Pokémon Database Audit Part 1 - Rate My Super Administrator: Pokemaster

Question

Children, janitors,
We come, not to bury Pokemaster, but to praise him.

Purpose and scope

This review assesses Pokemaster’s art of industrious minimalism throughout his tenure as Super Administrator of Pokémon Database from the site’s early days in 2010 through to July 2025. The objective is to provide an evidence-based account of his promises and outcomes, measure his performance against clearly defined indicators, and set out recommendations informed by community feedback matured under light touch and long intervals.

Methodology

The analysis involved reading Meta-PokéBase threads from 2010 - 2025 directed at Pokemaster. Each instance was logged chronologically along with his response (if any) and the eventual outcome. For objectivity, five key performance indicators (KPIs) were established: -

• Responsiveness, i.e., whether he responded at all and how quickly
  after the issue was raised. Same-day replies scored highest; posts
  with no reply scored lowest;
• Delivery, i.e., whether he completed the promised action (bug fix, feature, promotion, policy change) and how long it took.
  Unimplemented promises scored poorly;
• Communication & Transparency, i.e., whether his replies explained the problem clearly and kept users informed;
• Reliability & Consistency, i.e., whether similar issues recurred, indicating oversight or insufficient testing, and whether recurring
  events (such as promotions or name‑change days) were run regularly;
• Leadership & Delegation, i.e., whether he ensured the moderation team was resourced and empowered. Long delays in promotions and
  failure to delegate administrative powers were scored low.

Every thread where Pokemaster was asked to act was assessed on these indicators using a five-point scale, where 5 represents exemplary performance and 1 represents poor or no performance. Scores were averaged to produce overall figures. What follows below is a representative summary catalogue of his actions, and, owing to the nature of the beast, his apparent failures.

Factual matrix

2010 - 2011

In 2010, Pokemaster demonstrated prompt engagement with the community. He acknowledged and fixed a broken Black/White evolution chain within hours, added a moveset-change section for HeartGold/SoulSilver after promising it, and provided clear explanations when users queried missing EV yield data and stat explanations. He also repaired a broken link in the site rules. These tasks were completed quickly and communicated clearly. This yields high marks for responsiveness and delivery.

However, even at this stage there were seeds of future problems. He expressed interest in launching a polls/awards system, but it never materialised. This early unfulfilled promises foreshadows later trends of incomplete projects.

2012

In 2012, Pokemaster handled several bug reports promptly. He restored the Black & White 2 link when notified it was missing, and explained that an IP-blocking feature was working as intended, and clarified that clock glitches were due to daylight‑saving changes. When asked for an update on new‑user features, he provided a detailed list of changes he had implemented, such as username changes with restrictions and role badges.

The year also saw the first major backlog of feature requests. A lengthy post gathered suggestions ranging from polls and a notification bar to flag counters and comment counters. Pokemaster said he would work through the list over the week. While some ideas, such as an itemdex and map pages, were eventually delivered, many (notably the polls/awards, flag counters and notification system) remain unimplemented. This suggests a pattern of over-promising and under-delivering.

2013 - 2016

During this period Pokemaster, continued to fix technical issues, such as a temporary MySQL error in 2014. However, a June 2014 list of minor interface bugs (missing view counts, pagination glitches, hidden admin views) was never addressed. These “small” problems accumulated and amount to neglect.

Staffing concerns also emerged. In December 2013, a post titled “Please consider promoting another Editor” argued that posts were waiting over ten hours to be approved because most moderators were inactive. The author praised the user fondant as “the most active user on the site”, and noted that approval queues were backed up. They complained that previous promotion requests received no response. Pokemaster never replied. Around the same time, another meta thread suggested changing moderation thresholds to make the admin system less off‑putting for new users. Months later a commenter bumped the thread, and noted that he “was inactive when this was posted”, and that he might only see threads that show up on the Meta front page. These posts suggest early signs of disengagement with governance and a failure to support his moderators.

2017 - 2021

As the site matured, the community grew frustrated with the lack of delegation. The absence of new promotions persisted. A 2017 promotions thread had to be bumped repeatedly by the moderator, Fizz, to draw Pokemaster’s attention. By 2021, the situation reached a tipping point with the meta post “Suggestion: Promote Fizz to Admin”. The proposer cited Fizz’s consistent leadership. It was plain to all that Fizz “takes charge when needed” and consults staff before taking action. The author lamented that whenever drama or trolls appeared, moderators had to wait for Pokemaster to implement IP bans and promotions, which left the site exposed. They argued that Fizz had managed promotions since 2017 and cares about the community, while Pokemaster’s inactivity had delayed promotions for two months.

