War of the Pokemon forums

[ash_pikachu_98]

I've only scanned through some of the responses here so far, but one that caught my eye was a 5k limit for blog access. Without really giving a direct opinion of my own on that aspect, the quality aspect that was brought up got me thinking... Do we already or have we recently considered a "Like" or "Thanks" option for posts? Basically any user can Like/Thanks any post. There wouldn't be a dislike/nothanks option since that just breeds negativity, but users who post good content with better quality will naturally flow to the top with higher amounts of Likes or Thanks (whichever term were to be used). A system like that could totally replace a post count limit, or simply be used in conjunction with it; I think an obvious benefit of users knowing they have the option of building up that portion of their stats is that even brand new users will be more incentivized to not just post frequently, but better and more meaningful responses. Thoughts?

 

[Mana1]

Honestly, I think that one of the only things that PC could contribute to on an information side of things, is rom hacking. I know it's been brought up before about getting a hacking wiki attached to the site and that was shot down straight away. But I think that if the idea were refined a bit, and maybe shrunk down to a size that we could handle it could be something that could bring in members.

I think that's spot on, a lot of people are joining PC for Hacking (and/or Game Making when they work out the difference). We do have a lot of tutorials and resources in this section but for newbies, according to most of the newcomers I mentor, it's quite hard to navigate and work out what's what.

Generally, across the board, I think the mentor system should be flaunted - at the moment there are a couple asking Megan for mentors every day. Considering the majority are asking for Rom Hacking/Emulation mentors it would be good to encourage established members to help out and join in.

Perhaps, once we have enough mentors to support it, the mentor forum should be advertised on registration? I think the interaction with members is one of the key reasons people stay, especially if they've taught stuff and been friendly.

 

[Peeky Chew]

Well I left PC for about a year, and coming back the main thing that I see as worse than the other forums is loading times. When I joined PC there was occasional down time, but when it was up it was fast. Now it's just slow almost all of the time. If the servers could be upgraded I think a lot more people would want to join, and stay.

 

[Zaspien]

I remembered the good old days when PokéCommunity was the only place you could download Shiny Gold. This certainly did attract a lot of members, but where all of them active? If somebody signs up for a particular reason (such as the shiny example the original poster mentioned), I would think that after obtaining what they came for their activity would decline. It isn't a given though - I'm sure some members will find other aspects of the community that they enjoy and will stay on (which was the exact case with myself) however it would be in the minority.

The best way to increase PokéCommunity's activity, in my opinion, is to keep its morals as a friendly, well developed, easy access community where people would be motivated to post and stay active.

 

[ash_pikachu_98]

Is that program 'Netbattle' by TVsIan still around? Years back I came within just a few votes of their forum users from completely merging their forums into ours. Too bad the vote ended up in the wrong direction, would've been pretty cool to have their entire community as a section of ours. I always wondered if someday another opportunity to revisit that idea might come back around...

Perhaps, once we have enough mentors to support it, the mentor forum should be advertised on registration? I think the interaction with members is one of the key reasons people stay, especially if they've taught stuff and been friendly.

You've hit the nail on the head. One small aspect, mentoring helps create added purpose for seasoned users, passing down the things they know to others. Knowledge reaches a ceiling of potential when you have a limited number of knowledgeable users. Grow the knowledge of your users and you grow that potential exponentially. From the perspective of new users, getting genuine help will encourage them to stay longer, carry on the style of the first users they are exposed to, and hopefully lead to contributing something of value on their own at some point.

The best way to increase PokéCommunity's activity, in my opinion, is to keep its morals as a friendly, well developed, easy access community where people would be motivated to post and stay active.

Well said.

 

[champagnepapi]

I'm fairly certain Netbattle's community is dead, the simulator itself is unused for the most part and will most likely become completely obsolete once pokemon online releases cartridge rby play.

Actually a look at their site says im lying; they revamped it completely and have new forums etc, although it looks like a restart and most of the old community is gone

 

[aRedMoon]

A unified look would be nice. Like, you know, updating old styles so that they're not full of old links to sites that don't exist anymore.

>_>



I think even adding a portal where a select few could post news or something would give PC a "website" homepage that could generate some content/visitors. It wouldn't be that much more work to run, and would potentially bring in some of those news nerds.

Have like "Current Pokemon News" or something at the top of the Pokemon page, and when newsy-type stuff comes out, put it there. Comments would be done through the forum, which would generate activity.

If you could figure out how to duplicate threads so that they'd show up in their "native" forums as well as the Current news forum too would be sweet, something like what these two do:
https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=258109
https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=245414