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Greetings my friends, the time has finally come for my constantly teased critique addressing some of the problems I've noticed in the site, since joining in 2016. I've given a lot of thought to this, especially after discussions with other people. Unfortunately, This is a drastically simplified version of the original 18,000+ word critique. Since the original was too long and often got ill-mannered at points, I've shortened it significantly and rewrote a lot of my points. However, I am a busy woman with a lot on her plate so I apologize if some of this seems incomplete and reads weird or messy at points as the result. I just want to get my point across. If I lost you, read the summary as it generalizes the whole critique.
Before we get started though, here are some important things it is imperative to remember as you're reading the critique:
Before you get upset (remember, mind #2 of the disclaimer), I don't think VSB is the most unreliable vs site. In fact, we're likely still in many ways the most reliable since most others don't have actual profiles with stats like we do and the vast majority that do are copycats of either OBD or us (funny since we were formerly OBD and ACF copycats…) No, we are currently the "best of a bad situation", which really shows how forked vs debating is when you think about it. So what's the problem with our stats? Aren't they better than ever? Well, it's not a "yes" or "no" answer. We do have an undeniably more accurate tier system but we barely apply it in any meaningful way. How many profiles have calcs to back up their claims? Any stat that isn't from a blatantly obvious feat or power-scaling needs a calc to back it up. Whatever happened to all that math we're so proud of? Does that only apply to Low 2-C and above? Yes
What happened? How did it come to this? Well...for lack of a better term? Inflation. "Inflation" in relation to our site occurs when we have so many different people, with so many different opinions, making pages for so many different things, that due to our "overstaffed but understaffed" paradox (which I'll get into in a minute), many CRTs are accepted through a "passable statements, but not permissible feats" lens. Meaning: Upgrades are now, more than ever before, accepted due to simply "looking okay" if there's enough statements or second hand information (such as WoG or guidebooks) to pass as acceptable, rather than using objective feats, powerscaling, and calculations to determine stats, and only relying on statements as supportive evidence - statements are used as primary evidence to justify anything that has a modicum of possibility, regardless if it's even consistent or not.
This happens, almost unconsciously, because the sheer number of content revisions (mostly upgrades rather than downgrades) keeps increasing without limit. The more CRTs there are, the less time people will devote to them due to having to worry about nine other CRTs about the same verse. Their judgment gets partially suspended and rather than stop to ask themselves how this holds up from a more logical based conclusion. This continued until it became the normal practice of the site. We're basically Statements Battles Wiki now. Every character is treated as a reliable source for the most trivial reasons. "Goku is a martial arts master, so everything he says in regards to fighting must be reliable". Yeah. Never mind that he is a fictional character with no true agency, who is susceptible to bad and inconsistent writing like the plot, right? As long as there's at least a statement to back something up, our community seem to be satisfied.
How many featless characters are treated as OP powerhouses in vs threads or general discussions despite not even fighting another character before? As we speak, even powerscaling itself is starting to be dismissed in favor of statements too. Never mind Character A actually fighting on par with Character B to officially scale to B's stats. So long as Character A is stated by Character C to have once made Character B sweat (offscreen), A is scaling. What logic is this?
The site has now accepted quantity over quality in a nutshell. The result? Vs. Battles has become a trashcan for the recycled high-balls and wank no other site takes seriously. We've become a meme.
The Cause
What caused this so-called "inflation"? Well, it's a long story and a sensitive one. However, if laid out (to the best of my ability) you might be able to see how it all connects. In general though, we've gotten too big for our shoes. In page number, discussions, members, everything. I'm going to describe all the contributing factors to this inflation.
