Other Competitive CAP: An Idea [See Post #26]

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bugmaniacbob

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Approved by Birkal

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This idea is based off something that Deck Knight proposed a while ago as an in-between project for CAP (or so I recall). Essentially, the idea is as follows: That, for this once-off project, rather than there being one project, run by one Topic Leader, there are instead two projects, run by two different Topic Leaders, running simultaneously. These might be based off the same concept or different concepts or whatever takes one's fancy – the specifics are not set in stone. After the conclusion of both projects, both CAPs would enter a playtesting period on separate ladders, running at the same time and for the same duration, after which both products would be judged under the same criteria by an independent committee (subject to revision if people don't like the idea) to determine the more successful project, as well as by discussion amongst the userbase (I feel discussing and comparing the two in the forum to be essential to the success of any such project, or similar). A "winner" would then be announced.

As to why I feel this would be a good idea (or even worth doing), well, I find myself rather intrigued by the idea and would like to find out what sort of results it would produce. One thing that I feel the CAP Project has always lacked somewhat is the ability to judge what it has created – as no objective metric exists, as such, we are forced to rely on comparison, and anecdotal evidence from previous CAPs is often somewhat shaky. This way, we are capable of judging, somewhat, what we are producing by reference to another, and I'd be interested to see what the results of this project would be. Alternatively, it might just turn out to be a good deal of "fun". I'm not exactly an expert on "fun" so I'll leave that to other people to gauge.

Anyway, that's the long and the short of the project. More detail can be found in the hide tags (bear in mind that this is how I would suggest that it be run, as opposed to how it ought to be run. None of this is set in stone).

On Placement

This would be a one-off CAP Project. The products would collectively be treated as "CAP X" (or whatever number we're up to), or alternatively they could simply not be treated as part of the CAP "canon" at all, and listed separately from the main CAPs on the site.

On Concepts

As to whether or not the two separate CAP projects would be using the same or different concepts, I have not quite formed an opinion yet; both have their relative strengths and weaknesses. Having the same concept gels better with the mission statement, as we can more directly compare the two, but on the other hand it risks biasing the process by either forcing one of the two teams to strive to make their version as different as possible to the other, and hence sub-optimal. On the other hand, having different concepts means that there is more room for variety, but less room for adequate comparison.

On Loyalties

Some people on #cap brought up the subject of teams, and I have indeed been wondering how far the team aspect of the exercise ought to be pushed. There are people who would enjoy the atmosphere of a rival team game, but on the other hand there are those who would prefer to remain unattached and contribute to both. Hence I would advocate the following model to achieve the best of both worlds – that the two Topic Leaders would make separate introductory threads, in which members would be allowed to sign up to become part of that particular "team", which would be an agreement to only post in that team's threads, and not in the other. A member who was not a member of either team could constructively help both teams. A list of those committed to either team could be kept in their respective thread OPs.

I am also thinking that the Topic Leader model may be scrapped for this one-off in favour of leadership by a coalition of members who are a part of that team, as having Topic Leaders may provoke unfair comparisons between them, as well as unnecessary hostility. In addition, I like the idea of individuals who have committed to a team being more involved in the working of the project – even, indeed, organising amongst themselves how best to operate the project – for example, perhaps, one of them could be delegated the task of making thread OPs, another for posting a vision in a particular part of the project, and the like. Of course, the eagle eyes of the moderators would, I assume, be upon them. I am not sure at present whether moderators ought to be assigned teams, or allowed to join teams, or even to simply be unattached and watch both. Being a part of the team would probably be easier, as only one project needs watching for any individual moderator, but I'm sure some of them may feel uncomfortable with it. I'll leave that up to PRC discussion.

On Judging

Obviously, the metric used for judging these CAPs would likely be a contentious issue. I have given it a fair amount of thought, and the one I was thinking of was one similar to that used in the UK television series, Robot Wars (I know what you're thinking, but bear with me). Competitors, if both were still functional at the end of the bout, were judged in the categories of style, control, damage, and aggression, with different weightings going to different categories. Thus I would propose that each of these categories be assigned an independent judge who had no part in the creation process (or possibly the moderators if nobody else is willing).

Style, in this context, would roughly translate to flavour. Things that would be judged would include the cohesiveness of the design, movepool flavour alongside artwork, name versus art, and the like. I would suggest that an artist be selected for this judging process. Style generally had the lowest weighting in judging, and that's how I believe it should stay here.

Control would here be something along the lines of "how well does it perform relative to its individual parts". This encompasses quite a few things. If it is broken or underwhelming as a Pokemon, then naturally it will decrease in its Control. In addition, a Pokemon with 480 BST and Illuminate that performed just as well as a Pokemon with 600 BST and Magic Guard would have a higher Control value. Hence this is designed to reward good design, more than anything else.

Aggression would relate to the amount of risks taken that paid off, or rather, large experimental choices. This does not include things like giving a Pokemon Magic Guard in order to make it work properly, but rather, giving a very good ability to an already powerful Pokemon without making it broken, but giving it just the right edge to do its job. That's the theory, anyway.

Damage would be the highest-weighted variable, and would deal with the most important point – how well the CAP fulfils its concept. This would be judged purely in terms of its metagame impact, and irrespective of the build of the Pokemon, as opposed to Control.


Well, that's more or less everything I could remember. Sorry if this wasn't very coherent, I've been feeling rather exhausted recently. Also, I'd make it clear that CAP4 would come before this in any eventuality - it would be unwise to start this project when there have been so many metagame changes since the last CAP. In case it contains anything I missed, here's a log of a discussion on the subject on #cap:

Code:
<bugmaniacbob> I've been working on it for a week and I've only done two paras
<bugmaniacbob> agh
<Pwnemon> what's the gist of it?
<bugmaniacbob> er
<bugmaniacbob> it may take a bit of explaining
<bugmaniacbob> I can't take credit for the idea, it's something Deck suggested a while back
<bugmaniacbob> essentially, rather than there being 1 TL and 1 Project
<bugmaniacbob> we have two TLs and two projects, which are sort of competing with one another
<bugmaniacbob> which are then independently judged at the end
<bugmaniacbob> with a winner being announced
<bugmaniacbob> I've skipped over most of the details but that's the gist
<SubwayJ> DOUBLE TEAM!
<bugmaniacbob> [this would be a one-off if it wasn't already clear]
<SubwayJ> Would the community be broken up into teams?
<Pwnemon> not trying to be a butt
<jas61292> Oh, I was about to comment on how it would need to be a one off
<Pwnemon> but ew i don't like the idea
<bugmaniacbob> that would be the idea
<jas61292> But I think it would be really fun
<SubwayJ> Or would you be able to contribute to both projects?
<bugmaniacbob> well, I thought that you could do both
<bugmaniacbob> you could be "unattached" and contribute to both
<bugmaniacbob> or you could attach yourself to one of the two teams at the outset
<SubwayJ> But are you allowed to pick a side?
<SubwayJ> Ahh
<bugmaniacbob> I know some people would be uncomfortable with the idea of teams, but some people would enjoy it
<bugmaniacbob> so I'd like to keep everybody happy, if possible
<SubwayJ> Would the team be working from the same concept?
<bugmaniacbob> possibly
*** Oglemi is now known as OgAFK
<bugmaniacbob> that's a detail that I'm not entirely sure about yet
<SubwayJ> Okay
<jas61292> I love the idea of a team competition, but the main downside is that I would hate to miss out on working on the other
<bugmaniacbob> same-concept and different-concept both have their merits
<Pwnemon> i think they would have to be against the same concept
<bugmaniacbob> true jas
<SubwayJ> DOUBLE TEAM
<SubwayJ> MAKE 4 MONS
<jas61292> lol YES!
<bugmaniacbob> heh
*** paintseagull [~paintseag@6CA1FAFF.CD73A68B.D9107933.IP] has joined #cap
<SubwayJ> Hi paint
<jas61292> except I think that would kill the artists....
<jas61292> two not so much
<bugmaniacbob> anyway the idea would be to learn more about hitherto unspecified stuff by greater comparison between projects
<bugmaniacbob> as there is no objective way of valuing a CAP, and anecdotal evidence is a bit iffy
<bugmaniacbob> [that's what I keep telling myself anyway]
<bugmaniacbob> [truth is we'd probably not learn anything but have a lot of very heated and very amusing arguments]
<bugmaniacbob> [that's what usually happens in CAP]
<jas61292> probably
<jas61292> but thats what makes it great
<SubwayJ> Would there be different IRC channels?
<SubwayJ> For the different projects?
<bugmaniacbob> doesn't seem necessary
<bugmaniacbob> I mean the TLs could set them up if they wanted
<Pwnemon> if so they would have to have amusing nicknames
<bugmaniacbob> but really, there's not much point, as there's no need to be secretive
<Pwnemon> #mycapisbetter
<Pwnemon> #nomineis
<SubwayJ> Would they be CAP 4 and CAP 5
<bugmaniacbob> alternatively red team could colonise #grammar and blue team could colonise #smeargle
<SubwayJ> Or CAP 4 (1) and CAP 4 (2)
<jas61292> lol
<bugmaniacbob> probably the latter
 
Yeah, I've seen the gist of this idea being thrown around by different people in various forms. Suffice to say I do like the idea of having two CAP projects competing with each other or at least going alongside each other. At the same time, this seems like the kind of thing that could be submitted at the concept stage and maybe win the vote. As it's presented, it's rather vague to say much about, but like I said, I'm not against the general idea.
 
I would like to say I really like this idea, it encourages something new in the CAP world and I believe that it would further encourage people to participate because of the competitiveness.

