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 Psypoke's Community 
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Ace Trainer
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I thought of writing a post for the Goodbye/I'm Back thread, but I thought it would be more appropriate to create a separate thread for this. When it comes down to it, we've all said "Goodbye" to Psypokes, in one way or another. We might still check in everyday, or we might check in once in a blue moon, but I think that Psypokes is still alive, it's just asleep.

So, I'd like to open this thread up to invite everyone who sees it to simply state that they're still here. I'd like to let this thread show that Psypokes is still Alive! If we could see that there are still people present, even if there's no active discussion, I think that it would open people up to creating new discussion, and if we want to see Psypokes wake up, then that's exactly what we need.

News updates can come later. Content and organization updates can come later. What we need now is a community to provide a foundation.

I'm here, I check in daily, and I want Psypokes to live.


Last edited by Kiga on Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Sun Mar 06, 2016 7:09 pm
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Psychic Trainer
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I want to see Psypoke live again too! I am here and I am with you! Between Pokemon GO, Pokken Tournament, Sun and Moon and more to come. I am back to stay. I shall check daily as well.

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Sun Mar 06, 2016 10:13 pm
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Pokemon Master
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I check here every few days, but usually not inspired to post or do anything. Pokemon-wise I haven't been playing much, VGC16 is terrible and I still have no desire to play smogon again.. Maybe I'll get back into it when S&M comes out.


Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:17 am
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THE POWER IS ON!
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Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:29 am
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I don't want to say the site is dead but it's going to take a lot for a revival.

A few years ago there were basically three people behind most of the content - Jiggz, me and a third "mystery person" (it's a pretty poorly kept secret especially if you're a regular in the chat - but lol I'll humor him by keeping his identity "secret" in this post). The third person was the main coder and usually I bounced my ideas off him for new features and he'd do them. For him, the interesting thing that kept him doing work on the site was hacking the DS ROMs, which was no longer a possibility for XY and ORAS because of the 3DS encryption. So he's had no motivation to do any work on the site in the last couple of years.

Over the last couple of years Jiggz hasn't been around much either. He was behind a lot of the social media-type features including the Psyfari Zone, the Psyblogs, Talkbacks, and taking care of the Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook (the latter of which he does still post on sometimes). I'm guessing he's mostly busy with real-life stuff (you have to keep in mind that all of the admins, even including the totally inactive ones, are approaching or now in their 30's).

As for me? Coding has never been my speciality, so I always tried to provide content in other ways. For a couple years it was doing little guides and such, and then I burned myself out majorly by trying to do walkthroughs for HGSS (successful) and BW (ew). Doing walkthroughs has always been a problem because they are a major feature of the site but nobody wants to dedicate the time and energy to do one. EP tried to step up and do BW2's and burned out. DatVu did the XY one for us but our planned way to get screenshots fell through. I did update the Deck Dex without making a news update about it back in May or June but even that's a hassle when I need somebody else to process the scans for me. The site changed infrastructure a few years ago and I don't really understand it that well so even if I wanted to make new content I would have to fight with that and try to get one of the others to walk me through it.

I also hate hate HATE doing updates about news (about the only times I could force myself to do them was when new Pokemon were revealed) and I think all of three of us did. So that's always been a problem too.

And then there's the forums... I don't know, trying to cultivate them always has been a struggle, and I suppose especially for a franchise that skews as young as Pokemon does when as an admin you hope for intelligent discussion and get "guyz charzard iz da best!!! :D {charizard} {charizard} {charizard}." Some of the staff including myself were kind of jerks many years ago and I think it scared a lot of people away. This goes for the atmosphere in the chatroom as well. Obviously in hindsight we probably shouldn't have begrudged people for being young so much but it's a little late to fix that now lol. Combine that with the lack of motivation to work on the site and these are the tumbleweeds you see before you.

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Tue Mar 08, 2016 12:54 pm
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Frontier Brain
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Up until about last August I would still check in almost everyday but since then I've been doing so maybe once a week or less frequently.

Kiga wrote:
News updates can come later. Content and organization updates can come later. What we need now is a community to provide a foundation.


I don't know about that. I think content generation and news updates are more important since otherwise almost nobody will be drawn in to join the community. Right now there are at max 10 (semi-)active users here and we haven't been successful getting much discussion going. But even if we start putting up new content it will be a while before we start to get noticed again and attract new members and build up a community. During that latency period, if there are 1-2 people working very hard to generate that content with few new hits at the start they may very easily get burned out and give up. I think we would need at least half of the ~10 people we have, one of which would necessarily have to be that "secret" admin, I think, to commit to reviving the site + other members helping with a bit of work here and there (including news updates, main site content and forum+chat initiatives) but honestly I don't see that happening. I suppose one thing we could start with is making a thread which is essentially a prioritized to-do list for the site/forums.

