¿Que pasa? Parte dos (4/01/08)

chaos

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¿Que pasa? Parte dos (4/01/08)
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Since the first installement worked so well, I have decided to make these "internal updates" some what regular. I've somewhat decided on a timetable - for every major external update (i.e. an update on the front page of the site) there will be a corresponding internal update. If anyone has suggestions for this process, please, make yourself heard :)

1. Visibility

The first item I'd like to bring up is the visibility of our site. What I mean by "visibility" is - how much of the Internet knows of our presence? Related questions are: "how are we doing on Google rankings?" and "what are other people saying about us on the Internet?".

Right now, our situation is a weird one. While Google acknowledges us, we do not have particularly high rankings on any search terms and the "extra" links they give us are mostly related to our forums (more on the forums later). However, we are sitting pretty fucking pretty (heh heh) as far as word-of-mouth goes. I've searched the Internet extensively through Google and BoardReader and noted a few things:
  • We are mentioned or linked to in nearly every "How to Battle" or "Intro to Competitive Battling" thread.
  • When people ask for movesets, people tell them to go to www.smogon.com or link them to an analysis.
  • There are more people who praise us than naysay. Those who naysay tend to be shot down relatively quickly too.
The last item deserves elaboration. There is still plenty of naysaying, whining, and poo-pooing of Smogon, but there tends to be an observable pattern. MOST Smogon complaints are due to misunderstandings, and are correctable by posting a logical argument on the forum from where it originated. Some common misunderstandings involve
  • ...anything related to Syclant. Doug, it'd be appreciated if you somehow made it more clear that these Pokemon are not endorsed as "official" by Smogon. I don't know how to do that, or even why people think that kind of junk in the first place, but it happens. Once I explain what's going on, people tend to shut up with their complaints. One individual even asserted that we are "radicals." I found that funny...
  • ...the tier list. This has been tamed for the most part by the introduction of X-Act's tier algorithm, but it still pops up here and there.
  • ...the philosophy of our site altogether. "Smogon controls minds!!!!!!!!!" Yeah, shut up.
The first two are fixable, the last one I don't know... I'm hoping my Overview of Competitive Battling will clear up some stuff, since it will integrate bits and pieces of Misty's Philosophy of Smogon document. Blah.

As far as Google ratings go, we are so-so. I setup the "Google Sitemaps" service today - hopefully that will provide some insight on how to increase our Google visibility. Smogon tends to be #2 for the search term "competitive pokemon"; I'd like to boost that to #1. We also are like, #10 for Metagross and other important competitive Pokemon. I'd like to bump those as well. Anyone have suggestions for search terms we should try to boost our ranking for?

Most of our "Google power" tends to be invested in the forums. This is mostly due to people linking to the forums for junk before the site opened, I guess. I'd really like to move away from depending on the forums for everything. We're doing a pretty good job so far, I think. The main thing we need to do, at the moment, is to get our guides off the forum and onto the site and get them linked to across the Internet.

2. Big Brother Smogon >:)

Vineon expressed interest a week or two ago in seeing my old "Pokemon Watch List", so I thought I would bring this up with everyone. "The List" was a collection of every moderately popular Pokemon site on the Internet with statistics on how popular they were. It was lost with my old computer, but that's not a big deal as it was around two years old anyway. If anyone still has interest in The List, it could be brought back as a sticky in this forum or something.

3. Lazy chaos

Right now, I'm working on a revamp of the Pokemon Dictionary article. My goal eventually is for it to be a suitable introduction to Competitive Pokemon and to make it the defacto "startup" guide on the Internet. I've also been working on these goddamn tl;dr posts. My short term plans are to add index pages for generations (i.e, www.smogon.com/dp/ etc) and to finish importing Move, Type, and Nature data into the Smogon Database and finish up the Dex. After that, the next priority is to get the WFTC up and running so we can kill the Wi-Fi forum :)

Oh yeah, there are a few HTML peer edits I need to finish up too. I'll probably do that first. Thanks for HTMLing guys!

4. Productive other people
  • Shiv and Brain setup a new photo album at http://album.smogon.com/ :)
  • Lots of articles have been claimed.
  • A few new articles have been HTMLized and put on the site.
  • Lots of changes have been made directly on the SCMS :) Thanks for everyone who continues to update the site behind the scenes.
  • X-Act fooled the shit out of everyone.
  • Probably a whole bunch of shit I personally dont notice.
5. Article project?

