PC back in the day

[acatfrommars]

I came back to the site after about a year hiatus and things seemed a little different. Nothing to drastic but new sections, and the direction of certain sections had changed as well which is fine. The Underground and The World of PC were added which was cool, and both of the Clubs sections were taken away which sucked, but wasn't a personally big deal to me anyways. The majority of the people on here I didn't recognize either because they were new, or changed their names and it was a little intimidating.

Anyways for you old fellas, what was PC like back in the day? Like in 2010 or even 2005? What was it like when you first joined, and how has it changed since you've been a member on here. Are there any moments that you specifically remember that were great for you on this site, or moments that questioned why you even get on here? How has the direction of the forum changed in your eyes and if it has changed, how has the member base changed? Have you ever been on a hiatus for an extended period of time and felt the same as I did? So many questions I've been wondering since I've returned last month and I've seriously been wondering for a while now if anyone else has had the same questions or experiences that I've had on here.

Please share because I've been thinking about this on a gaily basis when I get on here and have been anxious to post something about it.

 

[Auticorn]

For me, it was all about the crush thread. It became a topic of guessing who you liked to constant and random chatter. It was nothing like it is today either. I don't remember much because I've blocked out most of my memories. This was back in 2004ish I believe too.

 

[Alex]

Honestly, I think PC has stayed relatively the same. Back when I joined, the Off-topic Discussions forum was modelled completely differently, however the topics have stayed consistent no matter what label the forums and subforums had. ROM Hacking was still incredibly popular. I used to have a blast playing the Monotype and Nuzlocke challenges and posting them to Pokemon Gaming General. And I made plenty of friends in the MCG, OVP and Other Chat forums. The biggest changes I can list are: popularity contests (Member of the Month) was a very healthy idea and people loved it, and the staff was a little bit more cliquey, a little less transparent and a little more closed-minded to expansion. So I'd say PC has changed for the better!

 

[moon]

Back in 07, 08 and 09, PC consisted of Other Trivia and The Count To Infinity for me as far as I can remember. Also some manga fandom or somesuch? I really can't recall much else, I hardly even knew who were mods and who weren't. Basically, PC opened up for me when I finally started roleplaying <3 Which is kind of backwards, considering how many in that forum rather are/were RPT hermits to begin with haha.

 

[wolf]

About ~4 years ago the staff were more distant from each other and the community in general. It was more acceptable to be rude to users. Rule enforcement was more uptight, especially in regards to minor rules like 4/25, consecutive posting, etc. Battle server community was incredibly hostile before ~2010. If you weren't staff or one of the 2-3 select favorites, you got **** on. In other words, it was a clique. Speaking of cliques, they were prevalent back then, such as team sweater. PC is a lot more lax and open these days.

Wi-Fi was huge back in 07-09 because it was recently introduced. Battling events and groups/clans had their own forum called Battle Stadium, while RMTs and discussion went into Strategies & Movesets. Over time Wi-Fi dropped in popularity, especially in 10-11. Battle simulators like Shoddy Battle, Pokemon Online, and Pokemon Showdown became more widely used as opposed to Wi-Fi. Eventually Stadium was merged with S&M to become the Competitive Battling Center, which was renamed to Battle Center, and again to Battling & Team Building.

Graphic art had a dedicated forum and community. It was pretty popular in around 09-11. It was more common for people to use graphic art for avatars and signatures. (I'm referring to banners with rendered art and fancy effects.)

PC was arguably more active in 09-10, and Shiny Gold probably contributed a lot to that. Presumably the rising popularity of social media, Smogon, etc. has reduced PC's activity some, but in my opinion our activity is fine right now and the difference isn't really noticeable.

