Pokémon Clubs Feedback and News

Hey everyone! I'm looking to hear some of the things that you guys would like to see put into place in this section so that we can make things more interesting. Here's some ideas that I've come up with/had thrown at me so far:

Contests/Competitions

Adding some friendly competition to this group may be some added incentive for people to post more or for owners to do more with their clubs. I originally thought some trivia would be a good idea, but also I've had my ear turned to the idea of posting and club design competitions as well.

Club Events

This could be things that open us up to the rest of the forum. I need some ideas for this that aren't solely competition based.

Promotion

Most of this falls on me, but we could really use some promotion of the forum. Our name is out there almost nowhere. This also goes for individual clubs. Userbar use has terribly fallen off the map so maybe we could find a way to get back into that. So if there are any userbar makers out there, please help! I'd like some general Pokémon Clubs userbars made as well if possible. I also plan on promoting such events as I mentioned above forum-wide so we can bring in some more activity.

IRC

I was informed that there was an IRC (aka a chat room) originally that regular members here would use quite often. I'd be okay with doing that again, but I'd like to get some feedback about whether or not it's a good idea.

Official Thread Reformation

AKA Rules, Grandmaster thread, CSS guide. Execution of this all falls on me, but you guys can help with input. Rules will be staying mostly the same because I think things work how they are, but more may be needed if we add other things. The Grandmaster thread is a bit of a tricky one. I've been told it's a bit too broad because it includes pretty much everything that's not Rules and CSS/Creation related. So I'm proposing creating a separate thread for club approvals for those who wish to have clubs reserved for a certain amount of time (and is a week enough?). CSS/Creation is something I will keep the same for now but I could use feedback on how to make that better since I know only very basic CSS (maybe someone could teach me :P ).

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I really would like to hear from owners the most here since you guys dictate a lot of what happens here. I'd challenge you to find ways to bring out the best in your own clubs as well as things that may draw others here. That being said, I want input from all of the regulars and even people just passing through so that we can make this something special and something people will want to remember.

Hi sup! So I know my interest with PoC's been on and off for a good part of this year, last year and the year before that but throughout my time I've noticed a few things that contribute to lack of activity in this section.

Well for one, I think there's a lot of 'post and go' in PoC. What I mean by this is that people'll drop by a club to answer the current topic then leave till the next discussion comes up. So in a sense it feels more like a thread where you can answer a weekly question as opposed to a club. But yeah if we have more people responding to each other's posts even with a simple 'Me too! I love _____ because ____' or 'Sorry but I don't like _____! How do you find ___ or ___ good about it?' then I think we'd see a general boost in activity. I haven't really kept up with clubs to know if most people do this or not but more people would definitely be inclined to sign up if they see a club that already has a lot of active discussion.

I think another problem's also the repetition of club topics across the board. I found answering 'what pokemon would you like to give a mega form'? six times in the same week rather boring though understandably it's a good topic to talk about. But yeah it kinda drives away the unique feeling of each club so. ):

Okay so moving onto how we could actually improve activity! Looking at the suggestions in the OP, I think IRC used to be pretty popular back in 2012-2013 so it wouldn't hurt to bring it back. I've always really liked the idea of chatrooms since they're really good for making new friends and owners could probably use them to talk to their fellow club members / plan events with other owners.

As for events, PoC's a hard section to think of events that aren't 'competition based'. A lot of the problem is that most events would probably fall under a better forum like the pokemon gaming or anime sections whereas PoC is really limited to stuff like post-a-thons / club of the month etc. And as Archer said, competition isn't necessarily a bad thing! Have we had a post-a-thon every year? Yeah probably, but things like post-a-thons encourage people to visit by more / find a new section they like.

So yeah! Basically I think there's a few things that could be done to get PoC back on its feet though I've probably missed a few things. Again, these are just my two cents so if you feel like anything said was incorrect / irrelevant then you don't have to follow up on it. :]

tl;dr: POKEMON CLUBS IS UNDERRATED

Sophie already pretty much summed up what I think is the main issue halting activity in the forum, and something I definitely also wanted to fix when I was a mod. The whole 'post and go' mentality that surrounds answering a lot of the topics. Clubs has always been meant to be a place where people can talk about their interests together, but usually, whenever we see a topic being thrown out, people just post and wait for a new topic to come around. No interaction with anyone, just an isolated answer. And while the topics are also to blame, I think it's just that no one's really taking the initiative. So the main thing to focus on in this regard has to be to encourage people to read and reply to each other's posts, and guide owners in making their topics so that they might be more chatty or discussion based to keep posts flowing, rather than people just posting once.

