Rules

[Turner]

You're saying these things need to happen. I don't feel that way. I'm speaking from your position that this should happen. I'm happy for things to stay the way they are.

What I'm saying this that so long as this site has an inactivity problem, threads like this will continue to be made and we'll keep having these same discussions until we end up driving everyone away, new and old. Every time the forums have a problem, you can always trace the reasoning back to the fact that the forums just aren't active enough.

The community wants this place to be a Pokemon fansite they can be proud of, we want to be up there with the other big fansites because we love Pokemon and we want our community to grow. We need your help as the site admin to do that.

yes

Fine, if it's functional and can be prettied up enough to be inviting to newbies then that's all I care about.

So what would it do. It's all very nice to go 'flashy' and 'Javascript' and web 2.0, but what would you do with it?

I already said, I'm not suggesting that we should do this. But the fact is, our competition - other fansites are created within the blink of an eye and sustain communities just fine. They don't bother trying to reinvent the wheel by having the users provide them with a hand crafted Pokedex, they just grab it from PokeAPI and have done with. Boom, operational Pokedex imported within an afternoon.

The internet has changed. The way this website is run is slow and clumsy. If it doesn't make sense to me and many other people here, you can bet it won't make sense to the under-13s who've grown up on phones and tablets without desktop PCs and forums. We need to make this site as attractive to those people as possible; to show them that this is a better alternative for their Pokemon fill than Reddit, blocked or Facebook. Focus more on the 'why' rather than the 'how' and you begin to see things from our perspective.

It's really, really easy to say "This is wrong", but it would be far more constructive to give some actual ideas that can be worked with. I've not seen anything concrete from you, and that makes it really difficult to say anything about.

I constantly give you concrete ideas Joeno and they either get rubbished or scaled down to such a point that it makes absolutely no difference to the site itself. You managed to turn 'Lets have the users freely submit news articles and content by letting selected moderators proofread it' into "We'll let people comment on content pages". Neither of these are even big changes to begin with, we need something bigger.

I don't know how your handwritten CMS works, so I'm limited in how 'concrete' I can be here with my suggestions and I'd much rather provide ideas at this stage so we can decide on whether or not they're good ideas before we look at their implementation. The strength of any changes is going to come from the community, so I'd rather have everyone on-ball and enthusiastic about the plans. There's also a danger in losing the forest to the trees if we focus too much on specifics at this stage.

Let's list some problems and break things into smaller chunks, shall we? I encourage anyone else who has ideas about the site/forum to also use this or a similar template so we're all on the same page. The more you ask yourself 'Why' the closer you get to the root of the issue and spend less time on small changes that won't make any differences.

Problem: The news on the front page is never updated.
Details: Nobody ever submits news to the front page. Nobody has the time or motivation to be a regular poster of news.
Why?: Submitting a news article to the website is time consuming and not transparent. If I'm a new user looking at the news page, I have no idea how to go about submitting news, it's not immediately apparent. I have to speak to a third party or send my article to an email address. I have no idea if my article has been read, if it will be posted and if the formatting I've made to the article will be maintained. I don't know if I will be credited or if my words will be paraphrased. I don't know how much of this article belongs to me.
Proposed solution: First, we make sure there is a link on every news article to a /submit page. Because we want as much community involvement as possible to keep the content coming in. We make this fairly big and inviting, not tucked away in the footer. Next, on that page we implement some kind of basic WYSIWYG form for submitting news pieces - we don't throw overblown content rules and style guides at them (we want this part of the process to be quick and painless so they don't mind doing it regularly) and then we use CSS to style every submitted article in the same way so nobody has to make sure the formatting matches the rest of the site. The news article is either quickly approved or not based on its written content by a volunteer moderator and ends up on the site, all well within 24 hours hopefully.

So this works on a sort of submit -> approve -> publish model without being selective over who is allowed to write the articles. Does this sound like a good idea or not?

We can tackle the other problems too, but I'm going to focus on the updating of the site first.