 

[Skip Class]

PC back in the 2008-2010 for me was really exciting since PC was the first forum I ever joined. I pretty much lived in the Pokemon Group section for a long time, since there were really awesome groups like The Wolves Hideout and Pokemon: The Toddler's Playground which kinda inspired me to join PC in the first place. Created my own club for electric pokemon club called Thunder Arena which ended up being kinda popular and eventually had about 3 or 4 versions of the club and kept me busy for 3 years between 09-11. Let's not even mention the millions of other clubs I joined or the fact I made a mystery dungeon club without even having played the games. Deep inside it still kills me that the place I joined PC for is now gone :c

Eventually I drifted into what was Art and Design then due to constantly staring at the Graphics and Photography section which inspired me to make my own. I think originally began because I wanted to make banners and such for my pokemon groups but half of it was also because a lot of the artists there inspired me.
I've talked about this a few times with the current A&D crew, but A&D although incredibly active, used to be pretty scary back in the day -especially for newbies:

I feel that A&D has become a lot more of a friendlier place than it used to when I first got started here. The community itself, although isn't the same in numbers as it was in 2009, has definitely become more comfortable!
I remember when I posted my very first gallery, the comments I recieved made me want to quit the hobby I had just started. Sure I hadn't experience constructive criticism back then, but the comments were pretty mean, sarcastic and not quite helpful at all like constructive criticism should be.

 

[Bay]

Eventually I drifted into what was Art and Design then due to constantly staring at the Graphics and Photography section which inspired me to make my own. I think originally began because I wanted to make banners and such for my pokemon groups but half of it was also because a lot of the artists there inspired me.
I've talked about this a few times with the current A&D crew, but A&D although incredibly active, used to be pretty scary back in the day -especially for newbies:

Oh man, I remember that very well and I was trying to learn graphic art too. Yeah, when I showed off a few of the render banners I made back in 2009 (as you mentioned), some of the comments I got were pretty mean instead of helpful advice. bleh. I wonder if it has to do with graphic designer's expectations that everything needs to be perfect. There was one conversation I had with a friend a few years ago where we agreed the graphic artists here were intimidating.

In relation to the hiatus question brought up by the OP, around 2010 to 2014 I would be on and off hiatus and lurking mostly, only to then be active again early last year.

 

[Margot]

Haaaa, this is gonna be fun. I remember the days when Natsuki, Lily, Loveless, Midori Chi and Kura were mods and now all but one are gone </3 Reading a lot of the posts and thinking about it, the staff was a bit more strict, but I honestly didn't have any negative opinions of anyone. Intimidating? Sure. Mean? Nah. I was too excited and too nooby to realize how nooby I really was.

VMs weren't a thing. If you wanted to talk to someone you either had to suck it up and PM them or go their member fanclub (which was my favorite section of the forum). I think I met every single one of my friends on here through fanclubs. Then VMs basically made them obsolete :< I also loved how crazy the DCC was, you could go away for like 10 minutes and come back to 3 new pages of posts. I remember how big forum families and pairs were. Like, my whole signature used to be dedicated to my family. Now families hardly exist?!? And the only people I see paired anymore are people who were paired back in the day anyway </3

I dunno. I may have rose tinted glasses when talking about PC back in '06-'08 because this time meant so much to me. Now, the people and sections of the forum I used to know are almost all gone. But this place is still my internet home. When in doubt, I always come back no matter how much it has changed :)

 

[Sopheria]

I only joined a little over 2 years ago, so there's nothing drastically different. What I look back on most fondly is the original group of friends I made in my first few months here. People like ShadowE, Mika, Fernbutter, and a bunch of other people who aren't active here anymore, I spoke to them literally every day, sometimes for hours at a time. It's really a shame most of them left because they all played a major part in shaping my experience here.

In terms of how the forum itself has changed, it's more or less the same. Things have been moved around, new forums have been created, and back when I first joined supporters of all tiers were green. And I think PC as a whole was a bit more active when I first joined, but that's because a new generation of Pokémon games had just come out at the time :) Now that I think about it, most of the activity was in the new generation's Pokémon gaming forum, whereas the off topic forums weren't as active as they are now.

 

[Sun]

Honestly, I think PC has stayed relatively the same. Back when I joined, the Off-topic Discussions forum was modelled completely differently, however the topics have stayed consistent no matter what label the forums and subforums had. ROM Hacking was still incredibly popular. I used to have a blast playing the Monotype and Nuzlocke challenges and posting them to Pokemon Gaming General. And I made plenty of friends in the MCG, OVP and Other Chat forums. The biggest changes I can list are: popularity contests (Member of the Month) was a very healthy idea and people loved it, and the staff was a little bit more cliquey, a little less transparent and a little more closed-minded to expansion. So I'd say PC has changed for the better!

