Introduction/Why did I make this?
I go by fwoofyy, formerly NebbyY on the DB. I am one of the ~100 people in this site’s history to hold the title of Expert and I joined over 7 years ago. Enough about me, though, I wanted to briefly cover the main reasons why this document exists. I feel that the following suggestions that I make will obviously take time to implement, and we are currently in a transition period with no announcements of Generation 10 that will inevitably boost site activity. Second, most of these suggestions have been abandoned over the years and there isn’t exactly transparency on whether they are located on an ever increasing laundry list or just forgotten. Third, I feel that my relationship with old and new users can allow me to bring up things that would benefit both parties. I want to preface that these ideas shouldn’t be taken as gospel and I encourage anyone to air out their disagreements in the comments.
Leadership
Let’s start out with the obvious. Pokemaster has been serving as our Super Administrator for over 17 years. Without him, the site would barely be functional, for better or worse. Over the years, unfortunately, he has been much less active on the site.
It cannot be overstated how much his work is appreciated. Without this site, I wouldn't be able to meet up with such a wonderful group of people over something like Pokemon. However, when something as seemingly simple as seasonal name changes and promotions slow down or are never fulfilled in the first place, it’s clear a change is in order. Pokemaster is becoming older with more responsibilities, including managing PokemonDB, Question2Answer, and the social media pages presumably all by himself. Therefore, I would strongly ask for somebody else who is more active, transparent, and dedicated to making the site better to take up the mantle of Super Administrator. Alternatively, if no one is able to step up, moderators should be given much more power to carry out name changes and promotions, among other delegations if necessary. Most importantly, one of the most popular features among the staff team that would make site management much easier is a proper execution of this thread.
Rate My Team/The Third Section
Let’s be honest. This community isn’t as inherently competitive as it used to be. While there are multiple reasons for this, we need to get to the crux of the issue. Rate My Team is a completely dead section. There are 152 pages of unanswered RMT questions in comparison to 41 pages of unanswered Meta questions and 6 pages of unanswered Pokebase questions. This doesn’t even count all the questions that have been closed and hidden. The regulations put in place have made it way too much of a hassle for most users to bother touching the section. Considering that there have been month-long gaps before a single question gets answered, it is time to put the section out of its misery and delete it. Going from here, we could replace it with the much anticipated Forum. Many creative ideas have been left to die in a Meta post or on the Discord server, so adding the Forum would do these ideas justice and reward points to people based on creative and inspired work.
The Showdown Server
Ever since around 2022, pokemondatabase.psim.us has been down. It went down suddenly with no explanation as to why this happened. I feel that with the history and legacy of this showdown server, it was treated unfairly. Tier updates, generation updates, and DLC updates always came weeks or even months after it had come to the main server. This showdown server was never advertised in the chat room and hardly on the site itself (One easily missable meta post in small text located in the margins). Why was this server abandoned? With the server back in place, the tournament process could be more streamlined with commands, new features could be developed to help differentiate from the main server, and it would almost certainly increase user retention among those who are more battle-oriented. It can be a hub for those seeking teambuilding advice to fill the gap that RMT left behind. The battling culture left behind many years ago will slowly return upon the server being resurrected. Monthly updates, sitewide advertisements, and regular mini tournaments could keep the server alive and well for years to come. Your move, Pokemaster.
Conclusion
The time for change is upon us. We can continue to hang in stasis as activity continues to slowly dwindle with continued neglect, or new leadership can bring an era of prosperity to the site not seen since the golden ages. This isn’t an ordinary Meta post. This is a demand for something greater.