[SirBlaziken]

I have said in the past that I would love to help, but I don't have the time to learn coding and stuff like that, and I don't know how to do so now. As for writing about the latest details on stuff, I can possibly research some stuff and write out some articles if people would help with that too. However, what it takes to submit an article hasn't been outlined, plus I am bad with coding and stuff like that, as I stated before.

im not letting this site be closed until we see the puk anime reach fruition

That and the roleplaying board being revived. I (or we if people want to send me ideas) need to start thinking and organizing some possibly. If anyone has any decently workable ideas for an rp, feel free to PM me. I'm willing to listen and I don't bite (hard).

[Joeno]

What you suggest is already there. People don't use it.

The forum not being active enough goes back a lot further, and comes from a toxic and argumentative group that was very active. That caused a number of notable contributors to be driven away. And on some level, that same attitude is still there. It's why I'm not inclined to do more here. Too much of a negative cycle to make the community work for the group that has been doing that work.

To be honest, Turner, looking at what you want out of the site, it seems like what you are looking for is simply not what PKMN.NET will ever offer or was ever going to. That's fine, I think part of the point here is that we can't be everything for everyone. But maybe it would help everyone if we can accept this.

[Turner]

What you suggest is already there. People don't use it.

Where? Where is it? I made sure I looked before I visited the page but I couldn't find it in any immediately accessible location, so it's no surprise to me that nobody submits anything if they can't find it.

The forum not being active enough goes back a lot further, and comes from a toxic and argumentative group that was very active. That caused a number of notable contributors to be driven away. And on some level, that same attitude is still there. It's why I'm not inclined to do more here. Too much of a negative cycle to make the community work for the group that has been doing that work.

So that's what this is really about? You don't like the community? PKMN.NET has had it's ups and downs, people have gotten angry over various things, but hardly any of those people are active anymore and if they are, I don't see them causing any problems. We've all been involved in drama but at this stage I think most of us are committed to getting some kind of meaningful change out of the site so we can finally move on. The active userbase has completely changed and is unrecognizable from what it was just 3 years ago. Can you tell us who this group is so we can try and identify the problem with them? I'm guessing there has to be some kind of issue stopping you from just banning them. I don't care about old drama being dragged up, I just want some progress so we can move past this and face the future.

To be honest, Turner, looking at what you want out of the site, it seems like what you are looking for is simply not what PKMN.NET will ever offer or was ever going to. That's fine, I think part of the point here is that we can't be everything for everyone. But maybe it would help everyone if we can accept this.

Why? I've just given you one suggestion that apparently we already have. If we already have it, then why won't we offer it? Surely if it already exists then all we need to do is to promote it more? If the process of user-generated news isn't something you want to do then let me know and I'll think up something else. Tell me the boundaries of how you're happy for this site to evolve and I'll come up with ideas that fit inside it, I'm more than happy to work with you on this.

[Joeno]

The vision mentioned before is one where I admit we won't have the latest content, because there is no way to win there at this point. User submitted content is too slow for that. The focus, for us, would be more community and interactivity based features. Again, the Name Rater is the big one there. Focusing on content is missing the point.

And if you want that honesty - your posts feel as aggressive as ever and are making me wonder why I bother. You have your own ideas, nothing posted here is changing them and O feel you would be better off implementing them on a site of your own.

[SirBlaziken]

@Turner: There's actually the topic right above this one on this exact board for that, which I literally just found.

If you're going to try to rebuild everything here based on interactive and community based features, what are some ideas you have, because i'd like to possibly hear some of them.

[lets all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes]

USP ideas:

- its a british site so we could have a site refresh based around misanthropy and tea but pokemon themed, design based around pokeball with union jack colours and we all sit around a virtual pot of tea and complain about whoever isn't currently in the room like real british people
- admit place as a second-rate forum on the internet and make it a tourney place where its ok to lose and our team have obvious exploits which ur meant to figure out. everyone likes it cos you dont have to be the best ever and a huge annoying bleeding-edge nerd about it. revisiting the old times of "havin a friendly"
- spriting resource???? we had a p deece spriting community and idk if any other websites teach u much about that
- pokemon crafts, even if its just a kind of Pinterest affair in the end, prefaced with knitting/sewing/crochet tutorials n support. i roll around on ravelry quite a lot so if nothing else it'd make a good 10 minutes of wasting time
- brocks donuts, our entire site draw would be a recipe for brocks legendary donuts made in his trusty frying/drying pan

