Team Rating Workshop

[animenagai]

if i felt like doing so (or if the rmts themselves weren't shit/people took your advice) i could rate teams really well. i had a run at a badge a month or so ago, and people told me my rates were solid, helpful, etc.


bad ass reporting for duty

I felt like that for a while too. But then no one really took notice enough or did anyone tell me just how far I was from a badge. So in the end, it became a hassle and I stopped caring.

There are guys who constantly do this as well who I think should have a badge. Soldius and Bloo come to mind. They write essays of good stuff.

 

[Flashstorm1]

I'd like to help if possible. While I'm not very active at the RMT forum as it is, I'd be willing to help for the benefit of the community. I'm still learning a few things here and there about team building, so this will be a great experience to further build up my knowledge of Pokémon.

 

[Veedrock]

I'm all for having better raters, but this idea is foggy.

I don't see how this could work, even after you're explanations. This is what I'm envisioning:

A) "Here's my rate, what can I change?"
B) "You didn't notice the weakness to so-and-so; etc etc"
A) "Oh ok."

What is taken from a confrontation like this? Nothing. What is said about the rate is not something you can take and carry to other RMTs. Doing an RMT isn't a consistant thing; the rater has to adapt to the different teams. How will this workshop would fix any of that? Learning to RMT has more to do with your knowledge of the metagame and team-building knowledge as a whole, which isn't what this will address (that's what I'm getting anyways).

Example: a new player, not even a month into competitive pokemon, is going around babbling nonsense in RMTs (I see this a lot), what will this do for him? This workshop won't suddenly make his rates good, nor will it really fix his issues of not knowing what he's talking about.

If I misunderstood, let me know. Perhaps it'd help if you found some volunteers and gave an example it would clearly demonstrate your idea in action.

 

[diinbong]

There are guys who constantly do this as well who I think should have a badge. Solidus and Bloo come to mind. They write essays of good stuff.

I'd just like to point out that people shouldn't think the staff are completely unaware of what's going on in the RMT forum. Very likely they've noticed and will give the badge appropriately. There's trees. They're listening.

Anyway, I'm not really sure how we would go about training team raters. In all honesty I wouldn't mind a sort of "Battling 101;Tutoring Program"esque kind of deal, however having a question and answer between respected raters and new ones is probably more appropriate and feasible.

 

[locopoke]

I'd just like to point out that people shouldn't think the staff are completely unaware of what's going on in the RMT forum. Very likely they've noticed and will give the badge appropriately. There's trees. They're listening.

The site staff do notice when people try to make an effort in one way or another and they will reward you with a badge. If they do not then it is most likely because you are not rating teams efficiently or you are not rating teams constantly, like a team rater is supposed to do. I am currently very active in the RMT forum, but even when I wasn't, it was easy to notice who was giving constant, quality rates and who wasn't.

 

[joshe]

This isn't a "who gets or deserves a badge thread," it's a thread to promote good team rating. Come on guys, if your going a badge, that's great, just don't do it just to get the badge. When I rate it's because I want to help them, I could honestly care less if I ever get any badge, all I care about is to help someone in need. Sounds corny, but its how I feel.

Now back on topic, I don't care if new smogon users rate teams, as long as they are helping the team poster. Who knows, they could be great team raters someday, even the badged users started somewhere. I promote team rating from anyone, new, badged or not. If I post a team, I want as many people working on the betterment of the team, and any advice/help is very helpful. Practice makes perfect. I'm still in support of that sticky idea of a sort of biography for experienced team raters, sharing any advice on how they rate a team, and what they look for.

 

[Thorns]

that's what a person who wants a badge would say so it's a moot point. this has nothing to do with badges, it's about improving the quality of rates in the forum (I've pretty much stopped rating since I just noticed there's no real point to it because the authors are ignorant plus I'm busy anyway).

I support this though. if I get the time I'd be glad to help, though I don't think I'm that good of a team rater.

