PC: Moving Forward

Laslow said:

Hey Went!

If you have any concerns or grievances to air about me or the team I pushed really hard to get together, I'll happily hear them out.

- Jake

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Look, I'm really glad you convinced Steve to sell and that you got to convince these four wonderful women to stay with you steering the ship. I may have my own personal opinions about you or whatever -and it didn't help that very close people to me and who I trust were telling me very bad things about you lately-, but seriously, I'm PC's old grump, don't worry about me. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the team, and if your efforts manage to save PC, trust me I won't think badly of you any more.

Thanks for taking up the challenge of rebuilding this community, and I'm sure most will look forward to moving beyond what has happened over the past 4 days.

Also, I'd like to thank Steve for financing and hosting the site. While it is unfortunate that he had made some mistakes 30 years ago, I don't think he's a bad person at all. And we should evaluate people on the basis of both their good and the bad aspects.

adventure said:

He has resigned (well, no, he's been demoted), and is only listed as a platinum supporter now. He's no longer part of staff at all, but we're talking with him on Discord.

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Perhaps pedantic, but if he still owns the server and he still has the financial part of it as a result, in my mind he still counts as staff. Maybe not in official rank, but in practise. The aim is to make him no longer any part of staff, but that has not yet been achieved if there are still negotiations to be done and server ownership to be resolved.

Gavvy was here, Jake is a loser

Good luck to all of the survivors. Thanks to this incident I realize I should re-think few things.

I hope the forum will get back on its feets soon.

Good luck to those who are rebuilding PC as I sincerely hope that one day this forum can be as fun as it was for all of my adult life. When PC started crumbling it really took a toll on me because all of the memories I made here suddenly felt tarnished. I couldn't even open PC without feeling disgust. With Steve out of the picture PC definitely has room to move forward.

I'm sorry for being overly blunt, but I feel this is too naive for me to process. I mean I get that this was a hard time for everyone to go through, especially for the people who loved this forum because it had a really nice community, including me.

That said, while I respect the statement that you've released to us, and have taken measures (like Steve resigning and passing the ownership), I feel like this is not enough for wanting me to come back.

Let me start with Erica getting admin off the bat. At first, I was very skeptical about it. To me, it felt like a power grab, and with the statement that she co-owns the server felt like a slap in the back. However, I did appreciate Erica clarifying her position, with it being temporary. Along with other people mentioning that she can be trusted is something that I can also trust as well.

As for Jake, I've already apologized to you, for the things that I have may done (any petty squabbles that I had with you over the past few days), however, if I may, I don't think that you should be in the position of power. I may not have been affected as much as the other staff that left, you did a number to them, and you are one of the two people that have been part of the allegations against PC in the first place. I'd rather have Rika, Janna, and Cowrie to co-own the forum, with Erica to help, but I don't think that I trust you with leading this forum, atleast not now anyways, while the issue is still hot.

There is also another issue. There's a certain user (you know who, but for the sake of the people who don't, I won't name them, someone else can because I don't give a fuck) that was banned after multiple accounts of users citing harassment towards them, was then unbanned after a few moments. They still run around in this forum, unscathed, and to me, I'm very shocked that the ban was reversed in the first place. I protest that they'd be permabanned.

Finally, I didn't like how majority of the people who replied so far were willing to forgive and forget everything just to save this forum. Look, I loved PC to death. I can't stand not visit this forum every chance I get, and it has been a part of my life for 8 years, but this controversy felt like a stab in the heart. It's not easy forgiving the mistakes that have been done. As someone told me, PC isn't defined by its owner, but by its community, and I love the people who stood up and walked away, because those people know what is morally right. I don't blame the young people who don't know what the hell happened. It's not their fault, and I understand that. What I can't stomach is the people who know what their doing, and still praise PC like nothing happened.

Tl;dr: I don't think I would return to PC that soon, or ever, until these conditions are met:

Jake steps down as admin, and relinquishes ownership to Rika, Janna, and Cowrie (Erica can stay as admin, as long as it is deemed necessary for her to be there)

Certain user gets banned like they are rightfully deserved to be

Transparency between the staff and users. That includes between hstaff and lower staff. None of this top secret bull.

