PC: Moving Forward

[ThatOneBritish]

Although I'm not sure it's my place to know, can someone say what happened? It looks like loads of people left to a new community? I'm really confused

 

[AetherBoyMicha]

What happened here sounds crazy...
I've been dragged through various 'crisises' on another forum including when I was part of the staff so I can tell it's stressful for all those involved. Especially when it comes to picking sides, one of my close friends (on staff too) caused chaos distressing the other users and staff. I've been through it as both as a normal user and as staff, it was equally difficult to deal with both times as our home felt unsafe to our friends.

We managed to get through it though because we wanted to keep our family together and it's now a distant memory. I know you guys can keep everyone's home together and get through this ^^ I support you guys, it's stressful for everyone I can tell but I know you'll pull through.

 

[Circuit]

Well if there was ever a reason not to come back, it'd be this.

Although I'm not overly surprised by it, the amount of people willing to wrap a towel over their eyes just because they don't want to accept they'll have to find another place to chat with one another is incredible. This is all very suspect, every step, every single move taken in this drama shit-show. How come the minute Jake gets accused of fraud, Steve gets ousted? Now I'm not defending Steve, and this whole situation is enough to warrant a shut down or an overhaul at least, but why did it come out immediately after the accusations made towards Jake? Next question, why the hell is the main target of these accusations suddenly in charge of the place? Like, it's so obviously suspicious yet everyone just seems to, go along with it, as if it's just a bump in the road. Hello? He's potentially stealing your money (if you donated). Even if the rumors are false, which after the course of actions taken I'm doubtful about, it's disconcerting to still see that person in a high or top position, as if nothing has happened.

It breaks all trust one has in the staff, when power plays like this appear to unfold. And before you retort "That's not how it is at all, let me explain... herpaderp," let me tell you, that is exactly how it appears, and what you say without definitive proof could always just be something to save face, so why should you be believed? Stepping down and handing over the reigns at that point would have been the best choice in order to maintain trust and allow the forum to carry on.

If you guys believe this can continue successfully, good luck. But honestly, it'd be a good time to bow out and rebuild from scratch. PC needed it for a long time anyway.

@ThatOneBritish - it was rumoured that "some of the admins" - later fingers pointed directly at Jake aka Hiroshi Sotomura - were stealing donations and using them for personal profit (which is illegal afaik), then shortly after the staff leaked that Rukario was as of some 30+ years ago a registered sex offender against a minor.

 

[Vigilance]

First, I congratulate (I use this word lightly) on the good news that comes from this after such an elongated wait. While I have my own reservations about the whole incident, it is good to hear that some change is on the horizon. As you must be aware of, some change is always better than none. Whether that is good or bad is solely in the Admin's team hands. That said, I would advise you to be completely transparent with the userbase. That begins with the staff. I see the staff list has been updated to some degree but the question remains who actually is staying. Are people from "Escape Rope" going to be working on both fronts and, with time, will people still be advertising Escape Rope on PC's community fronts? (Discord etc). I agree that PC needs to rebuild and more importantly return in a refreshed state to discern itself from the problems it was entrenched in and that occurs when you rid yourself of the old PC and come in with the new, independent PC. I don't think you guys can currently do it and I think the entire narrative with ER muddles it more. That said, maybe you'll prove me wrong. Use this to rethink who deserves what and who can take this issue and turn it into a positive for the community. Godspeed.

 

[Wicked3DS]

I think everyone needs to remember that this is a delicate situation and things have to be handled with care. It's not as simple as "throw it all in the trash" or "demote everyone involved" or "look the other way" because of how the community was built. So before anyone makes any hasty decisions about how those who leave are "traitors" and how shady the changing of the guard is, why don't you give it time to play out?

 

[Sheep]

it was revealed that "some of the admins" - later fingers pointed directly at Jake aka Hiroshi Sotomura - were stealing donations and using them for personal profit (which is illegal afaik)

I want to clarify that this was a rumor, not a reveal. As as an admin who was around the entire time these accusations were thrown around, I have not seen any sort of evidence to prove it was actually true. None of us want to act on the basis of rumors; it's not healthy for the people involved nor the community itself.

