Idea:
Weight-Voting by Suspect-Ladder
So we've identified that current suspect-ladder system is flawed in that we get too much sway from tc-hunters/singles players/new players due to the low difficulty of the doubles ladder. While I do feel this can still be solved to a degree by removing tc-points, this does gimp doubles players from an avenue of being able to get badges.
I'll plug that idea before getting into the nuances of weight-voting, as I still like the idea of removing tc-points. While some people have tried to point out the case of players on the ladder who make fresh Smogon accounts just to vote in the suspect, I honestly don't think they're a problem because if you're fresh off the boat and making teams that can make reqs you deserve to be able to vote. Generally, this demographic of player has interacted with doubles resources heavily, or talked a lot in doubles chat, or asked someone for teambuilding help. Contrast that with a singles player who sees a suspect, grabs teams from the resident milkman and just plays 60 games with a team that is good, the prior case/player has much more metagame knowledge and is more of a part of the community.
But, without further ado...
What is weight-voting?
Weight-voting is an idea to give good players (and presumably, members of the community) more of a say in contrast with other groups. If we give certain players a heavier amount of say in deciding a suspect (say 3x, or even more or less depending on what one decides is appropriate) then we can say that #1 player gets 3x the vote of the average player, and #2 gets 2.8 x the vote of the average players, and so on and so on, maintaining a baseline of normal votes, but giving players more say proportional to their ladder position. Thus ladder can be more competitive and people'll keep laddering throughout a suspect test, and we let the best community members and those with the most metagame knowledge have more of a say.
Some mechanical clarifications:
- The ladder wouldn't have elo decay
- Weighting is decided at the end of the suspect, with a snapshot of the ladder
- The rate at which value of a vote drops as you move from #1 to #w/e can be determined through different methods, ie exponentially, logarithmic-ally, or logistically, depending on what part of the ladder one feels differentiates players the most.
- The cutoff for baseline vote-value could be anywhere (ie at #20 and below your vote is normal value, etc)
- This could even allow us to make suspect reqs easier if we really wanted