 

[animenagai]

I'd just like to point out that people shouldn't think the staff are completely unaware of what's going on in the RMT forum. Very likely they've noticed and will give the badge appropriately. There's trees. They're listening.

Anyway, I'm not really sure how we would go about training team raters. In all honesty I wouldn't mind a sort of "Battling 101;Tutoring Program"esque kind of deal, however having a question and answer between respected raters and new ones is probably more appropriate and feasible.

Trees listen? :O Hehe my bad. Personal rant aside, I think we all agree that there are 2 issues. One is making the noobs learn what's good and the other is making good players post. That's it really.

 

[SoT]

Sounds good to me, I'll be willing to help out.

 

[locopoke]

Trees listen? :O Hehe my bad. Personal rant aside, I think we all agree that there are 2 issues. One is making the noobs learn what's good and the other is making good players post. That's it really.

I agree completely. I feel that there are a lot of intelligent players that don't want to put time and effort into helping others with their teams, which needs to be fixed. Not only that, but there are inexperienced players who are eager to help others but really don't know how. This project should find a way to get both of these types of people more involved and posting quality rates.

 

[Aeolus]

The details are still too amorphous for me to say "yea" or "nay"... but I agree with the goal of improving the team rating situation. I've tasked Tangerine with coming up with an implementation team and some sort of plan to go forward. We'll see how we do!

 

[Tangerine]

Mmmkay.

Here's the Proposal.

The Team Rating Workshop will be a temporary subforum in RMT. We will select a few promising up and coming team raters to be able to participate in the workshop.

The goal of the workshop are as follows

1) Update the "How to RMT" sticky and make it more detailed
2) Lead the "pre" team raters in the right direction, and also remind our current team raters the purpose of rating teams. By the completion of this workshop, the selected users should be badged, or atleast, considered for one, but this is not my jurisdiction so I will leave this to the admins.

Workshop + Discussion: Upgrading the How to RMT sticky

How to RMT, especially for Team Raters, have been too vague, as many of the advice is dead lost on the people. There is a need to update this sticky to make it more specific, and make it more direct.

Each session of this workshop should involve heavy criticism of the rates done by team raters and the "pre" team raters on what they might be doing wrong, followed by an explanation of why this is important for rating teams. Eventually, contents written for these lectures should be integrated into the how to RMT sticky. Following each lecture, anyone should ask questions, post their rates on a team and ask others to peer review.

Lecture 1 - Why Rate?
- The purpose behind team rating.
- What kind of teams should NOT be rated and avoided, and the advice you can give them.

Lecture 2 - Completing Rates
- See: How to RMT.

Lecture 3 - Logic
- See: How to Start Discussions
I'm going to emphasize this. Many team raters say really stupid crap when they're rating teams and say "I think this is better" is good enough for rating - it's not. This Lecture should emphasize that when you are rating teams, you are essentially convincing/arguing, and what kind of arguments work and what kind do not.

Lecture 4 - <any other thing that people may find necessary to update the How to RMT sticky>

Post-Workshop

1) "Live" RMTing. A Team Rater can take a team and analyze it, and start a discussion on the team, where the pre-teamraters will be encouraged (ie: forced) to look at it, and post. This can be done through forums, or if everyone is on a similar time frame, on IRC.

2) Peer Review. The pre-team raters will be paired - meaning that these team raters should be looking out for each other's rates and review it according to the How to RMT sticky and the information from the lecture.

 

[haunter]

Sounds very interesting Tangerine. Definitely consider me in when the project begins.

 

[Colloquy]

Yeah, this looks like it would be really cool. I'd be willing to help out as well. And by help out, I mean do the learning thing.

 

[Tangerine]

PS: I'm looking for users who will lead this project. You don't have to be a team rater, you just need to have demonstrated that you know what you're doing to me in the past.

 

[Legacy Raider]

I am on and off smogon for the coming weeks, but I'd like to have a shot at leading this if I can. I have a lot of ideas for this workshop, and think I know most of the prominent and consistent raters (both badged and not) pretty well. Now that we have a bit more of a framework for this project (thanks tang :] ) I'm really quite excited and would like to be able to do my part to help it along.

