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Tbh I think there should just be new moveset threads.
then how will I submit unnecessary comments on resolved Gen 3 movesets?!
This just seems like too big of an issue to tackle at the moment. We'd have to manually recategorise each or make new moveset threads, both difficult things to do and come with repercussions. It'd be a nice thing to fix, but I don't think it's worth doing.
Also, if your comments are "unnecessary" as you say, why do you want to post them? If you want to suggest changes, correct an error etc. by all means go ahead.
So are you saying that it's on a long to-do-list, or do you think that as new versions are released there will never be a need to organize them (I.e. delete old answers when it becomes too crowded in Gen X)?
To clarify, I want to post all of my unnecessary comments on resolved Gen 3 movesets because I am actually a Ditto transformed into a human so that I can search for and defeat an evil man in a suit with a pet lion.  If that's not clear enough then you're putting me in a difficult position XD
IMO there should be a tag-like feature for moveset answers that could help differentiate between them. Stuff like "Gen 3" or "RSE". It's just a thought at the moment though, since I can imagine how tedious it would be to implement that...
I think some people play local competitive and gen IV and V competitive on showdown?
Yes! (and some people do it even earlier than that...)
To be fair, not many outside of "stubborn" (they stick to their beloved gen) competitive players (usually on smogon) play gens 5 or lower. The people that do still play them are usually long time vets at the gen and play in smogon tournaments.

If you DO happen to be a new player trying to get into older gens, there is NO reason you shouldnt be using "standard" smogon sets while you learn the metagame. It is only when you become an accomplished and experienced battler in a certain gen that you should be experimenting with mons and movesets (example being McMeghan, a smogon tournament player, using offensive starmie in gen 3, where it is more often seen as a defensive spike spinner and nothing else outside of that).

1 Answer

0 votes

Yes I agree this is becoming a problem. It was suggested for Gen 6 to make new threads and a lot of people weren't sold on the idea at the time.

But as generations progress there are going to be new movesets for existing Pokemon that will clog up the already-crowded movesets. Plus it gets harder and harder to suggest new answers since they go to the bottom and can be missed.

On the other side, creating multiple threads creates a lot of duplication. Some Pokemon change very little between gens so the same movesets apply on all gens. But that's probably a minor problem in comparison.

However, how do we sort this going forward? For Gen 7 we can make a new thread for every Pokemon, that's pretty simple. But what to do with old questions? Keep them as being for gens 4-6, or move the answers into separate threads for each generation?

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Maybe you can separate the answers by utilizing tags?  Like Gen VI Movesets go under the Gen VI tag group, and so on? Similar to when you ask a question, you can apply that to the answers?