My thoughts on BMB's format

On Placement
-I see no reason why these both cannot be considered full CAPs and I believe they should both count as "main CAPs"

On Concepts
-I believe having the same concept would be better for this project. It provides a good basis for comparison (who fulfilled the concept best) and makes the CAPs have at least something in common, which I believe would be beneficial to the project.

On Loyalties
-For this truly to be a contest I would believe there HAS to be teams, if there are no teams whats the point of a competition?

-For the deciding of teams, I don't think its best for you to choose which you take part in, with that format we could essentially have one team with everyone and another with none. I would suggest deciding team based on username. CAP A for example could have users with usernames starting with A-M and 0-4 and CAP B could have users with usernames starting with N-Z and 5-9. I believe that would add far more structure to the project (which seems to be needed based on the results of Mollux).

-I am in favour of the scrapping of the TL and instead having a "topic team" per say and them collaboratively leading the project instead of a single person. A way we could do this is to have a "topic team" signup have community (or PRC) decide on two lets say "captains" who could have a schoolyard pick of the remaining candidates until each team has a certain number of leaders.

-As always the mods I believe should keep watch over each concept to make everything run as smoothly as possible. I also believe it'd be good to have a mod as a "leader" on each team.

On Judging
-I completely agree with the format you described and think it needs no change :P
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Just my thoughts on everything. I fit wasn't clear I REALLY like this idea.

SubwayJ


(Also if I've done anything wrong please let me know, this is my first PRC response :D)
 
I think this is a good idea. It would definitely be interesting.They should both be canon. They would go through the process and be designed for competitive use, so there would be no reason to make them non-canon. For designation, I thing that something like CAP (X)A and CAP (X)B make the most sense. It would show that, while they are two different Pokemon, they were made in the same CAP cycle.

So long as the concept has enough directions it can take, using the same concept would be best. Using different concepts would be okay so long as they are solid and clear enough for the judges to be able to judge how well the CAPs fulfilled their concept.

Teams would be needed for this to work. Not everyone should be on a team though, there are too many people who just vote in polls or show up in the middle.
How teams work should depend on how team leads are handled. If we go with a strong team lead, then the teams should be as large as possible and all submissions would need to be made by a team member. If we have either no team leader or a weak one, then the teams should be smaller and exist to shape the project.
The teams should not be determined by something unchangeable like username or by allowing the users to pick their team. Instead, at the beginning, everyone who wants to participate should sign up in a topic and then they are divided out into teams by the team leads, moderators or the PRC. This would prevent a team from being screwed over by being unpopular or having the bad luck of their half of the names not having enough active and skilled/knowledgeable users for a step.

As far as judging goes, I don't really have a problem with the categories, but I do think the names should be changed.
 

Bughouse

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Stealing SubwayJ's post format...

My thoughts on BMB's format

On Placement
-This is the category I am most unsure about. I do think treating both as full CAPs is necessary in order to not marginalize the "loser." At the same time, because of my answer to the next section...

On Concepts
-I agree entirely with SubwayJ here. The issue with that is do we want to have CAP4A and 4B both exist as CAPs if one CAP fulfills the concept better than the other. I'm not sure we do, and that's what concerns me most about this idea. I'm not entirely sure we want to have half of the communities' efforts wasted in the end (though they would still have their playtest, which is CAP's primary function) and not be implemented in the CAP metagame. At the same time, I don't think we want two options for the same concept available, especially when one is bound to be inferior.

On Loyalties
-I absolutely agree teams would have to be divided. Not entirely sure how easily that would be implemented, but I do think it would be necessary.

-I would be in favor of allowing the users to decide which team they are on after typing decisions have been made by each of the projects. That is, everyone can vote on the various typings in the polls on both projects (hopefully different ones) and after typing is decided we have teams decided. This also means that no one is forced to work on a project they prefer less, nor do we exclude people who join midway through the process.

-I don't think eliminating the TL entirely is a good idea whatsoever, as structure really is needed. That being said, I would hope this particular project to be a little more communal than in the past. Since users got to choose the project they work on and the nominating/voting population is smaller, maybe require every legal submission to be slated?

On Judging
-I feel that the concept of judging is good. I'm not sure entirely whether a formulaic approach could be implemented. For example, if CAP4A and B both have sweeperish concepts, how many kills they netted per battle. Obviously that's a skewed statistic, but some physical method rather than the eye test would be needed for the "Damage" category. The other option I see is to have a team tourney of sorts. Take the top 5-10 whatever playtest winners on each CAP version and then enable them to battle each other. As for flavor, yes, an independent panel is probably best, as team members are bound to be partial to their own flavor.
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I'm not 100% behind this idea until a few kinks are worked out, but if it can be cleaned up a bit, I could easily support this for CAP 4.

Hope to discuss this more here on PRC! Thanks for having me. Also, please update on irc discussion of this if possible. Every time I go there, I end up spending way too much time there, so I try to avoid it, but that means I miss important points.
 

jas61292

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Well, as you can see from the chat log, I do think that this could be a really enjoyable idea. There are definitely a few important things too work out before anything like this is put into play though, the biggest of which are the concept of teams and team leadership.

I do think that there needs to be some form of team structure for this to work, otherwise this is just 2 CAPs at once, and not much more. However, forcing everyone to pick sides does not seem like it is a good idea. Many of the more casual CAP posters would not really want to be restricted to one or the other, and I don't think it would be appropriate for us to force them to do so. However, if you do not have to choose a side, why would you? Wouldn't you want to participate in both if you could? What I am thinking is that if we want some sort of team structure to work without forcing it on anyone, we will need to give some incentive for people to choose a team. What this would be, I have no idea. Maybe have those that chose sides have their name put somewhere on the site next to their CAP. Maybe something completely different. I don't know. But I do believe that an option team structure would be better than a required one, and incentives may be needed to make something like that work.

As for leadership, I like the idea of leadership teams. While I do think a standard TL model could work, turning it into a competition could put even more pressure that usual on the TL, which is not really something I think we should be doing. By having groups of top contributors lead the CAPs, we can keep the veteran leaderhsip of the TL model, but take keep the pressure off any individual person. I don't think such groups should be too big, but it would definitely make sense to make it more than one person. Personally I think 2 or 3 people might be an ideal size. Its not to large, but since no one person is in charge, no one person has to go through the stress of leading it by themselves.

I just have a few other comments right now. First, I think that in general it would probably be good to do the same concept for both Pokemon. It provides a much more objective way to compare the two Pokemon. Unfortunately, not all concepts would work well in two different ways, but if we have to decide on this before we decide on a concept, then I would say making the two the same would be the best course of action.

Secondly, for judging, I'm not really a fan of the third aspect of judging you suggested. I know that when it comes to powerful abilities and risky ideas within CAPs themselves I have always been very conservative, so maybe my opinion on this is more conservative than most people, but I don't think we should reward for taking risks and not screwing up. I think such things are a part of the "control" and "damage" categories. As you used for an example of "control" succeeding with lower stats and useless ability is better than succeeding cause you beefed up its stats and gave it a powerful ability. And when you put it like that I don't see the use for a "agressiveness" score. If "damage" rewards for success of concept, and "control" awards for doing well without unnecessary power, why are we also awarding risks, that are essentially adding such power. They seem like they are looking at the same thing and one awarding for doing x, and the other awarding for doing not x. I do think that a way of judging is needed, but I feel like there are a few kinks like this that need to be worked out first.
 

nyttyn

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yay first PRC post

I like the idea, but I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute here.

First of all, this has a large potential for drama. The second we introduce competition into anything, people start complaining more then one would believe to be humanly possible. People will even more then usual hound and whine at the TL, demanding that their ideas get chosen because they know best and "we have to win this durnit!" And if we go with the council TL setup it becomes even worse since then every single member on the council will be hounded.

Secondly, this is going to have huge structure problems. Both threads will be going on at once and unless we dictate that each stage has a precise time limit, one CAP will finish sooner then the other, possibly causing a significant lapse of time before we can get into playtest. And twiddling your thumbs is never fun.

Thirdly, what's to stop people from making alts, convincing their friends to vote against the other team, or otherwise finding some other form of engaging in sabotage? Once again, once we raise competitiveness into the question, people will start trying to sabotage the other team in a attempt to win, and the CAP mods, the TL, and hell CAP itself already have enough issues dealing with drama and arguments as it is, it'll just get even worse if we have accusations of drama flying every which way.

Fourthly, who judges all of this? First of all we have to find someone who is not only independent, but impartial, a notable member of the community who we can rely on to not skew things either way, who we know doesn't have significant bias, and on top of all this we will have to ask this member to sit out the CAP project. Now this might be solved by recruiting someone from outside the CAP project, but they wouldn't have experience with CAP and as such wouldn't be quite as qualified as someone who has been with the project with some time. So either we get a sub-optimal ref or ask someone to sit out the CAP just so we can had a ref.

Finally, expanding on the judging question, defining aggression as a variable might convince people to take stupid risks they otherwise would not have taken in a attempt to score more points, which in turn will lead to a horrible CAP and a worsened CAP metagame. I understand that in general we shouldn't be even remotely considering the CAP metagame, but it is already in a fragile state as it is, and encouraging people to take risks that might wind up making a CAP overpowered will just make it worse. Taking risks can be good, but should we really judge risk taking when it can result in people attempting to do stupid things for more points?

And now to look at the other side.

This would certainly breathe new life into CAP. Introducing competition, while it has its downsides, induces "Team Spirit," really making people rally around ideas and try to aggressively recruit to maximize their chances of success, thus leading to a more robust, more energetic CAP overall. In addition we would finally have a metric to fine a CAP's success within a closed environment, something that we've only been able to sketchily define at best due to each CAP coming out in a changed metagame thanks to bans and what not. A concept like this will allow us to at last compare a CAP to another CAP side by side and see which one is more successful, thus helping us define success in future CAPs to com.
 