WAY Too Many Pages
Probably the most contributing factor to the site's unreliability via hyper-inflation is we have too many pages. Seriously, the more pages we have the more CRTs are made. The more CRTs get made, the less time is devoted to them as previously explained. This wouldn't be so bad if we didn't allow anything with a story to be eligible for profit-making status here. Allowing the most obscure verses hardly anyone has ever heard of to be allowed here also creates the gatekeeping effect where only "knowledgeable members" can actually verify the stats with further context. For lower tiers this can work since we still have calcs to help us (when observed correctly) but not so much for higher tiers. Obscure high tiered verses need to be banned. Period. Things like the Masadaverse should have nothing more than its translated material accepted for profile creation (Dies irae, not Kajiri Kamui Kagura). Why stop there? Deleting any pages without calculations (unless the feats are straightforward, are incalculable, or are based in powerscaling). Sadly, the staff honestly believe that because "one of the reasons our site is so popular is because of our number of pages" that we should just accept having well over 20k pages despite most being suspicious. Really? Quantity over quality. That's what we care about? Qwynbleidd was right. Matt was right. We need less pages.
Too Many CRTs
With more verses comes more CRTs about those verses. Never mind the fact that some people make multiple CRTs for the same verse at once, we still have too many CRTs without that. This results in less care and effort being put into the, as I've said many times before. Consequently, poor judgment is used to quickly deal with these threads to move onto the next one. This poor judgment rubbed off on our regular members and when newer members join, they accept it as the norm. CRTs when from "scans of feats and calculations" to "how many in-universe, author, and guidebook statements can we use to make this sound legit?" How many Dragon Ball threads mention the Daizenshuu before anything else? That's a problem. All of this stuff is secondary evidence used to support the primary evidence that is feats. Higher (or lower results) are primarily yielded through calcs, a clarification of context, etc. We should always however, start with the basics. Also, we need to decrease the amount of CRTs, specifically upgrades. It shouldn't matter if you think downplaying is worse than wanking or they are equal, downplaying doesn't result in unreliable stats so long as the methods used to determine our stats stay consistent throughout all characters. It's a shame that downgrades are more controversial than they've ever been before.
Calc and Powerscaling Abuse
In addition to the increase in upgrade threads, is the occasional abuse of calcs and powerscaling. Calcs are important and a necessary asset, but as much as I brag about them in this critique, they are far from perfect. Some people clearly have abused their ability to calc to get the highest result possible. Of course there's calc-stacking, but this here is done Nito by calc-stacking. But by re-calcing the same feat over and over again. Obito shooting a fireball jutsu across the shinobi war zone (not an actual feat just using it as an example) should not be re-calced so many times that it yields and even higher result than before. No one finds it suspicious how a feat goes from 5-C to High 4-C just by re-calcs? Even despite the massive difference between the tiers? "But Sera" I hear you say, "if the calc is legit, what can we do about it"? Well...are they legit? Lately, I've been seeing some questionable calcs get passed simply by someone (usually our overworked bureaucrat Antvasima) and maybe one calc member saying it "looks okay". That's it. Most others who accept the calc are regular users, many of whom are supporters of the verse. Hmm… is there some sort of… connection there ƒæÇ? As for powerscaling, as I've stated before, we've went from powerscaling via feats of consistent comparable prowess to powerscaling via statements of comparable prowess (some of which of off-handed or have no context behind them), or even worse, statements of conceived comparable prowess (conceived not by the character making the statement, but of the debater making the claim of scaling). We gotta stop being so lazy and additionally stop treating every statement from a fictional character with no agency as reliable just because it makes sense in-universe.
Too Many Staff Members
It pains me to say it, but we have too many staff members (although ironically, we don't have enough at the same time). Allow me to explain.
For those who are unaware, in Vs Battles, the staff are essentially those who have a mutual sense of trust between each other and thus their word carries a more weight in a discussion such as a CRT, Wiki Management, etc. This is undoubtedly necessary because if we left all endgame decision making to the whole community. Given that we currently have the largest number of active members in any fandom community, we need staff to serve as those that hold down the fort more so than other wikias.
However, it is often exaggerated at how "reliable" staff can be. Yes, staff can be more reliable in different areas but nowadays it seems that becoming staff is trivial. I don't even take staff drives seriously anymore. Most staff member candidates are those who posted a lot in discussion threads and have no bad rep, which is fine, but others (no offense to them) seem to have been recommended due to agreeing with some staff in big named verses like Marvel.