Until then.

This is the news that has needed to come since last Wednesday, to be honest. I am glad to hear that new leadership, and also new ownership of the forums has come about as well. Jake, I wish you, Erica, Rika, Janna, and Sylph the best and I know you guys can do your best to get PC rebuilt. All I ask of you guys is for more transparency to not only the staff, but to the members as well.

Transparency has always been an issue when it comes to discussions here. I'm not saying you guys should reveal who the next mod candidates are and whatnot while deliberation is underway, but when it came to stuff like reorganization of the forums and how PC is arranged, it was often done behind closed doors with no input from lower staff, let alone members.

Either way, should I ever decide to return to PC on a fuller capacity, I better look forward to seeing a thriving community and not just one that has a bad rap because of an admin who never really did anything other than pay the bills to keep the site up and running. Like many, I too have many memories here, and unlike others, I chose not to erase them.

Well, until next time.

I have to say I am tremendously ashamed for the handling of this situation, something that I have gone over in the Discord servers but I think merits mentioning again because no one seems to have called out the adequate people for this:

All this is because of nowadays' Tumblr-tier behaviour of "virtue signaling" and the trend of abandoning, backstabbing or publicly shaming people simply because they have a past. Worse, a past that is old, and they paid for, are recorded for, and have never denied. And how does the community respond? Well, the new Discord was suspiciously set up in just about 30 minutes. I wish I saw this efficiency in the State's public-facing support and welfare systems. Honestly, the whole situation -including taking into account the first pastebin- currently reads as if the mods feared that bad information was to come to the public about them, perhaps regarding the donations, and decided to hang out Rukario to dry as a distraction. They were, after all, the first ones to jump ship.

It is very telling that when I spoke to one person in the new Discord who claimed to be the "originator" of the leak, if that even makes sense (criminal records are public information), their stance on the matter could succinctly be resumed as a mostly carefree "...oops?".

A lot could be said about the nature of Rukario's "original sin" but I think I will leave that one to Debates. All that I'll say is that it was known and paid for.

So there, mods (and Rukario) - clean up your act. We have all done bad in the past. It's not worth punishing people for repeatedly, be it by inaction or by peer pressure, and helping break a community out of it.



Now, with all that said, at a personal level I am a bit conflicted on what to do about this situation.

I do intend to stay on PokéCommunity in the short term, which is the stablest community I have seen in a good while. It is still the main release channel for most of my new publications and honestly, even with its Discord side platform is the comfiest forum to navigate and catch up to. Maybe it's the themes (let Rt 167+ not be lost), maybe it's the organization, maybe I've just grown used to it, who knows. However, I do so knowing that it was the mods here who enabled -and some of them even led- this sabotage so I think they should responsibly apologize, step aside and let other people take the reins.

As for the new site and Discord, while I understand why it would be / were made, I feel like I don't really want to associate with those people in the short term. They read in my mind as little more than traitors who abandoned ship at the first chance given, re-crucifying someone without bothering to wait for an explanation and hanging on a half-excuse. I don't really want to be part of a "community" that has the fresh, public record of turning on its own people like that. Honestly people, who would want to be? I'll probs be keeping an eye n them and see how the userbase changes over time in consideration to join later, but that's it.

I guess if both the new and old Pokécommunity improve there's no reason to not be in both of them in the long term. But for the time being I'm going to be watching over from a lookout in the distance, probably Serebii, except for trying to keep myself in the mood to become active again in FF&W.


I guess that's all I have for the moment. There's so much more to come, but I want to see changes and responsibility first. Bring in new administration and bring in a project to keep the community going.

janejane6178 said:

What happened that made the Pokecommunity be nearly closed?

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Someone on the Community, potentially a staff member who eventually resigned, found out about Rukario's past.

I don't know what to do and I hate that we all can't be together. I hate that we can't go back a week. I hate that I have friends on both sides. I hate that even though I don't have to choose... there will be pressure to choose. Even though both sides has never hurt anyone... like... I've managed being staff on Smogon and on PC without any conflicts for the last 9 months... But this time? This situation? It's different. I feel like I'm pulled in so many directions and I want to stay loyal to those I love yet embrace a part of me that has meant so much.

