Liberality of throwing out suspect tests

I have noticed that, in this generation, we feel far more free to throw out suspect tests and call something problematic than even in past generations. From what my memories from BW2 serve me, OU elites were quick to dismiss dealing with Drought + Chlorophyll, Baton Pass, and the like, and complex bans were only considered by tier leaders when there was a dire necessity. I am not going to question any of the decisions made by tier leaders made during this generation, for chances are, most of the problems that their tier faced are indeed problems. However, I cannot stop but to question whether or not Smogon users are beginning to overreact more often when a Pokemon establishes itself as a top threat in a tier. Maybe this is because I still carry a BW2 mentality, but I am not going to dismiss this issue so quickly, for when looking back at the decisions made this generation, I cannot stop to question why we made certain decisions that, four or five years ago, we would have quickly dismissed. Are we really overreacting too often and labeling things that are not unmanageable as problems, or has the mentality towards suspecting/banning things needed to change?
 

AM

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What exactly has been thrown out liberally suspect wise that encouraged you to post this thread? I really don't know where you are trying to go with this and your question seems really intuitive based on tiers and what the community believes constitutes a suspect.
 
I am drawing this mainly from PU leaders wanting to suspect Dynamicpunch, banning Sand Veil / Snow Cloak from DPP 6 years after the gen ended, among other things. I am not going to judge or critique any of these decisions, but these types of tiering decisions makes we wonder why we have been so willing to consider banning things now we would never consider banning 3-6 years ago.
 

Andy Snype

Mr. Music
I am drawing this mainly from PU leaders wanting to suspect Dynamicpunch, banning Sand Veil / Snow Cloak from DPP 6 years after the gen ended, among other things. I am not going to judge or critique any of these decisions, but these types of tiering decisions makes we wonder why we have been so willing to consider banning things now we would never consider banning 3-6 years ago.
the answer is that the community then is not the same as the community now. people come, people go and people have differing opinions on stuff. it's the same thing as any organization that relies on its members on a volunteer basis, most of the members that deal with these decisions are not the same people that were involved 3 or 6 years ago. You don't see very many of the same people that post across those years because people move on from the site. The turnover happens because this is done on a volunteer basis. As people move on in life, they do what's important to them and staying involved in Smogon competes with other milestones like jobs, relationships, or just more enjoyable hobbies. Some people do stay even despite all of that, but the vast majority of the community a few years ago has moved on to other things and each year, there are more people with different perspectives coming to Smogon. The people that left don't have the same thoughts as the people that come in; that's just not humanly possible. Some thought camps become more popular; some camps become less popular as a result of how these people feel. That's the fundamental reasons as to why this community is bringing up things that would not have normally been brought up for discussion.
 
Ultimately, it's up to the community to vote on any suspect. More liberal testing is a good thing; it allows us to gauge community opinion in a concrete manner. There have often been times in NU where the majority of the council feels something is not worthy of a ban, but we still sometimes move forward on suspect tests anyways because we're a very small subset of the overall NU community. What we think is best isn't always what the majority feels is best, and that's fine. It's the job of each collective council (almost) solely to decide whether a potential suspect is valid or could be broken in the tier. It's up to the community to test and determine whether that facet of the metagame is actually problematic. If a council thought that the tier would be worse-off with a particular part of the game banned from their tier, they wouldn't give the community the opportunity to make that happen.

One could argue that our overall community has become much more ban happy over the years. I wouldn't inherently disagree, but we are not tasked to be thought police.
 
The answer is that the community has, in fact, become more prone to banning things. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is entirely a matter of perspective. Policy-wise I'm not sure there's much to discuss; whether you like all the bans or not, at the end of the day that's just what the community wants to do.

It's pretty interesting to think about from a 'cultural' perspective though, because a few years ago there was a significant contingent of people who basically fought to make sure this kind of shift did not happen. You don't see too much of those people these days! I think that represents an important turning point in the community's history.
 

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