Events and competitions were always encouraged, but it never really caught on. I don't know if you're aware of this, but we actually have en emblem that can be awarded to winners of individual club competitions, but I'm not certain emblems are a huge incentive to be active anymore. But yeah, I think clubs with some kind of point or ranking system did usually tend to get more competitions due to the fact that they'd usually get something out of winning. So I think competitions are a good idea, but giving people some incentive to post will often make them more successful, so I think things like points system could also be encouraged.

Userbars and general promotion of the clubs outside of the forum is definitely something I'd want to see back again. It was really popular to have the userbars of one or more clubs in your signature back in 2012, and I'm pretty sure they did bring a lot of people outside of the forum in. However they just suddenly started disappearing, and I've barely seen any since mid 2012. So yeah, while this is still something that can't really be forced onto people, encouraging members to use them and making them aware that the userbars are actually a thing might help bring in more people.

While I definitely wouldn't be against the IRC, I'm not gonna argue for it being much to help activity. Back when the old IRC channel was around, it was never really used for actual club related topics, and it was more just chit chat where we got to know other people from clubs. It did get super active, but that activity never really translated into the section, so you shouldn't look for the IRC channel as a way to increase activity, but if you simply want a good place to talk to other people who post in clubs in real-time, then by all means go for it :D

As for the revamp of the sticky threads; if you look back a bit in the staff forums, you'll see I kinda started on this. The main thing I found to be tricky was to keep the number of stickies low. I wanted to split up the GM thread, but I couldn't really figure out how to really group the different things together in a way that it would make sense, while not getting too many stickies. I was also planning to make a new kind of thread, where people could post suggestions for clubs, if they either got an interesting idea, or weren't able to make the club themselves, so that others could get some inspiration in there, however I'm not certain how useful such a thread would be if there isn't much activity. But yeah, a suggestion for something to add if you're interest :D

And that's about all I can think of now. I think Alex already mentioned this, but I had an unapproved thread (or deleted, I don't actually remember) with some ideas I had for the section, which you should be able to find going back in my thread history in clubs. It might be useful :)

Contests/Competitions

Competitions would be a great idea. This can connect different clubs. The problem is there isn't something as a typical club tournament I can think of right now. A drawing competition would be more something for Art and Design, while battling would be more something for Battling and Team Building. If that would be no problem, organizing these competitions can easily pull in people from the respective forum.

Club Events

Events often seem to boost the temporary activity on a forum. And people coming for the event, can possibly stick to the forum. Maybe you could organize a Skype call or conversation with all club members.

Promotion

Events will probably be a great promotion. I don't know what happened to the userbars, but it seems only the club owners refer to their clubs in their signatures, and not even all of them do. I don't think it's the lack of userbars, because a lot of clubs do have them available and I still don't see them being used.

IRC

Yes, great idea. I don't think that will pull in new people, but it'll definitely raise the activity of the regular members here.

Official Thread Reformation

I don't have a great knowledge of CSS either, I can only refer you to this. Also I think the Club Directory as a separate thread won't be so bad idea. The Grandmaster thread is mainly used for reserving clubs, so it will be hardly noticed there is an club overview too.

Ok first of all id like to quite Aslan on this as a issue

Well for one, I think there's a lot of 'post and go' in PoC. What I mean by this is that people'll drop by a club to answer the current topic then leave till the next discussion comes up. So in a sense it feels more like a thread where you can answer a weekly question as opposed to a club. But yeah if we have more people responding to each other's posts even with a simple 'Me too! I love _____ because ____' or 'Sorry but I don't like _____! How do you find ___ or ___ good about it?' then I think we'd see a general boost in activity. I haven't really kept up with clubs to know if most people do this or not but more people would definitely be inclined to sign up if they see a club that already has a lot of active discussion.

