VS Battles Wiki culture complaint/question

[Mickey1940]

Hi Staff, I'm making this thread because I have a possible complaint on how VS threads are treated on this website

My main reason for sending this message was to address the Versus Thread Rules and how I think the current way many people do VS matches is a bit flawed

I've been pretty on and off on this forum for a few years, and I've been part of a few debates myself, but recently I've been seeing a lot of... "rushed" debates that, from my perspective, concluded incorrectly

Many times, a character can reach the 7 votes necessary in order to achieve grace, but sometimes either new information is presented that objectively proves that said character shouldn't have won (before the grace period ends specifically), or the character was already losing yet still got FRA votes for seemingly no reason or explanation despite the evidence proving the contrary

The 2 matches I can think of where this has happened was this match (removed match cuz several people immediately went to the VS Battles Removal Page to get it removed), this match, and this match. In the first, Kirito was blatantly losing yet several people were voting FRA, and when asked why, they said they agreed with the points that were repeatedly proven wrong and acknowledged to be proven wrong by several people in the thread, in the second, Kaidou got the votes necessary to win, but new information about Boruto was given that proves Kaidou should NOT have won, yet the thread was closed and added anyways, and in the third, even though Grace was reached, the debate was still ongoing and new arguments were still being brought up, yet the staff (rudely) decided to just close the match and prevent further discussion.

Before you mention that I'm just being salty that the character I voted for lost, this is an example of a character I support reaching grace and winning, yet people still had arguments to bring up, and I went out of my way to try and engage and defend my vote so the thread doesn't close prematurely so the debate could reach a proper conclusion. I hope that that's made clear.

As much as I admit I don't have a say in anything due to not being an admin or anything, just some guy who likes vs battles debates, from my perspective, these kinds of discussions being cut off and closed without a proper conclusion besides "Grace ended so no one is allowed to say anything anymore L Bozo" seems extremely unconstructive and the opposite of what vs battle debates should be about. These kinds of conclusions give wins or losses to characters who don't deserve them, and despite the existence of the VS Battles Removal page, 1. there is there a staggering amount of battles that end this way, too many to be addressed with just the removal page, 2. several fights go unnoticed since they're already concluded, and 3. even after a successful removal, there's still a chance that the same fight gets done again and the same biases and FRA trains happen, which causes a loop of redundancy.

I see this wiki and forum as a form of entertainment, and I derive legitimate enjoyment from participating in these discussions, even if I'm on the losing side. Having discussions end prematurely for zero reason makes things extremely unfun, unsatisfying, and frankly disrespectful for the people participating.

I'm proposing that either the timeframe for "grace" should be extended to allow more arguments to surface (and also accommodate as many people's schedules as possible), or the rules for grace itself should be chance in order to prevent cutoffs.

Once again I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause but I just want vs battles to be more objective and honest, because right now that's not what it feels like at all

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Seems a bit early for a Mickey 17 sequel, how many ways can they possibly kill Robert Pattinson anyways...

Onto the point of the thread: I get what you're saying, but no amount of grace period time can force an individual to re-litigate their opinion on a given matchup. I don't think the suggested change will strictly stop the stuff you're talking about.

I don't really care if we add a day or two to the grace period time, it might get annoying for people to remember a thread that concluded but it's whatever. I'm just not sure it's a compelling solution here.

 

[Mickey1940]

Seems a bit early for a Mickey 17 sequel, how many ways can they possibly kill Robert Pattinson anyways...

Onto the point of the thread: I get what you're saying, but no amount of grace period time can force an individual to re-litigate their opinion on a given matchup. I don't think the suggested change will strictly stop the stuff you're talking about.

I don't really care if we add a day or two to the grace period time, it might get annoying for people to remember a thread that concluded but it's whatever. I'm just not sure it's a compelling solution here.

I'm open to any suggestion here. I know I'm not at all qualified to actually solve issues, I mainly wanted to bring up the issue in the first place cuz I thought it would be worth discussing

 

[Mickey1940]

Seems a bit early for a Mickey 17 sequel, how many ways can they possibly kill Robert Pattinson anyways...

lmao

 

[Agnaa]

I agree with Bambu that simply extending grace time won't help very much with this. And that it's probably not a worthwhile tradeoff given how relatively uncommon these sorts of situations are.

I also don't really think the rules for grace can be changed to prevent this sort of thing.

Ultimately, we have to balance out two methods of abuse. Staff arbitrarily closing threads and adding matches even though important information that turns the tide has been brought up, and users stonewalling with irrelevant information that doesn't actually change the outcome of the fight.

I think we should orient our policies towards believing that the staff are engaging in good faith, because if they aren't, they can be demoted for that. While, if a user engages in bad faith, our only real way to strike back is to warn or ban them for it, and doing that for simply having bad opinions about which things are relevant in a fight leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths.

If you have consistent examples of staff closing matches despite arguments that (in your words) prove that the leading character would objectively lose, please forward that to a Human Resources member, and if that's true, I think we could warn or demote them.

 

[Mickey1940]

I agree with Bambu that simply extending grace time won't help very much with this. And that it's probably not a worthwhile tradeoff given how relatively uncommon these sorts of situations are.

I also don't really think the rules for grace can be changed to prevent this sort of thing.

I see

Ultimately, we have to balance out two methods of abuse. Staff arbitrarily closing threads and adding matches even though important information that turns the tide has been brought up, and users stonewalling with irrelevant information that doesn't actually change the outcome of the fight.

Fair

I think we should orient our policies towards believing that the staff are engaging in good faith, because if they aren't, they can be demoted for that. While, if a user engages in bad faith, our only real way to strike back is to warn or ban them for it, and doing that for simply having bad opinions about which things are relevant in a fight leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths.

If you have consistent examples of staff closing matches despite arguments that (in your words) prove that the leading character would objectively lose, please forward that to a Human Resources member, and if that's true, I think we could warn or demote them.

I'll see if any of the matches I participate in the future have this kind of scenario and I'll contact HR promptly. Thank you for letting me know this

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out to Bambu and Agnaa.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Bump.

 

[Agnaa]

Both Bambu and I disagreed with any change being made. I outlined another route to a solution of this without changing the rules (that being, reporting staff to HR).

Unless anyone comes along agreeing with the change, this thread can probably be closed.