This brings me to my main point as to why we have too many staff members. Unless I miss counted, we have somewhere along the lines of 73 staff members. Of those staff members, how many can you say actually participate in and help bring down the Hammer of Judgment in a CRT? The way the site was supposedly managed was that discussion mods and admins mostly help out with CRTs. Do they? The only staff member to actually walk into a CRT regardless of their familiarity on the topic is Antvasima. DarkDragonMedeus and AKM sama do come close. The rest of us mostly handle the verses we are comfortable with/are knowledgeable on. This is unfortunate because as I stated before, the number of upgrades are increasing.
Why do we need 70+ staff members, especially discussion moderators, when the three most prominent CRT reviewers are two administrators and one bureaucrat? (Colonel Krukov and VenomElite used to do review nearly all CRTs as well but the former has returned as an Image Helper while the latter has retired). This is a problem because most administrators are promoted from discussion mod positions. That is very off base considering discussion mods seemingly do the least work in their actual field (not overall, don't misquote me) and this is coming from an ex discussion mod who ascended to admin and then consultant. I'm not jabbing at the discussion mods alone either, I'm aware there's content mods, image helpers etc. since given that all staff members are deemed these "trusted and reliable members", you'd expect in this Age of Upgrades that there'd be more an effort from staff of all kinds, even content mods (I get you guys later) to help with all these darn CRTs.
Also, I know the person matters a lot more than the position (mostly), as Bambu for example is a great example of a discussion-mod-turned-admin. Regardless, becoming staff is now an inevitability for any long-running member here who participates in enough CRTs and doesn't have a bad record.
So what about the admins? Well the thing is, some f the old admins were a "Jack of all Trades" of sorts. Gwynbleidd, Darkanine, and Kavpeny (a bureaucrat yes but still an admin) were CRT reviewers, content mods, handled calcs, and had some technical skills as well. They met many of the site's needs, not just "often had a good argument in a CRT". This shouldn't be an objective requirement for adminship, but how many current admins even work on pages anymore? And how many actually calc? The latter is extremely important in the tier system section below, so the "overstaffed but understaffed" paradox VBW is is detrimental to our site's unreliability.
We have too many staff who do what any regular member can do. Most don't review CRTs other than those of verses the like or are knowledgeable on. Let's go back to assuming good faith in the community, and let those with good arguments be trusted members, not just colored names. Staff should be decreased in number and be managers of the site only.
The Community's Role
People love high stats. But rather than be honest about it, we have a load of arguments about the intentions of others. The staff have lost the ability to assume good faith in their community (which is the ultimate recipe for a wiki's downfall) while the community seems to get increasingly bothered by the staff's importance and generally tend to assume their goal is to downplay. Staff = downplay. Community = Wank. Anyone with sense knows this is complete BS. Yes, we are drowning in overhyped stats/wank but the fault is everyone's to bear. The staff have lost their spine and aspects of the community (subconsciously) capitalize on that to continue the inflation. That's right, this schism didn't start the inflation, but it's sustaining it.
The community had its role to play in this too. I'm happy that we're a lot more open than we were back in the day and I appreciate opinions from many different perspectives. But, similar to an open-border policy (this is not a political argument, just pay attention), when there's an influx of individuals from all over the net (mostly from G+ tbh), the prioritization of "the most consistent high-ball became clear. Why? Because the guys who came here from Downplay City didn't last long. Mostly due to their attitudes towards the site. This means we have a lot more high-ballers coming into town and staying than low-ballers. The inflation spoken of previously didn't really start getting ridiculous until after the shutdown of Google+. Trust me, that is no simple coincidence.
What did I mean by the community subconsciously doing this? Well due to how they've been indoctrinated to accept as minimal evidence as possible to believe something is legitimate and the majority staff being MIA during these critical moments of said indoctrination. When the blue names see the colored names blatantly accepting minimal evidence as legit, they will do the same. It's quite simple. Yes, some regulars stand up and say "No, that's not right" but think about the newer members and not the seasoned ones or staff lites. Plus a lot of these seasoned members got indoctrinated too along the way.