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Often times i even find myself doing this although i dont do it as much anymore because i like to show my opinion on peoples opinions and it keeps a topic going longer while lately theres been only 2-3 days of dicussion to go on.

I think the easiest way to get people here would be a competition or an event. One thing people seem to want is Emblems so that can be encouraging and post a thons as in the past really seem to get people posting so we really just need incentive for people to post more often as well.

As for other promotion back when i was extremely active and posted in the welcome lounge i always refered to PoC which i think got a good amount of members here as well as in my club i could list 4 off the bat that are in clubs atm.

Userbars are a big thing to i actually found out about pokemon clubs through a linked userbar and i thought it was kinda cool and now i pretty much love it! Idk why it went down so much none of my clubs had userbars as i couldn't find anyone to do them so i think we should probably get some for all the clubs. Another thing is that all club owners should really have their clubs in their sigs i have mine and even my temporary in so that people can click on it and i can drive them to view my club and they become possible candidates to join.

Ive seen multiple of the usual people who used to post daily slowly becoming inactive im starting up POTW again in my one club and possibly starting it in the Dragons club to hopefully boost activity i hope to see the older members on more as well as bring in new ones.

Just a small thing that could help for the little description underneath pokemon clubs it currently says this:
This forum is for those who wish to start a club within the community. This forum is for Pokémon clubs; Fan Clubs & Groups is for everything else.
Are we able to change that? Because we could make it alittle more fun and inviting plus this section is not just for people who want to start a club its for those who want to be in one to which may turn some people away. So if we could just come up with something catchy fun alittle lengthier and inviting we could possibly get a lot more people driven here.

Once again the best way to get people here is by an event or competition thats for a wide audience not just a certain group in particular but to a lot of poke lovers. What that competition is? Well i have no idea haha but i think we could all come up with something that could atleast be a month long and a big thing that we could take advantage of is have it advertised in notices as well PLUS have a little userbar thing to go in peoples sigs to say ur apart of that competition. So thats all that stuff so now we just need to think of a good event. Haha hmmmmmm....

Other things....
Ummm for the grandmaster thread i always see it as a question thread or a thread to reserve a club wouldnt it be better if it was also a general chat for all the club owners and members that would also help alittle with enticing people to come on and join us chatting then answer some topics in the clubs.

Ok also another thing i see is its mostly follow the leader here if a topic has say 1-2 answers from different people a lot of new or not so active members dont feel they need to answer but if u have 5-6 people answering then you will constantly see people answering more so if all the regulars commit themselves to answering the topics in all clubs then that may ALSO drive people to answer topics.

Also as for repeating topics in clubs thats an issue as well i find myself doing it but really the big issue is the owners dont have enough help we need to really stay on one topic for a whole week i need to usually have two topics a week and maybe a POTW as well to keep the chat going so no more answering the topic and running for me and i also really would enjoy some more people creating topics literally since like November last week was the first time someone else made a topic in the Dark type club and it made me so happy because firstly i like the topic and i needed a new one and i would have never thought of it plus it was a new member that posted it along with his join form so that made me feel great to receive just a little help. Plus when owners are offline or havent updated a ton doesnt mean theyve lost interest it may mean they dont completely have the time i lost interent for a week and a half and my clubs died in activity but i did get 2 new members so yay but while theyre gone its nice to see that members start new topics in place for them its not against the rules or anything haha.

As for the IRC i dont really see it being used to promote people to come to pokemon clubs idk why i just dont see it haha.

And the biggest thing to just rephrase is promtion we just need to promote a ton and drive people here to have a nice fun community although the easiest and best way is through a competition or event the small things like recommending members to join or putting in a userbar in your sig all help so we as club owners and members should really focus on this.

Edit: i also gotta think how a club has over 7,000 views and only 20 people on the community has joined.
Edit edit: i also saw im the first club owner to talk besides Wiicked haha. Also Wow i typed all that? No wonder my fingers hurt! :3

Ok so sorry for that disorganized mess of my thoughts and all the also's haha. But in conclusion to quote Aslan once again as she is a wonder with speeches;

POKEMON CLUBS IS UNDERRATED

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Aslan said:

I think there's a lot of 'post and go' in PoC. What I mean by this is that people'll drop by a club to answer the current topic then leave till the next discussion comes up. So in a sense it feels more like a thread where you can answer a weekly question as opposed to a club. But yeah if we have more people responding to each other's posts even with a simple 'Me too! I love _____ because ____' or 'Sorry but I don't like _____! How do you find ___ or ___ good about it?' then I think we'd see a general boost in activity. I haven't really kept up with clubs to know if most people do this or not but more people would definitely be inclined to sign up if they see a club that already has a lot of active discussion.