Regardless, some people are clearly going to be unhappy with Jake being a community administrator, which was something every single one of us expected would happen. Serious work and transparency will need to be put in to restore people's trust in him, if that is even a possibility to begin with. I'll wait until he wakes up to see and address these points, as it's his responsibility.

I think everyone needs to remember that this is a delicate situation and things have to be handled with care. It's not as simple as "throw it all in the trash" or "demote everyone involved" or "look the other way" because of how the community was built. So before anyone makes any hasty decisions about how those who leave are "traitors" and how shady the changing of the guard is, why don't you give it time to play out?

This is true... You have no idea how much stress we've endured these last few days trying to help PC survive. People have worked extremely hard to ensure this community has a chance at a future and did our best to work out as many issues as we could to make more people comfortable with the idea of staying. If it hasn't been worked out now, it will be in the near future as we take steps forward. It's far from perfect and there are still improvements/changes we could make, but not everything can be done overnight. We're just humans behind a screen.

 

[twocows]

i still feel a bit miffed about how this all played out for steve and jake, both of whom i'm convinced did nothing wrong during their time here and don't deserve the crap they've gotten, but i'll be around no matter what happens. hope things go smoothly for you guys.

 

[Taemin]

Honestly, this thread and the resolves around it are the best things that could've come out of this! Just the fact that some of the old admins are back to help it along, and some very good staff members chose to stick around, gives me hope that PC and can keep going and move on. It's funny because I had kind of grown out of / or away from forums, but once this happened to PC I felt really terrible about it, and it made me want to stick with it rather than remaining inactive. I'll see what happens, but I wish all the best to the members, and the staff who are going to try to build it back up. This was a very small amount of time in the grand scheme of PC, even though it is a huge happening, I hope we can make it through as smoothly as possible. :>

Good luck to everyone, and thanks for this thread, and your input.

i still feel a bit miffed about how this all played out for steve and jake, both of whom i'm convinced did nothing wrong and don't deserve the crap they've gotten, but i'll be around no matter what happens. hope things go smoothly for you guys.

Yeah, Steve got treated a little too harshly IMO, however that issue is very sensitive to a lot of people, and with all the uproar I don't see another way things could've gone down - rather than him stepping down if only to stop riots over time.

 

[charmite40534]

ok I read thorugh the post and I honestly don't get what happened.How is PC in trouble of going down.But to the remaining admins on here cudos to you for sticking through it and trying to keep this beautiful community from going under.

 

[Venia Silente]

One random commentary that came to mind while reading the announcement to someone else:

Suggestions that finances have been used for untoward purposes have evolved largely as the result of the current lack of transparency within the staff. These concerns are understandable, but we aim to set the record straight: funds given to the PokéCommunity stay in PC's budget. A server like PC's requires a lot of resources, and as a result, a lot of money. Some months, PC runs a surplus and in this case, the extra money is set aside for the community, usually allotted to offset the costs when the budget runs a deficit in other months. Our new leadership intends to rectify these issues in several ways, and we'll have more to announce about this at a later date.

(emphasis mine)

The specific wording and breaking in that long paragraph makes it read like the issue that the new admins intend to have solved is that of Pokécommunity having a surplus... I'm aaaaaaaalmost sure that was not completely intentional, but still it sounds funny and weird enough that I felt it a good idea to bring attention to it, considering the size of that paragraph.

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.

I admittedly find that to be partly hypocrisy and partly fear of the witch hunt; McCarthyism if you will. I'll concede that while this is the internet and you should not be associating with almost any site using your real identity that could put at risk your job or career, it's not the kind of thing you change from back when you didn't know.

But calling out this situation as if it merited a special or spectacular response compared to the rest of stuff in real life feels at least a little disingenuous - if you go work on any mining, drilling or oil company or iPhone chip assemblies it's likely the owners are responsible for far worse, even actual deaths, yet no one really calls out on "no I can't be a consumer there". Not with the steadfast pace that we saw here. Not when those facts are unknown and certainly not as much as one would expect one they get known.

My view is that we are all willing to smooth talk on how everyone deserves a chance and the system is broken etc but when it is the time to put our money or our punch where we put our mouths, well, we already saw the response. I don't really blame it on those who left, I've already stated my word on who has to answer for this; it's just that herd behaviour is not a thing that one should ignore to build protections from.

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.

