A New Direction for Other Metagames

DEG

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I seriously would think about a way to implement an effective and fair blind voting, there's a reason it is used everywhere whether being on Suspect Tests on Smogon or Political Decisions in the real world. If the theory that "Page One" OMs get more votes than "Page Two" OMs is the problem, how inversing the order is going to really fix that? The result will still be the same, it's like a dog running around a tree chasing its own tail starting from the right but has now shifted to the left. Will it catch its tail? No.

I know doing blind voting takes a lot of work but that's the only way we can assure equality between all OMs, we can't really reach equality without sacrifice and hard work. I have some methods to achieve that but it really takes some work and needs dedicated persons for that.

1) Copying the Suspect Test voting method, that is the best solution to blind voting but requires way too much work. At the end of the month a thread will be created in the OM subforum for people to give out OMs they wish to be eligible for voting, it will be public and everyone will see people nominating the metas. Second step is to create a private thread that prevents other from seeing your post such as the Suspect Test thread, this of course takes a lot of work to keep up and count and people will only be able to vote for one OM, so I have other solutions

2) The first step will be the same but the second step will be different. A sub-subforum will be created (Just like the OM submissions one) and all nominated OMs will be posted as threads, a page there can handle up to 50+~ OMs so going to page two shouldn't be a problem. The users will comment in the thread they want to vote in and it will be hidden pretty much like the suspect test thread, but like this the host will be able to easily count votes for each OM (Seeing forums #post then remove the # of illegible voters and post the results on the title of the thread, it also can be handled by two+ people so it will be a faster way to go.)

3) Same as the system right now but if that's possible the likes to be hidden from public and only accessible to the host (I highly doubt that's allowed on the forums but it's worth a mention)

To be honest if I was to support an idea, I'd go with my #2 idea. It's an easy blind voting system with no downside (Maybe except more complex for newer voters.)
 
Dream Eater Gengar I'll just comment on your ideas :)

1) OMotM is more and more popular every month. Do you know how difficult it is to count every single vote manually? Trust me, I used to do it before imas took over and back then we only had half as many votes. In addition, it's also confusing to the voters because they can't see their own post. They might post more than once, or not post next time because they assume it's not working or something.

2) The same argument about the current system can be made there; in fact, I'd say it's worse in that situation because the threads are ordered by latest post rather than alphabetically. People will just vote for the metagames on top. :^)

3) Not possible.
 

DEG

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I had another idea while cutting my nails, what if we start the OMOTM voting the 20th of the month and cut it into different parts. First part will be the OM submission post, every user has the right to submit an eligible OM to enter the pool of the ones we can vote (same as atm). Second step is voting #1, the voting will be open for some days, in this period users will "Like" the OM they wish to advance to the third round (atm like system). Third round, we take the 25 TOP OMs (That's the 1 page number right?) and put them into the last round pool where the votes will be decisive. That doesn't stop the bandwagon but pretty much stops people from complaining about this OM being on page one or two for the final decision.
 

xJownage

Even pendulums swing both ways
I had another idea while cutting my nails, what if we start the OMOTM voting the 20th of the month and cut it into different parts. First part will be the OM submission post, every user has the right to submit an eligible OM to enter the pool of the ones we can vote (same as atm). Second step is voting #1, the voting will be open for some days, in this period users will "Like" the OM they wish to advance to the third round (atm like system). Third round, we take the 25 TOP OMs (That's the 1 page number right?) and put them into the last round pool where the votes will be decisive. That doesn't stop the bandwagon but pretty much stops people from complaining about this OM being on page one or two for the final decision.
If we just wanted to stop the page 1/2 issue we could just randomize the metas, so making another voting period just for that is a bit much to solve a problem that can be solved with nothing but random.org.

The only way to stop bandwagoning is blind voting, and again there's really no way to have something reliable off-site or painless on-site. Either we leave it as is or do a lot of work for little return. Honestly, I don't think bandwagoning is that bad since the voting system was implemented although I've been somewhat out of the loop lately.
 
I think DEG's first solution (copying Suspect test) is the best one. If counting votes is too much, why not assign two or three people to count the votes? Also, in case we resorted back to Blind Voting, people can only vote for one meta right? It shouldn't be that bad because in the current system, what makes votes too many is the fact that we can vote as many metas as we like. If we have one meta per person, we should have much less number of votes.
 
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scpinion

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It is super easy for me to make a script that parses a thread and counts up the votes (that is what I did for the Monotype Hub and Monotype's Power Rankings).

If you guys do blind voting I'll make one so the host doesn't have to manually count.
 
