Other online communities I'm a part of have Teamspeak servers so people can chat over voice. I think it would be super cool if we could run a Teamspeak server for the DB. It would be a great outlet for making friends, and it would be convenient for battling-- talking is easier than typing between clicks and turns, and hearing your opponent's reaction to your moves is always a blast.
If some of you aren't familiar with it, Teamspeak servers are hosted via hundreds of geographical locations, so the hoster nearest where the DB is based would be the one we used. You can go HERE to see available hosters, and HERE for a Windows installation/configuration tutorial. I don't think it's radically expensive, and a lot of people host Teamspeak for small-scale or private usage as well as business/gaming. Teamspeak encourages community socialization; voice is often preferred to typing by many users. It's a more personal way to engage with the community.
You can create tags and customize permissions and icons for them on Teamspeak, so we could even have staff ranks and user ranks, just like we do here on the site. We could have channels for each respective section of the DB, and channels for competitive battling via Showdown or 3DS. Servers themselves as well as channels can be configured to require a password for access, so if we don't want random people who have never been on the DB to enter the channel, we could have a password and leave it up on the site.
I know a lot about Teamspeak, because I've been hosting a server myself for years now.
This is just a suggestion, and if money is an issue, that's completely understandable. However, I do think this could be a fun introduction for the community.
