What was PokeCommunity like in the first year of launch?

We totally had a 13 year old mod, she had new users and I think another section. There was a lot of this smilie ^______________________^ and the use of "-chan"
 
Can confirm that 13-year-olds were in charge of everything and ^____________________________^ was 1000% more present than it is today.
 
hi guys i been here since 07. during the diamond/pearl wifi battles era. i dont play pkmn no more that was the last time. my last battle was 09. idk y but i still get on here once in awhile.
 
I was one of those ^___________________________________^ using 14 year-olds, sooo. I Can also definitely confirm this was a big thing.
 
Lucid said:
We totally had a 13 year old mod, she had new users and I think another section. There was a lot of this smilie ^______________________^ and the use of "-chan"
Click to expand...

colours said:
don't forget "XD"
Click to expand...

... Why did I found this that late, I would be so In.

I still use XD a lot tho. Sorry, but I just do, deal with it. And ^_^ but way shorter than I did at 13 y/o
 
I have been here since 2011, and I do have to confess the community wasn't as tight-knit as it was today. Back then, I was always in fear of staff power abuse but that's what to expect when you were the new kid on the forums.

I had probably witnessed the most drastic changes in PC's history in what has nearly been only six years.
 
Oh shit here we go, first person in the thread who actually was here in PC's first year.

Ok first time I joined PC, it was a dinky little Ikonboard piggybacking off of Kwesi's The UD domain. I don't remember much beyond the "We are working on a better slogan" slogan but it had a pretty bustling fanart and anime community. People were really nice but it was a small forum at a time when every site and their mom had a forum so regulars were hard to come by and a forum that was super active one week could be gone the next. I didn't stick around this time because I'd joined like 30 forums in the summer of 2002 and when school started back up I pared down to like 3.

Next time I came around, PC had upgraded to vBulletin and merged with PE2K. The popular people from PE2K were pretty whiny about the merge because some had lost moderation power in the move and their cliques got kinda messed up in the process. If you stayed out of Other Chat, it was easy to avoid the cliques but they won all the Member of the Month things unless you worked your ass off to get on their good side. One of my friends at the time (who encouraged me to join and stick around) was really popular because of her art and got modded in the fanart forum but also made some enemies and was prone to drama. She went out with a bang, spamming "KAMIKAZE" over and over in every thread she could find and since PE2K mods didn't really do much beyond flaunt their power, it was a few hours of this before she was finally banned. It was a weird time. ?_?

It's been like 13 years so my memory of this time is more than a little hazy, but a few months later PE2K decided to split again and PC became its own thing and its activity plummeted... but it was still active enough to be fun. I felt a bit weird not leaving with my friend but I liked the place a bit too much and clicked with the new set of regulars enough to make a bit of a name for myself. I got modded in the spring of that year, partially because "we should mod a girl so we have at least ONE female on staff" (thank u half-assed affirmative action!). Getting modded back then was like... sooooo lax. Basically a bunch of random mods threw out suggestions and then if the admins liked them enough, you'd get an AIM message from Kwesi himself asking where you wanted to mod. It wasn't like... based on need for mods or anything, it was basically just on a whim. Anyway, I chose Other Anime bc I was a weeb and also Other Voting Polls because it hadn't had a mod in forever and needed one.

About a month later, I think a few s-mods quit--I can't remember if it was because of drama or what, but they needed some new ones. My name came up because I was nice and helpful (and also still a girl, iirc????) and Arcanine was modded along with me. I didn't notice any difference beyond being able to close threads everywhere because they forgot to give me access to the HQ where all greater-than-mod stuff happened. lmfao oops.

During this time, PC started running into database trouble. Back then, I think vB wasn't as well-optimized as it is now. That or we had some errors. Either way, whenever a thread got too big, sometimes it would just disappear entirely. Hundreds of posts would just go poof, and back then a few hundred posts was a big deal since I remember it being a REALLY BIG DEAL when someone reached 3k posts once. We had to make sure to lock any thread that got too long but I think eventually it got so bad that even threads that had only 4 pages were at risk sooo.... we decided to restart!

