(request) DELETE SMOGON NOW [decision pending]

BIG ASHLEY · Jan 28, 2025

"a finch that chooses to eat larger seeds is different from a finch that eats tiny seeds"
--the buddha or confucius or some other old fella like that

doipy hooves · Jan 31, 2025

The ghosts of the past never truly fade...

Jeffers · Jan 31, 2025

Wait, what are they talking about? I never saw that. Was it just a manji or something?

Bog Monster · Jan 31, 2025

Jeffers said:
Wait, what are they talking about? I never saw that. Was it just a manji or something?

I think they just allowed twitter

FireBlaze · Feb 15, 2025

I realize the world that is Smogon- OFF, you could just be having the most random thing in your head and make it real, but for once it's a CONTROLLED CHAOS which I love, keep up great work mods, (I also love being able to wake up and see someone wants to know what they think of a 3d box.)

doipy hooves · Feb 24, 2025

Jeffers said:
Wait, what are they talking about? I never saw that. Was it just a manji or something?

I could believe there was probably a H*tler s*gn on the website, though I can't say for sure due to waiting for if/how the mods would respond and letting other recent events pass to see how to continue. But after 1.5 years, the mods have finally addressed this long-standing infamous thread by marking all of OP's posts as removed and by "Unknown", though the posts quoting them still exist and the first post of the thread still seems to be there. They don't seem to be banned exactly, but I guess it's something.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...-walked-under-the-heavens-ask-me-anything/p21

In other news, there seems to be yet another newly introduced bug with approved posts that makes them multiply to an absurd degree, spanning over three pages/30 posts in the extremes.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16785/whats-it-worth

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/13459/forum-assistance-requests/p5

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16604/forums-gym-challenge-battle-gym-4-dragon/p5

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16559/could-pokemon-be-made-in-the-80s/p1
TheJeffers got his post duplicated over like 3 pages here.

Finally, here are some shorter examples of multiplied posts:
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16656/how-has-kyurem-not-fallen-over-yet/p1

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16743/according-to-you-mysterious-pokemon#latest

And everyone is generally excited for the Pokemon Presents, while wanting to leave Gen 9 behind quickly.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16030/hey-wait-a-minute#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...dictions-for-the-next-z-a-trailer-info#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...on-day-2025s-content-and-announcements#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16780/pokemon-day-2025#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16805/pokemon-day-predictions/p1

Aside: L_LostWord is an up and coming new poster who joined less than 2 weeks ago and has almost 300 posts already and 3 stars, so already they seem to be on a more productive path than some others. It seems like at least 100 of those posts were made in their first 3 days and involved a lot of bumping of threads.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16461/updated-introduction#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/16467/praise-be-armaldo/p1

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/15755/things-i-don-t-want-to-see-in-pokemon-forums/p3

Jeffers · Feb 25, 2025

It feels like there's always some new bug on those forums. And when they finally fix one, another one crops up in its place.

Posts held for approval are a consistent source of headaches. Not only does it often fail to update the forum listing and notify users you reply to or quote when a post appears after being held, but it is unclear what triggers the system to hold posts in the first place. Long posts seem to trigger it more frequently, either because you are more likely to say certain words inadvertently in a longer post, or because posts beyond a certain length are set to always get flagged.

This duplication glitch is yet another layer of frustration.

BIG ASHLEY · Feb 25, 2025

Jeffers said:
It feels like there's always some new bug on those forums. And when they finally fix one, another one crops up in its place.

Posts held for approval are a consistent source of headaches. Not only does it often fail to update the forum listing and notify users you reply to or quote when a post appears after being held, but it is unclear what triggers the system to hold posts in the first place. Long posts seem to trigger it more frequently, either because you are more likely to say certain words inadvertently in a longer post, or because posts beyond a certain length are set to always get flagged.

This duplication glitch is yet another layer of frustration.

are you the real thejeffers from the official pokemon forums. omg. it's an honour.

Jeffers · Feb 25, 2025

BIG ASHLEY said:
are you the real thejeffers from the official pokemon forums. omg. it's an honour.

Yep. It me.

I used to go by Jeffers for most things online, but when that name was taken I'd usually resort to The Jeffers or some variant, and that was also true for the Pokémon website back during the Black and White era when I made the account.

I first became aware of this thread a few months ago, when someone posted on the Pokémon forums asking what we thought of Smogon. That led me to assume that people on Smogon were talking about us somewhere, and since I had this old account I used to lurk with back when I dabbled in Showdown, I thought I'd log in and see what was going on.

