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

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bugmaniacbob

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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"?
Firstly: THIS THREAD IS NOT DEAD

Secondly: All of those points have at some point or in some form or another been addressed, but I'll go over them quickly:

1. No, clearly you couldn't submit the same artwork to both Projects, if only for sake of convenience - allowing it creates far more problems than it solves (if any), as you pointed out. It's highly unlikely that both teams would choose the same typing or abilities anyway - largely because people have a tendency to want to differentiate early on from what I've seen before.

2. They can differ however greatly or however little they do. That sentence made no grammatical sense, but... there aren't going to be any strictures on how different the projects can be. It makes no sense to regulate that sort of thing - it should be down to the individual Topic Leaders / Team Members.

3. Yes, the losing team would still have its Pokemon archived on-site and would still be usable on Showdown, ideally. We haven't formally voted on this yet but it's hard to see any opposition to the idea.

srk1214 said:
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...
Not really feasible and requires way too much work for moderators. Plus, we don't want to require team participation - I wouldn't say that defeats the whole point, but it comes pretty close.

-------

Anyway, new ideas for commenting on:

- My original idea expressed in the motion below for the sign-up thread was pretty vague, as it gave no indication of when such a thread might close. However, seeing how the current PRC thread works, I think that may be a far better model to follow, in that it is open for the entirety of the Project and that people may sign up whenever they feel like it. Thoughts?

- I think it may be best to have no concrete reward for team participation, besides the honour and having your name on-site. I think it is right that all members of the team should be fully recognised somewhere, if not on the CAP's main page then maybe in an accompanying Smog article. But having extra posting privileges or whatever it might be is probably not constructive. Thoughts?

- I think that we should keep to the standard Topic Leader format for at least the first iteration of this, so that we are not implementing too many new, daft systems at once. The obvious question that arises from this is do we want TLs to be selected before or after the initial round of sign-ups? If before, we run the risk of people joining up with the person they like more and there being a skew in team numbers, but then, if afterwards it likely comes to the same thing, and is harder to organise. Although, I would still not be opposed to the Team being run by Leadership Committee or similar, if you want to argue for that.

We can discuss judging, and similar, once the above are ironed out.
 
I don't think we should keep sign-ups open for the entire project. If someone joins up during the movepool poll, then there wouldn't be anything they could really do. Closing it when either art submissions does or when the final art poll is finished would work better. Name, any flavor abilities, counters and movepool are all decided after art so there would still be things for a new team member to discuss and submit.

Yeah, there shouldn't be any reward for being a team member other than that.

A standard TL would most likely work out best, without an idea of how many people would join a team, it would be impossible to say how other forms of leadership would work.
While I would prefer it if the TL is decided after the teams are formed, if there are not enough qualified people with the time and interest to be a TL for each team to need to make a decision, then we would have to decide before making the teams.
 
I'm going to have to go with uwnim on that one. Allowing sign-ups throughout the whole project will result negatively. People will feel more tempted to not join at first, waiting until both the projects are mid-way done. At that point, the team with the more "fun" project will earn a flow of new members, giving them a distinct advantage of having more input. This means that if Team A is going more conservative on a CAP's statspread, or if the topic leader in general doesn't consider as many creative options, then Team B will gather more members as the project goes along, leaving Team A with only a smaller pool of opinions to work with. While you could argue that having a smaller group has its advantages, it nonetheless turns competitive CAP less into inventing the ideal CAP and more into a popularity contest. One of the teams would clearly be too disorganized or too shortsighted to compete with the other, and competitive CAP would end up as "CAP5A + That other CAP better suited for UU/Uber". Were all that not enough, members could sign up at the last minute during the Dex submission stage and still get credit, despite not being on the team for a majority of the project. Sign ups should only be allowed in the early stages of the project, in short.

There shouldn't be any rewards beyond on-site name. Maybe a badge, maybe, but CAP is made to be an objective project to learn about the metagame, not a contest to make note of how superior one is over another... That's what the ladder is for, at least.

