Meta-PokéBase Q&A
4 votes
1,343 views

I finally got around to updating the rules page. I have tried to make it more concise, quicker and easier to read. Not much of the actual rules themselves has changed, but I'd appreciate if everyone took a quick look in case there is something they didn't know.


In this thread you can suggest additions to rules if there is something that has been causing problems or is unclear.

by
edited by

10 Answers

4 votes

Recently we have had a few users who are siblings of other users joining the site. The problem with this is that some of these users have been complaining that they had made previous accounts and had gotten banned, presumably because they did not post on the Sibling thread and were assumed dupes. I think it would be a good idea to add the Sibling thread in a link to the rules, to avoid users being wrongfully banned.

http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/meta/12184/sibling-accounts-duplicate-account-watch

by
Thanks SBR, it would help a lot.
That sounds good.
3 votes

Got FIVE suggestions for the rules now, some things have been annoying me recently.
___
Have a part of the rules say that asking questions on the right section is vital. Recently, I've been dealing with a lot of misplaced questions on both Meta and the Battle Subway, and in past times the PokeBase as well. It does state in the rules to avoid doing this (in a way), however I feel it is not 'direct' enough to those who do not want to read the rules.

Add something like this to the rules. It should be one of the first things mentioned in there, before people get bored and leave the page. Something like this, maybe? >

Please make sure you ask questions on the correct section of the PokeBase. We have three sections, the PokeBase, the Meta, and the Battle Subway. Each of them work differently; the PokeBase is for Pokemon questions in general, the Meta is for reporting suggestions, bugs, and other site related things; do not ask anything other than that here. The Battle Subway is a section the follows stricter rules as described later on, and is for competitive rate-my-team questions - in game team questions are not allowed unless they are competitive in some way, e.g. PWT and the Battle Subway. Questions asked on the wrong section will he hidden by our senior users, so please make sure you are on the right section before posting.

This is also the reason I propose a converting ability for yourself, Mods and Editors; it'll be so much easier than people raging over their stuff being hidden. Definitely #1 on my list.
___
Have a part of the rules say not to ask questions that you know the answer to, or can only be defiantly answered by Game Freak themselves - too trivial.

This is getting a little out of hand now, stupid questions like 'Is Wattson based on Santa?' are getting more common, and questions that are for Game Freak are getting the same answer: Game Freak wanted it like that. People should know if their question is really that important or not; questions like that don't really matter. Questions that you know the answer to are pointless too - if people are going to ask for answers they found on Bulbapedia for points, they seriously need to get a grip.


Add it to the rules that you cannot guess an answer.

Recently, I've found several questions have been receiving answers that are technically guesses, and I see it happen too much. Add it to the rules that you cannot guess an answer, and if you cannot work it out by playing the game, a source of information is necessary. Just add it to the rules that you may not post an answer is you are not 100% sure it is correct.

Add it to the rules that you cannot claim part an answer/quote as your own.
Recently people have been editing the information from other answers into their own, and not giving any credit to the people they got it from; some people are also quoting something from another website but not providing a link to their information. This is likely intended to make their answer seem 'better' than others and try to compete for points - again, this site isn't a competition; it's a Q/A. The way people do this isn't fair to the other answerer or the site that happens to have the information that answers the question.
_
Add something to the rules about the approving/rejecting process.
Pretty straightforward, I've noticed sometimes that new users come into Chat asking about this. It would be nice if we had something in it about the rules.
____
Anyway, this is late, but the new rules page looks great! Just those few little addtions would certainly help keep the site functioning the way we want it to.

by
edited by
3 votes

No backseat modding. Nuff said.

by
In other words, mini modding
2 votes

I'd like to propose not being able to ask questions about where to train pokemon. I'm not talking about EV training, since I can see that one being more helpful (but we already have questions for it.) But most of the posts of this can be answered by going to the place with the highest leveled pokemon. You could have some rare exceptions from experience given off, but not enough to warrant several questions about it.

by
Yeah this is pretty much covered under "duplicate questions". Do you have any specific examples? I think we probably do have a bunch of old questions asking this but I haven't seen many recently. We should have:
- Where to EV train [stat] in all games?
- Where to EV train in [game]?
- Where to do regular training (high level Pokemon) in [game]?

I think I did approve one recently that was where to train for level 20-30. Come to think of it, if it's during gameplay then the answer is always "whatever place is the furthest in the game you can go".
2 votes

Please add this to the rules:

>"When asking for a suggestion between Pokemon for your team, please include your team"

Every question i see has always has an answer that begins with: "It depends on your team". Including the team would save the person who answer a lot of time.

