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The Start

P

Pie

Dead Again
Joined
Aug 20, 2004
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After a heated discussion in the IRC Chat with Zhen, he told me that if I wanted action, I should just ignore him and take action. It was something I was on the verge of doing anyway, since I'm sick of having my momentum squashed by people who like the rut BMG is in. So, that's exactly what I'm doing.

If anyone has any serious problems with what I'm doing, let me know and I will look for an alternative.

- First off, I want to get communication between the administration and everyone else flowing as much as possible, and not to mention communication within the administration itself. So, starting this Saturday at 5 PM EST, I am calling an open meeting on the IRC Chat channel [HASHTAG]#bulbagarden[/HASHTAG]. If you don't have an IRC Client, there's a link on the top bar which will allow you access - the one you want is Bulbagarden (Dejatoons). It's understandable if you can't make it - you're not obligated to come, and this is being called on short notice. But if you can, please do. The topic is completely up for grabs, since while we've got a lot of politics hitting the fan right now, I wouldn't have just equated it to shit right now if it were pleasant for most people to talk about. Meeting ends whenever we've decided we're tired of talking. Log will be posted for anyone who can't make it. Barring utter chaos and the destruction of [HASHTAG]#bulbagarden[/HASHTAG], I would like this to be the first of many chats, and have regular weekly get-togethers in the chat.

- Now, though I never made a public announcement about this, since I wanted to make sure people liked it before I went waving it around as the best thing since sliced bread, I actually have my own little recent addition to the chaos that is Bulbagarden, and that is Pokémon Creations. Prior, I only had it here because Archaic was kind enough to offer server space, but now I believe a greater bond can be created between this new fandom-based website and Bulbagarden itself - one which should benefit both sides greatly. Namely, I am working on adding a new section to it right now, something I was thinking of adding a bit in the future - a section for Contests - and once it is up I would love to integrate the contests themselves with Bulbagarden Forums, making discussion, submission, and judging all happen right here. I believe contests and short-term projects for no purpose other than pure fun are an excellent way to spark activity in lull periods like the one we're undergoing, and to draw new interest to Bulbagarden. I'm doing a lot of brainstorming about what contests to include and which to save for later, given that the overall total failure of the Radio Drama Script Writing contest has made it clear to me that not all contests will be successful right now. The only given is a Build-A-Pokémon contest, and I am open to other suggestions of contests that you would participate in if they were launched right now. Perhaps the Oekaki could be involved as well, with some sort of Oekaki-drawn-only Fanart Contest.

- Continuing on the theme of projects for nothing more than making this place more fun, I am going to start looking at vB hacks after making this post to go with another idea of mine, one which I have brought up a few times, including in our recent debate, but never had anyone really commented much on. So, if there's opposition, let me know right now, but otherwise I'll get working on implementing it. The idea I'm drawing from forums I visited years ago called Zeal Palace. It was, obviously, for Chrono Trigger, with its scope spreading out much like ours does into other video games and general topics besides - it even had a strong debate forum, much like we tend to when we're not in lull periods. What kept people interested even at the worst of times was a little row of sprites below their profile which listed their 'equipment', and they would be able to either earn things by slowly saving up GP and buying things at the shop - a difficult task, given money earned versus prices at the shop, and one which was actually better done through the second method - or having a small chance of, upon opening a new page, seeing that they had 'found' a random piece of equipment or a big bag of GP which they could pick up and add to their inventory. This did not invoke many spammers, as it thought it might, and was always making it enjoyable to browse the forums when bored if only to look for more pieces to building an awesome but unique character. I propose something similar - except instead of GP, we have a Coin Case that fills with coins, and instead of equipment, we have a team of six Pokémon. The sprites used would be the menu sprites, of course, and while it is not particularly useful otherwise, it makes the forums more fun, makes it more appealing to people who otherwise might not take interest in our forums, and overall I can't see how it would be a bad idea. Again, if you have opposition, I want to hear it, because otherwise I'm going to start working on it.

These are not just speculation on what I think we should be doing - these are all things I will be working to make a reality very near future unless I hear people give me a good reason why I shouldn't.
 
A few notes with problems. I don't know if you've considered them already, or if you can work your plan around them, but they're issues I see with this.

