Serious Pokecommunity then vs Now

[Palamon]

How different was Pokecommunity when you first joined? I want this to be a serious discussion with little to no jokes.

I joined Pokecommunity back in 2009. Around this time, a thing that was very popular was basically, literally everyone wanted to run their own Pokemon fansite. If I recall correctly, this was before I joined, btw, Pokecommunity was a collection of fansite runners that came together to create one big Pokemon Community forum? Please correct me on that if I'm wrong, though, original people that were on here since 2002. But, anyway, there were a lot of Pokemon fan sites. Pokemon Nightmare, Psypoke, Marriland being some of ones I remembered that are mostly dead now or even gone now. Nowadays, all that's truly left from the Pokemon Fansite boom are Serebii, Bulbapedia and possibly Marriland, but they're not Marriland anymore.

Forums appearance wise are pretty different now. We used to vbulletin 3, but I think the devs of the forum run a lot of custom stuff here so it's no longer completely reliant on that client/software. (Dakota please correct me, lmfao). Needless to say, the dev team was completely different, obviously.

Staff ranks were completely different. We had moderators, super moderators, Site Admins Assistant Admins and Webmaster. Battle Server staff, Social Media Team, Daily Staff and Rom Hacker Moderators were not a thing that existed yet. Eventually Site Admins and Assitant Admins became just well... admins. But, for a brief period of time, we had separate types of admins. No, I do not know what the difference was, please don't ask. Super Moderators were phased out a few years back now, though.

Obviously, the staff are a lot different now than when I first joined. Staff team used to be a lot bigger. I'm not going to name literally every single person who was staff from when I first joined to now, but here's some people I remember most prominently who were on staff. Of the ogs, btw, I think the only ones that are left are bobandbill, Hiroshi Sotomura (I think his name is jake) Tyler (Professor Plum/Erik Destler) and Cherrim/Erica. Also, Syd/Al, I believe was a moderator in the late 2000s. Also, Adventure/Riki? I believe they (are your pronouns he or they btw please correct me if I'm wrong) These are the only people I can remember that were staff when I first joined that are still on the staff team now.

Some people that are on staff now that joined in the 2010s are still staff now, though, but only two.

Some prominent people I remember that were staff when I joined that aren't staff anymore are: Drew (user Taemin), Gavin (Abnegation), Went/Ivysaur, Arcanine, Hiidoran, Ghost Owl (I literally don't know how to spell your old username, sorry), Kaori, Forever (Nica), LiveWire, Meganium and Astinus. I'd literally be here all day if I listed everyone, so I'm just going to list those people that came to mind to me the first out of everyone.

We used to have these things called social groups which were a separate section from forums and threads. You join them, or be invited into them, and inside these groups were discussions or polls. This was a feature that was pretty much removed from pc back in 2011 on April Fools day.

Name Changes went back and forth from being a thing to not being a thing. There was a large period of time where getting a Name Change on Pokecommunity was simply not possible. Then there was a period of time where there were name change seasons where you could only request a name change during a Name Change season. It would be, I think a period of a month where you could request a name change and the staff would not do it until the thread was closed. These seasonal name changes were usually once every four months, and then went down to twice a year to being temporarily not a thing anymore, to always being available for anyone who wants one, but with limits. I'd say the history of the Name Change Threads on PC is a story all on its own, by the way. A lot of people who joined pc after 2018 probably have never experienced this Name Change fiasco arc.

There were different donation tiers. Donator tiers were also something that went through many changes since I first joined. When I joined originally, there were six donator tiers with different perks: donator tier 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Most people were never the 6th one. During this time, your name would be in blue and italics like they are now, but then for awhile, we went green. After we were green, tiers were changed completely. I believe after the green period, the donation tiers were Silver, Gold, Crystal and Platinum. After some time, these were simplified to just crystal and platinum, which is where we are today.