Prioritization of the OP, the Philosophical, and the Technical
Thanks to reality being boring and many people suffering from Chuuni syndrome, the site is constantly discussing the OP and the impressive. Feats? Nah that's boring, but that one author that explains everything in a neoplatonic fashion that just sounds so cool? E p i c. Who cares about carefully calculated stats when we have conceptual attacks bypassing all durability? Look, these things are cool, yes, but they are just part of a spectrum. To prevent inflation, we need to stop fawning over hax and go back to the basics every once in a while. A little balance is all we need. At the end of the day...this is just fiction. Authors create this art that can be interpreted in many different ways. Just because Platonic concepts are technically 1-A, doesn't mean they should be at the slightest mention of them. The same argument was used against string theory and dimensions, so it applies here. No one cares about Many-Valued Logic, no one cares about Metaphysics. All that stuff takes the backseat from the linearly measurable and the physically observed. Platonic guy blowing up a planet just blew up a planet, you're not getting 1-A out of that. We have to stop prioritizing fancy concepts just because they sound inconceivably overpowered, in reality, they just might be hyperbole or flowery language fluff with no actual merit.
The New Tier System is Sorta Worthless
One of the best things to come out in recent times was the new system….or so I thought. The idea of an "objective" system sounds good, but no system matters more than how it is applied by its arbiters. What has the new system done except allow for more Tier 0s and put an end to the godawful assumption that any mention of higher dimensions = a larger verse than one that doesn't? Well...given how the inflation increases without end long after the new system was put in place, I'd say nothing. The intent behind a new system was all wrong, once again the result of caring too much about the obscure and niche high tiers. This goes back to a lack of prioritization of things that actually matter in favor of the more obscure and less important aspects of the system. Rather than prioritize the more feat-based tiers, you know the ones most often associated with vs debating, the site decided to prioritize Tiers 1 and 0. That didn't really make a difference to stop the main problem though. We need balance. I'll go into more detail about the new system in another thread.
Summary
Our wiki has become drastically unreliable due to inflation. This inflation was born out of poorly handled CRTs being accepted by merely having the most minuscule evidence possible for lower tiers and the most impressive hyperbolic description for higher tiers - where a result of the number of CRTs (Upgrades) increasing and the number of people subscribing to the staff's poor judgment of these upgrades further increasing. Poor judgment which sprang from an over reliance on statements, interviews, and guidebooks over feats, calculations and powerscaling. And a new system which despite all its claims of being "objective and mathematically accurate", has done little to mitigate it.
This was all caused by and is being prolonged by:
1. Having too many pages due to our staff's pitiful unwillingness to cull the number of pages in favor of our popularity and fear of workload. We value quantity over quality.
2.Having too many CRTs to manage our 25k pages. The vast majority of CRTs nowadays are upgrades, proving that the community at large values the most consistent high-ball.
3. Calculations (arguably one of the best tools at our disposal) are not checked and reviewed as they are supposed to be. Most calcs I've seen recently just get an "this looks okay" from normal members and staff that aren't even calc members.
4. Powerscaling being abused as well. A good deal of powerscaling is now hardly from if a character can consistently compete with whom they scale to, but if there's any minute statement to back it up.
5. Having too many staff members despite only a few actually doing what they are positioned for, and some having admittedly lost interest (just retire then). Having this many staff is unneeded as mass editing is a community effort or can be done by bots. Despite not needing over 70 staff, we still do.
6. The staff having lost their ability to assume good faith in regular members due to the scars of our past filled with vandalism and trolling, and since the staff are the "trusted members" this leaves the community at large feeling invalid in comparison, due to having not as important enough input in a discussion.
7. The schism between the staff and community continuously prolongs the inflation of our stats and pages, and thus our unreliability increases.
8. The community over-emphasizing higher tiers, as evidenced with the new system not actually being implemented in such a way that solves the inflation problem despite being marketed as "objective and mathematically accurate". We also over-emphasize philosophical mumbo jumbo that sounds impressive and try to use that as evidence for these higher tiers. 1-A Platonic concepts dozens of types of powers that really aren't that complicated come to mind.
Thank you for reading and I hope you understand my concerns, at least to some extent.