6. Randomly picking 24 metas from the ones nominated: (suggested by me in private months ago during omotm)
This eliminates first come first serve and is fair because rng. Rejected by evg because it could end up having an omotm voting up where the majority don't like the options.​
I had another idea while cutting my nails, what if we start the OMOTM voting the 20th of the month and cut it into different parts. First part will be the OM submission post, every user has the right to submit an eligible OM to enter the pool of the ones we can vote (same as atm). Second step is voting #1, the voting will be open for some days, in this period users will "Like" the OM they wish to advance to the third round (atm like system). Third round, we take the 25 TOP OMs (That's the 1 page number right?) and put them into the last round pool where the votes will be decisive. That doesn't stop the bandwagon but pretty much stops people from complaining about this OM being on page one or two for the final decision.
This just came to me: instead of creating a whole new round of voting, what if we use the nominations stage? The 24 most liked nominations go to the voting stage! Thoughts?
 
Can someone make a graph of the correlation between likes on nomination posts and the page the nomination is on?
I see what you're trying to imply, but 1) nominations don't have a fixed order and 2) nominations aren't linked on Pokemon Showdown or tweeted. So this addresses the concern raised similarly to how a randomized order would; and also, the people that would be apart of that process would be those that legitimately participate in the OM forum, rather than masses of people that may or may not play the OM of the Month.
 
This just came to me: instead of creating a whole new round of voting, what if we use the nominations stage? The 24 most liked nominations go to the voting stage! Thoughts?
Tbh I'm okay with this. Rather than do nothing, I think it's good if we can experiment things like this to see how it goes. It can be a way of "audition" of the OMs by us, OM community before we go public. It's not a bad idea i think
 

MAMP

MAMP!
it's certainly an interesting idea, and i think definitely worth experimenting with, but it does cause some issues of its own. there is still a possibility of there being bias between the two pages during the nomination phase. currently there arent enough people liking nomination posts to know if this would be the case, but when people are given an incentive to do so, a bias may manifest -- we'd have to see. furthermore, The Immortal, your post implies that the nomination stage wouldnt be advertised on showdown, which im not really sure is the right thing to do. the reason we started advertising the voting stage on ps was to not exclude the masses of om players on ps who were unaware of the voting on smogon. by giving more importance to the nomination stage and then continuing to not advertise it on ps then we would be again excluding them from a very important part of the omotm selection process, which seems to run counter to what we've done in the past. lastly, and this is a much smaller issue, people would likely choose to nominate popular metas rather than the ones that they're actually interested in so that they can get the free likes, which might mean that some less popular metas might not end up getting nommed? idk, this one is a pretty minor issue. point im tryna make is that its pretty hard to tell how well this will actually work, and we'll definitely need to test it and try to iron out kinks before implementing it wholesale.


edit: also what jajoken said
 
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it's certainly an interesting idea, and i think definitely worth experimenting with, but it does cause some issues of its own. there is still a possibility of there being bias between the two pages during the nomination phase. currently there arent enough people liking nomination posts to know if this would be the case, but when people are given an incentive to do so, a bias may manifest -- we'd have to see. furthermore, The Immortal, your post implies that the nomination stage wouldnt be advertised on showdown, which im not really sure is the right thing to do. the reason we started advertising the voting stage on ps was to not exclude the masses of om players on ps who were unaware of the voting on smogon. by giving more importance to the nomination stage and then continuing to not advertise it on ps then we would be again excluding them from a very important part of the omotm selection process, which seems to run counter to what we've done in the past. lastly, and this is a much smaller issue, people would likely choose to nominate popular metas rather than the ones that they're actually interested in so that they can get the free likes, which might mean that some less popular metas might not end up getting nommed? idk, this one is a pretty minor issue. point im tryna make is that its pretty hard to tell how well this will actually work, and we'll definitely need to test it and try to iron out kinks before implementing it wholesale.
Maybe you feel differently about the bias but if it exists then I felt it was because of random masses. I see no reason why proper OM players would vote for something because it was on page 1... That's why I proposed what I did.
 
It's a cute idea, but the problem is that likes lose a lot of meaning when the posts aren't standardized. My nom post is one of the most liked in the thread, but that's mainly because it was jokey and irreverent. If I just said the name of the meta, it would have half the likes at most. In this theoretical system, that could be the difference between moving on to voting and not.
 
Even if you standardize the content, you can't standardize the user -- some people will get likes just because of who they are. If Zarel comes in and nominates a meta nobody has heard of, it will still make it to polling. What then? Do we PM our noms to imas so he can post them under a neutral account? This doesn't even address the issue that noms wouldn't be posted at the same time, so whoever has the advantage of being in the best time zone to correspond to the thread getting posted theoretically has an advantage when it comes to collecting likes.

My point is, if this is supposed to fix what seems to be a relatively minor problem of user bias (people are lazy and won't click to the next page), why add an extraneous step that introduces several more potential vectors of bias? It doesn't make any sense to me. I'd just keep the old system, personally.
 

