Topics

[8 July]

We're organizing another PKMN.NET meet this year! It will take place on 8 July in London.

As it's where our social activity has moved to, we're organizing this on Discord. Join now to sign up!

This topic has been moved to Random Randomness.

http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=106810.0

This topic has been moved to TV and Movies.

http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=106723.0

This topic has been moved to General Pokémon Discussion.

http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=106655.0

This topic has been moved to TV and Movies.

http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=106642.0

This topic has been moved to Games General.

http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=106622.0

[Where?]

I know it's been absent, we've been distracted busy.

Where? London. Details to be confirmed

When? Saturday 4th July

How to be there? Post here. Sixteen and over only. Eighteen or over makes longer stays easier.

Further details will be confirmed in private, but most of us can find our way around, right?

We look forward to seeing you there!

Feeling happy? Sad? Annoyed? Need to get something off your chest?

If it's something small that you just want to share, no need for a discussion, no need for (many) further replies, go ahead and post it here.

Three sentences or less though. If you can't summarize it in three sentences or less, you probably want to create a topic instead. At that point, there's probably something worth talking about in a proper topic. Don't worry - we have more than enough space left for the forums that it won't get in the way.

If you want to reply with more than a few words, that's also the point to make a topic about it. We can split posts off this topic if we have to.

Early warning: The site will be down between (roughly) 9:30PM on September 17th to 8AM on September 18th at the latest as our hosts move our server to a different data centre.

We'll try to keep the downtime as short as possible.

[Where?]

Yep, it's another meet this year. Back to our old haunts. Do what we do best.

Where? London. Back to where we were.

When? Saturday 10th August

How can I be there? Sign up for it. But only if you meet our requirements. Only those of 16 years or older are allowed to attend. If you're 16 or 17 (and in some cases even when you're older), you must ask your parents or guardians for permission. That's a legal requirement. Which means it's really important. Be aware that if you're 16 or 17, you may be asked to leave earlier than most (after the main part of the meet is done) so we can enjoy certain things you might not be allowed to go.

Exact times and locations will be decided in private. If you're interested in coming, say so below, and we'll grant you board access.

We know that you might need to take a while to confirm your availablity here, therefore the deadline for attendance confirmation is the 5th August. After then, you will need to seek special permission from Typhlosion or myself in order to attend.

Again, here's something we wish to make clear: if you're going to walk off and do something by yourself, it's your own responsibility to find the group again. We're not waiting around for anybody.

If London isn't convenient for you, our apologies. Last year we tried meeting up in York and attendance was very low, so that didn't seem worth it. This works better for us.

(As for the small print: We reserve the right to refuse admittance to members for any reasons we consider appropriate. If, for example, you joined the site two days ago, you need to forgive us for not being quite as sure about your intentions. However, generally the meet is open to anyone).

We look forward to seeing you there!

To get more content moving, Richard & Blaziken has started work on a Pokemon of the Week feature. Part one, Gengar, is up now!

Full column
Gengar

Yeah, we know, it's VGC time. We're all rooting for our champion and hope we get a UK win. Go Ben!

In the mean time, as another internation thing, UEPC is organising a European tournament and you're all invited to join.

It's a single elimination double battle tournament following VGC 2012 rules with some related bits and pieces of legislation.

For the full announcement, please look at UEPC's official announcement, or if you already know you want to take part, go to the relevant registration topic.

Good luck and have fun! (And prove PKMN.NET deserves to be in there)

Those who keep up with other Pokemon sites may have noticed the actions of others making a stance against LGBTQ discrimination and hatred, explicitly calling it out as not allowed now and creating extra protection.

We're not joining them in this move.

Let me explain. PKMN.NET's admin team has three gay members on it. We're the ones paying for the site, writing the code, and have beyond this done a lot of work on the site. Several other staff members fall in the same group.

So yes, it's in our own best interest to be in favour of it. We're gay, we don't hide it, we're proud of it, and that isn't going to change.

That doesn't mean we like their changes.

My big issue with this is an expansion on this when asked whether this wouldn't simply be covered by flaming. From a staff member on that site:

There were a lot of caveats based on how you phrased your post, where you said it, etc. Special permissions to "allow debates" and to avoid "banning an opinion" and other things like that.