Before we get started though, here are some important things it is imperative to remember as you're reading the critique:
- The following is at the end of the day, my personal opinion. It's not objective by any means, and I'm perfectly fine with disagreements. I only ask that you do not take personal offense to anything I say. While I have not named anyone personally, if you happen to fall into one of the groups of people I discuss, it is not a personal attack on you. I address mentalities and why they are bad for the site's endgame goal of reliability, not as a means of pointing out a personal flaw or bad trait of an individual.
- I am no exception to some of the things I am critiquing, so I am criticizing myself alongside everyone else. Please don't think I believe for a second that I am immune to the criticisms I'm making. Quite the opposite.
- I am primarily focusing on the reliability of stats and pages. This is about community effort and management, not community drama. The drama is better left for a separate critique.
Before you get upset (remember, mind #2 of the disclaimer), I don't think VSB is the most unreliable vs site. In fact, we're likely still in many ways the most reliable since most others don't have actual profiles with stats like we do and the vast majority that do are copycats of either OBD or us (funny since we were formerly OBD and ACF copycats…) No, we are currently the "best of a bad situation", which really shows how forked vs debating is when you think about it. So what's the problem with our stats? Aren't they better than ever? Well, it's not a "yes" or "no" answer. We do have an undeniably more accurate tier system but we barely apply it in any meaningful way. How many profiles have calcs to back up their claims? Any stat that isn't from a blatantly obvious feat or power-scaling needs a calc to back it up. Whatever happened to all that math we're so proud of? Does that only apply to Low 2-C and above? Yes
What happened? How did it come to this? Well...for lack of a better term? Inflation. "Inflation" in relation to our site occurs when we have so many different people, with so many different opinions, making pages for so many different things, that due to our "overstaffed but understaffed" paradox (which I'll get into in a minute), many CRTs are accepted through a "passable statements, but not permissible feats" lens. Meaning: Upgrades are now, more than ever before, accepted due to simply "looking okay" if there's enough statements or second hand information (such as WoG or guidebooks) to pass as acceptable, rather than using objective feats, powerscaling, and calculations to determine stats, and only relying on statements as supportive evidence - statements are used as primary evidence to justify anything that has a modicum of possibility, regardless if it's even consistent or not.
This happens, almost unconsciously, because the sheer number of content revisions (mostly upgrades rather than downgrades) keeps increasing without limit. The more CRTs there are, the less time people will devote to them due to having to worry about nine other CRTs about the same verse. Their judgment gets partially suspended and rather than stop to ask themselves how this holds up from a more logical based conclusion. This continued until it became the normal practice of the site. We're basically Statements Battles Wiki now. Every character is treated as a reliable source for the most trivial reasons. "Goku is a martial arts master, so everything he says in regards to fighting must be reliable". Yeah. Never mind that he is a fictional character with no true agency, who is susceptible to bad and inconsistent writing like the plot, right? As long as there's at least a statement to back something up, our community seem to be satisfied.
How many featless characters are treated as OP powerhouses in vs threads or general discussions despite not even fighting another character before? As we speak, even powerscaling itself is starting to be dismissed in favor of statements too. Never mind Character A actually fighting on par with Character B to officially scale to B's stats. So long as Character A is stated by Character C to have once made Character B sweat (offscreen), A is scaling. What logic is this?
The site has now accepted quantity over quality in a nutshell. The result? Vs. Battles has become a trashcan for the recycled high-balls and wank no other site takes seriously. We've become a meme.
The Cause
What caused this so-called "inflation"? Well, it's a long story and a sensitive one. However, if laid out (to the best of my ability) you might be able to see how it all connects. In general though, we've gotten too big for our shoes. In page number, discussions, members, everything. I'm going to describe all the contributing factors to this inflation.