The internet has changed. The way this website is run is slow and clumsy. If it doesn't make sense to me and many other people here, you can bet it won't make sense to the under-13s who've grown up on phones and tablets without desktop PCs and forums.

how does the current site design scale up on mobiles/tablets? i hear fluid & responsive bootstrap and the weird flat design look is all the rage these days

im not letting this site be closed until we see the puk anime reach fruition

kickstarter to get vic magniolia (idk how to spell it) to voice one of us in the anime

we will keep the viewers and the active draw until all of us have revealed our puk bankais at which point everyone will get bored and desert us ＼(;´□｀)/

[Del]

alright, so we focus on community stuff. Name Rater, Ask Sentret, that's cool, i like it.

- spriting resource???? we had a p deece spriting community and idk if any other websites teach u much about that
- pokemon crafts, even if its just a kind of Pinterest affair in the end, prefaced with knitting/sewing/crochet tutorials n support. i roll around on ravelry quite a lot so if nothing else it'd make a good 10 minutes of wasting time

these are cool ideas too, I dunno if we have many active spriters left at this point though? might be worth looking at.

what about featured art of the week or featured fanfic and stuff like that? could help promote more art posting and fanfic posting and stuff?

maybe monthly Official PKMN.NET™ tournaments? maybe appoint someone who knows what's up as a head of the project, we can advertise them elsewhere (where allowed), maybe get some interest drummed up for the site

streams are the hip cool thing right now, we discussed a Twitch stream a while back, maybe that could be cool? i think Turner mentioned "why bother if you can make money off it doing it yourself" but let's be real I don't know if it'd be popular enough to make money off of and if it ever does get to that point we can discuss it then

a bigger social media presence, which we could tie into the "featured art/fanfic/whatever" maybe? start like a tumblr blog and feature an artist or writer every week and just post a piece of art once a day or something, maybe see if someone good at the tumblrs wants to take that up, could advertise potential events/tournaments whatever there too

those are the ideas i've got for now anyway.

[SirBlaziken]

Some of the people to do art, some tournaments sometimes, and writing are already here. The big thing in my eyes is trying to get people to look at it and be like "wow this is cool, this site is probably full of cool people who can teach me more on this thing". I would write and battle some more, however, with the former, i've hit an idea wall, which is why the rp board has dried up (no, seriously, pm me if you have ideas), and with the latter, I need to learn the current metagame in order to relay it to you guys, but I just haven't had the motivation or the time to do so. If someone else would learn how the current metagame works and teaches it to me, I would be more than happy to help show people the way. Same goes with roleplaying/writing, if people can help with ideas and etc. i'd be more than happy to help other people improve and possibly recruit them for that kind of stuff.

[the bread dragon]

i personally see no major issues with it on mobile and that's what ive been with for a while, but that's just me

i play competitive a lot but im really bad lol, i don't know if that means anything

[SirBlaziken]

If you pick on anything, let me know because i'd love to know.

[Turner]

The vision mentioned before is one where I admit we won't have the latest content, because there is no way to win there at this point. User submitted content is too slow for that. The focus, for us, would be more community and interactivity based features. Again, the Name Rater is the big one there. Focusing on content is missing the point.

And if you want that honesty - your posts feel as aggressive as ever and are making me wonder why I bother. You have your own ideas, nothing posted here is changing them and O feel you would be better off implementing them on a site of your own.

I've already said, if you tell me the boundaries you're willing to work within, I will come up with ideas that fit inside them. I'm not being aggressive, I'm just trying to get some definite answers. This topic is going to keep coming up constantly over the months so we need to know how much is worth discussing here. If you set us guidelines on what absolutely isn't going to change, then we know what kind of suggestions we can and can't make.

Is the site news ever going to be updated or is that basically out of the question now? Should we bother thinking about ways to improve the site news or can we consider that completely out of bounds?

You say you want to expand the community, okay fair enough let's focus on that. How much are you willing to work with us or give us permission in creating PKMN.NET presences over the internet? Can we get someone in control of the PKMN.NET twitter account posting news there? What about an official tumblr or subreddit? I can't speak for facebook as I'm not on there and don't know what the situation is but I'd like to raise the idea of a PKMN.NET twitch or YouTube stream. Is this doable?