The new policy eliminate the vast majority of those caveats and permissions.

You know what that says? That it isn't there to eliminate the bad behaviour. Other, more general rules can cover this. That protects everyone. Not just those who are LGBTQ, but also those with different religions, skin colour, ethnic background, hair colour and yes, even those who think the word 'forme' is cool rather than ridiculous.

No, this rule is created because apparently we need protecting. We can't stand up for ourselves. We're not firm enough. It needs to be called out specifically and seperately, and be covered by everyone else.

It implies a weakness, a softness, saying that we are. And that's offensive. Singling us out to protect us is as bad as allowing it the opposite way. Censorship is not the way to create understanding or equality, it's a way to make those who are opposed to, for example, LGBTQ rights feel even worse about us. You're silencing them to protect us.

We can do without that. We can take care of ourselves. Ban hate speech if you want, but do it for everyone, not just for the LGBTQ community. Don't make us out to be weak enough that we need it called out specifically. That can be as offensive.

To quote Chelsea Handler (yeah...) on Kathy Griffin's talkshow (yeah...), on something similar:

The more we talk about women being unequal to men, the more it becomes a true statement. I think we should just act like everything is even and it will be.

[Where?]

Yep, it's another meet this year... but slightly different location. By popular request and popular London avoidance!

Where? YORK. Yes. York this time

When? Saturday 4th August

How can I be there? Sign up for it. But only if you meet our requirements. Only those of 16 years or older are allowed to attend. If you're 16 or 17 (and in some cases even when you're older), you must ask your parents or guardians for permission. That's a legal requirement. Which means it's really important. Be aware that if you're 16 or 17, you may be asked to leave earlier than most (after the main part of the meet is done) so we can enjoy certain things you might not be allowed to go.

Exact times and locations will be decided in private. If you're interested in coming, say so below, and we'll grant you board access.

We know that you might need to take a while to confirm your availablity here, therefore the deadline for attendance confirmation is the 28th July. After then, you will need to seek special permission from Typhlosion or myself in order to attend.

Again, here's something we wish to make clear: if you're going to walk off and do something by yourself, it's your own responsibility to find the group again. We're not waiting around for anybody.

We know going north may mean some people may not be able to attend, but it'll also make life easier for others - it's only fair more people in the north get to attend as well. Next year we'll look at London again, promise... but that's something we'll discuss another time.

(As for the small print: We reserve the right to refuse admittance to members for any reasons we consider appropriate. If, for example, you joined the site two days ago, you need to forgive us for not being quite as sure about your intentions. However, generally the meet is open to anyone).

We look forward to seeing you there!

Hey guys,

Just wanted to let everyone know that UEPC has opened signups for their winter tournament - fifth gen unlimited level using Nintendo wireless.

All the details can be found linked from this UEPC topic.

Wasn't going to post it, but this way we look a bit livelier:

The news code has received a major overhaul. Aside from looking a bit nicer, region and type filters have been added.

Sorry for the late announcement, but we needed to make sure we were happy.

Tomorrow 8 October, the site will be down for roughly an hour to move to new hardware. Might provide a bit of speed and stability, mostly making sure we are ready before it does go down

We expect to start our move around 1PM, but this will depend in part on when we can get some other things set up to go.

We'll do our best to minimize the downtime - the main thing is that it'll cost us some time to transfer files.

Hi guys,

It turned out I never updated our theme development kit after the previous one... so I took some time to do so today. Go ahead and give it a try if you want to make something new!

Download the Theme Dev Kit

Main page update!

Yes, if you've just gotten to the site, you might have noticed a few changes. Aside from a slight layout update (one that probably won't stand out much to most), we have also updated our main page to use a new gadget-based system.

In the past, like many other Pokemon sites, our main page mostly contained news - both Pokémon news and site updates. That's not, however, what the site does best, and doesn't focus on other parts we feel people will want to learn about when they visit us. So we changed it.