Anyone have anything to report about the article project? As said before, a whole lot of articles have been claimed but I don't know exactly what kind of work has been done on them. FYI, Jibaku's uber guide needs the HTML treatment!

6. In the words of fat Serebii

Until Next Time, See Ya
 

cloud

groove, slam, work it back, filter that baby, bump
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read.

how is gamewinners number one anyway that's so dumb.
 

chaos

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Everyone reads, but has nothing to add :avatar: Max, you have nothing to report for the articles project, at least?
 

Max

yadig
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Everything seems to be going smooth; a lot have people have volunteered to lead articles, and that's great!

I do believe that we need more people commenting on the articles, though. Some of the threads have like 75 views with no comments. It'd really help if more people got involved; even finding typos and grammatical errors would help out.

So please, read and revise people!
 

Shiv

mostly harmless
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fyi, carl should get a mention for HIS april fools :D i enjoyed it atleast and noob cloud fell for it amazingly.

also, aeo did the section additions today so ill start work on the tournaments section and will also start helping aeo out with the tutor.

also, album should be fixed and up to date by tomorrow latest.
 

Taylor

i am alien
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chaos said:
X-Act fooled the shit out of everyone.
Indeed.

I really need to start looking at the articles and trying to correct what I think is needed. I mean, NetBattle and the OU Advance generation is something I still play evern to this day, and I'm sure I can help outdated areas in some of the articles.

I'm pretty confident in my D/P progress. Which means I'll be hovering over the articles now and again with a more knowledgable approach, hoping to advise what I can.

Yeah...read!
 

IggyBot

!battle
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Read. I can't really help with articles until we get around to D/P unfortunatly, as I have very little experience in ADV. I've already offered help on the tutor page if Aeolus finds he needs it.
 

Max

yadig
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Read. I can't really help with articles until we get around to D/P unfortunatly, as I have very little experience in ADV. I've already offered help on the tutor page if Aeolus finds he needs it.
You could at least read this, and then find mistakes in the articles. ;)
 
I've read it, though I can't say I can help with the site's immediate problems. I have been working from behind the scenes to fix any errors I find on the scms, though I can't say there are many. However, while scouring the strategy dex, I noticed that a few UU pokes have their "Counters" section dedicated to OU threats (read: Tropius!?). I'll do my best to fix some of these sections.
 

DougJustDoug

Knows the great enthusiasms
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It's amazing how worked up people get over one stupid little fakemon (Syclant). There have been probably thousands of fakemon created over the years; I really don't know why this one has sparked so much controversy.

Regardless, I'm trying to come up with a way to get a stronger message out to users when they log on the CAP server. Shoddy opens with a fixed-size JTextArea widget to display the welcome message for the server. There's nothing I can do about it, since that code is in the client. That means it's plain-text only, and if the message is too long, the user has to scroll to read it. No one reads the welcome message of any server anyway.

I am looking into making the server submit special chat text as soon as a user logs on to the CAP server, much like the text you get when you join an IRC channel. Right now, Shoddy base server code doesn't do that, but I've made much harder mods to the server than that. I don't think it will be too tough.
 

Havak

I'm the Best. You're a Towel.
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Have read.

Currently working on the Advance Magic Stat Numbers guide, and I may start working on a small section towards Grass Knot / Low Kick. As it seems like it would be a good reference for people to turn to once in a while.

I'll also help with other articles when I have time, along with updating move sets on the SCMS whenever people find errors or if I have the time to browse myself and edit things.

I'd also love to be more of a part of the Tutor program and don't mind helping with the page on the site. I'd also love to help with Tournaments if possible, so if anyone needs help I'm up for it.
 

Stallion

Tree Young
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Read. Also, using the Metagross example you had, more people who are new to pokemon would search "Metagross Moveset", or "Good Metagross Moveset" (as I myself did a few years back), and so something that included those search terms would help. In terms of writing articles, if the DP Magic Speed Numbers hasn't already been claimed; then I would be more then happy to do it. I will also help with other articles if needed and continue my tutoring :)
 

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