Josh

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If it clearly states in the op the metas with the most likes will get to be voted on then I strongly disagree with the notion more known users will get more likes. And what this does do is filter out the metas that realistically won't have a chance of winning such as Protect: The Metagame, which shrinks the first (and only) page down to the metagames actually in contention. Any minute bias will be drowned out by the sheer quality of people liking the posts.

I should be clear that I don't really care about "first page bias" and think it's dumb to worry about but this is a solution to it if you do find it a problem.
 
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EV

Banned deucer.
Sounds like we're just voting one stage early at this point.

But if that's the case, we can just turn the first stage into a nomination/preliminary vote stage and then post a run-off with the top 3/5/10. Any posts that are going to be weighed via votes should be hosted by Other Metagames to reduce bias.
 
Someone already suggested this (I'm sorry I forgot the username, credits to whoever suggested this), but the problem of user bias is laziness to read ALL of the metas right? People won't click page 2 or even scroll down fully in page 1 because of this. What if we create a Table of Contents in the OP, if possible, LINKS them to each post? The instant they log in from News announcement from PS, they are faced with the OP. It would be more convenient for them to instantly click the link in the OP.

I know many ppl are lazy, that's why when they are being explained an OMs, they usually prefer to ask for a link rather than finding out themselves. I think it's the same in OMotM Voting.
 
Nobody is invested in what exact 24 metas get in -- at most they just want 2-4 they actually plan on voting for. Past that, if a friend or otherwise respected user posts something, I personally would be more likely to like their post for the hell of it, because if the other 20 metas don't matter to me, why not support people I already respect in which metas they want? I think it's a more probable situation then you're counting on.

And "sheer number of people liking the posts"? If this isn't advertised to people (which TI says it won't be), it will just be OM community people liking posts in the thread, plus other users that occasionally browse the subforum. I wouldn't be surprised if a meta gets to polling with single digit likes.

I honestly don't care which system wins out. None of these precautions make that big a difference. In my opinion, the popular and hotly discussed metas will win almost every month, biases or no.
 

Josh

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I think you underestimate the amount of people who read those threads, and if there was an actual reason to like posts it would be more obvious. Also, you don't need to be invested in 24. The point is 24 people in general care about will move on. And yea, in the end it really doesn't matter, metas like mnm are going to win regardless of how we set the votes up which is why I think this whole discussion is pointless. The thing is, you guys (not you specifically jajoken but you guys in reference to a lot of people itt) keep bringing up that it's an issue and suggesting unfeasible solutions, this is the most feasible solution to date.

Debates like these are exactly what happens when you make a mountain out of something that wishes it was as big as a mole hill. Idek if I can call it a debate because we're both on the same side based on your last paragraph, lol.
 

MAMP

MAMP!
Hey, just wondering why Inverse was chosen to be replaced by Mix and Mega in the daily tour rather than Hidden Type? Hidden Type's continued presence as a part of the daily tour rotation grows more and more strange and difficult to justify as time goes on, and Inverse is a more important and popular meta than it by every metric I can think of. Most importantly, Inverse is a permaladder while HT isn't, and it seems really bizarre to me that a meta that has been selected as one of the core OMs by being made a permaladder wouldn't be in the rotation while a challenge-only meta like HT would be. Not only that, but Hidden Type isn't even that popular anymore. Last time it was OMOTM, it was literally one of the least popular of all time judging by number of battles, and in the past few months it's pretty consistently had a poor showing in the OMOTM voting. Additionally, its forum thread has been almost completely inactive for more than a year, whereas Inverse's is still (somewhat) active. Frankly it baffles me that it's even still up as a challengable format while exponentially more popular metagames like Linked and 350 Cup still aren't.

At one point Hidden Type was popular enough to justify being in the daily tour rotation, but that time has long passed, and practically any popularity that Hidden Type currently enjoys is due to its status as a daily tour meta. There really isn't any reason for Inverse to have been replaced instead of Hidden Type. Hell, Inverse is bigger than Tier Shift and arguably 2v2 Doubles as well, and yet both of those stayed in the daily tour roster. What gives?



For anyone who's interested, average votes for metas on page 1 this month was approx. 74.9, whereas page 2 was about 64.1 -- the pattern continues.
 
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The sole reason Inverse Battle was chosen over Hidden Type was because it was the Friday slot. Mix and Mega is going to keep that slot going forward and changing it one month and then the next is bound to cause confusion. Don't worry, Hidden Type is going next month too. I could have not changed anything and just waited one more month to remove both Hidden Type and Inverse Battle simultaneously but like I said in the other thread, Mix and Mega damn sure earned this already.

Also, I guess you can look at it as a slow phasing out of Inverse. People want its ladder replaced by Mix and Mega too this month. One change at a time is better to adjust to than multiple changes together.
 

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