Victory Road & Other Pokemon Communities: Why you're here rather than somewhere else

[PokeRemixStudio]

What are your reasons for staying here, rather than moving on to another forum?

To find out mine, I'd been exploring some other communities: revisiting PokeCommunity and Serebii, both places I had previously joined to seek a sense of belonging. I originally found them because they were popular, but I didn't find that to be necessarily a good thing. The sheer size makes you feel alone, because every way you turn, there's someone you've never met, never seen before. There are a lot of strangers, and little comfort in knowing a lot of unfamiliar people will be looking at your posts. You're discouraged to act like your true self because every post you make creates an impression on those people. Sure, you can meet a lot of new friends, but that'll be a lot of work in order to become acquainted with the whole community. And if you don't get to know everyone, you'll never be truly at ease. Because of its size, VR is more comfy and easy to join (credits to whoever suggested that as the motto, though I didn't vote for it).

A few other places I've looked at like to get pedantic on everyone. As in, "in this artwork board you must wait 30 days to post a second time if nobody as posted in your thread and you must introduce at least two works of art, otherwise you'll get infracted", or something like that. I see they like to be control freaks because it provides an sense of order, but I'd appreciate it if they didn't completely dictate how I do the things that I like to do. I guess that's another problem that comes with growing communities, the ratio of how much administration cares about the individual to how much they care about the community shrinks, so the gifts of liberty are overshadowed by the functionalism of organization. And I'm pretty libertarian when it comes to forum behavior. hnwrli5lgh54lel;m

Now our VRIM chat, as much as it sucks eggs from a technical standpoint, is still a magical thing. Like all chats it provides direct and real-time communication with other members. But the implementation of different rooms partitions the community, allowing cliques to form (groups of people who really like to hang out with each other). This is great for comfort, as you no longer have to get to know the whole community, just get to know the people you hang out with and you'll feel like you belong. The Roleplaying room's one example: there are certain people who just like to hang out there because they want to be with other RPers. And as long as they're doing that, they're enjoying their time here. That's what I like to see. From what I've seen it's harder for cliques to form on Serebii or Pokecommunity, because they only have one chatroom for everything.

If you ask me, there's no place I'd rather be other than Victory Road. I really love its size, structure, and civics. It's designed to be a lot of fun. Mingling with friends and acquaintances is more fun than mingling with strangers. Having choices is more fun than submitting to 57 rules. Chatting with your clique is more fun than waiting to see if a random dude replies to one of your posts, only to have him diss you.

[Quadcentruo]

I guess the reason why I'm still here and not there, wherever "there" may be, is because of the size and activity of this forum. The size of these forums aren't the greatest compared to the popular sites, but are large enough to the part where the forums stay active from many users and you know a large majority of the active users. I'd rather not have these forums go out of control.

I had always thought about joining a larger forum site, such as Serebii or Smogon, but something always detoured me from doing so, and I know why now - the size of both of those forums. Due to the size, you hardly know anyone there, and on top of that, when you join the forums, you feel like veterans of the site look down on you due to your membership length. You feel like you can't get anywhere because the long-time members will always look at you as just another new member.

The activity here, sure, it's not the greatest either, but it's still going. Responding to a thread and waiting 3 days for another response is better to me than responding to a thread and you find out 7 people have already posted before you because you spent time and thought into your post, while the 7 before you posted something like "that sounds cool."

Why should I join other larger forums when I know I can easily be active and accepted in one smaller forum? Even if I did leave for awhile, I did come back, and that tells me this site draws people in when they join and start being active. Once you start, you can't stop.

[Shadow]

I've been to several other forums beside Victory Road and I eventually left them all for one or more of the following: activity, size, motivation and nature of the people. Instead of explaining why I left these forums, I'm going to state what is it about Victory Road in each particular aspect that makes me want to stay:

Activity: The activity over here is nearly perfect for my preference. The place is not dead by any means and there's always a good number of posts to make per day. It is not overly-active too, so if you take a long break you won't feel like it's impossible for you to catch up with everything. I admit that we need a little more activity for the forums to be spot-on in this aspect, but this can always be remedied with time.