How about the dramas? :P I particularly recall the bash for Gen III and IV Pokemon and games were harsh. X'D The mods were like cops, they were like if yall don't stop the fight I'm gonna fire this pistol. Lol

Mods were a lot stricter back then, a slight off-topic wouldn't land you a warning. But the mods would definitely step in and remind us not to stray too far. Having said all that, I'm not criticizing the staff from both eras. They are all equally hardworking. (:

The stuff I remember most are, maybe sadly, staff things. I was a lurker for a couple of years and didn't get involved much, and when I finally did get involved I ended up on the staff pretty quickly. I was really good friends with a couple of people (I hung out on the IRC and met Hiroshi Sotomura and Sylphiel and others, and somehow met Morkula, all of whom became good friends) and when I was brought on as a moderator I kinda immediately integrated into one of the more popular staff cliques on PC (the people who posted above about PC being way way way more cliquey aren't joking at all haha.)

So with that preface aside, one thing I remember very vividly about PC's old days is the fighting with the community site admins haha. We were constantly, constantly at each others throats and it made it hard to get real stuff done on PC. All of the dumb forum politics and we all had too much time on our hands back then and... yeah. It's all really stupid when I look back at it, but at the time it was a big deal.

For those who weren't around in those days: when PC was first created, the whole point of it was that it was a shared forum between a group of independently operated fan-sites, which back in those days were numerous. Everyone started their own fan site, and Pokemon had such a huge fanbase that they were everywhere, and each one of them started their own communities. Some were decently sized but most never made it very far off the ground. So the original founder of PC had this idea of "why are we all running smaller forums, why don't we just make one big forum and share it?" and thus, PokeCommunity. The people who owned those fan-sites became administrators on PC and were supposed to help run the community. However, PC grew really really quickly and started to develop its own team of staff (who over time became admins themselves) who were used to how the community ran, used to its members, and who had developed a system of voting on major changes. It worked well, PC kept growing year over year.

Proooblem was, community site admins didn't always wanna play by the rules. In their eyes (and rightfully so, as PC's original founder told them as much) they owned PC and should be allowed to do whatever they wanted. So it was this constant battle of them being assholes and us fighting them, trying to get them to not screw things up, having stalemates where they'd all vote no on things just because they wanted to be annoying. In retrospect it was really bizarre, haha. But yeah. In those days I think I was focused a lot on those kinds of politics.

I also have really fond memories of Daily Chit Chat threads. :> They used to be really, really popular. Like... shockingly popular. They had their own subforum and we had to restart them like, weekly.

Mewthree or was it Armor Mewtwo? ;)
-killed and banned for mentioning-

 

[Loki]

I joined way back when and took a 6 year hiatus so you can imagine that I was (and still am) super confused at all the changes that happened while I was gone... What's all this World of Pokecommunity, Treehouse, Underground stuff?? Like.... What??? Who came up with these names LOL... And then I see that Ausaudriel has been busy adding a million cool features-- I remember when he first turned green and basically became the most useful staff member overnight because he actually knew how to work the forums and kept adding a bunch of cool stuff that we could do, like-- IDK colors in the userbars and whatever else was suddenly available. Now I'm like y'all and your fancy CSS need to slow down for this old lady and her twelve cats.

I was always most active in RP and G&D though... The RP section was really lax-- Shiranui was the mod at the time, and she was pretty laid back about stuff-- didn't need to have mod approval for your RPs or anything, you could just post and go. When I was modded in the RP sections though I was a lot stricter-- And for some unknown and bizarre reason, Pokemon RPs were all the rage- there were so many Pokemon RPs and literally like, maybe 2 or 3 'Other' RPs that weren't all that active. Now there's such a nice balance of Other and Pokemon RPs, and all my super uptight rules feel like they've mellowed out even though the system of thread moderation is still in place. It's really improved since I stopped being a grouchy old elitist vulture over it hahaha