This is going a little bit past the "one year" mark, since the story is now in September 2003, but I'll just go to the end of that year to be safe. So we decided the best way to deal with the database errors would just be to wipe clean and start fresh. This was still in the era of forums being really popular no matter the website, so starting anew could be dangerous because if our forum didn't appear well-established, it might just fizzle out and die. Plus, making users re-register and build up their reputation again? Might work, might mean the end of PC. But it had to be done.

Obviously, the reset went off without a hitch, really. Thanks to user Kairi having admin powers for a while after the restart, we were able to deal with any problems that came up really quickly instead of waiting hours or days for an admin to come on and help. I also finally had access to the HQ and everyone was like "OHHH you didn't have this forum before? no wonder you were so quiet!!" and so began my long journey of having a hand in almost every part of PC for the next 8 years. 'v' (It was around this time that modding became much more logical instead of the weird whimsical version that PC worked off of for the first year.)

Non-staff users were pretty great too. We lost quite a few accounts in the move, but plenty of people re-invited their friends and worked hard to boost their activity over the coming weeks so that we didn't even really have a dip in activity. PC just kept on growing and growing and growing after that and, somehow, it's still here today!!

The best part of digging all this back up for me is remembering the time when both Kairi and I were active parts of PC and when we had a big hand. I actually met up with her in real life a few days ago, all the way across the world in Tokyo! It was sooo cool to finally meet after 13+ years of knowing each other. ;w; We even reminisced about PC a little bit!
 
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Cherrim said:
Oh **** here we go, first person in the thread who actually was here in PC's first year.

Ok first time I joined PC, it was a dinky little Ikonboard piggybacking off of Kwesi's The UD domain. I don't remember much beyond the "We are working on a better slogan" slogan but it had a pretty bustling fanart and anime community. People were really nice but it was a small forum at a time when every site and their mom had a forum so regulars were hard to come by and a forum that was super active one week could be gone the next. I didn't stick around this time because I'd joined like 30 forums in the summer of 2012 and when school started back up I pared down to like 3.

Next time I came around, PC had upgraded to vBulletin and merged with PE2K. The popular people from PE2K were pretty whiny about the merge because some had lost moderation power in the move and their cliques got kinda messed up in the process. If you stayed out of Other Chat, it was easy to avoid the cliques but they won all the Member of the Month things unless you worked your ass off to get on their good side. One of my friends at the time (who encouraged me to join and stick around) was really popular because of her art and got modded in the fanart forum but also made some enemies and was prone to drama. She went out with a bang, spamming "KAMIKAZE" over and over in every thread she could find and since PE2K mods didn't really do much beyond flaunt their power, it was a few hours of this before she was finally banned. It was a weird time. ?_?

It's been like 13 years so my memory of this time is more than a little hazy, but a few months later PE2K decided to split again and PC became its own thing and its activity plummeted... but it was still active enough to be fun. I felt a bit weird not leaving with my friend but I liked the place a bit too much and clicked with the new set of regulars enough to make a bit of a name for myself. I got modded in the spring of that year, partially because "we should mod a girl so we have at least ONE female on staff" (thank u half-assed affirmative action!). Getting modded back then was like... sooooo lax. Basically a bunch of random mods threw out suggestions and then if the admins liked them enough, you'd get an AIM message from Kwesi himself asking where you wanted to mod. It wasn't like... based on need for mods or anything, it was basically just on a whim. Anyway, I chose Other Anime bc I was a weeb and also Other Voting Polls because it hadn't had a mod in forever and needed one.

About a month later, I think a few s-mods quit--I can't remember if it was because of drama or what, but they needed some new ones. My name came up because I was nice and helpful (and also still a girl, iirc????) and Arcanine was modded along with me. I didn't notice any difference beyond being able to close threads everywhere because they forgot to give me access to the HQ where all greater-than-mod stuff happened. lmfao oops.