From now on, the main page will contain a number of gadgets containing basic information. Furthermore, as long as you have an account here, you can customize the gadgets - which ones show up, in which order, and to an extent, the information they will show in there. From now on, you're in control. Well, as much as we are willing to allow you, but it's more than what you get in most places!

We're adding further gadgets in the future (having only a few right now... sorry) and allow for a few more customization option. If you have any ideas, let us know... and if you want to try your own hand at some PHP coding, get in touch for the basic API and relevant technical details.

Enjoy everyone!

As part of some legal requirements and to make things a bit more clear, we've posted our privacy policy on the site.

As you will have read in some other topics, to offset the cost of running the site, we've been looking at some options to share some of the burden. Small ads have appeared on the site and forums, and we'd like to offer a few more options for you to donate.

To get these, you currently will need a Paypal account. We can set up the accounts manually, and may do so as future contest prices or such, but payments are far easier to organise this way.

There are three seperate smaller donation options:

• Larger PM Inbox - increase the limit to 200 PMs
• Upload your own avatar - instead of having to hunt for unreliable hosting, have your avatar uploaded to PKMN.NET and it'll just work there and then.
• Upload attachments - Want to show off your work? Don't want to bother with other hosting places? Upload them as attachments for your posts.

One note with the first and last - the better we can afford to run the site, the higher we can push these limits.

Do you want this all? How about standing out a bit while you're at it? The slightly larger price is the big donator package, which offers all of the above, and for a bit less too.

Prices are available at the same place as where you order the accounts. Go to your profile, and under the Actions menu, you'll find 'Paid Subscriptions'. It can all be arranged there. Isn't that easy?

Donations happen through Paypal, and are just that: a gift to us. While we offer these accounts as a thank you, it does not give any further obligation - breaking the rules repeatedly will still get you banned if it's bad enough, stuff like that. We'll be careful, but so should you be. We will try to deal appropriately with site downtime, but can't make any guarantees in that area either. It's a donation first and foremost.

Should our costs be fully covered, the remaining money will be kept first to cover future shortfalls and will then be used for other site-related purposes, such as expanding our feature base or to use for a future contest. Details are to be decided when and if that happens.

The systems do not all seem to be stable yet. If there's trouble between you starting to pay and being set up as a paid subscriber, and this doesn't actually come through, get in touch with us and we'll do our best to fix it.

Yes, it finally returns! PKMN.NET goes international.

I've updated the codebase to allow for our content to be translated. It's been my design to do so for the past few years, with our codebase prepared to allow for the required translations, but it's only now that the possibilities to translate the site easily is there.

I'll be translating the site to Dutch when I have time from now on, and we'll officially update the site to link to it in when it's progressed far enough - stay tuned!

Next, the call for action. If you are a native speaker of another, non-English language, or are up to a similar level, then we need your help! Help us translate the site for your fellow speakers of the language and make our great content available to them! Get in touch with me and I'll get you set up.

[irc.synirc.net]

Right, don't complain me if anything goes wrong here. Connect to irc.synirc.net. Stuff will be updated as I get around to it. Good luck with it.

Oh, and you'll want to use #pkmnteambuilding instead of #teambuilding

Sorry, we're swamped with B&W work - lots is going on, so check our Pokedex and Twitter feed for all the updates for gen V.

In the mean time, to recognise the many contributions they've made to the site (in particular during these releases), we have two promotions to report.

First, Mulholland is promoted to global mod, so you'll need to be careful with him around the forums from now!

Second, Kay, aka Dragonpika, has stepped in to moderate the Debate forum from now on. Welcome back!

[Characters]

It's still bare bones, it still needs a number of updates, but trust me, we're working on that. We figured it'd be best to give it to you now so you can see where we're going with this and give us a reason to continue its development.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're happily announcing the release of the new Characters feature!

Having been in development for some time, and finally finished, this new information feature should provide you with more information on the various characters appearing in the anime, both for a longer time and (and this will take more work) in fewer episodes.

We still need to make a number of updates and so on, having mostly used our old characters section, but don't worry - we'll get there eventually. Give it a spin and tell us what you think of it so far!

Thanks to Rob for his invaluable help in getting all the data entered!