Then G&D, which is now A&D, was my other haunt.... looks away because I'm pretty sure I was the mod of that section-- or at least the s-mod that took care of it the most during the time that the critiques were at their worst. It amazes me in retrospect, because even as an smod I got scathing comments on my stuff too?? I was reminiscing with zappy about it but some of these people had serious guts, especially since that was when staff was, as mentioned, super cliquey and kind of holier-than-thou. Not even a golden bolded name could protect you from the G&D member base's snark, it was pretty incredible. (And in retrospect, why didn't I do something about it??? I guess I just thought it was normal???) But those were the days when tags and banners reigned supreme, when everyone had matching icons and siggys like I do right now (I'm old school sob) and G&D had some really really skilled artists who probably had the right to be maybe half as snarky as they were. Now there's a lot more variety in the galleries, which is really great-- and I really like how much friendlier everyone is in general. Comments are kind of a less common occurence than they used to be, which is a bit of a struggle when it comes to motivation to update, but-- better that people say nothing than say horrible things...?

Seconding what Ausaudriel said about H-Staff back then though. I honestly was never that active in h-staff, but honestly it was like we couldn't make any decisions without fighting over SOMETHING as a fundamental part of making decisions? Like I feel like it was some kind of precedent or something. I remember writing WALLS of text arguing in those threads over god knows what.... It's nice to see that most of the core staff has a lot of familiar faces though.

And finally, of course, being paired with parallelzero for like 5-6 years. Though technically we never 'unpaired' so IDK?? Maybe we've been paired for 10 years now LOL! I don't think my PC family ever really expanded much further than that, but some people had intense family trees back then...

You can tell I've put a lot of thought into this as well haha-- definitely been mulling over all these memories and surprises for the past month or so, so I'm right there with you marscat!

edit: also I can't even believe you remember their usernames Sun LOL.... I blocked them from my memory because they literally never did anything anyway...

 

[Palamon]

I joined PC in 2009, and I remember how strict and uppity the staff were. No offense, but half of the staff scared me. I remember vaguely how three staff members were up my ass about using a yellow font color, so I had to change it. Holy, some of the staff were just... yeah, uppity and strict. Most were very hard to talk to, and I've left this forum multiple times, to be honest.

I remember Other Voting Polls was a thing, and Tabletop Games had a forum as well. I don't really remember many specifics, but a lot of forums from the past are gone now.

Over time, the staff got nicer. It was probably around 2013 when I noticed a change in that. Mot of 2009 - 2012, I somewhat thought most of the staff were very hard to talk to or even ask them to help.

However, the April Fool's Jokes were fun, and well thought out. And the DCCs were insanity. I remember when Razor Leaf was still a mod of General Chat, I think, and when Drew was a Super Mod. I feel like I should have been more active here in 2009 - 2012, but it just never happened.

The community is much nicer now, and I hope it stays this way.

 

[Alex]

How about the dramas? :P I particularly recall the bash for Gen III and IV Pokemon and games were harsh. X'D The mods were like cops, they were like if yall don't stop the fight I'm gonna fire this pistol. Lol

Mods were a lot stricter back then, a slight off-topic wouldn't land you a warning. But the mods would definitely step in and remind us not to stray too far. Having said all that, I'm not criticizing the staff from both eras. They are all equally hardworking. (:

Uhh, I don't really know what you're referring to sorry, haha. My post was referring to years 2007-08 because that's when I was most active. My activity started dwindling in 2009-10, and completely shut down between 2010-2014. But now that College is over, and work isn't too demanding, I've got some more time to myself and this place still has charm. My favourite part is that I find people growing up on here just as I am. I joined almost ten years ago, and my mindset then was that, by the time I'm 23 I would be way too old for this place. But look at me now, haha.

 

[Sun]

-snip-

Yeah the strict part was real, haha. I'm citing our current XY speculation thread (this isn't a bash nor criticism, Nah and Ashley just simply citing, luv ya haha), if people dared to post the Pokemon super bowl commercial in the thread back in the day, we could have been told to not stray far from the topic, any mentions on anime in the said thread could have been seen as off-topic and could result an infract. XD

I officially returned here to PC around late year 2013, I also noticed the change of atmosphere as well as the disappearance of my older friends. The staff nowadays are kinder, helpful like the customer service people as oppose to the stern cops, haha.

I'm more curious on the current staff members' view on their predecessors, particularly on the stern ones, haha.

