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How Different Was SPPF from when you first joined?

Palamon

Silence is Purple
I don't know how many people that still come here were around in the 2000s Serebii or 2010s Serebii, but I wanted to ask how different things were back when you first joined?

I joined around 2008, was 11 then. I'm a completely different person now than I was then. Here are some things I remember from back when I was active in ~2008-2009 and occasionally in the early 2010s and late 2010s.

Let's see... back in 2008, this forum was on forum software known as vBulletin. If I recall correctly, the forum was on Vbulletin 3 for a really long time until it upgraded to 4 back in...2012? I don't know, I left this place for years, if I'm being honest. From what I can tell, this forum no longer uses Vbulletin. I encourage anyone who was not here on this forum before the upgrade in 2017...2018? To go on the wayback machine to see what old Serebii looked like.

Custom avatars weren't a thing at all. For everyone except staff members, that is. You had to use avatars that were in a gallery. There were thousands of preset avatars to choose from, though. I don't fully remember why it was like this, though, beyond something along the lines of: "the servers can't handle it."

We had these things called social groups which were some sort of plugin where you'd make a group and people would join it, or get invited to it. From a lot of what I remember about these, most of the clubs/groups were about various different hobbies and subjects. But, if you created a social group to discuss a singular Pokemon, the moderators would delete it because it was against the rules. Social groups were not a very long lasting feature and definitely disappeared before the end of 2010.

Most of the staff members from when I was most active are definitely no longer on staff. Prominent staff members I can remember are Erik Destler, Razor Leaf, Chelc, Tiffany(?), Kirby and Profesco, also some person named Big Nutter. There's hundreds of others I no longer remember off the top of my head, but those names stick out to me the most. Around the time I was here, I'd say a lot of staff were very strict. I'm not sure how it is nowadays, since I only come here maybe once to twice a year to see how my old friends are doing.

Member base was a lot different, and I'd say there was maybe around 1,000 to over 5,000 active people on this website throughout the 2000s and maybe the 2010s. Nowadays, I assume most people are probably active on the discord server instead of here. Just from looking, some sections here haven't had any posts made on them in years. The atmosphere of this place was different, too, but that definitely because the userbase was much larger than it is now.

Let's see... what else?

We were in generation 4 when I first joined. Pokemon Platinum was the newest Pokemon game that was coming out at the time. More than half of the Pokemon we have now didn't exist yet.

The last thing I can remember is that when you reached certain postcounts on here is that you'd have a small banner under your user title. Like, if you reached 1,000 posts you were the indigo league champion, or something, and a had a small banner that showed up in all your posts. I cannot, for the life of me, remember what those were called, though. There was about 40 of them? I don't really remember anymore, but that's a complete relic of the past now since Serebii definitely does not have those anymore.

That's all I remember back when I first joined and the entire time I was active. I do hope other people have interesting things to say, too.
 

Zora

perpetually tired
I think the biggest difference is just how active this place was. This was my first forum, so this place has memories. And, while this place's activity leaves a lot to be desired, it's honestly held on better than a lot of places. Forums are a dying breed, as it were.

And yes, no custom avatars. I remember using Manaphy for the longest time lol.
 

Pokefan_1987

Avid Pokemon TCG Card collector.
I think the biggest difference is just how active this place was. This was my first forum, so this place has memories. And, while this place's activity leaves a lot to be desired, it's honestly held on better than a lot of places. Forums are a dying breed, as it were.

And yes, no custom avatars. I remember using Manaphy for the longest time lol.
Custom avatars are more limited in size now. Forums are indeed dying by more than 50% over the years while chat servers and organized facebook groups are taking over.
 

Missingno.Fan

Well-Known Member
I first joined in 2006. At the time I mostly just posted in the Generation I board. I remember how we had to choose one of their avatars. Granted there was over a thousand to choose from, but still it felt…limiting. I became more active when Black and White were announced. This place used to be so much busier then, but that can be said about most forums. It’s actually kind of sad because I find forums like these a better place to carry on a conversation than something like Twitter.
 

ForeverFlame

Well-Known Member
I joined during generation 3, which was a really interesting time to be a Pokemon fan. The generation 4 launch feels like the Stone Age compared to how generations launch now. Data mining wasn't as much of a thing, so new Pokemon were revealed from blurry camera footage of people's Japanese copies. Pokemon didn't start launching internationally until generation 6, so people referred to new Pokemon by their Japanese names for months and months, and there was always discourse over whether or not a dub name was good or not.
 