1.Fixed weekly meeting as a mean of policy-making. Unfortunately, this is a problematic one to begin with. 5PM EST is 8AM where Archaic lives - which may be a bit early on a sunday morning. It's also even earlier (6 AM) where Zhen Lin lives. It may also be troublesome with staff members who happens to work, etc.

Sure, you can change the time of the meeting, but then that may be trouble for other members, etc.

2. So you have a fanfic/art/etc site. That's good. However, since you advocate integration of the various parts of BMG, have you stopped to think how this integrate with the rest of BMG? IIRC we're working on a fanfic archive and a fanart archive already. If all parts of the site are to be integrated, isn't this a case of duplication of efforts?

If not, what make this different enough from the fanfic/fanart archive that are already being set up that it's worth splitting efforts between the two?

The last idea...I'm extremely wary of it. We've had to disable postcount before (I see someone reenabled them, though) because some people were using and abusing the games forum to pad their postcount. Your idea seems like postcount on steroids.

You may be right that it wouldn't generate much spamming. Then again, it may be that the forum it was tried on had a community better able to handle that sort of spamming.
 
1. We've discussed the time in the staff forum, and Saturday evenings in general seem to be the consensus of the best time. Yes, it starts at 5, but I am hoping it will run later than that and allow many people to show up late - if it's agreed it won't last long enough to give them time to show up, then it can be bumped to a few hours later.

2. I'm aware of that. However, I'm integrating it just as far as contests go - as I said, originally, this site was only on Bulbagarden because Archaic offered such. I view it as more like Dogasu's Backpack than the Bulbapedia, something that goes under the Staff Sites of the Affiliates dropdown. However, I think that contests will be good at generating interest, and since trying to organize the staff to direct the focus towards things like contests is causing more trouble than action, I see no reason not to take this more into my own hands, having a personal project that already plans to do something to this extent. I'm aware that there could be a conflict between Bulbagarden's Archives and this site, hence why I'm trying to keep them separate but connected in a way that will actually benefit Bulbagarden more than the website, since I aim to draw any attention from artists and authors that the site gets towards Bulbagarden - we really could use more of those right now. Personally, I want to highlight the existance of Bulbagarden's Archives more, but I can't do that without ordering Admins around.

3. I propose the idea mostly because ZP was a lot like BMG in many ways, and this is what kept it alive even at the most boring of times. And I think we're better equipped to handle the spam than they were - heck, the mods were even more apathetic than we are. If nothing else, I don't see why we could just try it for a period - we can always take it out if things get out of hand.
 
1. Ah. Still sounds like a strange time to me, but if you say it's what the consensus settled on, then good.

2. Dogasu's site can hardly be presented as "his efforts to help BMG."

They're anything but - Dogasu's site is Dogasu's site, and the only thing it has in common with BMG is that BMG hosts it (affiliation too, maybe). Either you're like him - and in that case presenting your site as "my efforts to help BMG" is just plain false, or else you're doing this project to help BMG, in which case everything I already stated about duplicated efforts hold still.

Trying to add a middle-ground of sites that "are for BMG but really my personal project so..." sounds like a Bad Idea. All BMG projects should have equal amounts of freedom.

3. As I said...I'm wary of it. IT could work out fine...but I don't know. Personally I see that menace and, since I find the idea not very inspiring, I'm wary, but I suppose to people who finds the idea funny, it may be worth trying.
 
If we step in and find a medium between my proposition and yours, these can simply be the projects you're assigned to head up. The weekly staff meeting will just be an issue of logistics, and that will play out entirely based on who can make it and who can't, something out of anyone's individual control.
 
I'll just address #2, since this is where the most confusion lies. Let me see how much I can clarify this.

Pokémon Creations is my personal project. As I said, the only reason it's here is because Archaic offered to host it. It was not made to help BMG, and it was only intended to be a hosted affiliate, so therefore the most it does is fill the hole left in the staff sites left by LX's Pokémon FanworX. And as it stands, I do want to change this stance to any great degree. Period.

However, I already want to run these contests from my site, and right now I think BMG would benefit greatly from having contests but other staff does not like to assist in efforts like this, as demonstrated by the little help I got with the Radio Drama Script Writing Contest - getting feedback was like pulling teeth, and only one person jumped at the idea of putting up the contest on other forums to let them know about it.