-snip-

Hmm... I officially joined the forum on Feb 2008. :P We missed each other, Alex, hahaha. You can search for the archives on Google. You might be able to see some 'highlights' and a thread that is filled with banned members, hahaha. XD

-snip-

Didn't notice the edit until I posted my comment. It was so damn memorable, how can I forget that? XD

 

[Margot]

But those were the days when tags and banners reigned supreme, when everyone had matching icons and siggys like I do right now (I'm old school sob)

Yeah! I was going to mention something about that. Going back to the graphics section, it looks like there are a lot more galleries as opposed to ~shops~ where people were literally put on waiting lists. If you couldn't make yourself a respectable matching avatar and banner, you found a member who could and then everything else going on in your signature had to match the vibe/color scheme, etc etc.

Now everyone goes rogue and mis-matchy which is cool, but whenever I think about making a new sig I'm always like "but wait, do I have a matching icon???" ehhh it doesn't matter now :P I think that's a big reason why there aren't so many request shops anymore.

 

[Lucid]

I actually kinda miss PC families. While nowadays it's obviously unnecessary since you're already know who you're close to and whatever, at the time, it really did feel like you were part of one big family. Whether you were a twin, an evil twin, or a second-cousin-in-law or whatever, you still felt like you were part of some big family and you knew that you were close to a particular user by being in their PC family. It was kind of a fuzzy feeling on the inside at that time, knowing that you and everyone else in that same family kind of knew each other. You can say this was kind of clique-y as well, but it was what it was.

Being included and inclusive felt pretty great at the time, not gonna lie.

You pretty much covered everything I was going to say with this and your other post. Especially with staff hostility, I remember talking to a old staffer a few months back and they were kinda like "wtf? Why are the mods being so polite when closing threads?", so yeah, i think the current staff is more friendly and laid back in general, where as before it just the overall feel of things was more cliquey and I could imagine it was very hard to feel included. Like you said, I think that's why people really dug the whole pair/family deal, as it made them feel more included. And as for the crush thread, yeah it was funny at times, but it was basically just shitpost central. It was mostly just a silly incoherent PG-rated mess. The biggest contrast for me is how SLOW this section moves in comparison to like 04-06, like the DCC and crush threads would get several post per minute all day long. I do wish Trashcan would keep a DCC, I love that you guys are allowing things to be more fluid, and it has been active lately, but it just slows down sometimes and things just go through dry spells one way or another. Another big thing is the maturity level and what flies and is considered appropriate now. When I was part of staff, most members and staff members were between 14 and 20 (I think we even had a 13 year old mod), now everyone's is in their late teens and 20's, so that's a big difference obviously.

 

[Nothing Is Real]

I joined here back in 2009, when I was at the height of my teen years Pokémon hype. It was around the time HGSS were due to be released, and I was madly excited since GSC were my favourite games as a kid. I think that's what drove me to join.

I remember the crazy debates in 2010 when BW info was started to pile up slowly. That was hilarious, they got a little out of hand :S

The other thing I remember was the admins and mods trolling everyone with the Lerroux thing, and I knew the whole way through that it was a wind up. Funny times.

 

[Alex]

Hmm... I officially joined the forum on Feb 2008. :P We missed each other, Alex, hahaha. You can search for the archives on Google. You might be able to see some 'highlights' and a thread that is filled with banned members, hahaha. XD

Oh what was your username??

 

[Margot]

I miss PC families too, although mine was ridiculously large. You had parents, siblings, children, step-whatevers, it was crazy!! I think they went away because, like Lucid said, the average age range is much older and people seem to be socializing outside their small groups of friends anyway. The forum now feels a lot more open in that way. I used to get so nervous at the thought of randomly saying hi to a user I didn't know. Now? I feel like most people are cool talking to whomever. It's nice :)

 

[wolf]

PC used to have more (sub-)forums. Nowadays it's more common to use categories for organizing threads.

PC back in the 2008-2010 for me was really exciting since PC was the first forum I ever joined. I pretty much lived in the Pokemon Group section for a long time, since there were really awesome groups like The Wolves Hideout and Pokemon: The Toddler's Playground which kinda inspired me to join PC in the first place.

Oh dear that WH thread has probably the first CSS I've ever created. AVERT YOUR EYES.

WH and TP were good fun. They were the place that I spent most of my newbie days. Shitpost central though lol.