Community Vote on your Tiering (or Retiering) Thread

[Jopustopin]

So, recently there's been a lot of arguing about tiers and what class is in what tier and why, and then there was arguing about how to go about putting what class into which tier, so I decided to make this thread to help the community decide together which tiering thread is tiering classes correctly. This is a relatively involved process, and is going to take a while to complete, but at the end there can be only one tiering process.

The purpose of this thread is to vote on which tiering threads will be Giant in the Playground Cannon and which will be excommunicated permanently. By order of Pope Jopustopin, writer of the Camel's Handbook.

[Jopustopin]

Reserved for future use. Will list tiering threads by tier. For example, Tiering Thread # X: tier 1. Tiering Thread #Y: tier 2.... etc.

Please don't use this vote for joke votes, protest votes, or discussion of whether or not voting on tiering the individual community tiering threads is a good idea. If you don't think that tiering tier threads is an accurate description of tier threads , then what can you possibly hope to gain by posting in a thread for tiering the tiering class threads? This is meant to be a useful resource for DMs and players, to be able to use this tier thread as a source for which class tiering thread to use. So voting for the worst community tiering thread as the best tiering thread meme isn't a good idea - even if it's an obvious joke, it will throw doubt on whether or not the rest of this thread is serious. This thread is also not for arguing about how the community tiering threads should be defined - they are what they are, and having more than one conflicting standard for tiering the tier threads is only really going to cause confusion.

[Jopustopin]

Last Reserved Post.

One really important thing here is that you can't just toss a vote out into the void with no information and then just leave. You need some solid justification for your vote, and preferably some interaction with the discussion. If you don't, it's not that big a deal, cause you can always add justification, but your vote may not be counted until then, and you'll be notified if you've been left out. Our goal here is accuracy in tiering the tier threads, and if you think a tier thread is tiered in a certain way premised on incorrect knowledge, then that should be plainly visible from what you're saying about the tier thread. A few sentences is reasonable, a paragraph or two is quite good, and a few posts on the topic is great. Generally speaking, the more controversial a tier thread is, the more explanation you're going to want to give, and the same is the case for individually weird votes. Just giving "tier thread X" a 1 and saying, "Jeez, you called this a one explicitly in your initial post. How much detail do you really want me to give?" is likely sufficient. Doing the same about a tiering thread that's had ten pages of individual attention is probably not.



Thank you to all, let's keep this civil.

[eggynack]

I mean, Jormengand was refusing to take any input whatsoever, given in any form, about the nature of their thread. That alone was cause enough to start over, and we'd been discussing doing so for awhile, relatively low key style. Now they've apparently started banning folks from their thread for questioning the almighty procedure. Also seems worth it for the sake of Jormengand's apparently failing health in the face of tiering stress. I think my thread has a lot of advantages even if couched only in the term's of a lack of disadvantages that the other thread had. The longer form and somewhat less structured analysis thing seemed like a good idea as well, which is why I included it. The tier system doesn't belong to Jormengand. Everyone should have input, and a claim that things should operate in one way rather than another way should have justification.

Not sure how your tier tiering is structured. I'ma give myself an arbitrary tier two, cause I think I got pretty close to ideal though there's always room for improvement, and the other thread, I dunno, a four or five, cause it was a reasonable idea that's gone in really weird directions.

[OldTrees1]

Well, Tiering threads after the 1st exclusively or almost exclusively focused on the assigning Tier ranks to a collection of material. Honestly that seems to be missing the majority of the point and value of the original thread was posted.

Tiers were used to attempt to describe a qualitative difference in material that had in game impact that a DM might want want to estimate or predict in advance. As such, clearly communicating the type of difference being discussed was second only to giving DMs an ability to estimate in advance the impact of that difference on their game. Tier Lists were merely a guiding tool to both of those ends. As with most guidelines, they are fallible in comparison to understanding what they are being used to teach.

To that end, but still to keep with communication standards, I will rank 3 of those threads on a scale of:
1)Complete clarity delivered to all types of audiences
2)Complete clarity delivered to some types of audiences and high level literacy delivered to all audiences
3a)High level literacy delivered to all audiences
3b)Complete clarity to some audiences and base literacy to all audiences.
4)High level literacy delivered to some audiences and base literacy delivered to all audiences
5)Base literacy delivered to all audiences
6)Base literacy delivered to some audiences
7)Failed Transmission

Now literacy gained is a bit hard to measure but I will do my best.

