Hi all! Based on the results of July's moderation survey, I/we have come up with the following changes to the msq moveset threads that will hopefully improve content standards and reflect community sentiments. Let us know what you think. We'll begin to roll this out in the coming weeks.
Descriptions are required
Based the overwhelming response in the survey, we have decided to require that moveset descriptions are included in answers to msq threads. The exact wording of the rule, which has been added to the guidelines list, is as follows:
Include at least two sentences of explanation. Justify the choices you've made and suggest how/when the set should be used.
How harshly should we enforce the new rule? For example, should we allow a description like this? "Ice Beam for STAB, Calm Mind for setup. Psychic for coverage against Fighting and Poison."
To properly enact the new rule (and the improved content standards that come with it), we will need to remove old moveset answers that lack descriptions. This is a large undertaking, but everybody can help by doing the following:
- If you see moveset answers that lack two proper sentences of explanation, please flag them. If there are multiple of these answers on the same question, flag the question instead (we'll know what to do).
- If you have posted movesets in the past that lack two sentences of explanation, you will want to add onto them if you don't want them to be removed.
- Up-vote submissions that have good explanations!
If your old moveset gets removed and you want to improve it, just let us know and we'll reshow it for you to edit.
If these changes work well on the msq threads, then we'll consider rolling them out for lcmsq as well (bearing in mind those threads are much less essential to PokeBase).
New recommendations
Requiring a battle format was another popular suggestion from the moderation survey. We'd decided to add only the description rule (for now), as enforcing a battle format rule would involve removing a much larger amount of content, and many sets are applicable to multiple formats. We will revisit this if we are still unhappy with the quality of msq threads after enforcing descriptions.
There is also the issue of Showdown-importable syntax. First of all, thank you very much to everyone who has been editing the answers to be Showdown-importable. I agree this is worth our time, and I have been silent-editing posts when I come across them to use the syntax. However, I think it is a tough one to enforce outright, and maybe a bit unfair when it's easy to edit the post instead of remove it. To compromise, I've made it a firm recommendation in the moveset guidelines, along with specifying the battle format.
I've also decided to make "one moveset per answer" a recommendation, not a requirement. It's better if movesets are posted separately, but it's tolerable when they aren't, as long as the content is good.
One final note on new requirements: we will be removing old posts that recommend strategies that never released, such as Gems other than Normal Gem in Gen 6+, and replaced HAs such as Shadow Tag Chandelure. An existing requirement is that movesets are legal within the base game, so we will enforce that in cases like these.
Addressing branched evolutions, etc.
The moveset threads are organised so movesets for not-fully-evolved Pokemon belong in the thread for fully-evolved forms. This system works in the majority of cases, but there are some exceptions, such as regional variants and some forms (e.g. Rotom).
Another such exception is the case of Pokemon with split evolutions: which thread should movesets for these Pokemon belong to? What about Pokemon like Scyther, whose best movesets are quite different from Scizor's? We plan to finally address these problems by adding moveset threads for Pokemon that fit either of the following descriptions:
- The Pokemon has some competitive viability, and has branched evolutions (where Raichu and Alolan Raichu, for example, are considered to make a branched evolution for Pikachu).
- The Pokemon has some competitive viability, and its usage in competitive is considerably different from that of its evolved form (and deserves to be tracked in its own thread).
I can think of the following Pokemon that should get their own msq thread under these conditions: Eevee (#1), Pikachu (#1), Clamperl (#1), Porygon2 (#2), Galarian Corsola (#2), Scyther (#2, maybe #1), and possibly Dusclops. If there are others, please name them. (We won't do threads for every Pokemon with a split evolution; Wurmple movesets are unnoteworthy.)
We will also roll out moveset threads for Pokemon introduced in Legends: Arceus that appear in Scarlet/Violet, obviously pending confirmation of which Pokemon are in.
There is also the issue of Pokemon like Ursaring that gained an evolution in the time passed since their thread was posted. How should we handle these? Options include:
- closing the original thread for the Pokemon (but not hiding it) and directing new submissions to the new fully-evolved page, or
- leaving things as is with a note on the fully-evolved Pokemon's moveset thread.
Are there other conditions where Pokemon, forms, etc. should get their own threads? Should the two conditions above be changed? Let us know what you think.
Improving question descriptions
The descriptions in the moveset threads themselves could also use some work. They have slight variations depending on when the thread was posted, and they could be changed to emphasise the new content requirements, such as descriptions.
I have drafted a new description linked here that we might use going forward. Please give your suggestions and critiques of this! The sections in angled brackets < > will appear only when they apply.
Of course, it would be even more burdensome to update the descriptions of the threads in addition to auditing old content. That's why we (hopefully) won't need to! I plan to write a script that will automate HTTP requests to PokeBase to update the threads.
The script would use data to figure out what the contents of the description should be. I would let it run over a few hours, to avoid burdening the server. This script could be reused any time we want to update the threads in the future. ETA on this is November/December when my semester is over (as it will involve a bit of data collection/scraping).
In the meantime, please give your thoughts on the draft description above and any other topics related to the moveset threads. I hope you've found these to be fairly common-sense choices to improve the moveset threads.