WAY Too Many Pages
Probably the most contributing factor to the site's unreliability via hyper-inflation is we have too many pages. Seriously, the more pages we have the more CRTs are made. The more CRTs get made, the less time is devoted to them as previously explained. This wouldn't be so bad if we didn't allow anything with a story to be eligible for profit-making status here. Allowing the most obscure verses hardly anyone has ever heard of to be allowed here also creates the gatekeeping effect where only "knowledgeable members" can actually verify the stats with further context. For lower tiers this can work since we still have calcs to help us (when observed correctly) but not so much for higher tiers. Obscure high tiered verses need to be banned. Period. Things like the Masadaverse should have nothing more than its translated material accepted for profile creation (Dies irae, not Kajiri Kamui Kagura). Why stop there? Deleting any pages without calculations (unless the feats are straightforward, are incalculable, or are based in powerscaling). Sadly, the staff honestly believe that because "one of the reasons our site is so popular is because of our number of pages" that we should just accept having well over 20k pages despite most being suspicious. Really? Quantity over quality. That's what we care about? Qwynbleidd was right. Matt was right. We need less pages.
Too Many CRTs
With more verses comes more CRTs about those verses. Never mind the fact that some people make multiple CRTs for the same verse at once, we still have too many CRTs without that. This results in less care and effort being put into the, as I've said many times before. Consequently, poor judgment is used to quickly deal with these threads to move onto the next one. This poor judgment rubbed off on our regular members and when newer members join, they accept it as the norm. CRTs when from "scans of feats and calculations" to "how many in-universe, author, and guidebook statements can we use to make this sound legit?" How many Dragon Ball threads mention the Daizenshuu before anything else? That's a problem. All of this stuff is secondary evidence used to support the primary evidence that is feats. Higher (or lower results) are primarily yielded through calcs, a clarification of context, etc. We should always however, start with the basics. Also, we need to decrease the amount of CRTs, specifically upgrades. It shouldn't matter if you think downplaying is worse than wanking or they are equal, downplaying doesn't result in unreliable stats so long as the methods used to determine our stats stay consistent throughout all characters. It's a shame that downgrades are more controversial than they've ever been before.
Calc and Powerscaling Abuse
In addition to the increase in upgrade threads, is the occasional abuse of calcs and powerscaling. Calcs are important and a necessary asset, but as much as I brag about them in this critique, they are far from perfect. Some people clearly have abused their ability to calc to get the highest result possible. Of course there's calc-stacking, but this here is done Nito by calc-stacking. But by re-calcing the same feat over and over again. Obito shooting a fireball jutsu across the shinobi war zone (not an actual feat just using it as an example) should not be re-calced so many times that it yields and even higher result than before. No one finds it suspicious how a feat goes from 5-C to High 4-C just by re-calcs? Even despite the massive difference between the tiers? "But Sera" I hear you say, "if the calc is legit, what can we do about it"? Well...are they legit? Lately, I've been seeing some questionable calcs get passed simply by someone (usually our overworked bureaucrat Antvasima) and maybe one calc member saying it "looks okay". That's it. Most others who accept the calc are regular users, many of whom are supporters of the verse. Hmm… is there some sort of… connection there ƒæÇ? As for powerscaling, as I've stated before, we've went from powerscaling via feats of consistent comparable prowess to powerscaling via statements of comparable prowess (some of which of off-handed or have no context behind them), or even worse, statements of conceived comparable prowess (conceived not by the character making the statement, but of the debater making the claim of scaling). We gotta stop being so lazy and additionally stop treating every statement from a fictional character with no agency as reliable just because it makes sense in-universe.
Too Many Staff Members
It pains me to say it, but we have too many staff members (although ironically, we don't have enough at the same time). Allow me to explain.
For those who are unaware, in Vs Battles, the staff are essentially those who have a mutual sense of trust between each other and thus their word carries a more weight in a discussion such as a CRT, Wiki Management, etc. This is undoubtedly necessary because if we left all endgame decision making to the whole community. Given that we currently have the largest number of active members in any fandom community, we need staff to serve as those that hold down the fort more so than other wikias.
However, it is often exaggerated at how "reliable" staff can be. Yes, staff can be more reliable in different areas but nowadays it seems that becoming staff is trivial. I don't even take staff drives seriously anymore. Most staff member candidates are those who posted a lot in discussion threads and have no bad rep, which is fine, but others (no offense to them) seem to have been recommended due to agreeing with some staff in big named verses like Marvel.