Staff were a little stricter than they are now. There was a one month bump rule where if a thread hadn't been posted in after a month, the thread was considered dead, and shouldn't be bumped anymore. Nowadays, I don't think that's a rule anymore, at least, not the one month old rule, anyway. But the staff were definitely extremely strict back then.

I'd say that back around the time I joined PC, there were around over 2,000 to maybe 10,000 people around. I bet you 3/4s of those people were just lurking in romhacks, though. Nowadays, I'd say the userbase here is maybe around 1,000 to 2,000 max. This is definitely because forums are no longer the juggernaut they used to be. But back in maybe 2009-2014 there were thousands upon thousands of people here. Nowadays, I'd say most of the people around here are the regulars or new people who join for Romhacks or are just here for fun. I definitely cannot say for sure.

The forums/sections we've had here have drastically changed over the years, names included. Off-Topic, for example, has gone through so many different names. Other Chat, Other Voting Polls, General Chat, The Treehouse (I hated it when it was called the Treehouse btw it was literally just shitpost central), and now Off-Topic, which what it's called today. Pokecommunity went through this really weird phase where forums were named ridiculous things. Like, New Users section was called The Front Lawn/Main Street for a period of time. There used to be an entire forum dedicated to debates, and that was called Debate & Discussion and the Round Table at some point before its dissolution into Off-Topic.

We also had this weird period of time where members could vote on a new forum that would be made. It'd be made into a trial forum that would stay if it was popular and be archived/dissolved into a forum that was similar to it. One of these forums that was a trial forum that actually lasted a really long time was called The Mall. This one lasted awhile before being removed from the forums. We also had a Tabletop gaming forum which is long gone.

At some point, all the generations had their own forums. This changed around the Sun/Moon era where all the previous generations were combined into one big section. That's how it is to this day now. But, if you were around in the 2000s until around 2016, then you'd have experienced this.

The blogs section was very popular back in the day. Almost everyone who had one would use one. There were some people who kept their blogs updated very regularly. Nowadays, blogs are mostly someone no one reads or uses. A shame, really. But, I guess blogs are an ancient feature that only some dedicated people here use anymore, or read.

We used to have these things called Emblems. Staff would give them out to members on various occasions, be it an event around the forum, for various activities you did, or idk, they just were fond of you or something. Emblems have been phased out for badges at this point in time. I never really did earn a lot of emblems when those were a big thing, by the way.

Both birthdays and member anniversaries were displayed on the calendar section of pc's index for a few years. This was not very long lasting, though, and now only birthdays are shown on the home page here.

We used to have hundreds of forum styles that have since been archived or deleted. Some of the styles I remember that are gone were one that was themed around Misty, Pokemon Adventures, and Umbreon. None of these forums styles are ones I believe you can pick anymore. (I miss you Misty forum style.)

We didn't have Discord, and I believe we had livechat or something. Maybe a Skype group, but I never was in either of those livechat or Skype groups. The Battle Server has also had periods of time where it existed, or didn't. I think there was only a short period of time where's Pc's battle server was offline for an extended period of time, though.

Server on PC used to extremely slow, and connecting sometimes would be extremely hard if there was tons of traffic. There were times that if PC was over capacity, and image of a fainted Porygon would sometimes appear to tell you PC's servers were overloaded. Nowadays, I'd say PC runs a lot smoother. It still has its hiccups here and there, though, a server can only handle so much traffic at one time, after all.

As for what the Pokemon side was like when I first joined:

We were in Generation IV and Pokemon Platinum was about to come out. There were only 493 Pokemon at the time. HeartGold and SoulSilver hadn't been announced yet, either at the time I joined, but it happened a few months later. Being a full time Youtuber was nothing any single person would have ever considered in this era, so most Pokemon News I got was directly from Serebii. I still check Serebii in 2021, but less since Youtubers are easier to follow, in my opinion.