Yeah. Unfortunately the timeline of the events as reported does little to sausage that, even considering that things like the Discord that are not dependent on the site owner but on a completely different third party were left aimless, for example the bots were removed - or rather, migrated to the other server.

As for the strong advertising of ER itself, while quite minor at this point I think that should be dealt with in some manner, at least in the sense of "focalizing" the advertising.

And before you retort "That's not how it is at all, let me explain... herpaderp," let me tell you, that is exactly how it appears, and what you say without definitive proof could always just be something to save face, so why should you be believed? Stepping down and handing over the reigns at that point would have been the best choice in order to maintain trust and allow the forum to carry on.

Agree still that this would be a good move, and should have been the first (well, second after sidelining Rukario) move in the first place.

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

Saying that they're "traitors" and that they intentionally attempted to sabotage the site by leaving is harsh and not really true

Fair enough on the term; I think the direction is right though, even if in the end we here swear no further allegiance than skipping the TOS / EULA to click okay. Maybe, for the time being, I'll settle on unfaithful and undependable. Basically it'd be unfair to expect me to say welcome those people with open arms in a web platform or a community I manage.

Still, perception works both ways. They saw fit to focus on only one single sin of the past -already paid for- and take judgment from there with partial information and half rumors, ignoring the entire rest of that person's history; they saw fit to play to the trend of judging people only or mostly by the flanderized version of them, so to speak. Compared to that, I did -and feel a hold to- a lot, at least a couple notches above minimum diligence and decency.

While Steve will continue to support the community financially during this period of transition, we want to keep ensuring that funds are used appropriately for the continued benefit of PC and current funding will be closely monitored by the new leadership.

That's one thing I have been meaning to ask tho. Who is the site going to be legally delivered to? If we deliver it to one single person, we basically return to the same originating problem. I would expect a site like PC to be run or managed legally / financially by an LLC or at least a large enough group of people to as to diminish individual associations, though I have been told LLCs are complicated and web sites managed by them do not really work (which I'm pretty sure is wrong, but then again I'm thinking of highly successful and brand-marketable sites); handing over the finances of the site of a group of people who fully work in or invest in Pokécommunity also opens up a couple of evil incentives, as it was mentioned at some point the stuff about the guests seeing very bad ads.

 

[Maki-Nishikino]

i honestly dont want to see PC die despite what has been said im still considering donating something to TPC once i have spare cash and ive got my disability stuff as i would likely have more funds to do stuff

 

[Dragon]

Just wanna say that I'm quite happy that this whole thing is moving forward; I still love PC with all my heart, and I'll be most happy to help out wherever possible. I basically quit because I couldn't take the stress of it all...

I can attest that those last days were quite difficult and stressful for us all; it wasn't good for anyone. But they say time can heal, and if we're going to another direction, I'm happy to support that! I'm really hoping that things will grow even better overtime; just needs hard work and dedication. <33

 

[Circuit]

I want to clarify that this was a rumor, not a reveal. As as an admin who was around the entire time these accusations were thrown around, I have not seen any sort of evidence to prove it was actually true. None of us want to act on the basis of rumors; it's not healthy for the people involved nor the community itself.

Regardless, some people are clearly going to be unhappy with Jake being a community administrator, which was something every single one of us expected would happen. Serious work and transparency will need to be put in to restore people's trust in him, if that is even a possibility to begin with. I'll wait until he wakes up to see and address these points, as it's his responsibility.

My apologies, I didn't actually mean to write revealed, since there is no definitive proof as you say. I have changed the wording in my original post to rumoured, since that's exactly what it was. However, not acting on rumours can be as bad as reacting badly to them. It's important, when rumours surface, that they are dealt with in a thorough, thought-out and appropriate manner. Especially when such rumours are accusations of fraud, or other illegal acts.

I have also come to learn that the order of events wasn't as a lot of people seem convinced of, that the rumours of fraud came THEN the reveal about Steve, rather that first was revealed the situation with Steve, and someone has tried to throw HStaff under bus shortly after. Whilst this does change a few mindsets, in my opinion it doesn't entirely change the steps that should have been taken to mitigate backlash and aid recovery for the site. As you say, Janna, people will still be unhappy with Jake as an admin, and changing that at this point is a mean task, considering not everyone is open to accepting changes in the little information we have.