Therefore, I see no reason why not to make the contests a part of both sites, and right now it would be mostly on BMGf and therefore more benefical to it than to Pokémon Creations - given that I am getting the word out about this new site and had my bets placed on the contests being a large point of attraction, if the contests are displayed on the site but almost entirely held on BMGf... well, where do you think the people I'm gathering the interest of will go?

I want to do this as a dual project of two affiliated sites, not as connecting two parts of Bulbagarden. Normally I would not risk compromising Pokémon Creations' status as a completely unique site, but I want to help Bulbagarden right now and I am doing it in a way which makes it fully in my own hands.
 
Pie, seriously, are you even acknowledging me, my thred on where I stand on the future of Bulbagarden, or my underlying support for what you've said here?
 
Yes, sorry, I didn't notice your post until after I posted, and I had other things to deal with when I finished - namely trying to make my stomach stop churning and, when that failed, telling my parents to allow me to stay home for school.

That sounds fine, and I think we can finally work out a compromise - it seems the issue which was causing the most conflict was creating a greater link between the wikis and the forums, and I've decided that if that means the best I can do is to help the forums and nothing else, then fine.

As another note, and one which I expressed to Zhen in the IRC Chat without any sort of response, I was making great progress on the Bulbapedia tutorial, but I am now in question of whether I should even bother to put it up given that Zhen expressed a sentiment that seemed to me, quite literally, that if people aren't already a part of the Bulbapedia then they shouldn't be there at all.
 
Just to make times more complicated, 5 PM EST is 10 PM GMT. I was already willing to go into the early hours of Sunday this week if necessary, but I don't fancy making a regular habit of it.

On the third point, Pie's words were "a small chance of, upon opening a new page, seeing that they had 'found' a random piece of equipment or a big bag of GP which they could pick up and add to their inventory." I may have misread it but to me it suggests that post count has no effect - The gains are made from just looking around. If that is the case, then it sounds like it is worth a try.
 
She mentioned those as exceptional means of gaining GP/items, which lead me to assume there is a normal (less effective) way of doing so.

One would assume, especially given her various replies, that this ties in with postcount.
 
That is true. However, by less effective, I mean *far* less effective - we're talking under 10 per post, whereas the store, which only had the most common items and only a handful of the truly best ones, had prices well in the thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands. If any spammer is that devoted to going post crazy just for, say, a Porygon, they'll be at it for a long time, giving more than enough opportunity to us to tell them to either stop abusing the system or be banned. Worse still - we could reset their coin case to 0.

The easier way to abuse the system is to keep browsing the forums a lot until things start showing up, and that's something I think wouldn't really cause a problem. In fact, if we found out how to implement this, we could even turn off getting coins by postcount and make them have to either find coins lying around or be awarded them by mods through things like participating in the Games forum. Or we could do away with the coins altogether, and make it purely finding Pokémon in the 'wild'.
 
I think the last option sounds best, personally. Perhaps see if we can implement a system where pokémon can be traded to an extent (either with other members or with a "store" of sort).

But yeah, if you cut the "post count" element, the idea could be pretty interesting.
 
All right. I'm currently seeing if I can track down any of the old people from ZP to see how they did it, but not having much luck - I recall distinctly that it was moved somewhere else and renamed, but I cannot remember at all what that name was and don't know if it's still around in that incarnation. I've got my fingers crossed that my friend Magum will still have contact with some of the people there...

If not, it's off to searching through all the vB hacks for me. XD
 
Ooh, another upgrade? All right. I'll start getting the menu sprites prepped for it - they're all on PokéWiki, so that shouldn't be a problem.

A question, though - if we can alter the availability and make them show up very rarely, should we make shinies a part of this as well? The main problem with this is that the menu sprites, which are really the only things small enough that they wouldn't make utter messes of the profiles, have no shiny colors, so this would require quite a bit of time to make shiny versions of each... perhaps something not added initially, but at a later point?
 
I'll be there on saturday. I think that anything to help these forums and site is welcome. I think this is one of the best forums around and ill stand behind them all the way
 
Yeah, I'll be there too.

And I just want to let everyone know that this is my favorite Pokemon forums, and forums in general.

So I'll do whatever I can to help it.
 
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