As for the real world when I joined... I was a 12 year old kid, and I believe Barack Obama was still president. Times were different. My life was different. I was in middle school in the sixth grade. I'm now an adult at 24 years old who is trying to eventually get my life going, but with the world the way it is at the moment, I'm holding off on most of that. I went through a lot of weird and dumb phases while on Pokecommunity as well, but one thing that definitely hasn't changed is that I still like writing and anime. But, as a person, I'm definitely not the same Palamon I was in 2009, that's for sure.

This is all that comes to my mind, though. This thread ended up being an essay. Wow.

 

[moon]

ITT pala bashing our cute forum names

Sorry, I couldn't stay completely serious in a thread like this - it's perfect for old jokes tbh.

I joined PC in 2007 and experienced many of the things you mention. I think "community sites" were just about to be phased out, or just had been, back then, and we were becoming just a forum with no real attached site anymore. Username colors was a huge deal, judging from how very mega cool the staffers looked and how many times the Supporters color was changed. Generally, I was younger, things were more exciting, there were more people but everything was a bit uglier and more complicated and unstable. And drama, ugh.

I like where we are at now. We still have a lot of users, despite people chanting "Forums Will Soon Die" for the past decade and a half. Clearly they didn't. The devs and admins have worked wonders to make the site better than ever, and everything generally works pretty smoothly (it seems!). Plus, we have Discord now, making it easier than ever to get to know other PC users. I'm older and maybe not quite as excitable, which I also think matters for my view on things. And, I guess, having seen the admin side of things for a few years also took away some of the magic - but also added a lot of good understanding and respect for how the site really works and is run and the efforts going on to keep it great. <3

 

[Duck]

I've joined on and off many times before, but this is, I believe the first time I stuck around for so long (yay?).

That said, I have the memory of a goldfish, and was never that much involved with things so here are the few things I can remember:

- I remember Sydian being the mod of Challenges (this has always been like the one section I always frequented whenever I'm around here) and being the only mod at that.

On the topic of Challenges: The Hall of Fame definitely happened sometime after my last stay - which is a neat little difference.

- I remember Emblems and remember being disappointed Emblems weren't a thing anymore when I came back. Emblems were cuter than badges and even if they weren't so displayable like they are now, I still kinda miss them.

- I remember being so jealous of people that had blogs - but I was like 13 or something fetus-ish like that, so I had absolutely zero way to pay 5 bucks to a different country and get that supporter status so I just stewed in my corner.

- I think I got one of the phases where we didn't have name changes? Or maybe only seasonal ones, because I remember alt accounts were a thing, probably due to name reasons.

- Travel Journals and VPP weren't a thing (although I think VPP already were a thing on PE2K), so good thing they're around now! I love the concept of these forums.

- I'm pretty sure we didn't have access to CSS back then, only basic BB Code? I could be wrong, but nowadays I see people using fancy CSS and fonts and whatever and it definitely hits a bit different.

 

[Ivysaur]

Staff were a little stricter than they are now. There was a one month bump rule where if a thread hadn't been posted in after a month, the thread was considered dead, and shouldn't be bumped anymore. Nowadays, I don't think that's a rule anymore, at least, not the one month old rule, anyway. But the staff were definitely extremely strict back then.

Man, I remember when I was a mod in Other Trivia (=Forum Games), we had a four word rule so people couldn't just jump into, say, the Count to Infinity and post "55" and leave, you had to write four words somehow. That's how it sort of became a DCC for the section, even more shitposty than the original.

I feel so terrible for punishing people for that incredibly arbitrary rule now (not that it was a big punishment, to be fair, I mostly sent warnings).

 

[Starlight]

I remember things from PC that are probably such a no-no that I can't even mention them here 😅

PC has always been my home since day one, far above all other Pokémon spaces! However... and I'm gonna be the party pooper here...