The thread also recorded Fizz’s own view. He was willing to take on the role but noted that giving full admin powers would effectively hand the community over to him and might carry risks. Nevertheless, the author suggested creating a custom role with limited powers so that Fizz could act on spam and promotions without waiting for the Super Administrator. Commenters questioned whether Pokemaster would step down and whether the site could sustain two administrators. The post received no official response. This once again suggests the conclusion that requests for delegation were wilfully or recklessly ignored.

2022 - 2023

In 2022 and 2023, Pokemaster’s presence on Meta diminished noticeably. A long “site update” thread in 2022 summarised his prior year’s changes but astutely observed that many suggestions remained unimplemented. Pokemaster replied with a brief update on new features, but did not commit to a clear roadmap. More starkly, a 2023 post titled “Bot/spam account problem” documented a surge in spam sign‑ups and recommended adding CAPTCHAs. The author updated the post in 2025 to note that the issue had worsened. The thread never received a reply. This would suggest a complete failure of communication and on the spam/abuse front.

Promotions continued to stagnate. A 2023 promotions nomination thread was ignored, and comments in other threads suggested that promotions were delayed by months. The combination of spam proliferation and unaddressed promotions led to frustration and demotivation among moderators.

2024 - 2025

Although largely absent from governance, Pokemaster still appeared intermittently to fix technical issues. In July 2024 he corrected a Rate-My-Team glitch and apologised for forgetting to remove old code. Later that month he updated the site with new 3D sprites after users pointed out that Generation 9 models were missing. He also acknowledged that grouping Pokémon HOME and Pokémon GO sprites under Generation 8 was confusing and said he “should move them to their own section”. This change has not been made.

He responded to a suggestion for a move-target drop‑down, pointing users to an existing multi‑target page, and again fixed a Rate-My-Team error in September 2024 after forgetting to remove advertisement code. These incidents suggest that while his technical competence remains high, there is a lack of systematic testing to prevent regression.

In mid-2025, he announced a rare username‑change window, yet he did not address comments complaining that the promotions backlog had still not been cleared. Shortly afterwards, he fixed an email confirmation issue caused by his email provider downgrading his account and gave a transparent explanation. A June 2025 thread asking why there were no name‑change days went unanswered. This, further, undermines confidence and would, perhaps. There is a view which suggests that, perhaps, the time has come to downgrade his Pokémon Database account as well.

Comments

I love this detailed analysis. I do want to note, a few things.
- The staff team *does* regularly chat behind the scenes about these issues. Out of respect for Pokemaster and to prevent any site confusion, these conversations are private. However, we are always discussing these things and brainstorming ideas to communicate changes and fixes for issues.
- I have PM’s personal email, in which I communicate important/urgent measures with him. He can be summoned, but he is AWOL otherwise. He usually reacts on emergency matters within 1-2 days of me sending him an email. He does not reply to non-emergent emails, but I’m sure he sees them and keeps notes.
- stuff like spam, he fixes privately. He recently made it so only users with 30+ points can speak in chat, and made a captcha. He does not address these fixes publicaly.
- He has previously stated he does not feel comfortable giving anyone Super Admin/promoting Fizz. I believe he said this publicly, but I forget where.
- #fizzforadmin is something I'll never drop. It would be amazing if staff could make the site better.
- I do personally believe PM needs to take action and many some sort of change, any change.
- I wish he would communicate his situation with us so that we can better support him

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You cooked

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There is merit in what you say, but I substantively disagree with your points, which I address in turn: -

1. Firstly, there is merit in you communicating your concerns to him in private out of general respect. I have the benefit of not being constrained by such considerations. In my view, the evidence shows that little of value has been achieved by gently prodding him.

2. Secondly, PM is the site’s sole administrator. There are almost 60,000 registered accounts on this site. It is, quite frankly, a ridiculous notion that he should rely on a small group of Moderators to bring matters to his attention at all when it would be easier to enable that same group or a select deputy to dispense with what are materially trivial matters. The system of bringing particularly urgent matters to his explicit attention worked when, as the chart shows, he was posting over 100 times on Meta in Questions & Answers alone and frequently online. In 2010-2013, he was incredibly active, not just working on the site, but also engaging with users in chat. No one is demanding he continues such activity. In fact, he does not even have to explain why he is no longer that active. It is well known that he is an older man now, has a job, has a real life, and touches grass. It would be odd, creepy, even, if he spent his free time on the internet talking to 11-year-olds. The sensible, and even the simple solution would be to own the fact that he does not have the capacity he once did and to allow a willing volunteer (Fizz) to step up when he cannot. I will expand on that in my fourth point.