Tsukuyomi56

Sky High Knight
Joined in 2014, it was much busier but forums feel a bit more comfortable to post in (the main Pokémon subreddit was pretty ugly during the Dexit days). Think I used Roserade’s Pokemon Shuffle icon before settling for Darkrai’s Dream World artwork before custom avatars were allowed for normal users.

Edit: Also on the old forums system there is a 10 character minimum for posts and particularly short posts in the Games section had users add “10 char” to fulfill it.
 
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Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
I joined just as Gen V was coming to a close and XY were only a few months away from being released. I remember how your rank changed and you got badges indicating how much you posted. I think I had just gotten the Dynamo Badge when the forums got an overhaul. I also remember the different themes we could use and I enjoyed the Fairy one.
 

KRSplat

Unevolved Mankey
I was a lurker for what seems like the longest time,
just recently I found my account was made ~2009 and I didn't post until last week (more than 12 years later).
I can neither recall nor explicitly state what exactly changed since then.
However I always took to these forums (or similar ones) mostly to read Pokémon trainer fanfics.
That's probably why I hadn't felt strongly compelled to make a post until more recently.

The heydey of my passion for Pokémon trainer fanfics was most likely closer to 1999 than 2009 though anyway.
A plentiful count of good storys have been on the forums (here or elsewhere),
and when I was honestly that young it was how I got that magical fantasy journey feeling,
at dawn on weekends when I'd just had been dreaming all night and before joining the family for the day.
That's an incomparable aftereffect of the imagination, although it neither describes nor illustrates how the forums have changed.

I hope that's more of a similarity than a difference.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
It was a lot more edgelord back in the days.
 
Created my account in late 2006 and was really active the first 4 or so years.

It was a lot different. Tons more traffic, in some popular threads, it often happened that a few others already replied while you were typing your comment. Several sections such as misc and forum games also had their regulars which kinda formed groups (myself being part of the games group). Which might've been kinda intimidating for new posters. And the general age of the community also being younger. Most people were either in their teens or early twenties while I feel like most people now are in their twenties-thirties.

Also a lot more drama, well known members sparking controversies, a rogue mod here and there, the SPPf wiki where people basically made pages for people they either liked or disliked or edited pages of those they didn't like, etc.

The layout was much different, no custom avatars, stricter signature rules, the staff handing out infractions for even the most minor things (granted with such a huge active userbase they probably had to), the little banners under your avatar that changed based on how many posts you made (but only in certain sections), tons of different forum skins to use (80% of them either being horrible color combinations or burning away your retina with flat white), etc...

Sometimes I miss those days, not much people from back then are still online here, though I still talk with a few of the old Games regulars through social media.
 
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WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
I first joined in 2006. At the time I mostly just posted in the Generation I board. I remember how we had to choose one of their avatars. Granted there was over a thousand to choose from, but still it felt…limiting. I became more active when Black and White were announced. This place used to be so much busier then, but that can be said about most forums. It’s actually kind of sad because I find forums like these a better place to carry on a conversation than something like Twitter.
I joined in 2007. Posted a lot in the Misc section... somewhat in Pokemon games areas. Definitely. It was pretty busy. Mods were definitely stricter then too. Word. Twitter is ok, but it doesn't replace forums.
 

KRSplat

Unevolved Mankey
Before I knew of the Serebii forum, it actually reminds me about:
-During pokemon silver, celebi was said to be an unobtainable pokemon, much like mew in prior game
-I negotiate w/ a kid who had celebi, and claimed they got it from another version of the game
-We somehow trade cartridges or something, so that I could have the cartridge w/ the celebi
-The sticker on the new cartridge was all marked by the ridges of a coin, to denote the trade
...Maybe not when I first joined Serebii forum, although I always think about that trade on this website.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Well for starters, the forum was a lot more active back when I joined in 2008. That was both a good thing and a bad thing: on the bright side, there was a lot more discussion and it was much easier to find people to trade with in the trading forum, but on the other hand there were a lot of superfluous topics about common in-game queries that didn't need to exist.

There was also a very vexing lag problem around that time: sometimes it would take pages several minutes to load, which made posting difficult, and on rare occasions a submitted post would be duplicated several times because of the lag. We also couldn't use custom avatars, and only the staff and a few contest winners had the privilege to use custom avatars. Also, the signature rules were a lot more strict and I remember that large images and banners had to be split if they were beyond a certain size, which could be irritating especially if you wanted to have a gif in your signature.