I think one thing that slowed community growth and later activity was the fact that after 2008 we stopped reaching out to members to go beyond their role as regular users and to give them opportunities to become community leaders (i.e. staff) while keeping many existing staff members long after they have stopped being active. If you look at the list of staff, all 27 of them joined the forums in 2007 or earlier and 21/27 joined in 2005 or earlier. The latest staff additions were myself (November 2013) and before that Registeel_Rocks (July 2008). The only promotions since I've joined were EvilPenguin (from Gym Trainer in January 2009 (?)) and Serpentsounds (to "Super Saiyan", same role as Lite Four I guess, some time in 2014). I guess one factor was not wanting give a staff position to someone deemed to be immature or who wouldn't stick around for too long but I think keeping younger people involved isn't such a bad thing, particularly on a fan site for a game geared toward younger people. They might be a bit more motivated. Our oldest staff members are now above 30 and our youngest is 22. When the Elite 4 started they were between 14-17 and things didn't turn out so bad.

The chat is still kind of active but we never get new participants (I think the Java Applet isn't working (?)) and the number of existing participants is slowly starting to decrease as well.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

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Tue Mar 08, 2016 5:41 pm
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Well I always figured we didn't promote more staff in recent years because the activity of the forums really didn't require it. All that's really needed to be done around here in terms of moderation is deleting spambots whenever they come up, and I typically do that in a timely enough fashion. We also cut down on extra forums a year or two ago (and probably should have consolidated further) so we'd need even fewer mods than we had.

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Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:45 pm
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Psychic Trainer
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I think that if we are going to pull this off this thread should be the thread prioritized for recovery of the site. I am obtaining a brand new PC at the end of this month (I am a college student right now in school for video gamer and design) It will take me some time but I will see what I can do about a ORAS Walkthrough. Can I get an E-Mail to submit everything to? I have no idea when it will reach completion but I will get it done eventually. I also wouldn't mind posting updates myself (If at all possible.) on the main page as well as posting an announcement that we are trying to revive Psypoke.

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Sat Mar 12, 2016 2:29 pm
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Psychic Trainer
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I would be willing to make an X/Y walk through for the site. My coding experience is in C# though, and not HTML. I also have plenty of experience with moderation in the past as well. If you guys really want to see this website injected with a little life, you need to get some fresh blood first and foremost in the mod ranks. If there are any specific requirements you guys would like me to meet then I can do my best to meet them. Currently I am a full time college student attending the Art Institute of Vancouver for video game art and design. There is quite a bit of work to be done, but if we amp up our communication and at least gets some ideas bouncing around, then we could viably pull this off. However in order for that to happen, we need to get some responses.

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Sun May 29, 2016 11:02 pm
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Bug Catcher
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A year later and the place is still dead. I think that the reasons for psypoke's dormancy was summed up well in the thread already and indeed a major reason as to why this place won't get traffic is because of the lack of new content on the main site + no social media presence. You also have to bare in mind that there are other sites who have a much more devoted userbase, hell, serebii updates daily and they've been going strong for as long as I can remember. Compare that place to here that has virtually no activity and you see why a resurgence is so unlikely to occur.


Sun May 21, 2017 9:36 pm
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Pokemon Ranger
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And I dare say that the community just moves on. I haven't played the series in years, and bothered to look around today on a whim. Life changes, like the leaves.

Farewell, all.

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Tue Nov 28, 2017 3:41 pm
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Pokemon Master
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3 years later...

I've been in the Melee community for a while and my interest for video games has been waning, but I still feel nostalgia for this place. So yea, I'm still here, and I nearly had a heart attack when the site went down a few months ago. I still come back from time to time to check movesets or stats for old games playthoughs. The site doesn't get updated anymore, but it's such a good resource for old Pokemon games, it might as well be labelled as such.

If I had an advice, it would be to fold the site around sprites-based Pokemon games and expand around it. This website had the first good Mew glitch guide on the internet, but now we've got ways to unlock events in Gen3 with the pomeg berry exploits and in Gen4-5 with the wi-fi hotspot thing. Kinda gives a way to enjoy 100% of the game's content without using a gameshark or action replay.