The Pokémon forums are a bit of a throwback in internet terms, to the era of official message boards, before that was all replaced with official Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Discord servers. But it is an environment that I like.

I had assumed that they would block or delete any posts critical of the games or the companies associated with the franchise, but that seems to have proved mostly untrue, as evidenced by my long posts of whinging.

So I have stuck with it.

doipy hooves · Apr 11, 2025

The official Pokemon community forums have added new default sort and filter options within each forum category.

According to TheJeffers's thread on the situation, this was added (or at least first noticed) yesterday.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...g-and-filtering-options-for-each-forum#latest

From what I can tell, the filtering options are all completely useless and show nothing regardless of choice.

Otherwise from what I can tell, the default "Hot" sorting seems to show threads in order of their latest reply, as is shown in the thread listing and was the default before:

"New" sorting in comparison is not based on latest reply order at all, but rather date of thread/first post creation. I can't really show this in particular just from the listing, but this seems to be the case by opening various threads and noting the duplicate Sun and Moon threads being back to back.
- Would you survive ZA edition: April 5
- https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...-your-favorite-pokemon-into-the-real-world/p1 - April 8
- https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/17944/any-tips-for-high-level-raids-in-s-v#latest - April 9, 1:29PM
- https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/17947/my-10-pokemon-special-for-me#latest - April 9, 3:25PM

Lastly, the "Top" sorting order seems to be mostly represented by 2023-era threads on the surface, though not quite based on view count, so I initially suspect these threads to be ordered by some total of positive reaction count or so on the first post as is used for the "Best Of" listing, which I will try to confirm here.

Eventually I decided to look at the very last post in order and found the current oldest post so far sitting at 0 reactions, so I suppose the score at least doesn't track negative numbers.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/467/friend-safari-in-x-and-y#latest

doipy hooves · Apr 14, 2025

Another minor change I have noticed is that the stars/ranking indicator on profile pages are light blue now.

(current on left, old on right)

For now, I leave you all with the incarnation of a recent urge of isolated nostalgia for a 'better' time that we can only dare to envision once it has passed: a history that begs to be known again, that can never be fully recreated, yet was still experienced and perhaps could only ever be understood by those present at the time, still haunting the remains of what once was and may still be a Forum.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/18030/what-made-the-forum-so-good#latest

Have the forums really passed their peak? It's probably not my place to say, if anyone's, but the peoples' instinctive trends and their posts of wisdom have certainly changed over time, though the community stories have actually been going pretty strongly lately too.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/18031/type-cheeseburgers#latest

Also, an actual major milestone I kept putting off mentioning because I don't really play TCG Pocket, but the forums are actually very commonly used for TCG Pocket discussion and feedback. Of all people, NoahLaprasForum made this trading post congregation thread that has over 9000 replies (913 pages) and 144k views, which is probably the most replied thread by far on the forums. So that might be the Pokemon Forums' main claim to fame these days that is very much worth noting.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/15964/trading-post-pokemon-tcg-pocket/p1

Though it doesn't claim the highest view count since "Redeeming Codes" has over 190k views for some reason for a thread that's still just filled with "how to redeem" spam from new accounts.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/1694/redeeming-codes#latest

In the meantime, I'm also trying to get a discussion on the Switch 2 pricing going, which may be a slightly late hot topic but surprisingly hasn't really been discussed yet.

doipy hooves · Apr 28, 2025

RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/video-games

I was greeted by an error when trying to open the Pokemon Video Games forum, as my browser autofills to by default. I thought I might have been banned at worst, but the next moment of truth upon opening the main forum page was something I could never have expected...

The forums are evolving. It seems the mods/admins have finally responded to the complaints of forum stagnation (which have developed since my last post, but I'll get into that later). Apparently TCG Pocket trade thread spam is a much bigger problem than just being confined to the trading post.
But most importantly, the Pokemon Video Games forum and its general Pokemon associates are no more...

The General Pokemon forum has been completely removed, replaced with the Community Lounge (with a sky Rayquaza aesthetic), Play! Pokemon has been renamed to Pokemon Organized Play with a new image but still has the same subforums, and there is a Help & Feedback Center.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/community-lounge

The Community Lounge currently features 2 subforums: Welcome & Introductions (marked in purple with a star icon and Pichu) and the Pokemon Square with a blue background and Raichu. It seems most of the previous Pokemon General forum threads are being moved into Pokemon Square, but some are in Welcome & Introductions. I suspect some threads may silently disappear in the transferal process.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...-this-is-the-new-place-for-discussions#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/help-feedback-center

The Help and Feedback Center currently features a Forum Walkthrough & FAQ, Feedback Center, and Help Center.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/forum-walkthrough-faq

Nothing is present in the Forum Walkthrough/FAQ for now, nor the Feedback Center.