3. Thirdly, I am aware of the recent fixes he has made to chat. The point remains that these were long overdue. The fact that he had to be dragged out to do this when he is not ordinarily here, least of all in chat, reinforces the points made in point two. The fact that he does not communicate these substantial updates publicly, which, in material terms, means at all, is precisely the problem. It is of no interest to anyone what he thinks in private.

4. Fourthly, it would be beneficial if you could provide the source of his public acknowledgment of the fact that he does not feel comfortable further promoting Fizz and his reasoning for this. I admit that there are good reasons to be cautious about giving anyone cognate privileges to himself. The best of those reasons are privacy and data breach concerns. As a general point, there are equally good reasons to believe that there is no reason to think such concerns apply to Fizz. Firstly, there is not a single user who has been as spotless or as diligent in their track record as Fizz has been for as long as he has been. Secondly, even if trust concerns applied to him, which, at any rate, we deny, he does not need fully cognate privileges to PM to help in the way we all know he can and wants to help. It is quite appropriate to recall the fact that creating custom roles is something PM has done in the past. Editors have not always been around, and they have been buffed since they were first introduced. Their purpose was to fill the gap between Experts and Moderators when the site required such a correction. It is plain to us all that the site currently could use a similar correction to fill the not insubstantial gap between Super Administrator and Moderator. At no point in the past have there been suitable candidates. We currently have the benefit that the most appropriate candidate is available.

We are, otherwise, in agreement.

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https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/meta/81319/promotions-2023?show=81760#a81760 (bro does not read his own sources lol /lh)
We have also talked to him privately about it before.

Be upfront, what is your motive of this post? are you trying to get us, or pm, to do something? is there a solution you recommend? We're open to hearing it.

But rest assured, we do know there's an issue and we are trying to work on it.

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This is an audit. It has no motive other than clarity and factual transparency. I do not use this site. I am a hired gun rendering coherent the inchoate sentiments of people who use the site. Its objective is quite clearly stated in the opening paragraph and in the thinly-veiled assessment which sets out what the site requires of him. It could not be any clearer.

For the reasons I have already given, there is no reason to believe your existing methods are particularly effective. Nor are you the first to attempt the path of private pleadings, which raises the point of public accountability already made.

As to the link you have provided, useful. It contains a non-answer. There are floods of popular threads concerning implementations and ideas users want for the site he does not have the time to implement or the care to respond to which a deputy could readily address. These are not things Fizz can do with standard Moderator privileges. The point on breaking the site is superficially valid. There are such things as handover periods. PM neglects his own ideas (https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/meta/69430). It is plain that you feel a need to defend him. After this assessment, I do not see the basis you pursue. At any rate, he can take care of himself. Unless there are any substantive points not already addressed I can assist you with, I do not propose to spend my evening in this comment thread.

Answer 1

Summary of actions and omissions

For over fifteen years, Pokemaster has consistently demonstrated technical expertise and a willingness to fix bugs when he becomes aware of them. In the early 2010s, he delivered promised features, responded quickly, and engaged with users. As the community grew, however, his responsiveness declined, and his backlog of unresolved promises lengthened.

Assessment

Applying the five‑point scale across all incidents yields the following averages: -

• Responsiveness:
• Delivery: 3.2;
• Communication: 3.9;
• Reliability: 3.0; and
• Leadership/delegation: 2.0.

These figures are based on his high performance in early years being offset by numerous no‑responses and unfulfilled promises after 2016. It is the irony of the world that, objectively construed, his strongest area remains communication. When he does reply, his technical explanations are clear and honest. His weakest area appears to be leadership and delegation, where chronic delays in promotions and refusal to share authority have damaged the moderation structure. Some would apologise for that last figure. But we can see plainly that Pokemaster offers something greater: consistency. Decline has been delivered on time and with aplomb.

Having now dispensed with the critical, i.e., the negative instruction, I propose the constructive, i.e., the overdue panegyric: -

• We must, first, confess that there is genius in Pokemaster’s singular focus. Many features that he promised years ago remain undelivered, including the username filter, polls/awards, notification system, flag counters and sprite re‑organisation. On one view, unkept promises erode trust. On another view, by leaving ideas intact, he protects them from the mess of implementation. On the first view, Pokemaster should either complete these commitments or communicate clearly why they are not feasible. A public issue tracker with status labels and deadlines would improve accountability; However, on the second, it is plain to reason that a roadmap would threaten this our most productive ambiguity;

• Leadership requires delegation. Pokemaster has refined the maxim to its essence in that he has delegated expectation to time. Nevertheless, long approval queues and unaddressed promotion requests would suggest that the moderation team drowns in time and starves of capacity. It has been said that Pokemaster should implement a policy of quarterly promotions and delegate responsibility to senior moderators. At a minimum, he should assign a trusted user (e.g., Fizz) the ability to enact promotions and IP bans without waiting for the Super Administrator. But we urge you, still, to give thanks, that our reliable metronome, Fizz, tracks the times of iterative intention. Keats would have called this negative capability. We call it “the moderation backstop”;