This is especially true for people who ask something like "i need a dark type." Wall?? Sweeper?? Is this Secondary typing OK??


Some examples:

http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/121509/which-version-of-terrakion-is-better
http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/121489/umbreon-vs-zoroark

by
1 vote

Can we please please please have a part for the RMT saying to only answer RMT questions if you are going to rate the full team? Half answers like this http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/rmt/13843/mono-normal-team-anyone are really ticking me off.
Maybe something like this:

Only rate teams if you can give full movesets and rate the entire team
It doesn't really help when you answer with only an idea for a held item or something. If you want to make a small suggestion, please comment.

by
1 vote

Add a section to the Battle Subway Rules stating that TCG decks must have all 60 cards in them.

by
0 votes

Add this to the Pokebase rules, please.

Anime Questions: A lot of these uestions are very difficult to answer or stupid to ask. Questions like "Why does Candice wear a skirt in the anime?" or "What level is Pikachu?" are unanswerable. One of our top users, DarkTyphlosion, has a very nice Anime FAQ here.

Basic rules additions:

Flagging vs. Downvoting:

For questions:

Flag it if the question is against the rules.

Vote it down if the question is bad in another way, for example
terrible spelling, impossible to understand etc. In your case though
you can just edit it if possible :)

For answers:

Flag it if the answer is inappropriate in some way or breaks the rules
(e.g. it's not an actual answer and should be a comment).

Vote down if the answer is incorrect. (Side note: on the RMT section
only vote down answers if they're really bad, because some answers may
not be great but still not technically wrong.)

For comments:

They should be flagged if they are rude or insulting for no reason.
For example if an answer is bad you might downvote it and post a
polite comment saying that it's wrong. But saying "you're dumb" or
stuff like that is not welcome here and should be flagged. Also
comments should be reasonably on-topic relating to the question or
answer. A random comment like "hey what's your favourite Pokemon"
should be taken to the chat.

Also, there is no voting for comments, seeing as it is unnecessary.

Under all situations, do not flag a question instead of giving it a downvote. If you think 2 points is THAT big of a deal, plese get over yourself.

Other basic things

One of our top, oldest, and active users ( Besides Pokemaster ), Speed Freak, has a very nice summary of other common sense page of basic rules here.

This is a common sense thing, but please respect others opinions. Also, don't get over offended by criticism. Hail the mods! Definitely respect our Editors and Experts too. Just bow to the mods, as that is the most important thing to ever exist.

by
0 votes

Don't let users ask this type of Question.

Don't let users ask this type of question: Are the Rumors True? or Is it True That They're Making a New Pokemon Game? as they are unanswerable questions and can only be answered by Game Freak themselves. For crying out loud, they just introduced Black and White 2 and the new Mystery Dungeon game. What more do they want? People, give Game Freak a break.

>Please don't ask questions asking if a new feature part of the Pokemon series has been introduced, none of us are sure. You may take these questions to Game Freak, as we tend to not have knowledge of such things as an upcoming game or event. If you have questions such as these, go to chat and ask for the opinions of our fellow Pokefans. Or just wait and see for yourself! If a rumor has spread it should be soon if it's true. The questions we allow are mainly about the games that have released and how to solve puzzles that may be contained in them. We also allow questions about Competitive battling.

It could look something like this.

by
edited by
It could look like that but 'pleas' could be spelt right. :P
Typo XP
This is a good point. They can also become out of date quite quickly.
But at the same time, it's difficult to know whether a question is answerable or not. If you asked "will BW2 have the Pokewalker again?" (before BW2 came out) it could have been confirmed somewhere and they don't know.
0 votes

No unofficial games or websites: Only questions about official Pokemon games are allowed. There are hundreds of different unofficial games that come and go all the time and have many varying rules; we can't cater to them all. Go and ask on their forums if you have a problem. Two exceptions are Pokemon Online and Pokemon Showdown which are popular battler simulators.

i was thinking, maybe we could add PokeBattle here when it's released. i have a feeling its going to be a popular simulator

by
We just don't want an overflow of questions asking how the software works - this is a pretty flimsy rule, so I wouldn't be too concerned with asking about Pokebattle if people know.

The real guideline to this rule is people having to keep in mind that we're a Q&A, not tech support. Plus, as we can tell by the thread size here, people don't read the rules anyway. :P
mm, guess your right