There are reasons this account had no posts for years and years. PC felt far less safe to me back then. People are talking about staff being stricter, and they were with certain rules, but there was also more leniency with other things that simply wouldn't be tolerated now. Cliques were also rampant at times, and it didn't always feel as friendly and inclusive as it does today. Sorry to all my friends that are long term staff and members, but I would never have even considered joining staff back then.

I am extremely thankful to everyone involved in making PC my home over the years, and especially those that have made it the wonderful place it is today ❤

 

[Flowerchild]

omg this thread giving me the feels

i joined in 2010, but it took me a while to look outside the bubble of rom hacking. after that, some of my earliest memories of being part of an actual community on pc were actually in the old VIP forum, back when we had green usernames, a supporter skype group, and did theme collabs. i miss it so much. i miss blogs too, especially when we used to blog funny moments from the skype convo (i still have some on there). but blogs are probably so eclipsed by social media that i doubt they'll be the same ever again.

though, i don't think that of every removed feature pala mentioned. it's weird to think about how many ideas and features pc has had and discarded over years and generations of staff. some of them were stuff that just no longer made sense in the shifting tides of the internet, but some were still good ideas that we could try today! so here's my (personal) goals for a few things

Both birthdays and member anniversaries were displayed on the calendar section of pc's index for a few years. This was not very long lasting, though, and now only birthdays are shown on the home page here.

I want to bring this back in some capacity. It's low-priority, and I'm not sure where to put it exactly. But it was cute and seems worth having!

We used to have hundreds of forum styles that have since been archived or deleted. Some of the styles I remember that are gone were one that was themed around Misty, Pokemon Adventures, and Umbreon. None of these forums styles are ones I believe you can pick anymore. (I miss you Misty forum style.)

I miss so many old styles, especially Forever Standing and Quilava's Glaciation. I wanted to make New UI versions of more styles, but after the New UI came out we wanted to start moving to more modern forum software and with a tiny volunteer dev team we didn't really have the ability to multitask. Once we're no longer on vB at all tho... I got so many I want to bring back, including some I've already begun porting~

We used to have these things called social groups which were a separate section from forums and threads. You join them, or be invited into them, and inside these groups were discussions or polls. This was a feature that was pretty much removed from pc back in 2011 on April Fools day.

Omg social groups... a really good idea hamstrung by how bad vBulletin's implementation of it was. I remember being in a fakemon pixel art social group in like 2011 and it was the shit. But they were super messy to use and especially as we updated PC's UI and those got completely left behind. I still think the idea has promise. To me a social group is halfway between a forum and a thread. It's more lightweight than a forum, such that it doesn't need a spot on the index or to be managed directly by staff, but it can support multiple discussions, unlike a thread. That could easily be useful on PC for, say, clubs? Who knows.

We also had this weird period of time where members could vote on a new forum that would be made. It'd be made into a trial forum that would stay if it was popular and be archived/dissolved into a forum that was similar to it. One of these forums that was a trial forum that actually lasted a really long time was called The Mall. This one lasted awhile before being removed from the forums. We also had a Tabletop gaming forum which is long gone.

Forum Frontier! Or... Forum Festival? I can't remember now it was one of the two. I really think this was a good idea that was ditched too quickly. I don't remember the details, I know there was some drama surrounding it? People upset forums they liked were closing, etc. I think not everyone was on the same page about it. But I think the idea of giving members some say in sections was really cool, and I enjoyed things like the Mall while they lasted. Maybe this would pair well with social group revitalization? Forum frontier but after the month is over if it's not popular enough to stay it just gets converted to a public social group. Giving me ideas now...

/it is 7 am and i've not slept so this post is a little delirious, i am sorry

 

[Bay]

One of the things I remembered was back then many people have really nice render and shiny graphics for their signatures and avatars. It's ones where you probably have an anime or video game character and then in the background you have like gendered fireworks or shattering glass in the background. Several people have threads and shops dedicated to those graphics. I remember trying those myself and instead of getting advice how to improve I get laughed at and comments like "yup you're a beginner haha". That then turned me off from making graphics lol

We would have Member of the Month/Year polls and more often than not those can get heated as folks that didn't get mentioned feel left out and it was pretty much a popularity contest. Really glad we don't do that anymore.