The original thread continues to be referenced today and had a formative role in the overall discussion. For any high level literacy to exist today either it was founded in the original thread or in a "new insights into X" thread. Being unable to find such a thread I must assume that the original thread was Tier 4+. However since Tiers are still a highly contentious topic, clearly complete clarity was not delivered to everyone. This limits it as Tier 2-. Since there have been lots of serious misunderstandings about the tier system, I doubt every reader of this original thread came away with a high literacy(not 2 or 3a). However enough people have read this original thread that I don't want to discount some completely understanding the concept being communicated (3b over 4).

Both of the current threads debating the ranking of specific material are just that, focused on creating the guiding tool rather than focus on communicating the concept. Only one of those threads(Jormengand) has been going long enough to observe the actual discussion, but large chunks of that thread were disowned by the opening poster and can be considered part of both the first thread and the thread(eggynack's) they spun off into due to being disowned. By focusing on the tool I cannot expect a universal high level literacy would be gained by a new reader population. Thus we are looking at Tier 4-. However both threads did actually have some decent discussion between the various differing interpretations of the concept of tiers. As such I would expect some to gain high level literacy from the readings (so also Tier 4+).

Final Rankings
(noting but not accounting for the seniority bias inherent in judging based upon communication of understanding)
Original Thread: 3b, 4, 3a, 2
Jormengand: 4
Eggynack(as of time of this post): 4

Just as the Tier System has high standard in order to encompass abilities that can endanger campaigns, so to does this ranking have high standard in order to follow the pattern. These rankings are not as harsh as they might first appear.

[Zanos]

Personally I think Eggynack and Jormengand should just fight to the death at the next cult meeting. If they agree, I'll go ahead and waive the monthly fee this time. I mostly use it to cover food anyway, and we can just eat the loser.

[Troacctid]

My tier list is of course Tier 1, since it is the best tier list.

[Vaz]

Just came here to say "Told you so".

[noce]

I think I'll make a thread to vote if the community should adopt the result of this thread as canon or if we should follow jaronk, jongermand, eggynack or a brand new tiering.

Really guys, cui prodest?

[Jormengand]

Maybe, just to be meta, I should dispute the procedure of this thread, so we end up with a discussion about how whether or not we should dispute the procedure of the thread where we tier the procedures of the threads where we discuss the procedure of the thread where we discuss the procedure of the thread where we tier classes.

[OldTrees1]

Maybe, just to be meta, I should dispute the procedure of this thread, so we end up with a discussion about how whether or not we should dispute the procedure of the thread where we tier the procedures of the threads where we discuss the procedure of the thread where we discuss the procedure of the thread where we tier classes.

Unlike your posts, I think this thread would accept a discussion about its procedure.


Not sure how your tier tiering is structured.
This indicates the description of the procedure was already mentioned to be vague.


To that end, but still to keep with communication standards, I will rank 3 of those threads on a scale of:
Here I am questioning what we will use to judge the tier threads while proposing a metric and using that metric to rank the threads.

So yes, be meta if it means you are contributing to the thread by either following the procedure or discussing improving the procedure. I would be glad to see more of your honest contributions.

Although you could also contributing by going meta via describing the pros and cons of various levels of flexibility in thread procedure.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I... think this entire thread should probably be locked and deleted, because I don't foresee it going anywhere good or healthy.

[Karl Aegis]

Every tier discussion thread will be trolled until it dies. It's just the way of the world.

That said, a tier discussion thread started by those very same trolls is shameful. This newest thread obviously gets to the bottom of the barrel with 0.00% chance of making it out.

[Jopustopin]

This newest thread obviously gets to the bottom of the barrel with 0.00% chance of making it out.

This isn't a tier discussion thread. This is a tier "tier discussion thread" thread.


Unlike your posts, I think this thread would accept a discussion about its procedure.


Actually, I don't want to bias this thread by having a voting system similar to one of the tiering threads that we're going to vote on. So I will both, allow a discussion and not allow a discussion and have two different outcomes. That is, one outcome going by the way I decided to do it (it is my thread and I'm doing all the work) and another outcome as the result of community discussion.


I... think this entire thread should probably be locked and deleted, because I don't foresee it going anywhere good or healthy.

Good example of an off-topic discussion. Please do not discuss this in this thread; if you think this is an important topic for discussion create another thread discussing whether this thread should be locked and deleted. FYI, I take this thread to subway and we walk six miles a day together. It's healthy.

Excellent work OldTrees1. I will give out my answers soon (I don't want to bias the voting). However, the hallmark for my voting is on what tier the beguiler is in. I went to Eggynack's and he doesn't even have the beguiler in a tier yet. No bueno.

CaPtMalHammer