I was 13-14 when I joined in May of 2006, after reading the main site for a few months. I had started getting into forum culture with the Nintendo Forums, but those had been recently shut down. I thought a place to uniquely discuss my favorite games was the best thing ever. So I joined up and immediately got reprimanded by putting a desktop sized image in my signature. Wolf Goddess worded it quite nicely, which probably was what helped keep me around. Knowing the overly proud kid I was, as reasonably stern or short message would have resulted in me leaving.
After bouncing around the mainline game and TCG forums, I ended up in Face-Offs. What a weird but tight knit little community it proved to be. They were also very accepting of people willing to play the games with them, even if they had a bad tendency to pick fights out of nowhere. We eventually got to now each other well, and it was a nice respite from forum wide drama, such as a forum wide flame war in the late summer of 2006. The Faceoffs forum had its own drama, especially when it came to unannounced thread deletions, however the forum came back stronger. After a few key members left, the forum started to dwindle, as much of the site did.
Faceoffs recently have started to pick up with a lot of new blood, so maybe there is some hope, but it seems people travel less far on the web, I recall reading over 50% of web traffic occurs on 10 sites. Perhaps we can try to use social media to draw members in, or folks are less interested in meeting virtual friends in an increasingly digital world.
I am really grateful that Serebii was part of my life, it likely helped me adjust socially a bit better, as well as gave me some lifelong friends, which is truly a hard, valuable thing to find in this world. Thank you Serebii staff!