If the OMotM vote was advertised via the "Latest News" box, how would you tackle the "account must be over 1 week old" issue?
Here are some scenarios:
- The vote is advertised a week before the nomination thread actually opens so that people get a chance to make a Smogon account. Result: no link to the actual thread, and it might get forgotten.
- The vote is advertised when the thread is created, with a link to the thread. Result: People can't vote because their accounts have just been created.
- The vote is advertised a week before the nomination thread opens, encouraging people to make accounts if they want to vote, and then advertising again when the nomination thread actually opens. Result: Might clutter up the "latest News" box?
- The "account must be over 1 week old" rule is removed.
Now obviously the rule was added for a reason, and I'm guessing it's because you don't want people creating multiple accounts solely for the vote? Or maybe that creating a Smogon account just for the OMotM vote is not a desired reason?
My point is that the OMotM vote is something that directly affects PS and its users, and this rule might become a relatively big obstacle depending on how the advertising to PS! is handled.
Another idea that I like is closing up OMs that have failed after a reasonable period; there's no point in keeping a dead thread open.
I feel like an OM's thread is a place to discuss the meta itself and talk about whatever relevant thing or issue you might have about it. Why should the fact that there is no active discussion at the moment and in the past mean that there
will not be any talk allowed in the future, no matter what it might regard?
If there is something to talk about there will be posts, and if not, there won't be. It doesn't hurt anyone that there is a place to discuss or talk about the OM, I thought that was the point?
Furthermore, since there's a rule that locked OM threads can't be nominated for OMotM, it means it won't even get a chance to be played.
Just because there's nothing to say (assuming everyone it might affect even knows about this policy) doesn't mean that people don't want to play it. This is not a fair criteria for if an OM should be unplayable.
The argument I saw made was that this gives incentive for people to post in the thread for the OM they want to play. Assuming everyone who wants to play the OM in question somehow knew about this rule, in my opinion that might not give quality posts. Is the desire posts such as "I like to play this.", followed by "Yeah me too!", or maybe starting a pointless discussion that no one would care to join?
The OM's are listed in the archive with links to their respective threads, and there could be months before maybe some new Smogon users discover them and find them interesting to the point that they want to play them and might have something to say or ask about them.
If the point is to remove OM's then they should be removed if they don't live up to the standards of what a desirable OM is anymore, in my opinion.
I see your point that you want to clean up "dead" OM's, but in my opinion they aren't hurting anyone by existing. One example is Scalemons, an OM with a locked thread and no active postings for a while. Now I don't know why the thread was locked, but let's assume for this example's sake that it was because the thread was inactive. I found it through the OM archive recently and thought it was very interesting, but now I can't vote for it for OMotM. Is it fair that I won't be able to vote for it because it had an inactive thread before I found out about it?