And that is exactly the hardest part about all of this, the lack of information. Whilst of course it's clear that these are only rumours, and shouldn't be taken off-the-bat as fact, they arise from somewhere, and while that somewhere is unknown, it's hard to disprove as well as prove, and the timing of the reveals doesn't help one bit. Which makes the predicament all the worse.

 

[Klippy]

I already gave my opinion on Steve and his role in PC's slow and obvious turmoil - none of which began this last week alone - so I won't get into it. It's the only good call that could be made to even give PC a chance to be successful again.

The handling of this entire week's drama by the FORMER higher staff of this forum was an absolute joke and a travesty to order and the "authority" they had as leaders. The fact that the first decision wasn't to force Steve out (which is now the end result - and despite that, I'm sure the publicity helped quicken his removal), but to instead reveal to 50 or so staff members what occurred 30+ years ago was such an obviously bad mistake that it can't help but feel like an excuse to push this new other forum idea and try to swindle away members. The person that found this info, as I understand it, is so eager to cause drama and chaos that the entire thing seems like a rigged setup just to see what would happen. Add in that it was so evident the info would leak to the forum at-large and I can't help but feel like the members of this forum were deceived by those members of the staff and it's almost equivalent to the media in America generating discord and animosity among its citizens for their own personal benefit.

Add to that that many mods and staff members felt pressured to hastily resign and throw their entire history and memory of this site to the wind, unsure of this site's future or their place on it, and you can see how pathetically this series of events went. It's even more of a blessing that the ones who concocted the gaslighting of their peers, their forum, and their members are gone - and refuse to return.

The five "new"? admins are each valuable members of staff and have shown that through years of dedication and effort. Jake, for all his faults, is no thief and I've known him for many years. I fully trust that he has done nothing immoral with my donated money or yours and, even more so, I trust the women who support his remaining an admin if they are confident in him. The most obvious reason being that Jake had no access to the money for this forum and it only went through Rukario and his own accounts, the second being that Jake cares too much for PC to harm it like that, despite whatever faults he may have otherwise.

As I said in my CQ thread, PC's only future relied on Steve leaving, so I commend him for accepting the obvious and resigning without much argument. I don't (personally) think he deserved to be outed as some sort of criminal for something he was clearly punished for as the law requires and was trying to maintain (as far as we know) a clean life and a lawful life. The fact that his history was outed like it was was totally uncool and I am willing to bet nobody on here would appreciate the entire forum knowing mistakes they've made in their life. If the issue was current or something seriously threatening, the series of events may have been warranted (and the staff has removed and permanently banned actual threats to its members in the past with proof). All of this combined makes me think it was done to start up an alternate forum and try to pull as many members as possible from PC, while not actually caring about Steve's past. I do consider his abuses of this forum's value and importance to many as a far more recent reason to remove him, but I also completely understand the need to remove him for his history as well - which all could have been done in a much more professional way.

 

[Starlight]

I am so glad to see the staff are working towards a solution that will keep the community together, this place is special and a home to many, let's hope it stays that way for many more years.

However, I do have two reservations with this announcement:

First, the issue of keeping staff accused of wrong doing.

I am a great believer in "innocent until proven guilty" and find the whole trial by (social) media craze to be deeply unjust. With that said, I am not like most people on the internet and keeping staff who have been accused of various forms of inappropriate behaviour - and I don't mean Steve - is a sure fire way to bring about the end of PC in the long run.

People on media sites ranging from twitter to reddit and 4chan will keep burying PC until eventually it can't get up again. If these staff are to remain then PC better find a way to clear their names thoroughly or ask them to step aside. It is something that needs a lot of consideration, obfuscation wont help anyone.


Second, some of the behaviour when people were "burning" the forum was extremely rude, inappropriate and downright childish.

This site has many young members and seeing some of the things they had to read was heartbreaking, they didn't know and it wasn't their fault. I appreciate that PC will need as much normality as possible to stabilise and move onwards but I hope that any staff members that were involved in such behaviour think long and hard about their actions before retaking their positions.

Wow, I'm really cheery today!

Good luck everyone :pink_smile:

 

[Disturbed]

I'm just going to use this thread as a way to finally share my own opinions, as I've mostly been keeping them to myself.