DetroitLolcat

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I think teams should have as much liberty as they want when it comes to leadership structure, as that allows the community as a whole to learn the effects of differing leadership models. While one group might have a TL, another group might have a joint TL or a group TL or what have you. Why bind each team to a standard leadership model when we can learn so much more about how leadership affects a project, especially if we allow each team to select its own method of leadership?

As for team structure, there should be teams to some extent, or else there really isn't any competition, and this is called "competitive CAP". Now, the answer to how seriously teams should factor into this project is a difficult one to answer, and it may take weeks of discussion (if not longer) to hammer out every detail of the process, which is why this might not be a viable proposition for CAP 4. I mean, this might be the single largest change to CAP since the beginning of the project, and we should make sure this is done right. Maybe have more PR threads detailing the specifics of the Competitive CAP project while a normal CAP 4 is in production?

Also, I agree with nyttyn about drama and the unintended aftereffects of increased competition, especially after CAP 3 where only slightly competitive aspects of the project deteriorated into what was little better than a flame-war (i.e. Drought discussion). It's important to make sure this is a friendly competition between two (probably) very respected members or groups of very respected members, so a few restrictions should be in place to preserve the "friendly but competitive atmosphere" that made CAP a great project to begin with. We've never had a system like this before, and there are definite problems such as those nyttyn brought up. Again, this is something that should be worked out, potentially in a separate thread. Since we're making such a large change to CAP, it would be a good idea in my opinion to save this for CAP 5.

For judges, possibly a committee of members of both teams plus every PRC member not already on a team. Plus some other people if we want to, I guess.

Now, what I want to get into is what I fear is the greatest difficulty with this idea, and that's maintaining community involvement. As we all know, a lot of CAP members are only amateur members in that they vote in a few polls, make a few posts, and that's about it. There's a reason that CAP polls get 200 votes when there's a lot fewer than 200 active members in CAP, and that's what makes CAP great. Anyone can jump in at any time, post once or twice, vote once or twice, and feel like they contributed to the project, and putting in a team structure could potentially alienate the amateur CAP members. It's important to factor in a team structure while incorporating the less active CAPpers, since it's those people who "post a couple times and vote a couple times" that make up the backbone of the project. Or at least the current project. Furthermore, we need to have a policy for people who enter the Competitive CAP Project in the middle of the project. We have a pretty good policy for those who enter the regular project mid-CAP, and that's "start posting, voting, and IRC chatting!". We need to maintain that kind of open atmosphere when/if we transition to Competitive CAP, and I'm not sure how to go about doing that. It can't be through IRC, since most CAPpers do not use IRC, so it would have to be through the forums.

So, we have to consider those who want to just "participate in CAP" without worrying about teams and those who join mid-CAP, and that's where I think this idea starts to fall apart a bit. Should people not in a team be allowed to vote? If so, then why join a team when you can only vote in half the polls (assuming people in team 1 can't vote in team 2's polls)? If not, then how do you account for people who want to only marginally participate in CAP? What if you join mid-CAP? Is there a "join a team!" thread? Can leaders deny people access? If so, that doesn't seem very welcoming. If not, then inevitably there will be teams of 50 people with about 15 per team actually being active.
Also, this seems a bit unfair to the new members to an extent, since it potentially restricts people to only participating in half of the project. And what about switching teams. If a newbie joins a team and says "hmm, the other team is having more fun and I'd like to get involved there", is that okay? On one hand, it doesn't say much for the team structure if we allow that. On the other hand, we could lose potential contributors if we don't.

Sorry for the doubt-storm, but it just seems that no matter what we potentially alienate a lot of the community if we move forward with this. I advocate moving forward with CAP 4 as we work out the logistics of Competitive CAP and potentially use this for CAP 5.
 

bugmaniacbob

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OK so I should preface this reply with a few little misconceptions that ought to be cleared up before we go any further:

- This project was never intended to be for CAP4 and I would oppose any motion to make it so - given the large number of metagame changes that have occurred since the last CAP, it would be unwise to make a start on an unsure foundation

- This is intended to be a one-off project - there is no "transition" or "change" as such

- The judging categories were never intended to be literally Style / Control / Damage / Aggression, these were just useful and easy-to-remember categories that I didn't see the need to rename and make more complicated. Having said that, ideas for the names would be nice as a discussion topic (I have currently renamed them to Flavour / Balance / Success / Innovation)

- I was intending to postpone moving further forward with the intricacies of the model until such time as it was clear that there was a majority support for the idea itself - but seeing as there is a great deal of interest in these finer details, I suppose they are worth discussing now.

As to the comments on my specification:

Placement

- There seems to be pretty unequivocal support for these CAPs being part of the CAP canon (as it were), which I have no objection to.
- I would say that CAP X (I) and CAP X (II) would be the preferred nomenclature to refer to them (although since this would be one project, the project itself would simply be referred to as CAP X, and as the Pokemon are listed on the site, rather than the project details, there should not be an issue in filing them away.
- @srk1214: Both would certainly be implemented in the CAP metagame and recorded on the site for posterity, without question, irrespective of both of them filling a similar niche. Remember that the CAP metagame is supposed to be an archive, not a display case - the fact that both of them may find separate niches in the CAP metagame, which would certainly be interesting to investigate, notwithstanding.

Concepts

- It seems that opinion seems to favour both teams working from the same concept, which I have no objection to, but I would prefer to wait to vote on this (assuming, of course, that the PRC votes to put this project into operation)
- @uwnim, I would agree that the concept chosen would have to have many avenues open for exploration (this should not be too limiting a prospect; I am relatively certain that pretty much every concept that has ever been used for a CAP would qualify)

Loyalties / Leadership

- It seems that people are set on there being teams, and that's good. However, I wouldn't say that some of the ideas being thrown around are entirely optimal. Of course, these details can and should be ironed out.
- @SubwayJ: Deciding the teams based on username isn't really what I had in mind, largely because it's, well, somewhat arbitrary and fairly open to abuse. There's nothing really wrong with it, I just don't really like the idea of users being allocated, as it were, by anything other than random placement.
- @srk: Forming teams later is an interesting suggestion, and one that I'd be happy to see go to a vote; my only complaint with it is that it somewhat dilutes the idea of team loyalty and risks the larger body of users picking the less abrasive option, and also that we need to pick teams initially in order for there to be two separate typing polls, so this is in effect causing the same thing to occur twice - I will give this due consideration though. Also RE the Topic Leader, the theory is that the senior members of the team would act as a TL coalition, but I also like DLC's idea of leaving organisation up to the individual team members, so we'll see
- @uwnim: I don't particularly like the idea of non-blind allocation for the simple reason that it is open to unconscious bias, but perhaps others feel differently.
- @jas: You are right in that there ought to be an incentive for people to join teams - the one that I was thinking of was that, in lieu of any forum-based reward, the names of all the members of the teams would be listed on-site where the Topic Leader's name would ordinarily be. I don't have any other ideas at present, though. I would also say that for a "leadership team" I would have thought that more than 2 or 3 (say 4 or 5) would be optimal, as per getting more people involved - I would also like to think that all team members could have a say in which items they wanted slated for any given part of the process, or could volunteer to make thread OPs (this is my thinking out loud).

Judging

- As for who is doing the judging, which has come up a couple of times, I was thinking of getting OU QC members to judge the Damage and/or Control aspects, and some artists who had not taken part in the art polls (or maybe Alch or somebody similar) to make up the Style panel. As for Aggression, I really don't know (but if we get rid of it, it should cease to be an issue). If neither of these are available then some trusted members, or even the moderators, could be asked to do it. I don't think there's any shortage of viable members here and there. The judging method would be to give a score out of 5/10/50/whatever - the two projects should be allowed to tie if there is no justifiable reason for favouring one over the other
- The point of the Aggression category was so that teams would be encouraged to try new things, as there is a risk that they may be too conservative if they risk being marked down for going overboard. Thus I was trying to reward ingenuity and innovation, or thinking outside the box, as opposed to what it appears to have been interpreted as, as per just "taking risks". Perhaps it's unnecessary, or there's another way to reward the same thing, but as I couldn't think of it, that's what I went with. More ideas are welcome.
- OK, from now on (unless anyone has any objections):
> Style = Flavour
> Control = Balance
> Aggression = Innovation
> Damage = Success
- @srk: I don't want this to be formulaic as there are so many different factors to be considered in each category that this would create more problems than it solved - furthermore, the idea of a tourney is an intriguing one, but I don't think it's particularly feasible what with the time constraints we are likely to be working with.

-----------------------------------

With all this in mind, I have been able to piece together a basic timeframe for this project, and its potential variations, as it were:

Code:
1. Concept Submissions (+ Poll)
- A moderator would open submissions and poll threads
- Moderators would be responsible for slating concepts that have an acceptable number of potential variations to them
- For preference, larger slate > smaller slate

2. Team Sign-Ups
- A moderator opens this thread
- Users post in this thread expressing their willingness to be a part of a team
- Being a part of any team grants the following privileges:
 > Mention on-site as part of creation team
 > Obligation to help with administrative duties / etc
 > Right to have say on slating
- Teams allocated by hitherto unspecified method [discussion needed]

3. Team Talks
- Moderator posts topic inviting team members to organise themselves (1 topic for each team)
- Team nominates a Team Leader, goes to a vote if necessary [maybe several  Team Leaders? I'd prefer that, in all honesty]
- If only one Team Leader, then that Team Leader will name his council of 4 or 5 trusted members to help organise the project

4. Concept Assessment
- Representative (or moderator) posts topic
- Team Leader posts vision
- Discussion happens
- Conclusion is reached
- Ditto for pretty much every other stage

5. Typing
6. Threats
7. Stats
8. Ability
9. Art
10. Counters
11. Sprites / Names
12. Movepools
13. Everything Else

14. Final Product
- Team Leader posts the final product of their project
- Applause, tea and medals

15. Playtest & Judging
- Inaugural tournament between team members (rigged in favour of Team Leader)
- Once both product threads are posted, separate ladders are set up on PS!
- Each CAP is tested separately for the recommended testing period of 2 weeks
- Independent judges playtest both CAPs in categories of [Control], [Damage], and [Aggression]. They come to a verdict and, after discussion, post their individual findings and comments in the judging thread. The same applies to the [Style] judges.