During this time, PC started running into database trouble. Back then, I think vB wasn't as well-optimized as it is now. That or we had some errors. Either way, whenever a thread got too big, sometimes it would just disappear entirely. Hundreds of posts would just go poof, and back then a few hundred posts was a big deal since I remember it being a REALLY BIG DEAL when someone reached 3k posts once. We had to make sure to lock any thread that got too long but I think eventually it got so bad that even threads that had only 4 pages were at risk sooo.... we decided to restart!

This is going a little bit past the "one year" mark, since the story is now in September 2003, but I'll just go to the end of that year to be safe. So we decided the best way to deal with the database errors would just be to wipe clean and start fresh. This was still in the era of forums being really popular no matter the website, so starting anew could be dangerous because if our forum didn't appear well-established, it might just fizzle out and die. Plus, making users re-register and build up their reputation again? Might work, might mean the end of PC. But it had to be done.

Obviously, the reset went off without a hitch, really. Thanks to user Kairi having admin powers for a while after the restart, we were able to deal with any problems that came up really quickly instead of waiting hours or days for an admin to come on and help. I also finally had access to the HQ and everyone was like "OHHH you didn't have this forum before? no wonder you were so quiet!!" and so began my long journey of having a hand in almost every part of PC for the next 8 years. 'v' (It was around this time that modding became much more logical instead of the weird whimsical version that PC worked off of for the first year.)

Non-staff users were pretty great too. We lost quite a few accounts in the move, but plenty of people re-invited their friends and worked hard to boost their activity over the coming weeks so that we didn't even really have a dip in activity. PC just kept on growing and growing and growing after that and, somehow, it's still here today!!

The best part of digging all this back up for me is remembering the time when both Kairi and I were active parts of PC and when we had a big hand. I actually met up with her in real life a few days ago, all the way across the world in Tokyo! It was sooo cool to finally meet after 13+ years of knowing each other. ;w; We even reminisced about PC a little bit!
Click to expand...

Did PC ever have a linked website like Serebii or Pokebeach?
 
Hands said:
Did PC ever have a linked website like Serebii or Pokebeach?
Click to expand...
Mmhmm!

PC was actually originally built to be a forum for several sites. So instead of a bunch of sites having a bunch of different forums, they would all share one forum and not split the activity. It caused a whole bunch of drama back in the day because the only way to become an admin on PC was to have your site chosen to be a partner site and people who were active on the forum could only ever hope for s-mod, which became a sore spot.

I can't remember every site that was part of PC but here's a partial list!

  • The Unknown Dungeon
  • Pokemon Palace Network
  • Zapchu Evolution
  • PE2K
  • Total Pokemon
  • S*afoam Island (fuck you m3)
  • V-Road (or Victory Road?)
  • The APCC (I can't remember what this stood for LOL)
  • #free_pokemon
  • DF Dadragonz (? Claire's website. I think this might've been the name??)
 
Cherrim said:
  • DF Dadragonz (? Claire's website. I think this might've been the name??)
Click to expand...
DF Dadragonz (and yes, that is the correct name, 'z' and all) was the site that brought me here, I believe. Apart from PPN, I can't say that any of the other ones you mention ring any sort of bell!
 
Mr Cat Dog said:
DF Dadragonz (and yes, that is the correct name, 'z' and all) was the site that brought me here, I believe. Apart from PPN, I can't say that any of the other ones you mention ring any sort of bell!
Click to expand...
I googled a few phrases trying to track down as many as I could remember. I just copy pasted that one from a post and hoped it was right. :P

I only remembered like 4 of those from the top of my head. I'm surprised it was so difficult to find others...
 
Cherrim said:
Oh **** here we go, first person in the thread who actually was here in PC's first year.

Ok first time I joined PC, it was a dinky little Ikonboard piggybacking off of Kwesi's The UD domain. I don't remember much beyond the "We are working on a better slogan" slogan but it had a pretty bustling fanart and anime community. People were really nice but it was a small forum at a time when every site and their mom had a forum so regulars were hard to come by and a forum that was super active one week could be gone the next. I didn't stick around this time because I'd joined like 30 forums in the summer of 2012 and when school started back up I pared down to like 3.