I've been coming to PC since around 2004. I first signed up in 2006, and then made this account in 2008 and was active for a while. It was painful to see a place that I had been able to frequent for half my life go to such ruin. What upset me is how the staff reacted to the news. Extremely quickly after the announcement was made public to staff, we had someone quitting. Shortly after, more and more followed, and the way a lot of them quit was anything but graceful. Instead of letting things settle for a while and giving careful thought to what had happened and taking a more mature approach, a lot of people acted very emotionally. I don't really blame anyone for being emotional during this, but things could have been handled a lot better IMO.

Now, I want to speak about Jake. Not me, but Admin-of-Pokecommunity Jake. Right off the bat, I want to make it clear that I have no ill feelings towards him. In fact, I feel really bad for him. People he probably considered to be close friends all immediately jumped at his throat and branded him a bad person, and he doesn't deserve that. Not in my opinion, at least. At first, upon hearing the rumors about Jake, I was upset with what I had heard, but despite hearing this from sources I consider to be very credible, I don't exactly know if I can consider anything I saw as 'proof' until I see actual...well, tangible proof. I guess I'm just remaining... idk, cautious? Aware? Not sure what the word I'm looking for is. Anyways, I've spoken with Jake on numerous occasions in the past and considered him a close friend. In fact, I still do. However, a lot of people, staff included, do have issue with his leadership abilities and issues with trusting him in general. As harsh as this has all been for him, I hope he takes this all and uses people's reactions and the feedback given to him as a way to improve himself as an Admin. In all honesty, it really might be best for him to step down for now and let someone else take the reins. Not step down from staff completely, but from a leadership role, seeing as such a large portion of the userbase has negative feelings towards him. Regardless of how good he might be as a leader, especially now, having an Admin that so many users distrust and dislike just isn't good for the health of the community. For what it's worth, I was one of the ones who was happy to see him be promoted back to Admin a couple months back. EDIT: I just want to make it clear that in the long run, I'd still like him to be admin, but he obviously has a lot of thinking to do.

Now, the last thing I want to address is the divide. When the news hit, within a day, a good 90% of my friends joined Escape Rope's discord, including myself. In fact, I'm an admin of that Discord server. While I still had friends on PC, almost all of them moved on to ER, so it made sense for me to move on to there and dedicate my time and effort to shaping up that place. However, due to the news in this front post, this is causing a much greater divide. Some of the people that joined ER are going back to PC. Some are even quitting because we're losing people. It's really upsetting to me, especially knowing that my reason for coming back from almost a decade long hiatus, the dev-lounge in PC's discord, is now permanently divided. We lost so many great people recently and holy shit does it hurt. I guess I'm kind of rambling at this point, but I wanted to get all my feelings out.

As of right now, moving forward, I'm still going to be an Admin on Escape Rope's Discord server. I'm still going to be a Moderoid on PC's Discord server (seeing as I never left and was temporarily the only one actually moderating the chat). I just want to be with all of my friends again and have them all in the same place.

I just want to conclude this by saying that these are really just my own personally feelings towards the matter. I respect and understand the choices that everyone in staff made, and I more or less trust the judgment of all of you over my own, haha. No ill-feelings towards anyone. I just wish we weren't in the situation we're in.

 

[Morkula]

I had a big post planned out in my head for when I got home (which I just did), but Klippy pretty much said most of I was going to post.

But I do want to highlight one thing in particular:

The most obvious reason being that Jake had no access to the money for this forum and it only went through Rukario and his own accounts

I've seen this BS conspiracy theory about Jake embezzling money from PC or committing fraud being thrown around like it's fact. It's not. There is absolutely no proof of Jake doing anything illicit with supporter funds. I've been close friends with Jake for almost half of our lives now, and I know that he wouldn't even consider doing the things he's being accused of. He cares way too much about PC - in fact, in all my years on staff, there have been very few people that consistently cared about PC and its well-being and been dedicated to PC more than Jake.

But, feelings aren't facts, and just because I trust Jake doesn't mean that other people have to. But regardless of how you may feel towards Jake as a person or how well you know him, this single fact should be enough to bury that accusation once and for all: there's no way that Jake could have been misusing supporter money or embezzling money from PC, because Steve is the only person that has ever had access to donation funds.

So stop with the garbage conspiracy theories and baseless accusations. It's not helping your case and it's only helping sow division and prevent the community from healing.