------------------

Obviously, the above is quite rough and needs fine-tuning. The following are a list of things that may or may not need their own PR topics, and possibly PRC votes, in order to decide:

[B]On Concepts[/B]

Proposal A: That both teams should work from the same concept, chosen by a vote that incorporates the entirety of the CAP Community
Proposal B: That each team should select and work from its own concept, chosen solely by members of that team and the unattached members of the CAP Community

[B]On Allocation of Team Places[/B]

Proposal A: That a sign-up thread is posted at the beginning of the Project for each team, and that members may choose to sign up for one team or the other depending on personal preference
Proposal B: That a sign-up thread is posted at the beginning of the Project for allocation to a team, and that members are allocated to one team or the other by randomisation
Proposal C: That a sign-up thread is posted at the beginning of the Project for allocation to a team, and that members are allocated to one team or the other by the moderators
Proposal D: That a sign-up thread is posted at the beginning of the Project for allocation to a team, and that members are allocated to one team or the other by username
Proposal E: That participating PRC members are allocated to one team or the other at the beginning of the Project, and then that a sign-up thread is posted at the close of the Typing Poll for allocation to a team, and that members may choose to sign up for one team or the other depending on personal preference

[B]On Incentives for Team Participation[/B]

Proposal A: That Team Members should be credited in the on-site page for that particular CAP as being members of said team
Proposal B: That Team Members should be allowed input into the formation of each slate for said team's project
Proposal C: That Team Members should be allowed to volunteer to open, begin, or lead any aspect of the process that they feel they have a great amount, or some unique quality, to contribute, subject to team organisation
Proposal D: That Team Members get something silly like custom titles or a sig pic with their team's flag in it or indeed anything that exceeds the above in value

[B]On Team Organisation[/B]

Proposal A: That a single Team Leader is selected by moderators from those who are on a particular team to have full or significant authority in the creation of that team's CAP product
Proposal B: That a single Team Leader is selected by nomination and then bold vote from those who are on a particular team to have full or significant authority in the creation of that team's CAP product
Proposal C: That 2/3/4/5 Team Leaders are selected by nomination and then bold vote from those who are on a particular team to have full or significant authority in the creation of that team's CAP product
Proposal D: That members on a particular team should be trusted to form a coalition that would act as a governing body in the creation of that team's CAP product
Proposal E: That the moderators would open and close process threads and leave the job of leading and organising the project to the most enterprising of the Team Members
Proposal F: That Team Members are left to their own devices to come up with their own structure and organisation with which to carry through their CAP Project

[B]On Reward of Successful Ingenuity[/B]

Proposal A: That a category of judging given greater weight than "Flavour" and "Balance", but less weight than "Success", be listed as "Innovation", and be designed to reward successful outside-the-box thinking, ingenuity, and inspiration.
Proposal B: That the description for the category "Success" be updated to include that a successful use of an ingenious method to achieve the concept be ranked higher than a method of a less inspired nature, were they to have the same or similar success as pertaining to the concept
Proposal C: No reward for ingenuity

[B]On Judgement of Categories[/B]

Proposal A: That "Flavour" be judged by a panel of artists, each of whom, after discussion, shall return their own individual score, which shall be tallied up to give an overall score. That "Success", "Innovation", and "Balance" be judged by a panel of OU Quality Control members, or else talented OU battlers, each of whom, after discussion, shall return their own individual score, which shall be tallied up to give an overall score. These members should have had no or minimal involvement with the project, if possible. That categories be weighted in the following order: "Success" > "Innovation" > "Balance" > "Flavour"
Proposal B: That "Flavour" be judged by a panel of artists, each of whom, after discussion, shall return a collective score. That "Success", "Innovation", and "Balance" be judged by a panel of OU Quality Control members, or else talented OU battlers, each of whom, after discussion, shall return a collective score. These members should have had no or minimal involvement with the project, if possible. That categories be weighted in the following order: "Success" > "Innovation" > "Balance" > "Flavour"
Proposal C: That "Flavour", "Success", "Innovation", and "Balance" be judged by a panel of CAP members who can be trusted as impartial, each of whom, after discussion, shall return their own individual score, which shall be tallied up to give an overall score. That categories be weighted in the following order: "Success" > "Innovation" > "Balance" > "Flavour"
Proposal D: That "Flavour", "Success", "Innovation", and "Balance" be judged by a panel of CAP moderators, each of whom, after discussion, shall return their own individual score, which shall be tallied up to give an overall score. That categories be weighted in the following order: "Success" > "Innovation" > "Balance" > "Flavour"

--------------------------------

Whew. I think that's all of that... now to reply to the constructive criticism:

[QUOTE=cape][...] this seems like the kind of thing that could be submitted at the concept stage and maybe win the vote.[/QUOTE]

As it's presented, this proposal would be illegal by some significant margin as a concept and it would be unwise to make a project of this nature a possibility by relaxing the rules - I'd say that this should be approached as an independent project as there is plenty of stuff that needs to be discussed and considered for an idea such as this to be feasibly put into practice

[QUOTE=the nyt]First of all, this has a large potential for drama. The second we introduce competition into anything, people start complaining more then one would believe to be humanly possible. People will even more then usual hound and whine at the TL, demanding that their ideas get chosen because they know best and "we have to win this durnit!" And if we go with the council TL setup it becomes even worse since then every single member on the council will be hounded.[/QUOTE]

I realise that this is the case and can offer no solution. Added drama is the natural product of competition, and there's very little that can be done to solve it. I can only say that I would entreat every CAP member, and especially the PRC, to treat the project and other members with dignity and restraint, and to try and avoid heated outbursts or otherwise setting a poor example for other members who may try to follow the lead. I also hope that the moderators will keep the peace and keep hostility to a minimum. This is part of the reason why team members would not be allowed to post in the other team's threads, for example.

[QUOTE]Secondly, this is going to have huge structure problems. Both threads will be going on at once and unless we dictate that each stage has a precise time limit, one CAP will finish sooner then the other, possibly causing a significant lapse of time before we can get into playtest. And twiddling your thumbs is never fun.[/QUOTE]

That's a fairly trivial concern - there's no need to rush, and the only parts that need to occur simultaneously are the playtests. This problem could perhaps be mitigated by halting the leading project partway through the Project (say after stats, then after art, then after movepools) such that the delays become more bearable.

[QUOTE]Thirdly, what's to stop people from making alts, convincing their friends to vote against the other team, or otherwise finding some other form of engaging in sabotage? Once again, once we raise competitiveness into the question, people will start trying to sabotage the other team in a attempt to win, and the CAP mods, the TL, and hell CAP itself already have enough issues dealing with drama and arguments as it is, it'll just get even worse if we have accusations of drama flying every which way.[/QUOTE]

History has taught us that this is nothing new. CAP has always had to deal with people attempting to rig polls or bend the rules, though it's less publicised now. We have ways of checking for alts, and to be honest, sabotage is hardly going to work particularly well, since the Team will have slated only those ideas which they think could work anyway, so the rigging would be subjective to the rigger regardless.

[QUOTE]Fourthly, who judges all of this? First of all we have to find someone who is not only independent, but impartial, a notable member of the community who we can rely on to not skew things either way, who we know doesn't have significant bias, and on top of all this we will have to ask this member to sit out the CAP project. Now this might be solved by recruiting someone from outside the CAP project, but they wouldn't have experience with CAP and as such wouldn't be quite as qualified as someone who has been with the project with some time. So either we get a sub-optimal ref or ask someone to sit out the CAP just so we can had a ref.[/QUOTE]

See above. Ideally OU battlers or QC members for the competitive bits, and artists who didn't draw for the projects for the flavour bits. Even a committee of trusted PRC members could work. If all else fails, the mods themselves could do the judging. There is no dearth of feasible judges, don't worry.

[QUOTE]Finally, expanding on the judging question, defining aggression as a variable might convince people to take stupid risks they otherwise would not have taken in a attempt to score more points, which in turn will lead to a horrible CAP and a worsened CAP metagame. I understand that in general we shouldn't be even remotely considering the CAP metagame, but it is already in a fragile state as it is, and encouraging people to take risks that might wind up making a CAP overpowered will just make it worse. Taking risks can be good, but should we really judge risk taking when it can result in people attempting to do stupid things for more points?[/QUOTE]

Aggression (now innovation) was poorly defined and was meant to refer to blue-sky thinking, outside-the-box, ingenuity, innovation, inspiration, and the like, rather than just taking risks. An example for me, I think, would be a Gen 5 version of Colossoil (Stop the Secondary) as per the Dark / Ground typing to put an offensive stop to secondary moves, as opposed to something obvious like Magic Bounce or Scrappy Rapid Spin (this is assuming that Rebound or Guts was not added to consolidate the position, although it still has some merit, even so).

