I would just like to state a few things.
1. To those who prefer a "faith in the masses" system, trust me, it's not nearly as good as the council system. This is coming from someone who was outraged that we moved to councils a year or so ago. In the old (but not really old) days we had a system where anyone with a halfway decent rating could vote, and all that happened was "let's see what <insert prominent member of UU community with flashy badges and bold name here> has to say and I'll just bandwagon with them". The current council system gives the community an open forum for discussion about Suspects, and the IRC channel provides a place where community members talk
directlywith Senators. Even better, Senators have to stay up to date or risk removal. This is a functional system.
2. Okay can people stop writing off the opposing argument to banning Sand as "semantics"? If the ban-Sand group is going to fundamentally and controversially change Smogon's banning philosophy with significant opposition, then it's a bit rude to write off the keep-Sand group as arguing over semantics. There are, or at least should be, numerous justifications that the pro-ban Senators have to make such as:
1. Is the metagame truly better without Sand?
2. Is it acceptable to ban something on personal preference?
3. What is the community's stance on this issue, and to what extent should that opinion be considered.
etc.
The default option in this situation has, has, has to be Do Not Ban. Policy and precedence (Brightpowder ban notwithstanding, though that ban was ridiculously controversial and should be taken with a grain of salt) both dictate that Sand should not leave, yet both the community and Senate believe (as far as I know o_O) that this issue is not resolved. The burden of proof lies on the pro-ban group, and they're relying on arguments such as "better metagame" and "more fun" to justify a ban. I'm not saying or trying to imply that that is poor logic (I addressed that in a previous post), but to write off the opposing argument (which employs both policy and precedence) as "semantics" is fundamentally wrong.
Furthermore, this is not a mathematical issue. Numbers don't speak for themselves, so everyone has to resort to subjectivity to some extent to interpret the numbers, and as soon as you do that, questions pop up. Is 6.1% usage enough to warrant a ban? How relevant are usage stats to this issue? Since there are no 1337 stats how much do these stats really matter? My interpretation, for the record, is that the 6.1% usage is evidence (though not particularly strong evidence) against the ban, but I need to concede that Pokemon (namely Wobbuffet) have been banned for lower usage. I also should point out that Pokemon with higher usage (Alakazam for example) have avoided the banhammer, so that argument does go both ways. With precedents like that it's hard to rely on usage stats to make a decision.
EDIT: Derp, I should also talk about damage calculations :P. I do not see damage calculations as necessary for either side of the argument as this issue is almost entirely a philosophical issue. Nobody to my knowledge is trying to go the "Sand is broken" route, so the pro-ban side is falling back to the "Sand is uncompetitive" or a "Sand is boring" argument (which in my opinion, is little more than a "Sand is gay" argument, but that's neither here nor there...). Numbers are usually critical to a Suspect decision, and pro-banners in general enjoy overloading their opposition with numbers such as in the Alakazam discussions and the Hail discussions. In this discussion, however, both sides somewhat agree that Sand is not broken so numbers are irrelevant. I find that a bit unsettling that this issue has digressed to a purely philosophical one because if banning something off of personal preference is deemed acceptable, it's a slippery slope to future "I don't like this so off to Ubers/BL/BL2 it goes!" decisions, which as I've mentioned before potentially damage the credibility of the Suspect process. Just a concern for now of course.
Fourthly, someone else posted:
kokoloko said:
Okay then please go ahead and find me a solid definition of the term broken that isn't just as subjective as the term fun
Smogon's Philosophy gives a pretty good definition:
"only when it becomes very apparent that a Pokémon is far too powerful to be in line with a balanced metagame is it banished permanently from the standard arena."
It's subjective of course, but not nearly as subjective as the term "fun". I mean, this definition has been used by Smogon for a long time, and most likely has been agreed upon by Smogon's top brass (at the time it was written at least). Not a perfect definition, but it's not as subjective as "more fun".
Just some thoughts and opinions.