And yet a choice must be made - it may not be a problem now but if I were to choose both sides either way there would be an opinion from each side on where my attention should lie. And I can't turn my back on my friends.

I know I want to do SMT - but without the rest of the crew here it would be wrong of me to do it here. I'm more happy to do it there (on the other side) but I still have affections for PC and old gens that I can't really close up.

And so... I choose Smogon! Jk. But really this bloody sucks.

Venia Silente said:

As for the new site and Discord, while I understand why it would be / were made, I feel like I don't really want to associate with those people in the short term. They read in my mind as little more than traitors who abandoned ship at the first chance given, re-crucifying someone without bothering to wait for an explanation and hanging on a half-excuse. I don't really want to be part of a "community" that has the fresh, public record of turning on its own people like that. Honestly people, who would want to be? I'll probs be keeping an eye n them and see how the userbase changes over time in consideration to join later, but that's it.

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I'll plead that this is not at all the case, and the motivation of people to try and make a new site is not to be a traitor but try and remake a community which was (still is) under ownership by someone on the register. There were also other issues prior to this, such as nobody - including admins - understanding the financial situation of PC, despite numerous requests, a toxic approach to ad implementation (skimlinks and popups if you're a guest!), and an inability to develop key things such as building on the rom hacking community (which was staggering given it's PC's claim to fame... and yet steve did not want it). These issues have contributed to the various different stories seen such as 'oh so-and-so was using the money for their own profit', because when nothing is explained, you allow such conspiracies to manifest as explanations as to why.

All these reasons were additional motivation to making a new site when it appeared that there would be no chance of the site being relinquished. There were nigh a week long discussions by hq prior to try and figure out, and discussions were had with steve; they just did not go anywhere fruitful then. People simply rathered try and rebuild the community that was PC than to give it up.

Some people also cannot realistically risk their jobs or even careers, especially when it involves children, for being on a pokemon site owned by someone on the sex offender register. Another view is that knowingly staying at a place where kids would be in danger from that fact alone, even besides all the details in the conviction, etc., is morally unacceptable for many people.

What does not help is to label a large group of people traitors or the like. I truly feel that bar maybe the odd bad egg here and there, plus trolls from other sites, people simply want to see recovery and/or a viable alternative. See the post above for a clear example of that.

I'm not 100% sure what's going on, but since I only joined this community like 2 days ago I really don't want to see years worth of effort go down the drain so hopefully this trouble can all pass!

I say that, well even though im not an avid poster in the forums, or a fan game maker, or even a person who makes hacks very well that this might be the great opportunity to improve and make PC great, maybe even something better. Who knows? I'm just a dude who loves Pokemon. Arent most of us here? Also im neutral party, so....

I'm looking forward to see the forum standing again.

Venia Silente said:

All this is because of nowadays' Tumblr-tier behaviour of "virtue signaling" and the trend of abandoning, backstabbing or publicly shaming people simply because they have a past. Worse, a past that is old, and they paid for, are recorded for, and have never denied. And how does the community respond? Well, the new Discord was suspiciously set up in just about 30 minutes. I wish I saw this efficiency in the State's public-facing support and welfare systems. Honestly, the whole situation -including taking into account the first pastebin- currently reads as if the mods feared that bad information was to come to the public about them, perhaps regarding the donations, and decided to hang out Rukario to dry as a distraction. They were, after all, the first ones to jump ship.

.....

However, I do so knowing that it was the mods here who enabled -and some of them even led- this sabotage so I think they should responsibly apologize, step aside and let other people take the reins.

......

As for the new site and Discord, while I understand why it would be / were made, I feel like I don't really want to associate with those people in the short term. They read in my mind as little more than traitors who abandoned ship at the first chance given, re-crucifying someone without bothering to wait for an explanation and hanging on a half-excuse. I don't really want to be part of a "community" that has the fresh, public record of turning on its own people like that. Honestly people, who would want to be? I'll probs be keeping an eye n them and see how the userbase changes over time in consideration to join later, but that's it.