The Help Center currently has 1 thread moved into it, which you can tell because the Categories section only shows 1 thread in the whole category.

Lastly, I just wanted to give an update on "What made the forum so good".
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/18030/what-made-the-forum-so-good/p1

Something of note in this thread is that it's a "Question" type thread and clasingla has been marking every post as a "Best Answer", which seems to make every post show up on page 1 despite there being multiple pages worth of posts internally.

And perhaps, even the ghost of a forgotten legend may yet return to this court of public opinion, just as the official Pokemon Community forums rises from the ashes and a new era begins...

EDIT: Here is the new Pokemon Organized Play banner for reference. It features Mewtwo and Incineroar.

Some Pokemon Organized Play discussions for reference, under the strange choice of a URL with an accent and not mentioning organized play:
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/general-pokémon-discussion

fiish · Apr 28, 2025

community lounge logo looks a lot like showdown's logo (by that i mean it's blue)

doipy hooves · Jun 3, 2025

Just covering some minor mechanics updates since last time, after a month since the forums started to evolve:

Reportedly the forums are still evolving, but I believe most of the threads have been moved into Pokemon Square as of now, which hasn't expanded into any further subforums or anything.

The TCG Live subforum no longer exists, with its contents being merged into the general TCG discussion forum.

Tags actually exist now for use when creating a discussion. It seems this is the mods' solution to the lack of an anime subforum or so.

It seems there is a maximum limit of 5 tags per thread. I was able to press the Anime tag 5 times to reach this limit and it would not allow any other tags afterwards, though when actually posting it seems the tags don't actually get duplicated.

According to clasingla this happened on May 29, and he tried creating a tag but it was removed which is interesting.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/18711/they-added-tags-to-the-forums#latest

I would also like to note that the notification and pinned threads in each subforum linking to the Community Rules and Guidelines thread don't actually work because the Community Rules thread is still in a deleted forum, though you can at least see the quote in some of the pinned threads I guess. Maybe I should tell the mods directly because it's been like a month.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/4561/please-read-welcome-to-the-community#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/4499/pokemon-community-rules-guidelines

(What you get when you try to open the Rules thread.)

Otherwise I haven't really been paying much attention, but it seems like the mods have been pretty active trying to engage the users with discussion threads and responding to each introduction. I respect the efforts of Mod_Nova, Mod_Bee, Mod_Ember, Mod_Ginger, and potentially others to be seen.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/welcome-introductions

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/18348/use-your-favorite-pokemon#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...f-youre-limited-to-only-one-generation#latest

I noticed some strange test account behaviour going on as well. This account used to be named something else but it's now an Administrator with a Fearow avatar.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/18312/need-venusaur-ex#latest

I will end off with this thread as a fitting themed topic for the month.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/18769/least-fav-eeveelution#latest

doipy hooves · Jun 30, 2025

(small) red alert

The official Pokemon.com community Forums are still evolving, and have recently brought forward a new radical Posting UI (note that threads are Posts and replies are Comments contrary to typical forum terms. I will just call them threads).

Polls seem to have been removed, but in place are a new type of thread called Ideas. Well, they existed in the forum structure but weren't available until now.

The main draw of Ideas seem to be that they can receive Votes and are tagged as Active. Here's a filter in Pokemon Square for reference:
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/categories/pokémon-square?status=Active-status

As you can see, clasingla had noted that polls are gone and ideas were here a couple days ago on June 28th, and 9 votes are on that thread to bring it back.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19070/bringing-back-the-poll-feature#latest

Well, I just gave it a 10th vote.

UnovanZorua does make a good point that some polls didn't even work, but they were nice. This idea system seems to be yet another anonymous way to vote on a thread though, though without options or allowing other reactions on an OP either.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19072/starting-a-new-bracket#latest

I have no context for what this president business is by the way but people seem to be adapting to the lack of polls already.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19092/spheal-for-president#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19101/voting-day-pokemon-president#latest

Something else I had just noticed is that this Spheal for president guy has the 5 Up Votes badge as well as clasingla, so I assume these idea votes go towards that even though they don't show up as reactions.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/badge/57/up-5

Here's the difference between how regular threads and "Ideas" look back to back.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19098/spheal-s-political-opponents#latest

I'm still not fully back in the groove for actually regularly using the Pokemon forums and/or writing for this thread, but I'll try to keep reporting on more of these notable forum updates as they come and see what other bright ideas the admins have coming, as we approach the 2-year anniversary of this thread.