 

[moon]

(Forum Foundry, it was called for a while)

Also yes, MotM / MotY was ridiculous.

 

[NipahRika]

I remember things from PC that are probably such a no-no that I can't even mention them here 😅

PC has always been my home since day one, far above all other Pokémon spaces! However... and I'm gonna be the party pooper here...

There are reasons this account had no posts for years and years. PC felt far less safe to me back then. People are talking about staff being stricter, and they were with certain rules, but there was also more leniency with other things that simply wouldn't be tolerated now. Cliques were also rampant at times, and it didn't always feel as friendly and inclusive as it does today. Sorry to all my friends that are long term staff and members, but I would never have even considered joining staff back then.

I am extremely thankful to everyone involved in making PC my home over the years, and especially those that have made it the wonderful place it is today ❤

Yeeep. I remember some stuff back then be it good or bad. I felt PC was a bit safer than Serebii was back then. Serebii had some hostile members which lead to me leaving the site behind. Also yeah, the staff being strict was a thing but only certain rules. I would say PC is still one of the better fan sites. Most fandoms and communities I am/was a part of had issues with cliques. Nothing you can sadly do... I used to get pissed and angry at them on other sites/communities, but came to realize it wasn't gonna change anything.

I felt that when you said PC felt far less safe to you. I've had this happen before on other sites too where I no longer felt safe so left.

There's a lot of stuff that isn't tolerated now all over the Internet such as using certain words/phrases, homophobic/transphobic slurs, etc. I agree with you, I'd have never joined staff back then either. Younger me did wanna become a moderator back then, but I think requirements were stricter than they are today. I just don't remember any of my old usernames or emails, but know I've been here for ages off and on.

 

[Megan]

I remember when I joined I mostly stuck to PokeTrivia which back then had its post counter off. The club section wasn't a thing but at some point went through its first iteration. I remember joining my first club in there and shortly after it was merged with Pokemon General, iirc. After that PC got into its experimental phase where we got all these different short term subforums of which the Pokemon World one might have stuck around the longest. The one where people could create their own regions and get feedback on etc.
Later on the club section was remade and has been around ever since. I also believe the shiny club was pretty much the only club that has always been around...

There was also the VIP Lounge which was a forum solely for supporters. I think that might have been one of the few threads I frequented. I used to wander around PC aimlessly a lot. Don't know if it was that the climate back then was a lot harsher or if I was just not able to integrate well (probably both). But nowadays it's definitely a lot easier to find others to hang out with; probably because a lot of the people who are still around might have grown up a bit?

It might have also gotten a lot better after the owner mess a couple years ago? Staff has made a huge effort to restructure things after it was sorted out.

 

[Tsutarja]

I joined 11 years ago but wasn't really active until 2013. PC has definitely changed a lot, but I feel that part of its change is largely due to how the internet has rolled on as well, transitioning from message boards, to social media sites and aggregators, as well as chat rooms changing.

There was a different owner, there was no Discord server, and the Battle Server was brand new. PC still had an IRC channel, and forum families and pairs were the "in" thing at the time (although those are making a comeback!! :pleading_face:)

Then there was this new mod who took over a section so many years ago that still seems to hang around there :femme2:

 

[NipahRika]

I joined 11 years ago but wasn't really active until 2013. PC has definitely changed a lot, but I feel that part of its change is largely due to how the internet has rolled on as well, transitioning from message boards, to social media sites and aggregators, as well as chat rooms changing.

