ASB Chat Thread - 2015 Edition. Now with improved posts!

[DarkestLight]

>.> #SARCASM

>.>...

[Oslo]

Oh cool, I didn't know Em was learning about diving.

Be sure not to come up too fast or you will get the bends. D:

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

"Okay okay I'm sorry! Ill just leave then!"

So uh yeah, I'll leave this place for now. Out of the building we go!

First when I read this I thought it was on our battle and Aura was going to leave TPM because I'm hopeless with women :O

Then I noticed it was the Safari Adventure thread and was relieved.

[BTPoke]

And now i'm out of my funk, thank god. I've been really bummed out for the past couple of weeks, but now I'm fine, and ready to catch up on stuff.

[Oslo]

*gives BTPoke cake*

Do what you can.

[Charles Legend]

@ Mikachu "Dusk Fan" or "Fan of Dusk" which I think fits Venomoth nicely.

~Charles Legend

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Charles Legend, you are a legendary genius! Viuhka can also mean 'luck', figuratively.

[Puma]

So much stuff to do q-Q
Sorry guys, been working on a 40 page essay and some stuff for the university I plan to attend this october I'll be getting to all the fights and safaris soon enough though!

[Oslo]

So much stuff to do q-Q
Sorry guys, been working on a 40 page essay and some stuff for the university I plan to attend this october I'll be getting to all the fights and safaris soon enough though!

Jeezus, 40 pages and you're not even enrolled yet? I didn't write a paper that long until my first Master's degree. What kind of labour camp school do you plan to attend?

[Perfect Chaos]

Yeah seriously, I had to write a 10-12 page essay for my high school graduation but a 40-page one JUST for enrollment? That's definitely overkill @_@

[Oslo]

HAY GUYS OSLO NEEDS YOUR HELP!

Right now Grey is in the Safari Zone and he's participating in a Pokemon Contest. Rather than scoring his appeals myself, I'm going to try an experiment: I'm going to crowdsource scores from you guys. Here is the Contest criteria and here is Grey's first appeal. If you'd like to help, evaluate his appeal on a scale of 1-10. The score you give him must be end in a .0 or .5. PM your score to me and, after two-ish days, I'll calculate the mean for all the scores submitted. If Grey beats the scores of his NPC competitors (which I will predetermine), he will advance to the next round. The crowdsourcing process will repeat for the following two Contest rounds.

You don't need to be a Contest Judge to participate. Just look over the criteria and figure out how well you think Grey did. Here is some loose guidelines for scoring:

0 - 5.5: A Coordinator will only score in this range if they really eff shit up. Generally appeals that score this low are very easy to spot; the outcome of the appeal will deviate quite obviously from what the Coordinator intended. It is rare for a Coordinator to score this low.
6.0 - 6.5: A little better, but still a pretty darn underwhelming appeal overall. If an appeal scores in this range, it was probably a fairly unoriginal and contained some noticeable hiccups.
7.0 - 7.5: This range is for appeals that are good, but not amazing. Appeals in this range show some signs of creativity and flair, but generally they could be a little more original and memorable. Sometimes appeals in this range contain mistakes, but they're usually not very big ones.
8.0 - 8.5: Appeals in this range are generally very good. They contain creativity, dazzle the crowd and meet most (if not all) of the Contest criteria. Appeals in this range also probably don't contain any errors.
9.0 - 9.5: An exceptional appeal. The Coordinator did something here that was particularly special; they delivered an appeal you wouldn't have expected and it demonstrated an impressive amount of originality. Appeals in this range aren't super common, but they can definitely happen.
10.0: A virtually unattainable score. I can't really envision a scenario where someone would score this high. If it did, it would somehow end up on the frontpage of reddit.

So yeah, PM me the score you think Grey deserves (along with a short justification) and that's really all there is to it! Hopefully I can get at least two or three participants.

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks again for participating! The scores have all been averaged. The outcome is posted here.

[Puma]

Jeezus, 40 pages and you're not even enrolled yet? I didn't write a paper that long until my first Master's degree. What kind of labour camp school do you plan to attend?

Yeah seriously, I had to write a 10-12 page essay for my high school graduation but a 40-page one JUST for enrollment? That's definitely overkill @_@

Well, actually, the 40 pages are still for school. There is a new system here in austria, that would be, roughly translated, called like: "centralised school leaving examination, A level", according to a dictionary, haha xD
And for me to even be ALLOWED to participate in these exams, I need to write that essay. It's criticised a lot, but I can't do anything about it, also, I'm the first uhm... age group (I guess) they try it out on, so yay for me! I'm already done though... Mostly, just need to correct some stuff.

Also @Oslo Contest, I'll be writing something up very soon. Been thinking about applying for Contest Judge anyway. ^-^

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Back there, when I was at lukio (high school), I wrote an essay about videogame history. It was 12 pages long. Too bad the other students in my class had their essays like 4 pages long at maximum, so my grade dropped to 8 out of 10. 4 is the worst grade here, though. Still, it was a miracle to get 8 out of 10, unless my teacher was feeling pity for me.

[Cynder]

Damn Puma, I thought I had it bad with the sheer amount of maths I'm doing atm .-. but a 40 page essay would actually kill me, crikey. I feel you with the stupid exam reforms though, they're happening here in the UK as well; they just keep making things more and more difficult for us. Not faaaaaair. You should see the hoops I had to jump through to get an interview at Oxford; a 2.5 hour exam which I couldn't really prepare for and then I had to go down there for 3 days for interviews (oh no what a chore right (jk it was really nice; not for me though)). Didn't get a place in the end but ah well, still get to brag and say that I've briefly studied at both Oxford and Cambridge university

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Well, now that Mystic_clown has returned, among many others, we can celebrate his birthday! Happy Birthday, if I'm not mistaken, you'll get two points, can someone confirm, please.