Next time I came around, PC had upgraded to vBulletin and merged with PE2K. The popular people from PE2K were pretty whiny about the merge because some had lost moderation power in the move and their cliques got kinda messed up in the process. If you stayed out of Other Chat, it was easy to avoid the cliques but they won all the Member of the Month things unless you worked your ass off to get on their good side. One of my friends at the time (who encouraged me to join and stick around) was really popular because of her art and got modded in the fanart forum but also made some enemies and was prone to drama. She went out with a bang, spamming "KAMIKAZE" over and over in every thread she could find and since PE2K mods didn't really do much beyond flaunt their power, it was a few hours of this before she was finally banned. It was a weird time. ?_?

It's been like 13 years so my memory of this time is more than a little hazy, but a few months later PE2K decided to split again and PC became its own thing and its activity plummeted... but it was still active enough to be fun. I felt a bit weird not leaving with my friend but I liked the place a bit too much and clicked with the new set of regulars enough to make a bit of a name for myself. I got modded in the spring of that year, partially because "we should mod a girl so we have at least ONE female on staff" (thank u half-assed affirmative action!). Getting modded back then was like... sooooo lax. Basically a bunch of random mods threw out suggestions and then if the admins liked them enough, you'd get an AIM message from Kwesi himself asking where you wanted to mod. It wasn't like... based on need for mods or anything, it was basically just on a whim. Anyway, I chose Other Anime bc I was a weeb and also Other Voting Polls because it hadn't had a mod in forever and needed one.

About a month later, I think a few s-mods quit--I can't remember if it was because of drama or what, but they needed some new ones. My name came up because I was nice and helpful (and also still a girl, iirc????) and Arcanine was modded along with me. I didn't notice any difference beyond being able to close threads everywhere because they forgot to give me access to the HQ where all greater-than-mod stuff happened. lmfao oops.

During this time, PC started running into database trouble. Back then, I think vB wasn't as well-optimized as it is now. That or we had some errors. Either way, whenever a thread got too big, sometimes it would just disappear entirely. Hundreds of posts would just go poof, and back then a few hundred posts was a big deal since I remember it being a REALLY BIG DEAL when someone reached 3k posts once. We had to make sure to lock any thread that got too long but I think eventually it got so bad that even threads that had only 4 pages were at risk sooo.... we decided to restart!

This is going a little bit past the "one year" mark, since the story is now in September 2003, but I'll just go to the end of that year to be safe. So we decided the best way to deal with the database errors would just be to wipe clean and start fresh. This was still in the era of forums being really popular no matter the website, so starting anew could be dangerous because if our forum didn't appear well-established, it might just fizzle out and die. Plus, making users re-register and build up their reputation again? Might work, might mean the end of PC. But it had to be done.

Obviously, the reset went off without a hitch, really. Thanks to user Kairi having admin powers for a while after the restart, we were able to deal with any problems that came up really quickly instead of waiting hours or days for an admin to come on and help. I also finally had access to the HQ and everyone was like "OHHH you didn't have this forum before? no wonder you were so quiet!!" and so began my long journey of having a hand in almost every part of PC for the next 8 years. 'v' (It was around this time that modding became much more logical instead of the weird whimsical version that PC worked off of for the first year.)

Non-staff users were pretty great too. We lost quite a few accounts in the move, but plenty of people re-invited their friends and worked hard to boost their activity over the coming weeks so that we didn't even really have a dip in activity. PC just kept on growing and growing and growing after that and, somehow, it's still here today!!

The best part of digging all this back up for me is remembering the time when both Kairi and I were active parts of PC and when we had a big hand. I actually met up with her in real life a few days ago, all the way across the world in Tokyo! It was sooo cool to finally meet after 13+ years of knowing each other. ;w; We even reminisced about PC a little bit!
Click to expand...

At last, an original member who not only delivers their story in such an elegant structure, but still communicated like a human being. I am amazed by your contribution to this thread. You are without a doubt the leader PokeCommunity has been looking for. #censored
 
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