Size: Victory Road is not tiny and not massive - it just lies in the middle. Forums which are too small are unappealing for me because there's barely anything to do on them. On the other hand, forums which are too huge make you feel really overshadowed and unworthy. Over here, it's fairly easy to get to know most of the members which frequent the forums and remain up-to-date on the major events taking place.

Motivation: Victory Road, unlike most of the other forums, gives a good chance for members to be promoted (and let's face it: who doesn't like that?). I've stayed on a forum long enough to make 2500+ posts and I wasn't approached once for any promotion deal, even when the place was small and inactive. On top of that, members over here can be easily involved in projects regarding the whole forums, giving them a feeling of motivation and appreciation. Lastly, every single member over here - old or new - can contact any staff member and guarantee a reply in 95% of the cases, even when it's the Lead Admin.

Nature of the people: The people of Victory Road are really helpful and understanding - even if you live on the opposite side of the planet, they are willing to accept your cultural differences and argue (where applicable) without showing discrimination. I've always felt a special bond which ties us all together, as if we really are a family (no matter how clichéd, it's still true). I've never asked for help and got turned down, even when it's a relatively big favour. This always brings me back to the forums after leaving them for a long time.

My post maybe a little too long or detailed, but these are the exact reason that keep me wanting to return even when my interest in Pokémon dwindles.

[GalliumGrant]

My last few months on VR have been hell, but you think that's the fault of the people or the community? Absolutely not. For this entire time I've been going around verbally abusing myself in my head, going, "Your never gonna make it! You're a bloody freak." Believe me, the abuse was vulgar, and to be honest, even though shouldn't be telling people on the internet I don't know about this, I almost went insane. No joke.

Then I looked at the people on the forums. Did any of them care about any of this, let alone call me a freak? I've come across two freakin' people, waiting to tell me my mechanical problem with open arms, and I pretty much told them to screw off.

That's the thing; If there's any reason why you could be unhappy socially in Cat's crib, it's probably because of you. In this case, that "you", would be me. I can safely tell any new, nervous member this: The people and the community are very, very generous. You've not nothing to be scared of. Go on. Click dat' "Sign Up" button.

Now, as for other forums; there's only one other that I've been to. No, not Serebii, not Pokecommunity (even though I was very willing to join them at one point), but a non - Pokemon forum. It's a very, very miniscule forum dedicated to hacking that blue, speedy rodent. The Sonic Stuff Research Group. There aren't many members, and most of the time nothing really happens, but the people and the community as a whole is perfect for me. I'm just into the kind of stuff they do, so I joined. Small forums aren't really a bad thing all the time, but unless you got a real good reason to join that forum, you'd probably best avoid joining. I've never become a member of a forum larger than Victory Road, so I have no take on what to say on that.

Anyways, the reason why I'm here, is because of the community and the people. They're phonominal. The people are nice, there's lots to do, and at you can be known around here. Oh yes, did I mention this place is addicting as **** because of it? (Also, the Sonic Stuff Research Group gets boring quite a bit, so I'm more active here to pass the time. Occasionally, something new pops up on the site for me to check out, but until then, I'm usually with you guys.)

[NismoZ]

Honestly, I can't remember why I'm still here. Back around when I joined, I stayed because it was the only place I could find with a decently sized active userbase. And sure; I left a couple of times, and I still hate a fair few aspects of this place, but I always find myself coming back to it. I think the main reason I stayed is because of the userbase. Almost every other place I've joined has their resident *******(s), yet I really have yet to find one besides a certain other user (members who have been here for a while should know who I'm talking about), who never really got in my way.

Plus, I've joined several other forums, and almost everyone seems too... formal. That I'm just another user. The staff especially. Yet when I joined VR, all the staff were super-lenient and the userbase happily accepted me. It was just a nice place to be. And even though it's had a turn for the worse, it's still a damn sight better than most other forums I've gone to.