There was a different owner, there was no Discord server, and the Battle Server was brand new. PC still had an IRC channel, and forum families and pairs were the "in" thing at the time (although those are making a comeback!! :pleading_face:)

Then there was this new mod who took over a section so many years ago that still seems to hang around there :femme2:

I swear the other "in" thing was ships/shipping too. I don't really see that as much anymore. I mean people shipping characters from the Pokemon anime, manga, or what have you.

 

[Cherrim]

The first time I joined PC, it was an Ikonboard and it was the year 2002. I don't think it even had a domain name, it was just in a subfolder of The Unknown Dungeon site. I believe even then it existed as a forum that was shared across several community sites, although I don't actually remember what the community sites were at the time. The slogan on the banner at the time was "we are working on a better slogan" and I was 13 (?) and thought that was hilarious so I signed up. However I signed up for dozens of Pokémon forums that summer and when school started up again, I kind of forgot about most of them.

The second time I joined PC (still 2002), it had moved to vBulletin 2.x (and had a domain name!). One of my friends said that she had a fanclub on this forum she'd become a regular of and that sounded wild to me at the time so I checked it out and lo and behold, the slogan on the banner was "we are still working on a better slogan" and I thought that was even funnier, so I joined. At the time, PE2K had joined the site and merged its forums with PC, so there were some bumps along the way as PE2K staff clashed with PC staff, but as essentially a brand new member I was wholly oblivious to it. A few months after that, my friend got mad about something and spammed the forum as best they could with their mod powers and quit, but I stuck around because I liked the atmosphere. A few months later in 2003, PE2K split off to go back to their own forums again, leaving the staff kind of sparse. People said it was probably the end of PC but the site held together and continued on.

Back then, staff wasn't very organized. The admins were the owners of the websites who were invited to called PC their forum and were pretty hands off, for the most part. Most of the mods after PE2K split were just s-mods. In the summer of 2003 there was a bit of a staff drive, but what that meant was the smods (of which there were... 2? 3?) wanted some more moderators and just picked people seemingly at random. It wasn't like today where if a forum was in need of a mod, someone who was active or good in that particular forum got picked—back then, good members were handpicked and just asked where they wanted to mod. When I was asked where I wanted to mod I picked the Other Anime forum but I was told it didn't really need any more mods so I also chose mixed voting polls. About a month later (I think?), I was promoted again to super moderator because I was "a girl and we don't have any on higher staff" LOL.

Oh, man, speaking of polls. For a long time, all polls on the whole site had to go in one forum: Mixed Voting Polls. It was "mixed" because it encompassed both Pokémon-related and miscellaneous polls. So you'd have "what's your favourite pokemon" next to "who's your favourite Simpsons character". One day we realized that was stupid and decided to split them, so we got Pokémon Voting Polls and Other Voting Polls. All Pokémon-related polls went in the former, whether it was about the games, anime, trading cards, etc. I think it was a long time before we realized that was also stupid and just folded both forums into their respective places. (So now game polls go in the proper Pokémon gaming forum, non-pkmn anime polls would go in Anime & Manga, etc.)

The final (current) iteration of PC happened in 2003. See, we used to have this huge problem with the database. I think something was wrong with the vBulletin 2.x code or something, but basically if a thread got too big (think over 10 pages), sometimes posting it it would cause a database error and just delete the whole thread. I think people lost accounts to this somehow, too. We mitigated it by closing threads and remaking them when they got to 8 pages but at times when the DCC was really bopping it was frustrating to be remaking it a few times a month. When vBulletin 3.0 was far enough along that the release candidate version was available, we finally bit the bullet and restarted PC entirely. Admins weren't sure if the database would survive an upgrade with all the holes in it, so they just did a fresh installation. I missed all of this discussion even though I was higher staff at the time because someone forgot to push the extra buttons that actually let me see the forums where all the planning happened so I didn't get early access and ended up with userid 31 instead of, like, 6, because I only got to register after the site was open to public again. :)

There have been upgrades here and there since then and some forums or threads have been deleted in the interim, but the PC we're still running today is still technically the same one that premiered in September 2003. (We used to have a backup of the vB2 forums that we could go back and look through, but that got lost in one of the many server moves over the years.)