Lastly, I think it'd be within our interests to pick topic leaders after the initial creation of the teams. Much like the issue of being a popularity contest above, members will join teams based on the topic leader, not based on balancing the size between the two teams. Deck_Knight and bmb, for example, might be the topic leaders. Deck_Knight argues he'd be a much friendlier leader than bmb, people agree with him, and everyone pools into his team, leaving bmb's team with a disadvantage*. In real life, work groups don't form based on which people will be their friend. Groups are formed based on the necessity of members. As such, if bmb ends up being critical beyond all reason, so be it. He was voted for in the first place and is now the leader Team B needs, not what Team B wants*. Again, by waiting until after teams are formed, the size of teams is affected by who initially joined, not by the bias of who is preferred.

*Purely used for example reasons. bugmaniacbob is the underdog because he is a pretty cool guy like that.
 

bugmaniacbob

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Hm, I didn't consider the possible adverse effects of joining late into the project. That seems clear enough, thank you for your posts. If I may, I would like to change the question to for how many stages, or how long, should we keep sign-ups open?. I imagine your answers would be "close before TL is chosen", and I think that's altogether reasonable.

It may even be feasible to select and poll the concept before team sign-ups close and the Topic Leader is chosen, since the concept will be selected irrespective of teams regardless.

Badges are a definite no-no, but the honour purely of belonging to a team, I think, counts for something. So we could say no specific incentives for being on any team.

Continue to discuss. I think I can draft a basic timeline for this Project with a little more information.
 

DougJustDoug

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I am not sure we can realistically pull something like this off. Ideas like this have been kicked around many times in the past, and I myself was advocating a similar concept two years ago. For those of you that were not around, here's an IRC log where we discussed it in quite some detail:

http://pastebin.com/EJYij343

At that time, I was proposing that we make two teams that compete against each other to make two uber CAPs that had related concepts, which ultimately would be used to battle against each other to determine the "winning team". The whole purpose was to make a fun CAP project to serve as a bridge in the lull between the 4th gen and the 5th gen. I spent time with Rising Dusk and Tennisace at various times, trying to figure a reasonable way to make it work.

As we stepped through the various issues of organization on a project like that, things got more and more convoluted. The CAP project in general suffers from accessibility problems because of all the structure, process, and rules we have in place for a regular project. By making a dual-team project we compounded the difficulty and complexity. Ultimately, I asked myself, "Will this really be fun for everyone and a positive step for CAP? Or will it simply be interesting for a few longtime CAP diehards that are tired of the same old thing, but confusing as hell for newcomers and a nightmare for moderators and other CAP leaders?"

As I read through this PR proposal, it strikes me as following the same convoluted progression as previous attempts to organize a competitive CAP project.

I'm not saying I am shutting this down completely. But I am saying that someone needs to figure out a MUCH simpler way to execute something like this, because the current proposal is not workable. And when I say "not workable" -- I don't mean that a few hardcore CAP participants might not be willing to forcefeed a project like this on the community. I'm saying that, like it or not, the CAP community is mostly comprised of casual participants with very little foresight or planned effort. A project like this is not geared for that kind of participation. It is geared towards avid CAP diehards -- of which, there are very FEW.

Unfortunately in PR threads, we have CAP diehards talking only with other CAP diehards, and we tend to lose perspective on the way the majority of the CAP project sees things. While a project like this may seem really great and enjoyable for a select few, and on the face of it may even be exciting for a casual observer -- the reality is that when a project like this starts, people will not read rules or guidelines on what is going on. And they will be turned off, alienated, or outright infracted when they don't follow the established rules and guidelines. We already have a big problem with the fact that we pretty much throw a bible of rules at new participants for regular projects. A project like this would be writing "Bible #2" and throwing it at users as well.

Although I personally like the idea of something like this, and if you read the log I posted, you'll see I have been very enthusiastic of this kind of thing for a long time. But the way this is currently shaping up in this thread is not something I can see us putting into effect and furthering our project goals.
 