Which brings me to my other point...

The conduct of some people throughout all of this has been nothing short of appalling, and the more I hear about it the more I'm inclined to agree with Klippy that this whole ordeal was in large part an excuse to burn PC to the ground and poach members for their "new" place. I realize a lot of good people have migrated to Escape Rope, but the more I hear about it, the less I want to have anything to do with it.

True, there are plenty of people with good intentions, like Marcin has alluded to in his posts (and Marcin himself, though I do disagree with him on points). A lot of them have legitimate concerns and reasons why they no longer feel comfortable being on PC. But a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch, and the constant trolling, peddling of baseless bullshit conspiracy theories, spamming up the forums, and outright aggression towards people who didn't want to burn PC to the freaking ground have already made that place toxic in my eyes.

There's been plenty of absolutely disgusting remarks on Discord and even a ridiculous attempt at forming a 4chan mob, but you don't even have to look further than this very thread to see the toxicity. The fact that a lot of this type of conduct is coming from some of the very same ex-staff members that spearheaded Escape Rope raises a whole ton of red flags for me. It's especially sad because some of the people I've seen peddling those conspiracy theories and acting out in this way are people I've considered good friends in the past (and many of them that I still do).

Hell, I'd even say that the majority of staff members that I've talked to that resigned said they didn't do so because of the accusations against Steve and Jake, but because they felt pressured to the breaking point. Or even worse, that they felt that they would be threatened and targeted if they didn't leave PC. It seems to me that it's been bordering on bullying at some points - psychological bullying, if nothing else. That's beyond sad.

I know there are a lot of people at ER that simply don't feel comfortable staying on PC or want to move on from here while preserving their community. But those people need to rein in those among them that are being flat-out toxic and who've made it their mission to troll/flame/harass and stoke the fires trying to keep PC burning. Otherwise, they're going to get a very negative reputation, and I'd have my doubts about the two communities being able to co-exist peacefully.

Finally, to those who aren't satisfied with Steve still being around...be patient. Steve isn't just someone that can be fired on the spot or who can just walk away. He literally owns PC, he runs the server, he's in charge of all the finances, and there are a lot of things that have to be ironed out and dealt with before ownership can be transferred to someone else. You can't expect all that to happen overnight, and if Steve were to walk away right now the forums would be even more of a dumpster fire because there would be no funding, no server, he owns the domain name and such, etc. There's a lot that needs to be done in the interim before Steve can well and truly step away from PC.

Just be patient - things are moving in the right direction. It just takes time.

 

[Nah]

I don't really understand this whole "this was all just a plot to destroy PC and promote a new website" train of thought.

 

[Sydian]

I don't have some long bit of things to say. As a former super moderator here, it hurt a lot to see what's transpired over the past few days. On one hand, I'm glad to see that Steve is stepping out of the picture. I'll play nice and not air all my grievances because many of them are largely unrelated to the issue at hand. I hope the best for here, but I imagine I will be here even more infrequently. It's still home, though. No matter what happens to it. I just hate that all of this had to happen as it did.

 

[EC]

This is all good news. Unless Steve doesn't actually give up control of the site, I'll still be posting here. I'm confident that we will have enough members here to keep things rolling, and with more people joining every day due to this site's prominence in the ROM hack community, we'll rebuild in no time.

I hold no ill will to the Escape Rope people, nor do I think it was a power play by them to create a server with haste to get people talking. Hell, this is the third time I've gone through a divide like this (one even spawned THREE sites for members to seek refuge at), so I'm used to it.

If people are still uncomfortable here, that's fine and completely understandable. All I know is it will be hard to build a member base on Escape Rope outside of the 200 or so people in that Discord server. I know the example people will bring up is ResetERA springing up from the ashes of NeoGAF, but that had thousands and thousands of members ready and communicating in tons of Discord servers, waiting for codes to join the new site.

This just feels like the main PC Discord people splitting off and making a forum. That isn't to say it won't work. I'm sure it will, and I'll probably join just in case this "moving forward" plan fails and the site goes belly up.

Anyway, I'm rambling at this point, so I'll just close it off here by saying I have made many friends here, and I will do my best to keep those people as friends, whether they stay here, join Escape Rope, post on both, or just bail on Pokemon forums in general.