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Ok, this is somewhere that I have fallen off the boat. I'm leaving a POTW and commenting on everyone else's, then I'm done. I need to be more involved here like I was before I was a mod. However, this isn't only me, and there is a lot of this going on, so I would encourage everyone to try to make this more feedback based like some of my clubs used to be.

Aslan said:

I think another problem's also the repetition of club topics across the board. I found answering 'what pokemon would you like to give a mega form'? six times in the same week rather boring though understandably it's a good topic to talk about. But yeah it kinda drives away the unique feeling of each club so. ):

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This tears me apart a bit. This is something I used to pride myself on and I believe it was part of my success, but if you look in my Fire-type club, there are a TON of topics that I've covered and I think I've finally hit the bottom as far as that's concerned, hence why I came up with a POTW that would serve as that new idea.

So Olli hit on a lot of things that I liked so I quote a lot of his post after this and add in what everyone else said:

Pidgey said:

Events and competitions were always encouraged, but it never really caught on. I don't know if you're aware of this, but we actually have en emblem that can be awarded to winners of individual club competitions, but I'm not certain emblems are a huge incentive to be active anymore. But yeah, I think clubs with some kind of point or ranking system did usually tend to get more competitions due to the fact that they'd usually get something out of winning. So I think competitions are a good idea, but giving people some incentive to post will often make them more successful, so I think things like points system could also be encouraged.

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I'm going to work on/get help with emblems for some competitions. I'd like to do some monthly competitions and I'd like to have some events that maybe would appeal to those outside of the forum as well. I know it may not have worked before, but perhaps since it's been a while it will be something sort of new for people to try. Archer also mentioned emblems last night and said he noticed people seem to like them a lot, so I'm willing to give that a shot.

Pidgey said:

Userbars and general promotion of the clubs outside of the forum is definitely something I'd want to see back again. It was really popular to have the userbars of one or more clubs in your signature back in 2012, and I'm pretty sure they did bring a lot of people outside of the forum in. However they just suddenly started disappearing, and I've barely seen any since mid 2012. So yeah, while this is still something that can't really be forced onto people, encouraging members to use them and making them aware that the userbars are actually a thing might help bring in more people.

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General promotion and userbars confirmed. However, something that limits this a bit that I thought of is size. I know userbars are supposed to be big and stand out, but with the elaborate themes people like to use sometimes, they can be hard to squeeze in a bit, so I'm wondering if that is contributing to the issue. Not much we can do, but it's something to consider an alternative to perhaps.

Pidgey said:

While I definitely wouldn't be against the IRC, I'm not gonna argue for it being much to help activity. Back when the old IRC channel was around, it was never really used for actual club related topics, and it was more just chit chat where we got to know other people from clubs. It did get super active, but that activity never really translated into the section, so you shouldn't look for the IRC channel as a way to increase activity, but if you simply want a good place to talk to other people who post in clubs in real-time, then by all means go for it :D

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Here's something everyone seems to agree on. It won't get new members, but it will give the active members a bit of a lounge so to speak.

Pidgey said:

As for the revamp of the sticky threads; if you look back a bit in the staff forums, you'll see I kinda started on this. The main thing I found to be tricky was to keep the number of stickies low. I wanted to split up the GM thread, but I couldn't really figure out how to really group the different things together in a way that it would make sense, while not getting too many stickies. I was also planning to make a new kind of thread, where people could post suggestions for clubs, if they either got an interesting idea, or weren't able to make the club themselves, so that others could get some inspiration in there, however I'm not certain how useful such a thread would be if there isn't much activity. But yeah, a suggestion for something to add if you're interest :D

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Dedenne1 said:

Ummm for the grandmaster thread i always see it as a question thread or a thread to reserve a club wouldnt it be better if it was also a general chat for all the club owners and members that would also help alittle with enticing people to come on and join us chatting then answer some topics in the clubs.