The best thing about the older version of the forum is that spambots were practically non-existent at the time, so at least we didn't have to worry about that.
 

Shiny Venusaur

Internet Relic
I'm a relic of the past, that's for sure. I'm not here often now, but I like to pop in every now and then to see what's what.

Things have definitely changed. I found Serebii early on into the Gen 3 days but didn't start really lurking the forums until Fire Red and Leaf Green if my memory serves. I was most active with the lead up to the Japanese launch of Diamond and Pearl - when forum culture in general was at it's peak (or at least one of it's peaks). One of the noticeable differences is just accessibility of the main site and of the forums; there were times it would be impossible to even load due to the amount of people on at the same time and server space not being able to keep up mixed with the internet quality we all had back in 04-06. It's always interesting to see if people apply todays current tech standards to early days of the internet.

The forums were a lot more populated and busy for sure. There was a bustling of excitement within the post and topics. Things moved quickly and flowed rather fast. You could leave to go to school for the day and come back and have 20+ pages to read in a topic. People were overall very friendly and positive with the series and each other - the negative notions that we have now was much less present (but did exist). If I had to guess, it's in large part to YouTube and individual influencers who grew personal branding. Things went from discussion points or opinions to charged statements that caused divide.

The mod team was more strict and a well oiled machine, but that isn't a knock against them; it was 100% needed at the time. Forum etiquette and just general maturity was much lower as most of us were young teens to early adults. Topics were constantly made on things that didn't need to be made or could have been just post in the appropriate, already established place. Spam post were not necessarily common, but you had a lot of junk post - people just posting to post without real intent.

The non-Generation forums were also very active back in the day. Fan-Fiction, Fan-Art, and Miscellaneous were very populated. It was always neat to see how creative fellow board members were. I think in general, people were just excited to have people to talk about their hobbies with.

I actually really appreciate how these forums are still up and archived the way they are. Every now and then I'll go back and read old threads or look into how people thought about different things about the games. It's a nice little nostalgia trip that shows the growth of our community, for better or worse.
 

SerenaRulez

Well-Known Member
I first joined in 2006. At the time I mostly just posted in the Generation I board. I remember how we had to choose one of their avatars. Granted there was over a thousand to choose from, but still it felt…limiting. I became more active when Black and White were announced. This place used to be so much busier then, but that can be said about most forums. It’s actually kind of sad because I find forums like these a better place to carry on a conversation than something like Twitter.
I have browsed alot of old topics and I can tell that things were busier around here in the old days so that must have been more fun.

I also heard about the avatar situation but it does not sound that bad because at least members were still allowed to pick from a big selection of available avatars. :)
 

Kyuu-Tales

織田信長☆FAN
Wow, this takes me back! This place was hopping when I first joined in the early 2000s. I tried making myself known among the avid RPers in the community... only to disappear for ten years! xD I definitely remember the old forum style, the preset avatars, the signature restrictions, the tiny Pokemon sprites one could insert into the body of a message. I still in many ways prefer forums to instant chat servers and social media.
 

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
Well for starters, the forum was a lot more active back when I joined in 2008. That was both a good thing and a bad thing: on the bright side, there was a lot more discussion and it was much easier to find people to trade with in the trading forum, but on the other hand there were a lot of superfluous topics about common in-game queries that didn't need to exist.

There was also a very vexing lag problem around that time: sometimes it would take pages several minutes to load, which made posting difficult, and on rare occasions a submitted post would be duplicated several times because of the lag. We also couldn't use custom avatars, and only the staff and a few contest winners had the privilege to use custom avatars. Also, the signature rules were a lot more strict and I remember that large images and banners had to be split if they were beyond a certain size, which could be irritating especially if you wanted to have a gif in your signature.

The best thing about the older version of the forum is that spambots were practically non-existent at the time, so at least we didn't have to worry about that.
Omg... the lag. I remember it. I had to to leave the forums and then come back to get pages to load.
 

ChloboShoka

Writer
A lot of people I know from Serebii no longer go on here, but I see them around on social media and other discord nf facebook chat groups. I've met a few irl too and I am also dating one of them now. The forum was fun and was always active.
 

The Admiral

the star of the masquerade
I joined in February 2004 and I sucked on a human level. The site was on vBulletin. I think this works better, but whatever.

Can't believe I'm not the longest-running user here, though. /turns to dust
 
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