The Tiering Contributor Badge

[shiloh]

Tiering Contributor

• TC is awarded automatically to tiering leaders of official tiers.
• TC is awarded to those with 4 tiering-related votes in a single official tier.
• TC is awarded to those with 6 tiering-related votes in a single unofficial tier.
• TC is awarded to those with 10 tiering-related votes across Other Metas.
• TC is awarded to those who have had notable contributions to the tiering process.
• Council votes for official tiering councils count toward TC at a 1:1 ratio. A single voting slate always counts as one vote, even if there are multiple Pokemon on the slate.

When nominating users for TC, you must link to their votes. Tiering Contributor nominations must be approved by a Tier Leader.

• TC alumnus is awarded to users who have voted 6 times in a single official tier.
• TC alumnus is awarded to user who have voted 9 times in a single unofficial tier.
• TC alumnus is awarded to user who have voted 15 times across Other Metas.
• TC alumnus is awarded to tiering leaders.
• TC is removed from those who do not have enough votes to earn alumnus when they quit or do not participate in tiering related activities for 6 months.

Top Tiering Contributor

• Top TC is awarded to users who have voted 12 times in a single official tier.
• Top TC is awarded to users who have voted 18 times in a single unofficial tier.
• Top TC is awarded to users who have voted 30 times across Other Metas.
• Top TC is awarded to tiering administrators.
• Top TC is awarded to those who have had major influence over the tiering process.
• Top TC alumnus can be obtained with the same requirements as Top TC.

TC is removed from those who do not have enough votes to earn alumnus and who go 6 months or more without participating in tiering-related activities. Individuals who previously qualified and were approved for TC but had the badge removed due to inactivity may have it reinstated by participating in a tiering-related vote and contacting a tiering leader.

If you meet the criteria, you can apply for TC. Simply contact a tiering leader and provide them with a list with links to all of your votes, and they will handle the nomination. Please note that users with active infractions will have their nomination rejected until the infraction expires.

 

[Hogg]

Hello, all.

We have made a few significant updates to the tiering contributor badge policy, which has been updated in the OP. The previous standard of 4 votes in a single tier or 10 votes across all tiers remains. However, we have expanded the TC badge to include some votes from non-official tiers. This is to reflect the growing and dedicated communities for non-official tiers such as 1v1 and National Dex, and to provide incentive for leaders of non-official tiers to follow Smogon’s tiering policy. Tiering-related votes in non-official tiers or metagames may now count toward the “10 votes” requirement if they meet the tiering policy standards and take place in the Blind Voting subforum; the standard of 4 votes in a single tier still requires that all votes be from an official tier, though.

If you have any questions, or you believe you qualify for a TC badge under these new standards, please contact your tiering leader.

 

[shiloh]

Hello!

Another update has been made along the lines of the above, expanding the tiering contributor badge policy further for unofficial metagames. From now on 6 votes in the same unofficial metagame will qualify for tiering contributor. Along those lines, 9 votes will qualify for tiering contributor alumnus, and 18 will qualify for top tiering contributor. Like before the 6 vote requirement must "meet the tiering policy standards and take place in the Blind Voting subforum".

The badge will be given out within the week to those who qualify with the new requirements, so do not PM me or OM TLs until the first batch of badges are given out. If you are missed in the first wave, just shoot any of us a PM with your votes and we'll be sure to get the nomination up ASAP.

 

[Star]

After a lot of discussion between Senior Staff and Community Leaders, we are introducing some revisions to the tiering contributor badge standards. One widespread concern among Tier Leaders is that the current structure of the TC badge encourages people to "farm" it by just laddering for any random ongoing suspect without really having any vested interest in the specific tier they're voting on. Incentivizing this is detrimental to our tiering processes and the general idea of the TC badge, which is meant as a reward for people who are passionate about and want to contribute to the evolution of a tier.

Our solution to this is to remove the "10 votes across any tiers" method of achieving TC. This means that qualifying for TC will require users to participate in suspects for a single official or unofficial tier. The numbers required for those at each level of the badge remain unchanged.

One caveat here is for Other Metagames, as this community functions a bit differently. The majority of OM players do tend to have opinions on various OMs and as such, there's a decent amount of overlap (which is actively encouraged) in suspect ladder participation within the section. For this reason, we will allow people with 10 votes across OMs to be eligible for TC (with the number scaled appropriately for alumn and top TC).

Another concern that was raised is that the current TC guidelines don't really look at anything beyond voting as contributions relevant to the badge. There are other kinds of large-scale tiering contributions that should be rewarded. Recent examples of these are the noms we did for dhelmise and Hecate. dhelmise has been implementing tiering changes on PS for god knows how long and Hecate recently contributed to the major revamp of our suspect test infrastructure. To cover these kinds of cases, we have added an intentionally vague qualification of "notable contributions to the tiering process". This will be handled on a case-by-case basis but contributions like the above, high-quality PR posting over long periods of time, or other significant impact to our policy/processes will be eligible for the badge.

New Standards

Tiering Contributor

• TC is awarded automatically to tiering leaders of official tiers.
• TC is awarded to those with 4 tiering-related votes in a single official tier.
• TC is awarded to those with 6 tiering-related votes in a single unofficial tier.
• TC is awarded to those with 10 tiering-related votes across Other Metas.
• TC is awarded to those who have had notable contributions to the tiering process.

When nominating users for TC, you must link to their votes. Tiering Contributor nominations must be approved by a Tier Leader.

• TC alumnus is awarded to users who have voted 6 times in a single official tier.
• TC alumnus is awarded to user who have voted 9 times in a single unofficial tier.
• TC alumnus is awarded to user who have voted 15 times across Other Metas.
• TC alumnus is awarded to tiering leaders.
• TC is removed from those who do not have enough votes to earn alumnus when they quit or do not participate in tiering related activities for 6 months.

Update to Top Tiering Contributor

• Top TC is awarded to users who have voted 12 times in a single official tier.
• Top TC is awarded to users who have voted 18 times in a single unofficial tier.
• Top TC is awarded to users who have voted 30 times across Other Metas.
• Top TC is awarded to tiering administrators.
• Top TC is awarded to those who have had major influence over the tiering process.
• Top TC alumnus can be obtained with the same requirements as Top TC.

We will not be removing the TC badge for anybody who qualified via the old standards, but no longer meets the new ones. However, all future nominations should meet these new standards. This also applies for current TC holders still working towards alumn or top TC requirements.