The forums are saturated with already answered topics so there's no real point in discussing anymore. I think the wise thing would be to make a Discord server.

But that's up to the admins of course.

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Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:33 am
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Ace Trainer
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GhostPony750 wrote:
3 years later...

I've been in the Melee community for a while and my interest for video games has been waning, but I still feel nostalgia for this place. So yea, I'm still here, and I nearly had a heart attack when the site went down a few months ago. I still come back from time to time to check movesets or stats for old games playthoughs. The site doesn't get updated anymore, but it's such a good resource for old Pokemon games, it might as well be labelled as such.

If I had an advice, it would be to fold the site around sprites-based Pokemon games and expand around it. This website had the first good Mew glitch guide on the internet, but now we've got ways to unlock events in Gen3 with the pomeg berry exploits and in Gen4-5 with the wi-fi hotspot thing. Kinda gives a way to enjoy 100% of the game's content without using a gameshark or action replay.

The forums are saturated with already answered topics so there's no real point in discussing anymore. I think the wise thing would be to make a Discord server.

But that's up to the admins of course.


That wouldn't be a bad idea. It would be very helpful for Psypokes to have its own niche, but expanding out to Discord would probably help. It's probably a stupid question, but does Psypokes already have a Discord server?

To be honest, I that we - that Psypokes - needs a goal. Small talk is nice and all, but it's not particularly engaging, especially when there are so few people checking in so infrequently. I'm not really good at social ideas, but if anyone has any ideas, it would be good to have a starting point.


Mon Sep 14, 2020 6:02 pm
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Frontier Brain
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GhostPony, what are your thoughts on Galarian Ponyta/Rapidash?

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Mon Oct 26, 2020 1:07 pm
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Pokemon Master
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Cherrygrove wrote:
GhostPony, what are your thoughts on Galarian Ponyta/Rapidash?

I'd use it in a playthrough so it's alright, but not a favorite.

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Fri Nov 13, 2020 7:55 pm
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Bug Catcher
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{weedle} Hello Psypokes

This website will certainly struggle to compete with fan wiki's and pokemon video's on Youtube.
Bulbapedia is just so good.

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/how-se ... y-20-years

I would like people to talk about their favourite pokemon moments more.
i can still remember the moment I discovered pokemon back in the nineties.
Maybe focus on memorabilia?

:idea: Psypokes deserves a much better send off that is for sure.

Thanks Guys {weedle} {weedle} {weedle}


Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:39 am
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Bug Catcher
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Hello Guys {weedle}

Is anyone even here or is it an echo chamber.

I might be able to contribute in some way. I wish I had years ago the chance to have been part of the pokesphere would have been cool back in the day. Yeah, I have a few health limitations now.

I think more pages, essays about the pokemon craze when it was fresh would be sweet.

How has everyones life gone?

Cheers Guys
{weedle} {weedle} {weedle}


Tue Nov 24, 2020 5:14 pm
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Pokemon Master
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Didn't this celery-themed website steal all the info from psypoke in the early days? I've never liked their website, just taking a look at their rules thread for the forums make me dizzy.

And yea, it's pretty dead here sadly. I think psypoke has the best layout for the info of all the pokemon websites, so I'm always coming back to it, but you won't find any activity on the forums.

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Wed Nov 25, 2020 6:04 pm
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{weedle} Hi GhostPony

Which celery themed website, Serebii or Bulbapedia?

Bulbapedia has all the stuff but is slow to load on my computer.
Serebii seems primitive like Psypokes but is way harder to navigate.


Yeah back in the day I was not at all Web savvy. Would have helped me alot. When I needed help with something people made fun of how many hours I had spent on silver. Then I once had people trade away or realease my Pokes when I wasn't there. :( When I did start using the internet (insert dial up tune) psypokes was my go to for pokemon. Cheers everyone :wink: {meowth}

Wow, there were psypoke members like Amphy and TonberryKing in New Zealand.

Thanks Good day
{weedle} {weedle} {weedle}


Wed Nov 25, 2020 6:52 pm
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How could I post Updates?

My computer was out of action for a while, so I have had time away from all internet stuff.

I would life to get web experience.

Thnaks
{meowth} {staryu} {haunter} {vulpix} {sunflora} {snorlax}


Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:28 pm
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I completely agree with you that there is little communication on the site now. Let's just talk what do you love to do the most? Personally like to play online games. Today I will try to play at https://oddsdigger.com/au/handball. A friend says it's a fun and easy game.


Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:17 pm
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