I don't really see how this could be made much simpler or accessible. People will not be forced to join a team, and if you are not part of one then you can participate in both just as if they were regular CAP projects. The additional rules and stages really wouldn't matter much or affect them anyways, most of it concerns organization and judging, they will be fine as long as the topics are clearly labelled.

This will be harder for the mods, but we won't do this unless they feel like they can manage two CAPs at once.
 
I hear DougJustDoug's concerns for sheer disorganization within the community in the attempt of this... However, I see those concerns as an opportunity. Unless someone can grab factual evidence from the future, all these concerns about how the community will handle this compared to the diehards is mere theory. That is not to say that everything will go right, but it is suggesting that we will not know for sure until we try.

In a sense, this means ComCAP will be a CAP of its own in that sense that we are experimenting with a form of project, much like we would a concept. If we can initiate Competitive CAP into happening, we will then be able to analyze it the same as we analyze nearly everything else we do.

The benefits/consequences of attempting Competitive CAP
Pros

  • A new and exciting way to do CAP
  • Creates a greater need for compromise between members
  • Follows the scientific method in our experiment in that we're actually testing variables--two forms of one concept
  • Promotes more in-depth discussion with a greater basis of comparison
Cons

  • Casual members will create conflict within the organization
  • Teams can potentially bias towards making a stronger CAP rather than one that better suits the concept
  • An unfortunate loss of time if it fails
There's greater pro-to-con ratio for ComCAP's idea that leaves us with no real consequence in trying. Best case scenario, we have a completely new standard for the CAP Project that results in the best discussions we've ever had. Worst case scenario, we have a bad CAP that took up a month of time. In either case, we're learning of what potential this idea can have by trying it.

I'm not saying we should attempt any idea that floats by simply because there aren't severe consequences for it. I am saying however that there is enough potential to the idea that we are definitely better off getting a concrete answer. The Policy Committee would like to know, is ComCAP a good idea or not? We can't know for sure unless we try it like we would any other CAP.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
Doug's right - the more i try to ponder the logistics of how we would get this to work out with the casuals, the more and more convoluted it gets, and the less it even looks like what it was striving to be. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't see how this could work out. The most important thing, for me, that kills the project is that there'd be a period of 6-8 months with no new members joining - the time between the CAPs before and after, and, highly likely, the time of the CAP also. That's just absolutely unacceptable to me, spurning new members like that, and unless we can make a way to allow new members to join halfway through the CAP, i will never support this idea.


edit: @grscousin you can honestly not expect that all of those pros and cons will be weighted equally - "A new and exciting way to do CAP" being equally as important as "Casual members will create conflict within the organization?" ridinkydonk
 

bugmaniacbob

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Posting IRC chat log instead of arguing because it's 1am here and I'm lazy