[QUOTE=DLC]Also, I agree with nyttyn about drama and the unintended aftereffects of increased competition, especially after CAP 3 where only slightly competitive aspects of the project deteriorated into what was little better than a flame-war (i.e. Drought discussion). It's important to make sure this is a friendly competition between two (probably) very respected members or groups of very respected members, so a few restrictions should be in place to preserve the "friendly but competitive atmosphere" that made CAP a great project to begin with. We've never had a system like this before, and there are definite problems such as those nyttyn brought up. Again, this is something that should be worked out, potentially in a separate thread. Since we're making such a large change to CAP, it would be a good idea in my opinion to save this for CAP 5.[/QUOTE]

Members on one team won't be allowed to post in the other team's threads, so I don't see any worry in there being flame wars - at least, certainly not on the forums, and honestly who cares about social groups. Also, as I said before, we would be relying on the veteran CAP members to show an example and keep a level head - while, yes, you could say this is a bit naive of me, I would say that trust is essential to this project working.

[QUOTE]Now, what I want to get into is what I fear is the greatest difficulty with this idea, and that's maintaining community involvement. As we all know, a lot of CAP members are only amateur members in that they vote in a few polls, make a few posts, and that's about it. There's a reason that CAP polls get 200 votes when there's a lot fewer than 200 active members in CAP, and that's what makes CAP great. Anyone can jump in at any time, post once or twice, vote once or twice, and feel like they contributed to the project, and putting in a team structure could potentially alienate the amateur CAP members. It's important to factor in a team structure while incorporating the less active CAPpers, since it's those people who "post a couple times and vote a couple times" that make up the backbone of the project. Or at least the current project. Furthermore, we need to have a policy for people who enter the Competitive CAP Project in the middle of the project. We have a pretty good policy for those who enter the regular project mid-CAP, and that's "start posting, voting, and IRC chatting!". We need to maintain that kind of open atmosphere when/if we transition to Competitive CAP, and I'm not sure how to go about doing that. It can't be through IRC, since most CAPpers do not use IRC, so it would have to be through the forums.[/QUOTE]

People can easily jump into the Projects whenever they want to. Nobody is forced to join a team - they can just as easily remain unattached and contribute to both projects. It would not be unreasonable to put in big bold letters at the top of every OP: "If you are not a member of either team, you are still allowed to post in this thread". I do not believe that the team structure will be any more alienating than the system of Topic Leaders and Moderators that currently exists.

[QUOTE]So, we have to consider those who want to just "participate in CAP" without worrying about teams and those who join mid-CAP, and that's where I think this idea starts to fall apart a bit. Should people not in a team be allowed to vote? If so, then why join a team when you can only vote in half the polls (assuming people in team 1 can't vote in team 2's polls)? If not, then how do you account for people who want to only marginally participate in CAP? What if you join mid-CAP? Is there a "join a team!" thread? Can leaders deny people access? If so, that doesn't seem very welcoming. If not, then inevitably there will be teams of 50 people with about 15 per team actually being active.[/QUOTE]

Naturally people who are not in either team should be allowed to vote in any polls. As you say, the casual contingent of CAP is nothing if not significant. As previously mentioned, there are incentives to joining a team, such as recognition and greater weight at the team table, and possibly more pending discussion, and there are incentives to not joining a team, such as participating and voting in all discussions. We're not trying to force people to do either. Similarly, while I doubt that most who turn up mid-CAP is going to want to join a team anyway (shyness etc), I would just tell them to lurk and post a bit, as I would with any other new or casual CAP member. Of course, if others think that a "join-a-team" thread would be a good idea, I'm open to putting it up to a vote.

[QUOTE]Also, this seems a bit unfair to the new members to an extent, since it potentially restricts people to only participating in half of the project. And what about switching teams. If a newbie joins a team and says "hmm, the other team is having more fun and I'd like to get involved there", is that okay? On one hand, it doesn't say much for the team structure if we allow that. On the other hand, we could lose potential contributors if we don't. [/QUOTE]

Nobody can switch teams as that sort of defeats the point of having teams. "More fun" isn't something I know a lot about, but it ought to be made clear that if the newbie [I]wants[/I] to be participating in the entirety of the project, s/he shouldn't sign up to be part of a team in the first place. Nobody is forcing them to, after all.

----------

Right. I think that's everything. I think I'll go have a nap now. Discuss away.
 
I believe that a double CAP system would be best served by letting people participate in whichever project they want. I mostly agree with jas in this respect. I think that we can create incentive to participate in either project by introducing major contrast between the two projects somehow, such as having each operate under similar but starkly contrasting concepts (like Kyogre versus Groudon). But maybe that's a matter best talked about when other matters are more fleshed out.

I don't think it's necessary to deviate from the TL model just because there happens to be two projects. I think people fixate too much on the negative aspects of competition, when in reality, TLs and mods have had to deal with stuff like cheating and drama even with the single CAP projects. (Seriously, the first and third points that nyttyn listed already happen.) Competition doesn't have to be a toxic drama machine where rivals bear genuine ill will toward each other. Having two projects compete can, in fact, improve both projects and put more people on the same page, because each one is naturally focused by the "threat" of the other.

I also believe that the idea of objectively judging two CAP projects is probably a lost cause. If one is obviously more successful in every way that matters to people, then it will be clear. Otherwise, people will naturally have different ways of judging each project and come up with different conclusions. There is really no avoiding this unless we can make everybody agree on what it means to fulfill a concept, and that doesn't quite happen even with relatively straightforwardly defined concepts like Momentum and Perfect Mate. I find this aspect pointless to pursue in an "official" manner.

As an aside, we should consider the compatibility of two simultaneous CAP projects with the CAP site's structure. Remember when we decided to reset the CAP numbering and that actually caused problems for updating the site? Just throwing this out there so that people are aware.

P.S. As for the legality of an idea like this in concept submissions, I guess I wasn't that clear because I never meant to say that this very OP was a viable concept submission. I'm just not sure that a concept that happens to involve making two Pokemon is necessarily illegal, though I can see why it could be interpreted as illegal on the face of it. I know that SubwayJ's concept from last project was almost disqualified, so maybe it's best just to fish for more input on this matter.
 

bugmaniacbob

Was fun while it lasted
is an Artist Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
OK, time to get this thing voted on since it looks like nobody wants to comment on anything I wrote above.

On Approving the Idea

Are we willing to pursue the idea of Team-based, Competitive CAP as a Project?
YES / NO

NB. Please note that you should only vote "no" if you have no intention of supporting this proposal in any way shape or form irrespective of what it looks like after all issues have been discussed and voted upon. Once a final proposal is reached, you will be able to vote for or against implementation, never fear.

--------

On Small Details

The two teams should work from the same concept.
YES / NO

If "Yes" to the above, for selection of concepts, moderators will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by the CAP Community. If "No" to the above, individual Teams will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by their own Teams and by the wider CAP Community.
YES / NO

Individual members are free to sign up for any Team of their choosing, or alternatively may choose to not sign up for either Team - a sign-up thread for each team will be posted at the commencement of the project, in which members may post to pledge their allegiance, as it were.
YES / NO

Members of a Team are required to organise themselves in the way that best makes themselves comfortable - this could be by nominating and electing a single Team Leader or by Coalition of Members - but this system must be ratified by the moderators before being put into practice.
YES / NO

Members of a Team are to have full input into construction of voting slates for that particular Team's Project - this will be made easier by individual Social Groups for each Team, in which discussions and votes on the subject are held.
YES / NO

Members of a Team who are felt to have not contributed adequately to the creation of that Team's CAP may not be mentioned on-site with the others, depending on moderators' discretion. More serious cases of rule-breaking or antagonistic behaviour (eg. flaming, spamming, etc.) will be grounds for dismissal from a Team if desired by a majority of other members, again at moderators' discretion.
YES / NO

Individual Teams reserve the right to decide on a name for their Team in the manner of their choosing, after the formation of the Team but before the Concept Submissions.
YES / NO

That CAPs be judged on the basis of Success (degree to which concept was fulfilled), Flavour (degree of aesthetic prowess), Balance (degree of stability within assigned metagame) and Innovation (degree of imagination or non-obvious ideas used in construction of CAP)
YES / NO

That Success, Innovation and Balance be judged by obliging battlers of OU who have not participated in the Project (eg. QC members), and that Flavour is judged by representatives of Smeargle's Studio who have not participated in the Project.
YES / NO

That the method of judging should be as follows: For each category, the judges will decide whether one of the CAPs is significantly better than the other, moderately better than the other, or inconsequentially better than the other (and hence tied). From here, the judgements will be added up by a system of points, for example:

Sig. Mod. Tie
Flavour 2 1 0
Innovation 3 1 0
Balance 4 2 0
Success 5 3 0

Point system subject to variation depending on number of judges, but weighting as shown.
YES / NO

That Team members are not allowed to post in the threads of the opposing team, for sake of keeping the peace, but that unassigned members are allowed to post in any thread - this to be advertised in size 4 bold black lettering at the top of every discussion or poll thread.
YES / NO

------------------

I'm going to leave it there for now. Any further issues can be discussed and resolved (hopefully) after the vote.