Might talk about other things later but it's been... so long............ I've forgotten so much over the years lmao.

 

[Hermione Granger]

I joined in 09 and spent most of my time in the Rom hack section. I forgot the username I joined as, but when I was able to change it, I started basing my usernames on wwe divas, which obviously I still do. Since most of the changes that have happened since I been here have been mentioned well also is stuff I forgot happened since I don't have the best memory. Though I will say that I pretty much haven't gotten into trouble at all since I been a member. I do remember that supporters were able to get an email address, which I did have one, but now obviously those are a thing of the past. I see myself coming to these forums regularly until it closes down.

 

[Zeostar]

I only joined 4 years ago so I can't say much, although these posts are interesting.

The only thing notable to me was that incident during 2018 with the old owner being accused of a crime. I was still a new user, so that was quite something to observe. There were all these posts about the forum shutting down, it was like the feeling of walking into the end of a fun party.

 

[Ivysaur]

I think something was wrong with the vBulletin 2.x code or something, but basically if a thread got too big (think over 10 pages), sometimes posting it it would cause a database error and just delete the whole thread. I think people lost accounts to this somehow, too. We mitigated it by closing threads and remaking them when they got to 8 pages but at times when the DCC was really bopping it was frustrating to be remaking it a few times a month. When vBulletin 3.0 was far enough along that the release candidate version was available, we finally bit the bullet and restarted PC entirely. Admins weren't sure if the database would survive an upgrade with all the holes in it, so they just did a fresh installation. I missed all of this discussion even though I was higher staff at the time because someone forgot to push the extra buttons that actually let me see the forums where all the planning happened so I didn't get early access and ended up with userid 31 instead of, like, 6, because I only got to register after the site was open to public again. :)

It was a few years later but when I joined, the database was still so shaky that the second thread I looked at after joining (after Shiny Gold in Rom Hacks, of course) was Nica's Database Error Fanclub. Sounds a bit dramatic but I honestly don't know which way my life would have gone had I not met Nica in that hilariously dumb (and mildly trollish) thread and been dragged to Other Trivia by her.

 

[Caite-chan]

Well for me I originally joined back in 2003 although I don't even remember doing so. My main community was PE2K when it was on ProBoards (I think it was called) and then when PE2K moved to a new forum system I remember being the 3rd person to join and I was so excited. LOL! Then after PE2K died and was made into PXR I joined there and then PXR started to kinda die out as well so I joined back up here in 2014 but was kinda between here, PXR and Bulbgarden. Then I just stuck here and brought VPP over with me.

So I don't really have any old school memories of PC from back in the day. Just more recent ones and it was mostly me trying to find my place and toss VPP out for everyone to take part in. My biggest memory is actually one of the worst just before Sheep bought PC but it was as we can tell for the best.

 

[Corrin]

I joined in 2013 because a few friends from another forum were here. However I left for a long time because another user made me uncomfortable, but he was taken care of, and also I went into a "tumblr phase" where that's the only site I used.

I returned a few times but this time is (obviously) permanent.

 

[Hiroshi Sotomura]

It was a few years later but when I joined, the database was still so shaky that the second thread I looked at after joining (after Shiny Gold in Rom Hacks, of course) was Nica's Database Error Fanclub. Sounds a bit dramatic but I honestly don't know which way my life would have gone had I not met Nica in that hilariously dumb (and mildly trollish) thread and been dragged to Other Trivia by her.

Was this the database error page at that time?

I spent effort on this before Nica ran with it and made a theme based on it! And then one of the devs hosed it.

Oh well, dead Pory is better.

 

[moon]

omg dont say that dead pory is good, she might hear you



I don't miss the way The Count To Infinity would lag and doublepost and mess up the count when it got too long.