[Lord Raven]

I'm dropping the argument with xhanatos, because I don't think I was being at any point productive.  I'm looking around and seeing less of what I'm talking about so I was just making an mountain out of a molehill.

snip

The issue is, I like all of these ideas, but nobody's stepped up and made anything consistent.  I feel like people have been either passive or some of these streams and things like this don't get the attention, care, or support for the organizer to keep on going.  I dunno, it's just an uphill battle to implement some of these.

I was trying to plug the IRC but I'm really exhausted and I don't want to be the only one plugging it.  The only people we've even got lately are some random 10 year old kid and a few others who came in and left because nobody was coming into IRC.

None beyond possibly having only a handful of forums left, possibly mostly focus on site questions.

You mean like consolidating a bunch of forums then having a few left for site questions?  Or something else?

As for the aggressive tone; I really don't see how Turner was being aggressive, just disagreeing about certain things and questioning things here and there.

I'm going to put out there that all of us are appreciative of the time and effort put into the site yet at the same time I don't think Turner is trying to be toxic or kill it or anything.  I'm kind of baffled that you think that some of this attitude is toxic - maybe mine you could argue but Turner's is not.  I don't even see the aggressive tone in there anywhere.



Also, while I don't really agree with wiping out the site, if we're going to suggest an overhaul why not just make an "archives" section for a bunch of pages if our focus is shifted away from content?  Just a form of consolidation.  That way we can still keep the pages and refer to them and prevent clutter or shifting from the interactive focus.

[Joeno]

Is the site news ever going to be updated or is that basically out of the question now? Should we bother thinking about ways to improve the site news or can we consider that completely out of bounds?

Improving site news does not feel like the way to go at this point, as other places get there faster, any submission feature could help but would slow it down, and this page doesn't seem to stand out anyway. It feels less productive to focus on that anyway.

In general, based on the past seven or eight years struggling with that (and with news and content it's been at least that long), things that rely on people doing a lot of work are less likely to make it. Crowd source in a sustainable way - which is hard for news when there's nobody who feels you can provide it.

How much are you willing to work with us or give us permission in creating PKMN.NET presences over the internet?

I'd like two things: First, a plan. What are you going to do with it and how are you going to do it.
Second, the right person. I don't really want to hand it over to the first person who comes along and I'd want to make sure some cohesion can be maintained. We'd ideally form a new team around it (we have the custom CMS, my permission management can be insanely granular), but it needs the right people to do it who'll keep them up.

I hope IRC is a decent enough example of that. Muhed stepped up to register it and keep that running, we had a conversation about it and it has been running fine ever since. It hasn't happened for these others though.

an official tumblr or subreddit?

On these two:

Tumblr looks easy enough to integrate, so could be worthwhile to add if there's a further plan for it (what, why etc)

A subreddit is one I am less sure about. To be honest - I'm not sure what the point is. It seems to me that a second discussion forum is redundant and possibly damaging when you're trying to grow it. If there are good reasons the other way I'm willing to listen to them.

a PKMN.NET twitch or YouTube stream. Is this doable?

I don't see an issue with these.

For some of these, if you're not sure what to do with them quite yet, try making an unofficial <thing> and we can switch it to be official when it becomes clearer. Not to say it can't be official straight away, but it might help ramp things up.

The issue is, I like all of these ideas, but nobody's stepped up and made anything consistent.

This is, by the way, the main reason 'more content' (in whatever way) doesn't feel like the best way to go, and feature that can bypass some of that (crowd sourced without needing moderation) is a better direction to look into.

You mean like consolidating a bunch of forums then having a few left for site questions?  Or something else?

Possibly. I haven't decided on anything yet. At least reduce the number. Perhaps a set of three (Pokemon - site - other stuff). Perhaps a few more (Pokemon games - anime - other pokemon - site - other stuff). The nuclear option would be site questions/updates only, without any community support.

[The name master]

And make the name rater thing a sub board that allows users to rate the nicknames without getting too crazy.

That's exactly what I'm doing now I rate loads of terrible nicknames and say they're terrible

without getting too crazy.

That's impossible when I'm around!