Voting will close at 23:00 GMT (18:00 EST) on 7th September.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
is a Site Content Manageris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
On Approving the Idea

NO

I've thought about this some more, and I don't want to be the downer here... but I just can't see this concept ever working in a way that makes even half of the community happy. There are just too many details to work out that I can't imagine it's our best use of time. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
 

jas61292

used substitute
is a Community Contributoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Are we willing to pursue the ideaof Team-based, Competitive CAP as a Project?
Yes

Sounds fun and interesting. Could be a good learning experience. I don't see why not.
The two teams should work from thesame concept.
Yes

Honestly, I have a hard time seeing how a it would be a competitive project if we had different concepts, and not just a case of two projects going on at the same time. While that itself is something I think is a good idea, it is not what this project idea is about.
If "Yes" to the above, forselection of concepts, moderators will be responsible for considering andslating concepts proposed by the CAP Community. If "No" to the above,individual Teams will be responsible for considering and slating conceptsproposed by their own Teams and by the wider CAP Community.
Yes


With both teams using the same concept, it would be necessary for concept selection to be determined not by one team or the other, but by a neutral party, with the moderators being the ideal group. Depending on the leadership model of the teams, it might make sense for a leader of each team to collaborate with the mods on this decision, but that would depend on how we decide to structure things, and may not be necessary
Individual members are free to sign up for any Team of their choosing, or alternatively may choose to not sign up for either Team - a sign-up thread for each team will be posted at the commencement of the project, in which members may post to pledge their allegiance, as it were.
Yes

While I am not 100% sure that a plain sign up thread would be the best way to do it, the general idea of having teams be existent but optional definitely seems like the way to go.
Members of a team are required to organise themselves in the way that best makes themselves comfortable - this could be by nominating and electing a single Team Leader or by Coalition of Members - but this system must be ratified by the moderators before being put into practice.
No

While a leadership structure for each team is definitely needed, I do not think that this would be a good way to go about it. Leaving the decision up to the groups will end up a big mess as countless people suggest their way of doing things. We need to remember, this is not just the PRC that will be in these groups. There will be many, many people, and spending extra time in messy discussions to decide on how and by whom it will be lead just seems ill advised to me. I don't think either of the two suggested methods themselves are bad, but I believe that how teams are lead should be something decided by the PRC before the project even starts. If we want to save individual nominations until after teams are formed, that is fine, but the process should already be in place.
Members of a Team are to have full input into construction of voting slates for that particular Team's Project - this will be made easier by individual Social Groups for each Team, in which discussions and votes on the subject are held.
No

My vote here is coming from a similar point of view as for the one above. Sure, this would make sense if the teams were made up only of a small group of experienced members, but the fact is that that is likely not what they are going to be. Picking a slate is a huge part of a TLs job in a regular CAP project, and you need someone smart and experienced to do it. If we let the entire team have input into the slate, the likelihood of ill informed choices being made greatly increases. The Experienced members are not always going to come out on top unless it is their decision to make. I believe it would make a lot more sense to have some sore of TL or small leadership group for each team that makes these decisions, or else there will be no real difference between the arguments in the discussion and in the slate picking.
Members of a Team who are felt to have not contributed adequately to the creation ofthat Team's CAP may not be mentioned on-site with the others, depending on moderators' discretion. More serious cases of rule-breaking or antagonistic behaviour (eg. flaming, spamming, etc.) will be grounds for dismissal from a Team if desired by a majority of other members, again at moderators' discretion.
No, though some parts are good.

Basically, what I am thinking here is that all this will do is punish newcomers and people not comfortable with participating yet. I have no problem with not including people who sign up but don't post, but I don't think that we should remove what is likely the only benefit of choosing a team just because you are subjectively determined to not be a frequent enough contributor. Now, I also see no problem with removing problem users, but that is no different that anywhere else on Smogon. If you do bad things, you will be punished. Nothing new there.
Individual Teams reserve the right todecide on a name for their Team in the manner of their choosing, after theformation of the Team but before the Concept Submissions.
No, but I don't really care (Or yes, if I am misunderstanding this).

Not that there is anything wrong with team names, but this is just adding an unnecessary step to the project. The team names are not something that will be remembered in the long term, it is the Pokemon that will be. As such, I see no reason not to just assign names such as "Team 1" or "Team B" and just get on with the project. If they want to come up with a name on their own time, good for them, but there is no reason to spend an entire stage on choosing something so frivolous. If this is simply saying that such a decision should be allowed, then I would say yes. However, I do not think that it would be something to go on site anywhere, so it is really not of any concern.
That CAPs be judged on the basis of Success (degree to which concept was fulfilled), Flavour (degree of aesthetic prowess), Balance (degree of stability within assigned metagame) and Innovation (degree of imagination or non-obvious ideasused in construction of CAP)
Yes

Obviously, if this is to be a competitive CAP, there needs to be some competition, and in the case of a creation project like this, I see no better way of doing it that judging based on these criteria.
That Success,Innovation and Balance be judged by obliging battlers of OU who have not participated in the Project (eg. QC members), and that Flavour is judged by representatives of Smeargle's Studio who have not participated in the Project.
Yes


Probably the hardest part of a judging based system is choosing who the judges are. In this case though, that you hit exactly what we need. Now I am not completely convinced that representatives of Smeargle's Studio are necessarily the only place we could find good people to judge flavor, as flavor goes way beyond art and the like, to every aspect of the Pokemon, but it is definitely a good place to start. What I would suggest is that the judges be selected prior to the start of the CAP process. This way, we can ensure that we will have people we want who are not on either team, and will let the judges start watching from the beginning of the process, as it makes the end results a lot easier to understand.
Thatthe method of judging should be as follows: For each category, the judges willdecide whether one of the CAPs is significantly better than the other,moderately better than the other, or inconsequentially better than the other(and hence tied). From here, the judgements will be added up by a system ofpoints, for example:

Sig. Mod. Tie
Flavour 2 1 0
Innovation 3 1 0
Balance 4 2 0
Success 5 3 0

Point system subject to variation depending onnumber of judges, but weighting as shown.
No

Now don't take this the wrong way, but I just think any judging system will need a lot of thought and work before we even think of voting about it. I mean, for example, I am not entirely convinced that we should be judging them relative to each other and not just individually. Additionally, as another example, I am not so sure that innovation should be placed above flavor in terms of importance. Neither is necessarily critical to learning about the Pokemon or the metagame, so why would we just arbitrarily decide to value one more? I am not saying something similar to this couldn't work, but it will need a lot of tweaking, and I don't think we should be voting on something like this until we work most of the kinks out.
That Team members are not allowed to post in the threads of the opposing team, for sake of keeping the peace, but that unassigned members are allowed to post in any thread - this to be advertised in size 4 bold black lettering at the top ofevery discussion or poll thread.
Yes


I mean, this is pretty much the entire point of teams. If we are not restricting who can post where, then all we are doing is running the same CAP twice at once. I definitely do believe though that unassigned members should be allowed to post wherever. And having a warning at the top of the threads is a good idea. Not much else to say.
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
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Please note that while I am against the idea of pursuing this at the moment, I will place my other votes in the event that this goes through.

Are we willing to pursue the idea of Team-based, Competitive CAP as a Project?
No.

I, too, feel like a downer for having this opinion. However, I am perfectly happy with the way things are currently in terms of how many CAPs we run. We're currently hosting the Gen4 Pre-Evolution Process alongside of CAP4, and that should continue for a good amount of months to come. Perhaps in the future, I'd be interested in looking into this again. The idea intrigues me, the timing does not.


The two teams should work from the same concept.
Yes.

If it's a competition, give them the same concept. It makes sense and seems to be the backbone of this proposition.


If "Yes" to the above, forselection of concepts, moderators will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by the CAP Community. If "No" to the above, individual Teams will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by their own Teams and by the wider CAP Community.
Yes.

It makes sense to have an unbiased party select the slate. I hope both Teams would vote in the same poll; that seems to be the logical progression here.


Individual members are free to sign up for any Team of their choosing, or alternatively may choose to not sign up for either Team - a sign-up thread for each team will be posted at the commencement of the project, in which members may post to pledge their allegiance, as it were.
Yes.

This is gonna get complicated, but sure. I don't like the idea of forcing all users to one side when some will definitely want to just go back and forth.


Members of a team are required to organise themselves in the way that best makes themselves comfortable - this could be by nominating and electing a single Team Leader or by Coalition of Members - but this system must be ratified by the moderators before being put into practice.
No.

Absolutely not. This project is going to get complicated enough as is. Institute a TL is the obvious choice here.


Members of a Team are to have full input into construction of voting slates for that particular Team's Project - this will be made easier by individual Social Groups for each Team, in which discussions and votes on the subject are held.
No.

Still too complicated. Put in a TL; that's what will prevent this from going completely off the walls, in my opinion.


Members of a Team who are felt to have not contributed adequately to the creation ofthat Team's CAP may not be mentioned on-site with the others, depending on moderators' discretion. More serious cases of rule-breaking or antagonistic behaviour (eg. flaming, spamming, etc.) will be grounds for dismissal from a Team if desired by a majority of other members, again at moderators' discretion.
No.

Everyone gets credited, no matter how "new" they are. Everyone is an active contributor, even if they don't submit anything. However, don't include people who are troublemakers, but that is already implied by the CAP Process rules.


Individual Teams reserve the right to decide on a name for their Team in the manner of their choosing, after the formation of the Team but before the Concept Submissions.
No.

This is CAP. We do things logically and in order, not helter-skelter and confusing. Simple team names that are clear in meaning is the way to go here.


That CAPs be judged on the basis of Success (degree to which concept was fulfilled), Flavour (degree of aesthetic prowess), Balance (degree of stability within assigned metagame) and Innovation (degree of imagination or non-obvious ideasused in construction of CAP)
Yes.

Yep, stands to reason, since this is a contest.


That Success, Innovation and Balance be judged by obliging battlers of OU who have not participated in the Project (eg. QC members), and that Flavour is judged by representatives of Smeargle's Studio who have not participated in the Project.
Yes.

Yes, this too makes sense. I can help assemble a judging panel; shouldn't be too difficult.