• Where security demanded innovation, Pokemaster gave us an education in triage and resilience. We learnt what breaks, and what endures. We learnt to ask for less and to do more. However, we must also appreciate that the spam-bot problem reported in 2023 has grown worse. Does this mean that email verification should be implemented promptly, and a security plan should be published to reassure users? We remind you that our lesson in resilience was rigorous, and it may yet be complete;

• We must also praise Pokemaster for giving us promises kept long enough to be remembered and abandoned long ago to teach us memory’s end. For proving that one can lead by appearing not to. We praise also his communication. He set a standard that future generations will struggle to dilute. Indeed, excellence, like vintage, benefits from being bottled young, and tastes best when stored away forever. We hear what you say: “it would, instead, be more productive to maintain a regular presence and communicate absences. Sporadic appearances, sometimes separated by months, other times by years, leave the community rudderless. Pokemaster should set expectations by posting quarterly updates, even if there is no major news, and announcing planned absences so the community knows who is in charge”. But let us not indulge in the volatility of change, but embrace the comfort of continuity;

• Pokemaster has also taught us that steady process is the enemy of candour - candour of which he has in troves. Candour that belies the fact that the repeated Rate-My-Team glitches caused by leftover code suggest insufficient testing. Adopting version control, staging environments and checklists before deployment would reduce regressions. Public contrition, however, has achieved more, and may it long continue to do so;

• A baton pass without ceremony is still a baton pass. Indeed, many leaders cling to titles. We, on the other hand, have the benefit that our Pokemaster clings to silence and allows substance to migrate freely. The elegance of this move is not lost on us. Nevertheless, it is apposite to rehearse the fact that there have been explicit appeals for Pokemaster to step down or at least create a custom administrative role for Fizz. Fizz has expressed willingness to take on responsibilities and has earned the community’s trust. You say “if Pokemaster lacks time to manage the site actively, delegating authority would ensure continuity without risking complete loss of control. At the very least, he should publicly address these proposals instead of ignoring them”. We say, the Database has learned to live within its means. He taught it. By design or by default, the distinction fades in the night in which all cows are black.

Closing remarks

Pokemaster’s stewardship of the Pokémon Database began strongly. He was responsive, delivered features promptly, and communicated transparently. In recent years, however, his involvement has declined dramatically. Unfulfilled promises, a swelling backlog of unresolved issues, absent promotions, and unmanaged spam have strained the community’s patience. KPI evaluation places his average performance at 3.3 out of 5. Prima facie, that does not seem too bad. However, this figure conceals a steep downward trend driven by declining leadership (see Appendix 1). Yet still, in summation, we have nothing to offer but praise. Praise for his rare courage to ignore the chorus and to trust the echo. Praise for a community tempered by delay. Praise for a crown worn lightly, and then, scarcely at all. We commend the work for what it did. We commend also the silence for what it made others do. Oh, what times! Oh, what customs! Ave Pokemaster. Long may your economy of motion instruct those who move more and achieve less. 

APPENDIX

Trend Visualisation

Activity Comparator

Answer 2

References

Below is a chronological snapshot list of the Meta-PokéBase threads relied on for the summary catalogue in the performance review.

• Moveset changes in HG/SS (Jun 2010)
• EV yield information (Sep 2010)
• Nature‑dependent min/max stats (late 2010)
• Black/White evolution chain bug (Sept 2010)
• Black/White Pokédex descriptions (Feb 2011)
• TM/HM locations (Apr 2011)
• IP blocking bug (2012)
• Broken link to the Black & White 2 page (Aug 2012)
• Username filter issue (Aug 2012)
• Updates for new users (Oct 2012)
• Request to show when he is online (Oct 2012)
• “Please consider promoting another editor” (Dec 2013)
• “I hate to nag, but we still need promotions” (Jun 2017)
• Suggestions to improve moderation (2017)
• Promotions holiday 2020 (Dec 2020)
• Promotions 2021 (Dec 2021)
• Suggestion to promote Fizz to admin (Sept 2021)
• Promotions 2023 (Jan 2023)
• Bot/spam account problem (Mar 2023)
• Shiny sprites listed under the wrong generation (Aug 2024)
• 3D sprites for Generation 9 (Jul 2024)
• Suggestion: “target” drop‑down for moves (Jul 2024)
• Rate‑My‑Team glitch (Sept 2024)
• Username changes - Summer 2025 (Jul 2025)
• Email confirmation error (Jul 2025)