[Blademaster]

Don't bother. He never returns. He'll abandon everyone again within a week like the last three times.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

But one of my friends just joined ASB and his birthday is soon as well so that's why I wanted to raise the issue.

[BTPoke]

so the whole "judge grey by the people" thing is throughout the whole contest or what?

[Perfect Chaos]

The crowdsourcing process will repeat for the following two Contest rounds.

Looks to be that way

[Oslo]

so the whole "judge grey by the people" thing is throughout the whole contest or what?

Yep! I just came here to say that HAY GUYS OSLO NEEDS YOUR HELP again! Grey has survived his first elimination and performed his second round appeal. The theme for this round is Blustery Winter Weather. His appeal is here. Once again, if you lovely folks could look over Grey's appeal, come up with a score and PM that to me along with a short justification, it would be much appreciated! The scoring criteria is a few posts above. Even if you didn't participate in the first round scoring, you're totally welcome to participate in the second round scoring.

Cheers!

[Charles Legend]

@ Mikachu technically I used Google Translate, although it could not translate "Viuhka" into 'luck'

~Charles Legend

[Oslo]

HAY GUYS OSLO NEEDS YOUR HELP again! Grey has made the third round! His instructions are here and his appeal is here. The scoring criteria is a few posts above this one. You don't need to have participated in the last couple rounds to participate in this one. Just PM your score along with a brief justification to me.

Thaaaaaaaaanks. :3

[DarkestLight]

I will be reffing this Weekend-Saturday all day until around 6 pm.

Lot of comedy work and I need to hunker down for it. See ya Saturday.

[Oslo]

Yeah, this week is tough for me too. D: My teaching load has reached critical mass and I have to keep giving stupid boring talks on stupid boring topics. Sorry if I drag my heels on stuff.

[BTPoke]

same. I'm working 3rd shift this entire week for work (so 10pm till 5 in the morning) because I have to learn how to close/open the store for manager purposes, so my rhythm has been thrown way off because of me adapting to a change in sleep.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Do your best. My Japanese course doesn't seem to make it, so it looks like my schedule is opening. Being an ASB member since 2009, I'd really love to help our community and start reffing, but I'm hesitating. I just don't get it how to manage it and take account of certain aspects. The hardest for me would most likely the stat modifying. You can't possibly tell the refs are calculating the damage according to this:


Source: Bulbapedia: Damage

[Oslo]

Nah, we don't take that sort of thing into account. Damage is determined by an attack's type/base power and in-battle stat modifiers. That's it, more or less.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

But if, say, your Special Attack is reduced by 2, does it simply mean the damage from a Special Attack is cut from Excellent to Good, for instance? This is how n00b I am.

[Oslo]

That could be one way to ref it. Or maybe a -2 Special Attack reduces the damage output by 2 HP. You're allowed some flexibility in how you ref certain things. :3

[Underscore]

Since we're talking about damage formulas now, I think we should also take into account the physical characteristics of the Pokemon. The battles here seem more type-oriented. This is why Pokemon with 4x weakness become very unpopular (Gyarados, Garchomp, Golem, etc.). I think a Gyarados Hydro Pump would do more than a Rattata using Thunderbolt but I would expect the opposite in people's reffing.

[Oslo]

I believe this came up in conversation a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly, Grey was definitely a big fan of that whole thing: an Alakazam's Psychic doing more damage than an Abra's Psychic, a Steelix's Tackle doing more damage than a Caterpie's Tackle, etc. I don't think anyone actually introduced this sort of thing into their reffing formula. If other people want to do this sort of thing, that's cool, but since I tend to ref so many battles at once I'm not super eager to add another layer of complexity to my damage calcs.

[Puma]

I always wanted to write a little reffing tutorial, including various damage/ep cost formulas, as well as all the BBCode stuff. Don't know if there's any demand though o-o

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I demand!

[Ayeun]

I'm even willing to offer a prize to contributions to this 'ref tutorial' when its done...

[Puma]

Oh, well, sounds great! Don't want any prizes though, lol. It's supposed to be for the community, not for my greed to get more points or something, haha x)
Is there anything out of the ordinary people would want to see covered? I mean, I'll be including the following things for sure:

-> Layout Creation (BBCodes and all that stuff.)
-> Damage and EP Cost formulas.
-> Status Effects and Abilities
-> Basic Writing Tips
-> (...)

Anything you would like to add?

(Also, which forum would house the thread? Business or Towers? o

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Awesome! Of course the tutorials would be mere guidelines, we don't want to have 20 Puma copycats reffing, do we? At least I'm already having a picture how my reffing would seem a bit unique.

[Ayeun]

Also, which forum would house the thread? Business or Towers? o:

Post it in the towers section for now, while we all contribute to it. When its done, we can sticky it in the towers FOREVER!!!!!

[Puma]

Awesome! Of course the tutorials would be mere guidelines, we don't want to have 20 Puma copycats reffing, do we?

*cough* Yeah, one is enough. Haha xDD Just kidding (:

Of course, I merely strife to explain how you can use BBCodes to create your own unique template, nothing more.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Hmph, this sucks. Ylivieskan Kansalaisopisto (the school where I should teach Japanese in a few weeks) has changed their webpage a bit and I can't see how many students have applied to my course. Last time I checked, there were only 2 which is not enough but now I can't see it anymore. I just hope they inform me soon enough.

EDIT: and Miika Säily! He'd be very happy if he got some points

[Cynder]

I also made a spreadsheet with rudimentary calcs in it if anyone's interested? May have to adjust the formulae to fit your reffing style but it's a matter of inputting the base power and selecting which modifiers are active and it calcs everything for you. It's nice.