EDIT: Here are those other Ideas for reference. They're kind of questionable.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...ve-the-way-of-battling-in-future-games#latest

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...e-rpg-based-fighting-video-game-series#latest

doipy hooves · Aug 1, 2025

doipy hooves said:
Otherwise I haven't really been paying much attention, but it seems like the mods have been pretty active trying to engage the users with discussion threads and responding to each introduction.

It turns out that the Official Pokemon Forums fans have gotten vocal about the state of moderator posts and they are not happy.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...else-dislike-the-discussions-mods-make#latest

More on this as the story develops and if the mods respond, but I feel like this was specifically spurred on by a thread posted just earlier today:
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19562/would-you-rather#latest

Would you rather have an app to track Pokémon sightings IRL or one that lets you virtually “raise” a buddy Pokémon?

So here’s the deal: Option A gives you real-world Pokétracking radar. Option B gives you your very own digital Togepi to take care of. Which would you rather have and why?

This "would you rather" is admittedly pretty confusing depending on the lens you view it with. On the surface if you take it as having a pokemon radar app in the real world vs. having a digital Pokemon raising app, the former either implies Pokemon exist in the world you're deciding this in, or it refers to Pokemon GO or something. But the latter is also rather redundant because the Pokemon games basically let you virtually raise a Pokemon anyway, though I guess they aren't treated as literally digital monsters.

So I feel like this conundrum makes more sense if you view it as an in-universe dilemma of either having a Poke Radar to find real Pokemon or play a digital Pokemon simulator instead, given both options exist, because people seem to be playing with gameboys and link cables in Gen 1/2 all the time so the games would probably exist still.

Personally I do think the mods have been real and just restrained, or at least Mod_Nova has been, because they have been responding to some more questionable threads over time.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19209/what-is-the-most-sus-pokemon/p1

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19268/karen-or-gentleman

Otherwise I don't think Mod_Ginger's posts have been that terrible, maybe overly-specific but an attempt was made sometimes.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/profile/discussions/33267/Mod_Ginger

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us...usive-pokemon-variant-is-your-favorite#latest

Some of these were better received than others though.

Also more topically, here are some assorted reactions to Mega Dragonite. It is about as controversial as one would expect, yet there was more posting about hating the controversy itself than the design as far as I can tell.
https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19411/mega-dragonite-confirmed

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19420/do-you-like-mega-dragonite

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19459/what-mega-dragonite-means-to-me

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19413/mega-dragonite-revealed

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/19435/why-the-hate-on-mega-draginite

grayblood · Aug 2, 2025

That one chad saying "Gary" instead of karen or gentleman

Bice · Aug 2, 2025

can we make rename this thread to "Smogon and Official Pokemon Forum Cultural Exchange", the current title is clickbait

skippergamez · Aug 2, 2025

Bice said:
the current title is clickbait

And?

Let's go shuckles · Aug 2, 2025

Bice said:
can we make rename this thread to "Smogon and Official Pokemon Forum Cultural Exchange", the current title is clickbait

It's not clickbait. The request to delete smogon is still pending. The smogon bureaucracy sucks so it hasn't been answered yet. This is part of the reason why smogon should be deleted.

Mahmudkipz · Thursday at 4:07 AM

i can't believe we are still getting updates for this. this is peak journalism

RainWaiv · Thursday at 11:33 PM

Mahmudkipz said:
i can't believe we are still getting updates for this. this is peak journalism

they dont tell you this but the pulitzer prize is not the real highest award in journalism. the real highest award in journalism is being assassinated by the CIA

(request) DELETE SMOGON NOW [decision pending]

BIG ASHLEY

brain like a hurricane

doipy hooves

Jeffers

Bog Monster

FireBlaze

doipy hooves

Jeffers

BIG ASHLEY

brain like a hurricane

Jeffers

doipy hooves

doipy hooves

doipy hooves

Attachments

fiish

doipy hooves

doipy hooves

doipy hooves

grayblood

Bice

Feast On My Flesh

skippergamez

A hop, skip, and a jump

Let's go shuckles

Mahmudkipz

RainWaiv

ding ding ding ding ding

(request) DELETE SMOGON NOW [decision pending]

brain like a hurricane

brain like a hurricane

Attachments

Feast On My Flesh

A hop, skip, and a jump

*ding* *ding* *ding* *ding* *ding*

ding ding ding ding ding