To begin, I want to bring up points people mentioned in the forum post. People raised some good arguments, and I'd like to address them here.
I definitely agree with this statement. Twitter serves a terrific function as social media. It's great for knowing what people are doing. There's no real place for people to update how they've doing at Regionals or a PC, or even Nationals and Worlds, aside from like Twitter. It's harder to find that all on Facebook, posting on the forums is less than desirable, and IRC is well, less crowded. So I definitely think Twitter serves a useful function in our community, however that's where I think it should end on Twitter. Discussions are better off elsewhere, in my opinion. Of course, you can still use it for everyday social functions, but in terms of Pokemon related things, I think it should end there.
Pookar mentioned that "There are a TON of posters who reply to every single thread that is posted in competitive with pretty much nothing to add to the topic, and why? Are those posts infractable? No! They're just terrible posts. And they are opinions and posts I wouldn't want to have to weed through if I'm trying to get productive responses. They are posts that turn other people off to discussions."
Unfortunately this is a true reality for the NB forums at the moment. There are a lot of new and very active users who don't contribute much with there posts. I think there's many reasons WHY this is the case, but the biggest one for me is that there isn't an active example for them to follow. These players see other "bad posters" with more experience and take after them. All of the good players aren't on the forums, or are on Twitter trying to get a thought across in 140 characters. Sure, they may not gain anything out of the forums, but helping others should be enough to get players back on.
Anyway, with that out of the way I'm going to transition into my main points that I want to bring up with this article. Unfortunately I may upset some people with this. This is not the intention. I'm just going to say publicly what a lot of players say privately.
The problem that I want to address today is the articles on NuggetBridge, specifically team reports. While I think we definitely do get some good articles, (still waiting on some to come from Nationals) it does not make up for the lower quality articles we've had the entirety of the year. This is of course met with the "it's that or nothing" complaint from admin and staff, but that's a different subject which I will answer in the next entry.
1. Lower Quality Articles Glorify Bad Ideas and Team Building
Ohhhh boy. This is where things might get ugly. I mean no disrespect to the players. Their accomplishments are entirely their own, and there's nothing I can say or do to take that away from them. Which is why I'm going to pick on a player who I can poke fun at without him getting exceptionally upset: Ashton Cox. Asthon hasn't written anything this year, but his article in 2014 showcases a plethora of "Ashton teams" that probably cannot be used in the hands of anyone othre than him. While I think a lot of people would like to see how he made his teams, unfortunately a lot of newer will gravitate to his teams and see "He's using his favorites and does well, so I can too!" and then build a bunch of really bad teams filled with favorites and then wonder why they're not winning. Sure, Ashton says his teams are eccentric and odd and he's definitely an exception to the rule, but that's not the message it sends to newer players. Now I know underused Pokemon can still be good. I understand there can be a niche, but Ashton pilots odd teams to success because he is a good player, not because he believes in his Pokemon and loves them more than other trainers.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Ashton has any malicious intentions with his team report, I just think it unknowingly sends the wrong message to newer players. While Ashton's quirky team building has certainly calmed down, using a rather standard team at Spring Regionals, newer players will always use unique teams that aren't good, and Ashton's article could have validated that trend slight.
Ashton, if you're reading this, please don't change. You're team building always spices up an event as we all want to figure out what crazy stuff you're using. I just use you as an example because I know you can handle it, and I don't know some of the other people who write questionable (IMHO) articles well enough to call them out publicly.
Regardless, the problem with articles that aren't very good is that those ideas are glorified in a sense. They get on the main page, the NB Facebook and Twitter shares it, and those are teams people look at. Remember that 2014 report with Pyroar? Sure the team did well, but Pyroar isn't very good. Still, tons of people began to test it after. Of all the things we took from Japan, it's that. Japan had Goth + Maw practically all year, yet that was what we gravitated towards because it was cool. That's where I think the main problem is with articles such as that. Newer players gravitate to the cool teams with the cool mons that have decent tournament placings, and pass up the boring teams that are leagues better which could teach newer players a thing or two.
2. Setting Strict Requirement to Post Team Reports
This is something I see happen in the Workshop when people want to write articles, but not something that happens when people write reports. I periodically get linked a thread on Skype that has Rushan just thrashing someone who's trying to write an article who doesn't have any tournament results as credibility, or has a bad premise, or something. Whether the article would be good is irrelevant, players have to prove themselves most of the time before writing. (Which is why when I write my articles, I let the good players do the talking and slowly have been adding my own commentary, because no one wants to hear how to play the game from me). This is something I think we should do for team reports. We should simply be blunt and tell the people who's teams simply aren't up to snuff "sorry."
It's something I've talked with privately with friends, but I think setting baselines that players have to meet to get their team report on the front page prevents players from getting their feelings hurt if we deny them, and keeps our site consistent. I think having Top 4 at Regionals, Top 16 at Nationals, and then Top 32 for Worlds (or less, depending on number of players. Just a good record) is a fairly decent benchmark to have only super solid teams featured on the site. These are the teams that we want players to gravitate towards. These are the teams players should look at.
But where do the teams go that don't meet those requirements, but players still want to post them?
3. Other Teams Get Posted to the RMT Section
I will elaborate a lot more on why trying to make the RMT section better is useful at a later date, but to summarize it boils down to giving them an example of a good team, and then ideally having other top players show what a good team rate is and identifying problems the team could have. Leading by example, in summary.
Posting them to the RMT section still lets players get their teams out there. Blake and I posted some of our retired teams in the RMT section a while ago to get our ideas out there. This serves many purposes, which I promise I'll get to later (I say that a lot, but I promise), but it lets our ideas get shown to the masses, gives an example of good content to newer players, and lets other players get inspiration from known players.
Another interesting thing we can do with these teams that Smogon does, dear God I hope I don't get lynched for mentioning their name, is that they feature RMTs weekly. When we don't have a lot of articles going on site, we can easily feature a Top 8 or Top 16 Regional Team, or a Top 32 Nats team to still highlight good content, but we can be extremely selective with what content. And I trust the NB Admins to pick and chose which teams should and shouldn't get highlighted if they decide to do that.
So with that I hope I've gotten across why I think increasing the standards on articles is important to NB's success at cultivating newer players. As always, thank you for reading and be sure to send any replies to the thread I have on NuggetBridge. I'll be sure to reply if I feel the need to clarify something.
Also I'm aware the blog looks a little odd on mobile. I have literally no idea on that one. Well beyond my scope to change. Sorry fam.
I feel like Top 4 is too restrictive for Regionals. Top 8 seems fine. There's a fine balance in motivating players to write, guaranteeing reasonable quality content, but also not running dry. While you don't want new players emulating teams that are only on the front page for their gimmick, you also can't be so restrictive that you severely reduce the amount of discussion going on.
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