This brings me to my main point as to why we have too many staff members. Unless I miss counted, we have somewhere along the lines of 73 staff members. Of those staff members, how many can you say actually participate in and help bring down the Hammer of Judgment in a CRT? The way the site was supposedly managed was that discussion mods and admins mostly help out with CRTs. Do they? The only staff member to actually walk into a CRT regardless of their familiarity on the topic is Antvasima. DarkDragonMedeus and AKM sama do come close. The rest of us mostly handle the verses we are comfortable with/are knowledgeable on. This is unfortunate because as I stated before, the number of upgrades are increasing.
Why do we need 70+ staff members, especially discussion moderators, when the three most prominent CRT reviewers are two administrators and one bureaucrat? (Colonel Krukov and VenomElite used to do review nearly all CRTs as well but the former has returned as an Image Helper while the latter has retired). This is a problem because most administrators are promoted from discussion mod positions. That is very off base considering discussion mods seemingly do the least work in their actual field (not overall, don't misquote me) and this is coming from an ex discussion mod who ascended to admin and then consultant. I'm not jabbing at the discussion mods alone either, I'm aware there's content mods, image helpers etc. since given that all staff members are deemed these "trusted and reliable members", you'd expect in this Age of Upgrades that there'd be more an effort from staff of all kinds, even content mods (I get you guys later) to help with all these darn CRTs.
Also, I know the person matters a lot more than the position (mostly), as Bambu for example is a great example of a discussion-mod-turned-admin. Regardless, becoming staff is now an inevitability for any long-running member here who participates in enough CRTs and doesn't have a bad record.
So what about the admins? Well the thing is, some f the old admins were a "Jack of all Trades" of sorts. Gwynbleidd, Darkanine, and Kavpeny (a bureaucrat yes but still an admin) were CRT reviewers, content mods, handled calcs, and had some technical skills as well. They met many of the site's needs, not just "often had a good argument in a CRT". This shouldn't be an objective requirement for adminship, but how many current admins even work on pages anymore? And how many actually calc? The latter is extremely important in the tier system section below, so the "overstaffed but understaffed" paradox VBW is is detrimental to our site's unreliability.
We have too many staff who do what any regular member can do. Most don't review CRTs other than those of verses the like or are knowledgeable on. Let's go back to assuming good faith in the community, and let those with good arguments be trusted members, not just colored names. Staff should be decreased in number and be managers of the site only.
The Community's Role
People love high stats. But rather than be honest about it, we have a load of arguments about the intentions of others. The staff have lost the ability to assume good faith in their community (which is the ultimate recipe for a wiki's downfall) while the community seems to get increasingly bothered by the staff's importance and generally tend to assume their goal is to downplay. Staff = downplay. Community = Wank. Anyone with sense knows this is complete BS. Yes, we are drowning in overhyped stats/wank but the fault is everyone's to bear. The staff have lost their spine and aspects of the community (subconsciously) capitalize on that to continue the inflation. That's right, this schism didn't start the inflation, but it's sustaining it.
The community had its role to play in this too. I'm happy that we're a lot more open than we were back in the day and I appreciate opinions from many different perspectives. But, similar to an open-border policy (this is not a political argument, just pay attention), when there's an influx of individuals from all over the net (mostly from G+ tbh), the prioritization of "the most consistent high-ball became clear. Why? Because the guys who came here from Downplay City didn't last long. Mostly due to their attitudes towards the site. This means we have a lot more high-ballers coming into town and staying than low-ballers. The inflation spoken of previously didn't really start getting ridiculous until after the shutdown of Google+. Trust me, that is no simple coincidence.
What did I mean by the community subconsciously doing this? Well due to how they've been indoctrinated to accept as minimal evidence as possible to believe something is legitimate and the majority staff being MIA during these critical moments of said indoctrination. When the blue names see the colored names blatantly accepting minimal evidence as legit, they will do the same. It's quite simple. Yes, some regulars stand up and say "No, that's not right" but think about the newer members and not the seasoned ones or staff lites. Plus a lot of these seasoned members got indoctrinated too along the way.