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This is a challenge as well. I'm wondering if we do a DCC AND an IRC or just one. I also don't want to have 10 stickies up top, but I also like to make things clear for people, so it may be a necessary annoyance.

Dedenne1 said:

Just a small thing that could help for the little description underneath pokemon clubs it currently says this:
This forum is for those who wish to start a club within the community. This forum is for Pokémon clubs; Fan Clubs & Groups is for everything else.
Are we able to change that? Because we could make it alittle more fun and inviting plus this section is not just for people who want to start a club its for those who want to be in one to which may turn some people away. So if we could just come up with something catchy fun alittle lengthier and inviting we could possibly get a lot more people driven here.

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I could consider changing this. It is a bit straightforward and does leave out a little bit of detail.

H.A.N. said:

Maybe you could organize a Skype call or conversation with all club members.

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Club owners speak up. Is this a good idea? I'm on Skype a LOT so I'm okay with this.

Aslan said:

tl;dr: POKEMON CLUBS IS UNDERRATED

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I feel this way as well.

Thank you all for this first wave of feedback (this includes anyone who helped me via private messaging). I'm glad to have the regulars who have stuck by here lately even though this has gotten pretty slow. The fact is, I know a lot of it was my fault, but I'm ready to turn things around. I'm gonna spend a couple nights a week for the next month or two just working on stuff for this area. FYI this thread is a permanent fixture, so any time you get an idea you think is worthy of looking into, drop it in! I also want to emphasize teamwork here, though seeing that you guys all came and left me some notes to go over, I think we have a good basis here.

Wicked3DS said:

This is a challenge as well. I'm wondering if we do a DCC AND an IRC or just one. I also don't want to have 10 stickies up top, but I also like to make things clear for people, so it may be a necessary annoyance.

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I don't think a DCC is really necessary. We had it in I think the period January to March during 2012, which was arguably the most active period for PoC in the time I've been on PC, and the DCC just never really caught on. I've always considerd PoC to be more of a section consisting of smaller sections, which obviously means that the general focus of the forum isn't one specific thing. Essentially, if the DCC should feel like it had any purpose, the topics would have to be centered around thigns like club management, ideas for new clubs and events and such, and I just don't think that would really be broad nor enough nor interesting enough for most people. You couldn't really talk that much about Pokemon in there, since that's already covered by the PGen DCC. And to add onto it, it's gonna further add to the issue of possibly too many stickies. Feel free to try it if you want to, but I think things such as event discussion and the likes could have a better place in a thread that also served another purpose. It was also my intention to split the GM thread at some point, so that reservations and index would be seperate from the general discussion of clubs and events, however the problem was just to fit them together in a way that would make sense. But yeah, I don't think a full-out DCC should really be made, simply because the range of topics is too low.

Anyways, I may be reiterating a bit of what's already been said, but I was talking to blade, and I think we both agreed that the are basically two important things that really need to be worked on with PoC at the moment. Promotion and user interaction. Promotion may be something that could be put a little less weight on once the forum starts picking up activity again, but for now, it's important to get activity flowing. I imagine a lot of the reason that's causing the lack of activity, is the lack of awareness of PoC. I mean, realistically it should be a place for everyone to post, since it can cover every aspect of the franchise as long as someone makes a club for it. Basically people should be able to talk about their favourite things regarding the franchise in here, so it's weird why the activity should be so low. And I imagine that might be due to people just not really checking out the section or really realising how the section works. So if that is actually the issue, promotion of the section through userbars or other things in the signatures would definitely help in that regard.