Once we've got an idea of how many badged raters (not a necessity, really people who have shown that they know what they are talking about, can carry a train of thought well and express it clearly) are willing to contribute to this, I think getting a registration thread up in this new RMT Workshop would be the best idea, and would keep things fair. People who have already expressed interest in this thread could have their names down already. My plan is that we pair up each badged rater with two non-badged raters, and have them work in groups for the duration of the workshop. I really don't want this to become a tutor-tutee thing with each rater with two tutees... rather I'm thinking of it as having one experienced rater and two not-so-experienced raters work together on the same activities. That is to say, badged raters would have their rates criticized just like everyone else. I hope to get something like an IRC channel made where the entire workshop could join in in discussing particular rates, their strengths, weaknesses, pros, cons, etc, and most importantly, how the individual rater can improve them.

I would ask everyone who is signing up for the workshop to start rating consistently for the duration of it (and hopefully beyond as well, of course), so that every session we have at least one of their rates to analyze. I'll admit many of the currently badged raters (myself included) are slacking off and aren't quite fulfilling their rating obligations as much as would be liked. Hopefully this will provide a somewhat immediate solution to the lack of raters in the forum, and would address the 2nd workshop goal of directing "pre-TRs" in the right direction, as well as giving the old hands a crash course :).

A second problem faced with the RMT forum as of now is that new users with little experience of the game and teambuilding are posting very poor RMTs, which need not so much rates as rebuilds, and are clogging up the forum, sending actual competitive teams that need rates down to the second page without being touched. This was discussed earlier and if I recall correctly the solutions that came up were either to a) moderate the forum more strictly, and b) to clarify the "How to RMT" sticky in the forum. While it is very well written and all, it is quite a lot for new raters to take in atm and I think many just pass over it because of its size, despite it having "REQUIRED READING" in its title. Making it more concise and emphasizing what kind of standard of team is expected in the forum would be a good start. Stricter moderation would help somewhat with older members making sub-par teams, but since the vast majority of people submitting poor teams for rating do so as their first post on the forum, stricter moderation would really have no effect on them whatsoever. I propose in this sticky we clearly direct these new players to the game to the "Introduction to Competitive Pokemon" article, and of course Battling 101, and ask them to learn to play the game to a certain standard before posting their teams for rates.

These are just a couple of the ideas that I have for it right now, hopefully once this gets rolling I'll be able to clarify a bit more and get this workshop started :).

 

[Stathakis]

I am on and off smogon for the coming weeks, but I'd like to have a shot at leading this if I can. I have a lot of ideas for this workshop, and think I know most of the prominent and consistent raters (both badged and not) pretty well. Now that we have a bit more of a framework for this project (thanks tang :] ) I'm really quite excited and would like to be able to do my part to help it along.

i have the same exact sentiments

 

[SoT]

So i guess I'm co-leading this with LR ie: I'm his bitch.

 

[locopoke]

Now that you've gone more in depth on this, Tangerine, I get a better idea of how this thing is going to work. I'd love to be involved with this, so definetely consider me in when this project begins.

 

[Virtuoso]

I would definitely be down for this idea. I constantly lurk the RMT forum, and have seen the influx of RMTs.

Count me in as one of the learners!

 

[Limitless]

I agree with all of the points foretold in this thread. Therefore, I'd be ecstatic to help in any way possible. Since I don't really have a niche on Smogon, this would be a great way for me to contribute to the site.

As some can attest, I know my way around the metagame and team building.

 

[LonelyNess]

I have near limitless time this summer, and a willingness to lead this.

 

[joshe]

I'd love to do help with any of this. I'm rather free this summer, so I have plenty of time to get involved.

 

[User 12783]

I want to be apart of this!

 

[animenagai]

I'm not sure I play enough tiers for this, but I'm willing to join in anything for OU.