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I do not know what is contained in this pastebin you've mentioned, but almost everybody on staff who chose to leave did so either because they did not want to take the risk of a link between them and someone who was registered as a sex offender being found out and possibly damaging their irl futures, or because they strongly felt it was their moral obligation to do so, or both. It was not done out of fear that people would think that the information was about them or that they knew and were hiding it all along or something. Steve was not used as some sort of scapegoat or distraction.

They were "the first to jump ship" because staff was the first to learn about all this. People were submitting their resignations within hours of the information being presented to us. The Escape Rope server appeared to go up so quickly once Steve's past was leaked and started to become public knowledge because the staffers who were leaving decided very early on that a new area for people who wanted to leave PC needed to be made (we all knew that somebody was going to leak the information)--they all believed that PC was going to be dead within a week, especially given that Steve did not agree to stepping down at first. It's probably not hard to quick make a new Discord server, so all they had to do after making it was wait for the chaos to begin to unfold, there was a gap in time between when we were broke the news and when the rest of the memberbase started to learn of it.

I would've very much preferred it if most of the people who left instead decided to, like me, stay and try and see if we could fix the problem or problems. But they probably felt that there was no way in hell that PC could live through this. This all could've been handled better too. The news about Steve should've been officially announced not long after it was told to staff (so like on Wednesday morning basically) so there could be a chance for far less chaos than there was, and more work towards the necessary steps required to have PC move forward (and having most of staff stick around would've helped with that I would think).

But I did not, do not, and will not think even the slightest bit less of anyone who did/has/will make the choice to leave this site because of this. Saying that they're "traitors" and that they intentionally attempted to sabotage the site by leaving is harsh and not really true. I'd rather that there be less skepticism and mistrust from them regarding this thread, but I can understand why people are still wary--since at the moment, nothing really has changed. But that change should come in the days ahead of us.

god idk if I'm even making sense here or if it's even a good idea for me to post

bobandbill said:

Perhaps pedantic, but if he still owns the server and he still has the financial part of it as a result, in my mind he still counts as staff. Maybe not in official rank, but in practise.

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He must be considered as staff as long as he owns the server and therefore has access to it because he can still do what he wants to the forum, all he needs is access to the files and database.

Escape Rope was 'promoted' very heavily in the old Discord and many times it was posted it felt as if people were being pressured to join. To me, this incident is not something that is unrecoverable, it's very ancient at this point. It somewhat feels like a way to make Rukario a scapegoat whilst trying to scoop up all of PC's userbase and put them into a new, flashy forum, essentially attempting to replace PC. It's quite suspicious to me.

With that said, I hope PC continues to survive. It would be a shame to see it fall apart over this.

Mantager said:

Escape Rope was 'promoted' very heavily in the old Discord and many times it was posted it felt as if people were being pressured to join. To me, this incident is not something that is unrecoverable, it's very ancient at this point. It somewhat feels like a way to make Rukario a scapegoat whilst trying to scoop up all of PC's userbase and put them into a new, flashy forum, essentially attempting to replace PC. It's quite suspicious to me.

With that said, I hope PC continues to survive. It would be a shame to see it fall apart over this.

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ER was being promoted by people outside of staff(for the most part) and not something we encouraged. I don't want anyone to join the new community if they feel pressured. If you feel more comfortable and prefer PC, definitely stay here. However I can promise you that when we created this community it wasn't to take down PC but rather give those uncomfortable a place to go. With PC seemingly surviving I think everyone hopes for the best for both sites. And I for one think they can coexist.

Choice Specs said:

ER was being promoted by people outside of staff(for the most part) and not something we encouraged. I don't want anyone to join the new community if they feel pressured. If you feel more comfortable and prefer PC, definitely stay here. However I can promise you that when we created this community it wasn't to take down PC but rather give those uncomfortable a place to go. With PC seemingly surviving I think everyone hopes for the best for both sites. And I for one think they can coexist.

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Yes, in fact, everytime I saw the link being spammed, it was the same guy who I had never seen before.