Blade had quite some good ideas on a potential way to promote the section and clubs, which I imagine might have been sent to you already. But if not, it's coming :D

The user interaction on the other hand is important to keep activity going. I'm pretty sure the declining activity and the lack of user interaction went kinda hand in hand. The peak of the section's activity was around a time where a lot of people seemed to talk to each other within the clubs. Everyone welcoming new members, people discussing or commenting on each other's answers to topics and generally more casual interaction. But like has been mentioned, the section has fallen more into a state of 'post and wait for new topic'. That's not to say that people still don't interact with each other within the clubs, because some clubs and people definitely still see that, but it just became more of the club mentality to not do so for whatever reason. I think the best way to fix this is really just to encourage it and by having people setting examples. I think especially club owners should focus on replying to people. And as a sidenote to that, I think there should be put a lot more emphasis of welcoming new members. I often used to see a lot of owners welcoming and commenting on the sign-up posts of every new member individually, and I think that does a lot to make people feel welcome. So I'd love to see more emphasis on that :)

Wicked3DS said:

Official Thread Reformation

AKA Rules, Grandmaster thread, CSS guide. Execution of this all falls on me, but you guys can help with input. Rules will be staying mostly the same because I think things work how they are, but more may be needed if we add other things. The Grandmaster thread is a bit of a tricky one. I've been told it's a bit too broad because it includes pretty much everything that's not Rules and CSS/Creation related. So I'm proposing creating a separate thread for club approvals for those who wish to have clubs reserved for a certain amount of time (and is a week enough?). CSS/Creation is something I will keep the same for now but I could use feedback on how to make that better since I know only very basic CSS (maybe someone could teach me :P ).

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I've given most of the advice I have already in the other thread and Olli was always better at that stuff than me, but one thing I am pretty good at is CSS (especially CSS for clubs) so I'm more than happy to help out here if you need it - just send me a PM or Skype message some time saying what you need and I'll do my best to help out :D

Following up with Pidgey's mention, I think it's key to try promoting this section. It's going to be difficult to tackle some of the other ongoing issues (the post-n-go mentality, the repetitive topics, etc) when there is a lack of fresh faces here.

Post challenges are amazing, and advertising/referral contests are something to consider as well. I'm all for donating emblems and CSS, so just let me know.

I wanted to share some userbars and if more people are interested, I can make more:

なぎ said:

I think sometimes it may also be difficult for members to reply to others' posts, simply because there isn't much else to say than that they dis/agree. This is where I think the club owners' setting an example comes into play. (I don't really know what 'POTW' means - Post of the Week? But regardless I can't really comment on that or 'Post challenges' as I don't really understand how they work, haha)

Personally I think the definition of Pokémon Clubs needs to be made more clear in the first place. It's advertised as a section where you can create a club, but it's really not clear why anyone would want to do that, especially when most subjects are just as well discussed elsewhere. Also for this reason, from my perspective it seems most topics are off-limits anyway: discussing any of the games is not allowed, discussing the anime is not allowed, even discussing the spin-off games, that I feel are not getting enough attention elsewhere either, are not allowed to be discussed here because they're supposed to be discussed in PGC. Honestly, sometimes to me it seems the only function it still carries is talking to like-minded people about your favourite Pokémon typing... which is a shame because I think clubs are a much nicer environment to talk about any subject than the answer-a-question threads in PGen and PGC.
This is also why I think we need more threads like the Shiny Hunters Club and the Breeder's Corner, because they could appeal to a wider audience as well as give more of a sense of unity as a club, through working together to a common goal (gathering shinies and breeding Pokémon, respectively) and being able to check on each other's progress.

Finally, I really don't understand why the number of sticky threads is an issue - nor do I understand why your intention is to split the current stickied threads into more. I'd say all you need for stickies is

• a merged Rules + Club Creation Guide (+CSS) sticky (with simplified rules - for example by adding the rules for making a club into the creation guide post, rather than with the other rules)
• a Clubs Directory + Reservations thread (and possibly removing the 'clubs to be made' post, because i think people who are motivated to create a club usually already have a topic in mind)
• a DCC/event-related thread, but if this is deemed unnecessary it could be added into the reservations thread as well.

So that would be a whopping total of two, maybe three stickied threads. Seems fine to me c:

...
So, that's my two cents. Maybe a bit more. Hope it helps (and I didn't offend anyone. sorry)
bye ( ´ ▽ ` )ノ

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Definitely good feedback here, the rules need to be adjusted to allow for more discussion and we could definitely use less confusing terminology (POTW is Pokemon of the Week, sorry D:)

I'm not sure about rules being with CSS, but I like the rest. I'm aiming for 5 total stickies or less, I don't think that's a whole lot (I've seen much more). I think combining Directory with Reservations is a perfect pair so people can say "Oh, what's already here? Spooky clubs isn't? Sign me up for that!" So thanks for the feedback.

