First off, I'm posting this here for anyone interested in giving feedback. I could post this in the Mod Lounge first, but I'd like to get the battling community's opinion on this.
BC has been hurting for activity lately, and this is nothing new. I think there's little I can do to fix that. There has been little to no competitive discussion here at PC, and that has gotten even worse. PC's battling community has gotten more "casual" and has become less focused on being a second Smogon (which isn't a bad thing). As a result, the Competitive Battling Center was renamed to the Battle Center to accommodate discussion related to in-game battling strategy and team building. However, a major problem remains from that change: in-game battling discussion is already discussed in the other Pokemon gaming forums. Threads such as "What's your team?" could exist in BC as they are related battling and team building. The same can be said about
this random thread I spotted while viewing the forum index; mainly because abilities and other Pokemon stats are associated with battling strategy. I could possibly make a thread about Sylveon and what people predict its stats, moves, and such will be, but it would be strikingly similar to the XY forum's version. There is simply no need for a separate forum just for battling and team building when those topics are already covered by PC's other Pokemon game forums. However, there's still competitive discussion, but the problem is that there is not enough activity and interest to warrant an entire forum for that. In fact, there's not much of a reason for competitive discussion when the "# Generation" forums could easily include that. The tiers for competitive Pokemon have always been organized by generation, so it seems like a perfect fit. The fifth generation forum already has
Weekly NU Match-up threads without encountering any problems. I doubt any issues would show up, and the PC's community may even become more interested in competitive play if it was discussed in the main Pokemon game forums. I feel there is no need to separate competitive play from other discussions about the Pokemon games, and that separation may be one of the causes why members feel intimidated by competitive play. As a result, PC's battling community may benefit from this.
In conclusion, what I want to do is remove the BC we have right now, because I believe it to be redundant when its purpose is essentially filled by other forums. Then, make its sub-forums into separate forums like in the past. E&G would be renamed to "Battle Center" or "Battle Stadium," while the team help sub-forums would be combined into one forum called "Pokemon Team Help." The Pokemon Team Help forum would be similar to Strategies & Movesets, but it would be strictly for team help and not the "all-in-one" competitive forum like it used to be. The other Pokemon gaming forums would then be used for discussion and battle logs depending on which generation the thread is related to.