Ramblings about team rater badge reqs and B101

I've been thinking about it, and I feel like team posting as a new path towards getting badged is a good thing for this community, even if the badge it leads to suggests a different kind of activity. The competitive community (I'm guilty here too btw) is very stingy these days about sharing teams outside of our own circles -- we barely even want to share or discuss ideas (scraped ones even) regarding EV spreads or set moves. Everything is about having the smallest edge and keeping it to yourself, so it's good move like I mentioned already that there is now a concrete reward process for those who share / post valuable teams for the community.

Ske's team dump thread is an example of what I feel should be included as part of the new team rater badge contributions, even though these types of threads are posted outside of the RMT/B101 subforum. Ske isn't even the only one to have done something like this either; Ben Gay and Z0mog also come to mind here. Good posts in the Bazaar threads could be something worth considering too. Just my point on this in general is that worthwhile team-related sharing should be rewarded outside of the B101 subforum too, if possible, especially considering the climate and competitive culture we share that actively discourages this type of contributiveness in the first place.

As for posting teams that get featured counting towards the team rater badge, [redacted]. I don't even know if the HOF is a thing anymore, and while I have no problem with it hosting and featuring "fun" teams I definitely feel like the selections should be curated more stringently in light of the new badge reqs.

My last thoughts have to do with B101 overall, which obviously you are involved in (although this tangent kind of ties in Smogon in general). But I feel Smogon doesn't hasn't done enough to put forth resources that actually TEACH people how to build. A lot of rates etc. shape up teams but most of the suggestions have to do with what's meta appropriate at the time and not always to do with what makes a team "good" in the first place (Redacted's post in redacted thread is a perfect example of doing both well).

To extrapolate on my point about "teaching people how to build" one example I have on this is the teambuilding guide hosted by UberPyro some years ago. This guide has never been re-made or even updated in the years following its posting, which is a shame because I feel that a resource such as this would be critical and foundational even to actually helping users to understand and learn building through concrete cross-generational basics rather than pattern mimicry etc. The tutoring program takes care of a lot of this, but the mish mash of usual forum resources outside of that don't actually take you through the process of building - they just have some things that are good to know about (VR, speed tiers, etc.) A lot of these resources are too spread around IMO and there should be a post or something along those lines to actually teach users how to go through, learn, and use these resources towards building etc.

There's also a lack of written resources regarding good battling habits too / concrete ways of improving -- Shurtugal's old guide is still pretty good, but there's no reason that should have been the only guide of its kind out there even up till now.

Most of these things I've shared so far I've been thinking about for a long while now, but with the new rater badge reqs I felt like it was a good as time as any to share them with someone. Sorry if this seems defamatory or just out there but for the most part these thoughts aren't exactly new/spontaneous to myself either.

I heard that there is a re-work of B101 planned for gen8, I hope some of these thoughts and suggestion can be included!