That the method of judging should be as follows: For each category, the judges will decide whether one of the CAPs is significantly better than the other, moderately better than the other, or inconsequentially better than the other (and hence tied). From here, the judgements will be added up by a system ofpoints, for example:

Sig. Mod. Tie
Flavour 2 1 0
Innovation 3 1 0
Balance 4 2 0
Success 5 3 0

Point system subject to variation depending onnumber of judges, but weighting as shown.
No.

Just let judges pick which one they think won and let the provide an explanation why. This is just too complex and unnecessary, in my opinioin.


That Team members are not allowed to post in the threads of the opposing team, for sake of keeping the peace, but that unassigned members are allowed to post in any thread - this to be advertised in size 4 bold black lettering at the top of every discussion or poll thread.
Yes.

Actually, you should probably go a size font larger. Make it well known.
 
Yes

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes

While I support teams being able to pick how they are organized, I believe that the PRC should approve of several ways before the project starts and have the teams vote on those options.

On removing the names of people who don't contribute, I am for this on the condition that everyone knows what is expected of the team members when the sign up topics are made. Removals should be mostly restricted to people who don't participate and people who break the rules.

Team names are fine, but it should be considered unimportant and not slow down the project. They can be discussed on the side while organization is taking place.

I really can't vote for how the categories are to be weighted and points decided without reasons for why it should be done that way.
 
My votes probably don't precisely reflect my opinions on this stuff, but here they are. A lot of this stuff relies heavily on how we end up doing a competitive CAP double project, and where I think it could go both way, I generally vote for the less intrusive option.

Are we willing to pursue the idea of Team-based, Competitive CAP as a Project?
YES

The two teams should work from the same concept.
NO

By which I mean "not necessarily". Like I said before, I don't think we can achieve more objectivity by making two projects with the same concept. I don't think we shouldn't try it anymore, but I want to keep options open.

If "Yes" to the above, for selection of concepts, moderators will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by the CAP Community. If "No" to the above, individual Teams will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by their own Teams and by the wider CAP Community.
YES

Voting on this is getting harder and harder... It makes sense for a neutral party to run a joint concept, since it seems like there would be a leader on each team and not for both teams. It also makes sense for team leaders to run two different concepts.

Individual members are free to sign up for any Team of their choosing, or alternatively may choose to not sign up for either Team - a sign-up thread for each team will be posted at the commencement of the project, in which members may post to pledge their allegiance, as it were.
YES

I do think this depends heavily on the kind of project we do, since under some conditions it may be pointless, but that's no reason to vote against this wholesale.

Members of a Team are required to organise themselves in the way that best makes themselves comfortable - this could be by nominating and electing a single Team Leader or by Coalition of Members - but this system must be ratified by the moderators before being put into practice.
NO

I feel that a process is needed for this kind of thing, and I don't see what changes in this kind of project that makes the process we use currently inadequate.

Members of a Team are to have full input into construction of voting slates for that particular Team's Project - this will be made easier by individual Social Groups for each Team, in which discussions and votes on the subject are held.
NO

The previous response applies here.

Members of a Team who are felt to have not contributed adequately to the creation of that Team's CAP may not be mentioned on-site with the others, depending on moderators' discretion. More serious cases of rule-breaking or antagonistic behaviour (eg. flaming, spamming, etc.) will be grounds for dismissal from a Team if desired by a majority of other members, again at moderators' discretion.
NO

I'm actually not sure of what this motion intends to add, other than the mechanism for removing someone from a Team. As such, this depends heavily on the other two motions, and because of this, I vote No.

Individual Teams reserve the right to decide on a name for their Team in the manner of their choosing, after the formation of the Team but before the Concept Submissions.
YES

Again, though, I don't see what this motion intends to add. If teams want to name themselves silly things, no one telling them not to do it will stop them.

That CAPs be judged on the basis of Success (degree to which concept was fulfilled), Flavour (degree of aesthetic prowess), Balance (degree of stability within assigned metagame) and Innovation (degree of imagination or non-obvious ideas used in construction of CAP)
NO

I said before I think this is completely pointless. People will compare the projects by their own standards regardless of whether or not one is "forced" on them. Success and failure are subjective and nothing will change that.

That Success, Innovation and Balance be judged by obliging battlers of OU who have not participated in the Project (eg. QC members), and that Flavour is judged by representatives of Smeargle's Studio who have not participated in the Project.
NO

This assumes that the previous motion passes. This motion is working off of the fallacy that people with no conflict of interest can make unbiased decisions. I'm not even sure how we're going to get people who are:

- interested enough in CAP to judge the projects honestly;
- not participating in either project.

More than this, judging the projects formally takes the focus away from learning about the metagame and toward making certain-sounding judgments, which is something I think is a problem in Smogon and something we should work to counteract.

That the method of judging should be as follows: For each category, the judges will decide whether one of the CAPs is significantly better than the other, moderately better than the other, or inconsequentially better than the other (and hence tied). From here, the judgements will be added up by a system of points, for example:

Sig. Mod. Tie
Flavour 2 1 0
Innovation 3 1 0
Balance 4 2 0
Success 5 3 0

Point system subject to variation depending on number of judges, but weighting as shown.
NO

Again, even assuming the previous two motions pass, a weighting system is really silly and flawed, and it imposes an artificial sense of objectivity, which is kind of cheating and definitely a fallacy.

That Team members are not allowed to post in the threads of the opposing team, for sake of keeping the peace, but that unassigned members are allowed to post in any thread - this to be advertised in size 4 bold black lettering at the top of every discussion or poll thread.
YES

If we're letting people sign up for Teams officially, we might as well make it mean something. Like I said, though, having official Teams may not even be fruitful depending on where we go with this.
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
Are we willing to pursue the idea of Team-based, Competitive CAP as a Project?
YES. but this is a very tentative yes. I do not endorse the idea of Competitive CAP and Competitive CAP needs a lot of work before it's ready to be implemented in some way, but I'm not going to write it off immediately. Things could change and voting no here could kill an idea that might turn into something great.

The two teams should work from the same concept.
YES

There is a necessary degree of standardization for competitive CAP. Though teams should have a high degree of liberty when performing the project itself, there is little point in letting each team choose its own concept. It allows judges to vote on which concept they prefer rather than the merits of the Pokemon and the extent to which the projects have succeeded, which is far too subjective. There should be a standard of concept, but few other aspects that must be shared between the projects.

If "Yes" to the above, for selection of concepts, moderators will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by the CAP Community. If "No" to the above, individual Teams will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by their own Teams and by the wider CAP Community.
YES

Moderators should serve as the referees of the project, and therefore should determine the "rules of the game", per se. Concepts should be slated by the moderators since there may not be TLs to do so, and the moderators are the only remaining high figures of authority. Team Leadership could potentially collaborate with the moderators, however.

Individual members are free to sign up for any Team of their choosing, or alternatively may choose to not sign up for either Team - a sign-up thread for each team will be posted at the commencement of the project, in which members may post to pledge their allegiance, as it were.
YES

live auction draft do it do it do it

It is imperative that the community be made aware that participation on a team is not required for participation in Competitive CAP, but regardless, this is a good idea. This proposal, if it passes, begs the question if teams should have to be balanced in some way numerically.

Members of a Team are required to organise themselves in the way that best makes themselves comfortable - this could be by nominating and electing a single Team Leader or by Coalition of Members - but this system must be ratified by the moderators before being put into practice.
NO

I see no reason why moderators should have to ratify any leadership schemes. Each team should have the right to select their own method of leadership. There are no overt ways to "cheat" with leadership schemes (at least none that I can think of. If there is a way to bend the rules with leadership schemes then I'll reconsider changing my vote), so there's no point in having the referees (moderators) ratify the schemes. If a leadership scheme is ineffective, then it will harm the team that chose an ineffective scheme. I see no reason why moderators should be allowed to interfere with the teams's schemes (rhymes :D). Teams should be allowed to come up with their own leadership methods, but moderator approval shouldn't be necessary.

Members of a Team are to have full input into construction of voting slates for that particular Team's Project - this will be made easier by individual Social Groups for each Team, in which discussions and votes on the subject are held.
NO

I mean "not necessarily". Teams should decide how voting slates are determined, and there shouldn't be a rule on how each team gets to vote. Each team can have its own rules on how the voting slates are determined, though I don't expect any other system to be put in place.

Members of a Team who are felt to have not contributed adequately to the creation of that Team's CAP may not be mentioned on-site with the others, depending on moderators' discretion. More serious cases of rule-breaking or antagonistic behaviour (eg. flaming, spamming, etc.) will be grounds for dismissal from a Team if desired by a majority of other members, again at moderators' discretion.
NO

Team Leaders should have the final say on who gets credit for the final product. Moderators should step in for disciplinary issues, obviously, but the leadership of the individual team should have the last word on intra-team behavior. If universal CAP rule-breaking is committed, then moderators should step in. Moderators should not have the power to disqualify members from a team, Team Leaders should. If this proposal was split between the two sentences, I would vote NO for the first half and YES for the second half.

Individual Teams reserve the right to decide on a name for their Team in the manner of their choosing, after the formation of the Team but before the Concept Submissions.
YES

Sure, why not?

That CAPs be judged on the basis of Success (degree to which concept was fulfilled), Flavour (degree of aesthetic prowess), Balance (degree of stability within assigned metagame) and Innovation (degree of imagination or non-obvious ideas used in construction of CAP)
YES

These seem like quality characteristics of a CAP, and there are no qualities listed above that I disapprove of. We can always add more to the judging slate if there are more criteria that we want to add.