<nyttyn> Anyways, honestly the issue with 90% of what we the PRC see as cool ideas was nailed on the head by doug
<bugmaniacbob> I simply need to re-steam it
<bugmaniacbob> yes we know
<bugmaniacbob> "voter participation"
<nyttyn> Unfortunately in PR threads, we have CAP diehards talking only with other CAP diehards, and we tend to lose perspective on the way the majority of the CAP project sees things.
<bugmaniacbob> which we have all invoked on one or more occasions
* Flarephoenix shrugs.
<bugmaniacbob> in any case, I can't see competitive CAP being only for diehards. I've taken pains to ensure it wouldn't be.
<Flarephoenix> I can't see why people wouldn't want to try that idea, honestly.
<Pwnemon> well then read my post
<Pwnemon> prc is an open forum!
<bugmaniacbob> In my mind, only diehards would join teams - everyone else can just contribute
<jas61292> That's my opinion
<uwnim> Yeah, that is what I was thinking
<uwnim> So, I don't see how it would be a problem for the more casual users
<Pwnemon> i thought the same thing bmb
<bugmaniacbob> it's exactly like normal CAP in terms of casual users
<Pwnemon> hence me saying that letting casuals participate would "make it stray from the very spirit of competitive cap"
<bugmaniacbob> what
<Pwnemon> or something along those lines
<bugmaniacbob> you said it would be convoluted
<Pwnemon> it's not very competitive if most everyone's on both teams now is it
<bugmaniacbob> the only remotely convoluted part of what I've lain down it
<bugmaniacbob> *is
<Pwnemon> even little league tee-ball gets this
<bugmaniacbob> "two going on at once"
<bugmaniacbob> Pwnemon we don't have to emphasise the fact that it's a competition
<Pwnemon> "the less it even looks like what it was striving to be"
<Pwnemon> whatever, they're the same thing
<bugmaniacbob> the existence of two teams makes it a competition
<bugmaniacbob> I'm not seeing the issue here
<jas61292> Indeed
<Pwnemon> bmb if we don't emphasize the fact that it's a competition then i can only see it devolving into two concurrent CAPs
<Pwnemon> and if we have teams, new people can't join
<bugmaniacbob> what are you talking about
<uwnim> Each team would have a different TL
<bugmaniacbob> if anything people would take pains to diverge because that's the way people are
<Pwnemon> give me a reasonable structure for a new guy joining the competitive CAP process
<Pwnemon> and i'll concede
<bugmaniacbob> and yes, different TLs, different visions
<uwnim> They would have different ideas of how the concept would go which would cause the products to be different
<bugmaniacbob> what do you mean by "reasonable structure"
<SgtWoodsy> oh hang on
<SgtWoodsy> do we actually want to do the competition now
<bugmaniacbob> guy turns up
<bugmaniacbob> guy posts in thread
<bugmaniacbob> profit
<Pwnemon> guy not allowed to post in other team's thread?
<bugmaniacbob> what do you want me to say
<Pwnemon> casuals don't care about that
<Pwnemon> it would daunt them
<bugmaniacbob> only if he joins a team
<Pwnemon> fuck when i was a new guy one cap at a time daunted me
<uwnim> They can choose to not join.
<bugmaniacbob> and why would you join a team
<bugmaniacbob> if you want to be a casual
<Pwnemon> would you not be allowed to submit anything or get anything slated if you weren't on a team?
<bugmaniacbob> of course you would be
<jas61292> Joining a team only limits you
<uwnim> Being on a team means you get credited even if you don't win a poll.
<bugmaniacbob> the existence of "teams" is simply saying "two are going on at once"
<Pwnemon> well then - i don't see how this is anything other than two concurrent CAPs with some retards limiting themselves from participating in one of them
<bugmaniacbob> the team is an arbitrary construct that makes it more appealing to diehards
<bugmaniacbob> and yes pwnemon
<SgtWoodsy> sounds fun then
<bugmaniacbob> that is the point of it
<jas61292> No. The point is to win :p
<bugmaniacbob> people like a competitive atmosphere.
<Pwnemon> i don't see the point in general
<bugmaniacbob> well you've already made that clear
*** zebrb is now known as zeb
<Pwnemon> upkeep of two caps at once would be hell, even with two TLs
<bugmaniacbob> in what sense
<uwnim> Moderating
<Pwnemon> and you could hardly say one is a "winner" when the majority of projects had votes cast by, in most cases, the same people
*** Fusxfaranto [~smuxi@synIRC-D677A392.hsd1.ca.comcast.net] has joined #cap
<uwnim> Why not?
<Pwnemon> bmb you know more than most what a shitstorm CAP threads are to moderate
<bugmaniacbob> yes why not
<bugmaniacbob> I know exactly
<bugmaniacbob> and I can safely say that I managed to do it.
<Pwnemon> now moderate twice as many, concurrently
<bugmaniacbob> Pwnemon, at most one or two posts per thread were being deleted.
<bugmaniacbob> with the exception of the art thread
<Pwnemon> >art
<Pwnemon> oh ninja
<jas61292> And, lets be honest pwnemon, the diehards who are joining teams will make up a good portion of the competitive discussion and slated submissions. Its not like everything is done by the smae people on both
<Pwnemon> jas: not the discussion, but the voting is
<bugmaniacbob> anyway look
<bugmaniacbob> if I'm the one proposing this
<bugmaniacbob> I am more than willing to take responsibility for seeing it run cleanly
<Pwnemon> id love to do it but the prospect of having a 6-8 month drought of newcomers is repulsive
<bugmaniacbob> if the mods are willing to let me retake pmods for this thing
<jas61292> Umm...6-8?
<jas61292> a cap is like 2-3
<bugmaniacbob> yeah what is this 6-8
<bugmaniacbob> besides, it's not like newcomers would be automatically turned away
<bugmaniacbob> they can contribute however much they want to.
<Pwnemon> given there'd have to be substantial planning and implementation time for this CAP
<Pwnemon> say, two months
<bugmaniacbob> we can do that while other CAPs are going on
<jas61292> And that won't stop normal operation
<Pwnemon> and then the cap itself would probably take a bit longer than usual, say 3 months
<bugmaniacbob> and this will take little to no time to implement, just saying
<Pwnemon> bmb in past experience the prc threads stagnate when caps are going on
<Pwnemon> if you're confident this'll work then ok
<Pwnemon> i guess i'll be along for the ride
<Pwnemon> but im afriad
<bugmaniacbob> I can't see this having any difficulties beyond what ordinary CAPs have
<bugmaniacbob> to that end, it's the most feasible of any of the alternative-CAP suggestions
<SgtWoodsy> it's basically the exact same as a normal cap
<jas61292> Oh, definitely
<bugmaniacbob> except possibly that one about Multitype
<SgtWoodsy> except there's two of them at once
<uwnim> Yeah.
<SgtWoodsy> and there's inevitably going to be more shittalking between teams
<SgtWoodsy> which is half of the fun anyway
<bugmaniacbob> well as long as you keep that to IRC
<bugmaniacbob> I'm sure nobody will mind
<uwnim> Threads will be clearly labelled and no one will be forced to join teams, so there should be no problems as long as the CAP mods are fine with the potential extra work.
<Pwnemon> djd have you been lurking or no
<bugmaniacbob> and the fact that unattached members can contribute will be clearly advertised.