Prioritization of the OP, the Philosophical, and the Technical
Thanks to reality being boring and many people suffering from Chuuni syndrome, the site is constantly discussing the OP and the impressive. Feats? Nah that's boring, but that one author that explains everything in a neoplatonic fashion that just sounds so cool? E p i c. Who cares about carefully calculated stats when we have conceptual attacks bypassing all durability? Look, these things are cool, yes, but they are just part of a spectrum. To prevent inflation, we need to stop fawning over hax and go back to the basics every once in a while. A little balance is all we need. At the end of the day...this is just fiction. Authors create this art that can be interpreted in many different ways. Just because Platonic concepts are technically 1-A, doesn't mean they should be at the slightest mention of them. The same argument was used against string theory and dimensions, so it applies here. No one cares about Many-Valued Logic, no one cares about Metaphysics. All that stuff takes the backseat from the linearly measurable and the physically observed. Platonic guy blowing up a planet just blew up a planet, you're not getting 1-A out of that. We have to stop prioritizing fancy concepts just because they sound inconceivably overpowered, in reality, they just might be hyperbole or flowery language fluff with no actual merit.
The New Tier System is Sorta Worthless
One of the best things to come out in recent times was the new system….or so I thought. The idea of an "objective" system sounds good, but no system matters more than how it is applied by its arbiters. What has the new system done except allow for more Tier 0s and put an end to the godawful assumption that any mention of higher dimensions = a larger verse than one that doesn't? Well...given how the inflation increases without end long after the new system was put in place, I'd say nothing. The intent behind a new system was all wrong, once again the result of caring too much about the obscure and niche high tiers. This goes back to a lack of prioritization of things that actually matter in favor of the more obscure and less important aspects of the system. Rather than prioritize the more feat-based tiers, you know the ones most often associated with vs debating, the site decided to prioritize Tiers 1 and 0. That didn't really make a difference to stop the main problem though. We need balance. I'll go into more detail about the new system in another thread.
Summary
Our wiki has become drastically unreliable due to inflation. This inflation was born out of poorly handled CRTs being accepted by merely having the most minuscule evidence possible for lower tiers and the most impressive hyperbolic description for higher tiers - where a result of the number of CRTs (Upgrades) increasing and the number of people subscribing to the staff's poor judgment of these upgrades further increasing. Poor judgment which sprang from an over reliance on statements, interviews, and guidebooks over feats, calculations and powerscaling. And a new system which despite all its claims of being "objective and mathematically accurate", has done little to mitigate it.
This was all caused by and is being prolonged by:
1. Having too many pages due to our staff's pitiful unwillingness to cull the number of pages in favor of our popularity and fear of workload. We value quantity over quality.
2.Having too many CRTs to manage our 25k pages. The vast majority of CRTs nowadays are upgrades, proving that the community at large values the most consistent high-ball.
3. Calculations (arguably one of the best tools at our disposal) are not checked and reviewed as they are supposed to be. Most calcs I've seen recently just get an "this looks okay" from normal members and staff that aren't even calc members.
4. Powerscaling being abused as well. A good deal of powerscaling is now hardly from if a character can consistently compete with whom they scale to, but if there's any minute statement to back it up.
5. Having too many staff members despite only a few actually doing what they are positioned for, and some having admittedly lost interest (just retire then). Having this many staff is unneeded as mass editing is a community effort or can be done by bots. Despite not needing over 70 staff, we still do.
6. The staff having lost their ability to assume good faith in regular members due to the scars of our past filled with vandalism and trolling, and since the staff are the "trusted members" this leaves the community at large feeling invalid in comparison, due to having not as important enough input in a discussion.
7. The schism between the staff and community continuously prolongs the inflation of our stats and pages, and thus our unreliability increases.
8. The community over-emphasizing higher tiers, as evidenced with the new system not actually being implemented in such a way that solves the inflation problem despite being marketed as "objective and mathematically accurate". We also over-emphasize philosophical mumbo jumbo that sounds impressive and try to use that as evidence for these higher tiers. 1-A Platonic concepts dozens of types of powers that really aren't that complicated come to mind.
Thank you for reading and I hope you understand my concerns, at least to some extent.