That Success, Innovation and Balance be judged by obliging battlers of OU who have not participated in the Project (eg. QC members), and that Flavour is judged by representatives of Smeargle's Studio who have not participated in the Project.
ABSTAIN

Judges should have to apply for the job of judging a CAP, and that moderators of the CAP forum should select which judges are approved. Flavour can be counted separately as it is in the proposal. There should be a fairly rigorous selection process of judges for a CAP project, especially since the judging of Competitive CAP essentially validates three, maybe more, months of work by countless people. I voted Abstain on this proposal because it doesn't really explain how judges are selected. Will all QC members be allowed? Some? I don't think the proposal adequately explains the selection criteria so I abstain from this vote.

That the method of judging should be as follows: For each category, the judges will decide whether one of the CAPs is significantly better than the other, moderately better than the other, or inconsequentially better than the other (and hence tied). From here, the judgements will be added up by a system of points, for example:

Sig. Mod. Tie
Flavour 2 1 0
Innovation 3 1 0
Balance 4 2 0
Success 5 3 0

Point system subject to variation depending on number of judges, but weighting as shown.
NO

A scoring system has not been discussed much by the PRC/community, and these numbers seem rather arbitrary. I do not feel comfortable voting for a scoring system without that detail being further discussed, so I vote no on this proposal for now.

That Team members are not allowed to post in the threads of the opposing team, for sake of keeping the peace, but that unassigned members are allowed to post in any thread - this to be advertised in size 4 bold black lettering at the top of every discussion or poll thread.
YES

Amen to that!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


My stance on this in general is that intra-team business should be dealt with by the Team Leadership, while universal changes should be dealt with by the moderators or PRC, whichever is more fitting. Team Leaders should essentially be the final word on the intricacies of their own portion of the project, so moderators should not have to approve any team business. Teams should be forced to make their leadership decisions public, but they should not have to await moderator approval. Moderators should control things that affect both teams such as discipline for rule-breakers (not including disqualification) and deciding judges for the project.

Essentially the moderators should have control over the generalities of the Competitive CAP Project, but Leaders should have control over the specifics of each team. Party business should be controlled by party leadership. General rules and discipline should be handled by moderators.
 

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
YES
It's something new, exciting, and while we wouldn't exactly learn a whole lot more then we otherwise would, it'd make for a nice change of pace. And sometimes that in and of itself is enough reason to do something. It does however need quite some work.

NO
Constraining teams to just one idea seems silly to me.

NO
Due to automatic no as seen above.

YES
A little team spirit never hut. Plus we can't have people choosing and picking favorites. And for people who was to be neutral - that's fine too. Contributers are always welcome in CAP. People should be able to pick sides at any time though, but they shouldn't be able to swap sides.

NO
We should have some hard and fast ground rules about how the teams should be structured so they don't get bogged down spending too much time figuring out their bureaucracy.

ABSTAIN
I honestly don't understand the question. If it's that team members would have a greater say in things, then YES. Afterall, that's the whole point of a team. It shouldn't be a much greater say though.


YES AND NO
This might sound stupid, but I think that every team member should be mentioned so long as they contributed to at least a certain number of stages. There should be a definite cut off point (such as, participated in two or more stages), but at the same time people who only contributed some still deserve to be mentioned. Plus we run the risk of drama wars if we don't make a hard and fast cutoff point
This is going to need some definite changes.

YES
This seems like a pretty fair system.

NO
There should be a simple, hard, and fast "Better or not" rather then various degrees of better. It doesn't matter how much better it is, it's either better or its not better.

YES
This seems fair enough to me.
 

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Pokemon Researcheris a Smogon Media Contributor
Orange Islands
No

I think it really won't work... I know we are fairly relaxed here but I think this might just fracture things up to be honest.
 

bugmaniacbob

Was fun while it lasted
is an Artist Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Vote Closed

I'll just say YES x 12 for my votes since what I think doesn't actually matter - I have a plan for progressing from here that doesn't need my votes to alter it.

-----

On Approving the Idea

Code:
For: 7
Against: 3
Abstaining: 7
On Same Concept

Code:
For: 6
Against: 2
Abstaining: 9
On Choosing of Concept

Code:
For: 7
Against: 1
Abstaining: 9
On Team Sign-ups

Code:
For: 7
Against: 1
Abstaining: 9
On Team Leadership

Code:
For: 4
Against: 4
Abstaining: 9
On Choosing a Slate

Code:
For: 1
Against: 6
Abstaining: 10
On Dismissal of Team Members

Code:
For: 3
Against: 4
Abstaining: 10
On Naming of Teams

Code:
For: 4
Against: 3
Abstaining: 10
On Judging Categories

Code:
For: 7
Against: 1
Abstaining: 9
On Judges

Code:
For: 5
Against: 1
Abstaining: 11
On Point Systems

Code:
For: 2
Against: 6
Abstaining: 9
On Restricted Posting

Code:
For: 8
Against: 0
Abstaining: 9
-----

It's a bit late now, so I'll go into where we go from here in the morning.
 

bugmaniacbob

Was fun while it lasted
is an Artist Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Apologies for the delayed reply (and for double posting, but this bit is important) - there was this thing called CAP4 which kept me from delving further into this.

Now, I should explain at this point that my intentions through holding this vote were not to find a unanimous conclusion that all the entirely arbitrary voting choices I had put up on the spur of the moment were exactly those that the community wanted, but rather that I wanted people to discuss the main issues with this Project, and the only way I could see of doing it was to hold a vote on some of the key issues. So, if any subject is even mildly controversial, I want it to be discussed further irrespective of any slight majority it may have achieved. So, thank you to those people who put time and effort into your answers, as you have given us an excellent base upon which to move forward. Right now I feel that I have got what I wanted out of the poll - I have removed the points that were unanimous or barely contested, and have opened up discussion on those points that are a lot more controversial. I won't say any more on this point, but move on to the more important stuff.

--------------------

As a result of the vote, the following have been approved:

  • We are willing to pursue the idea of Team-based, Competitive CAP as a Project.
  • The two teams will work from the same concept.
  • Moderators will be responsible for considering and slating concepts proposed by the CAP Community.
  • Individual members are free to sign up for any Team of their choosing, or alternatively may choose to not sign up for either Team - a sign-up thread for each team will be posted at the commencement of the project, in which members may post to pledge their allegiance, as it were.
  • CAPs shall be judged on the basis of Success (degree to which concept was fulfilled), Flavour (degree of aesthetic prowess), Balance (degree of stability within assigned metagame) and Innovation (degree of imagination or non-obvious ideas used in construction of CAP)
  • Success, Innovation and Balance shall be judged by obliging battlers of OU who have not participated in the Project (eg. QC members), and Flavour shall be judged by representatives of Smeargle's Studio who have not participated in the Project.
  • Team members will not be allowed to post in the threads of the opposing team, for sake of keeping the peace, but that unassigned members are allowed to post in any thread - this to be advertised in size 4 bold black lettering at the top of every discussion or poll thread.

--------------------

The above seems about right. As for those who voted against parts of the above, it should be noted that we really ought to be going with the same concept for both at least for the first of these (if there is another, we can look at changing it), largely because, as has been said, I think this will lead to the more interesting comparisons between them. As for the judging, it was more a case of who should judge and how they should be judging than the process for choosing them, specifically - that can be worked out later. For now, however, the most pressing issues currently facing us are the following:

  1. How, or to what extent, are we to reward and encourage team participation?
  2. In what way should Team leadership be organised?
  3. How and at what point should judges be decided?
  4. What system of judging should be used, based on the categories already decided upon?

I'm going to sleep now, but these are the critical issues that need addressing. Feel free to discuss.
 

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
I'll go ahead and bite into point one for now, i'll do the other three later.

I don't think we should do more then mention everyone on the winning team on the CAP's page, with posssibly a "greatest contributer" reward voted on by the community. We can't really reward it outside of that since CAP has never really offered any tangible rewards outside of having your name placed on the page of the CAP for winning a poll/being TL/winning the playtest.

Although, i'll throw it out here riiight now, and this might be something the rest of the thread might not agree with, but: for people who participate particularly often / foster a sense of team spirit, they could, perhaps, get custom titles.

Just saying. We don't need rewards, we've never really done them before, but if we were to reward people, custom titles would be a happy reward since it's one of those things that everyone wants but does absolutely nothing.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
is a Site Content Manageris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
As I'm not familiar with smogon's forums' coding, I can't assure this is feasible, but I have an idea. Simply require team participation. Users will only have posting capabilities in the a/b thread if they sign up for a/b. no switching will be possible. In order to enable users to still join mid project, a sign ups thread will be used before and during the project. A certain group, cap mods? Prc members?, can then give the team membership and posting privileges. There is no better motivation to do something than to have no alternative. Just my authoritarian side coming out...
 
I don't mean to necromance any threads (should this currently inactive thread even be interpreted as dead), but I have a few questions that could affect critical segments of a competitive CAP.


  1. In the artwork submission stage of the CAPs, what freedoms do artists have in submitting their work? If the typing and abilities are the same between the two teams, can they submit the same artwork to both teams, and if so, could both team's CAP look the same if they vote that it's the best looking art flavorwise? If not, what dictates who gets the winning artist's design and who has to go with the runner-up?
  2. To what extent can the two projects differ? In the example of CAP3's "Extreme Makeover: Typing Edition", would one team be allowed make an offensively orientated CAP while the other makes a good defensive one, or must concepts stay within a certain boundary to make an easier comparison between the two final products?
  3. What fate is given to the non-victorious team's CAP? Would it stay within the CAP metagame on Showdown regardless of its success, or is it only kept record of but no longer associated as CAP5, rather from then point on only as an "XCAP1"?
 
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