Important points:

- This CAP is hardly a convoluted process. It is exactly the same as an ordinary CAP for any casual member, except that two are going on at once. And I find it hard to believe that that's particularly difficult to get one's head around.
- To this end, I can't see it being off-putting to newcomers or difficult to organise in the slightest
- The "team" structure is purely there for sake of interest for CAP diehards - the main point of the exercise is to run two CAPs with two TLs (or whatever leadership we agree upon) against each other and to compare the results.
- Moderation is the only concern here. And I've said that I, and likely others, are willing to help out if the mods feel they need extra hands - since this is my idea I feel obliged to offer my services. Of course, if the mods feel that this is too much work for them and they don't want to make pmods, then there's nothing more to be said here.

Remember also that what is in the OP is not even close to the Proposal in its current form. When I have time, I will go about collecting up the pieces of the proposal that have already been decided upon - but thus far, we have not debated and constructed all of the pieces of the process yet.
 
Back to the topic of when we should close the team sign-ups, the earliest should be when the TL nominations end, but I would prefer it to be later to give people who are busy near the beginning of it to have a chance to join a team.

Concepts should be done before TL selection. It is the only step that has an effect on both teams, so it makes sense to have it before the teams have done anything. There wouldn't be any negative effects, winning the concept poll would just mean that person can't TL. It would be helpful if we do have a short team sign-up period since it would give the teams more time to get members.
 

DougJustDoug

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I'm closing this for several reasons:

1) The proposed processes are complicated and full of operational holes.
2) This project, even if it could get the process issues worked out, will not launch before BW CAP 5
3) Between now and BW CAP 5, we have other PR issues we need to focus on
4) The outcome of those PR's will change quite a bit about the proposal here and the problems with it
 
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