Archer99 said:

Lots of stuff.

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Thank you for emphasizing my point about teamwork. That is something I want first and foremost and I've been fortunate to have it come to me here.

Not sure if this helps but here's a link to our last feedback thread: http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=289832 !

After reading the feedback thread i think bringing club of the month back would be a big thing although i think it would work better every two or 3 months something like that to keep it fresh with new clubs being made about in that time period.
Ik i said this already but emblems seem to be a big thing and if we had more we would probably have more traffic here actually is there any emblems in pokemon clubs? I probably just dont know about them but ive never seen it. also i dont think we have emblems for club of the year awards as well if my memory server haha i think that may be beneficial as well

I made several emblems for pokemon clubs when I ran it so I'll try make a list of those soon as an idea of what's on offer - I believe they're all listed in the rules thread right now but I'll have a proper rummage later! We had emblems for things like active posting, making unique topics, creative posting, active clubs, good owners, etc... But emblems are always a good activity booster :D

Squirrel said:

I made several emblems for pokemon clubs when I ran it so I'll try make a list of those soon as an idea of what's on offer - I believe they're all listed in the rules thread right now but I'll have a proper rummage later! We had emblems for things like active posting, making unique topics, creative posting, active clubs, good owners, etc... But emblems are always a good activity booster :D

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Sweet, I was going to ask someone about emblems tonight, thanks Ozzy! I've toyed with the idea of making Club of the Month more like Club of the Quarter or something lIke that, but it depends on how many clubs we have at a given time.

So either tonight or tomorrow I'm going to start working on updating the stickies. The CSS guide is going to be me weakest point, but I plan on posting a template that I use for all of my clubs as a startinG point.

Wicked3DS said:

So either tonight or tomorrow I'm going to start working on updating the stickies. The CSS guide is going to be me weakest point, but I plan on posting a template that I use for all of my clubs as a startinG point.

Click to expand...

I'm happy to re-write my old CSS guide for you to use if you want, I'm pretty good at CSS in general and have tonnes of experience fixing broken CSS in clubs/making CSS for clubs from when I was a mod here so I'm more than willing to help out if you need it :)

As for emblems, I dug up these:


Then there are also some random event-related emblems if you look through the archives such as post-a-thon emblems, review contest emblems, etc, but that's pretty much all of the standard ones! I gave notes for each emblem about what we used to award them for, but obviously feel free to use them in any way you see fit haha.

One last thing for now - if you want any new emblems made I'm more than happy to help out with that too, I always found it fun making them so let me know if you need a hand. :D

Now I'll leave you alone I promise!!

So we had a couple of interesting discussions here that I think could warrant a discussion thread for club ideas, but we could just integrate it into the new directory/reservations and call it done.

http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=8680496#8680496

Wicked3DS said:

So we had a couple of interesting discussions here that I think could warrant a discussion thread for club ideas, but we could just integrate it into the new directory/reservations and call it done.

http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=8680496#8680496

Click to expand...

I think the grandmaster thread couldnt that also be a DCC? I do think that some things should be able to be discussed but there isnt a thread for that here so i think the grandmaster thread created with free chit chat on anything in pokeclubs would work they could talk about ideas and what clubs we hope to see in the future and other things :)

The GM thread was always intended as a place for people to discuss new club ideas etc, it was always encouraged there so I'm sure if people start doing it again it'll pick up haha. New thread could work too though!

Sheep just pointed something out to me that I'd like to propose to others as well. She asked me via PM for "permission to abolish the members list in my cute club" for the reason that she doesn't really "fancy the idea of needing to sign up to participate in a club."

I like having something up there to encourage people reading the rules of clubs if you have them (I don't because my only exclusive rule is stay on topic, the rest are clubs/PC rules anyway, but I see why people do it). Also, if there is no username list, it takes away from the "post-and-go" atmosphere we're trying to move from. Having the members sign up makes it feel more like a club to me vs. a discussion thread in any other forum. That being said, it also would possibly make it feel less exclusive so anyone could chime in at any given time, but that does encourage post-and-go much more, which we want to remove.

So what do you guys think? I vote yes to the member lists, but I'm also willing to have an option to let people use them at will.