Big changes in little Bulba
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Big changes have happened at Bulbagarden. The forums have been almost totally revamped. Perhaps Head of Staff Damian Silverblade can announce the changes best:
As you can see, the changes this time around were quite extensive, and involved lots of moving threads around (hence why so much downtime was necessary). Another thing to note is that the vast majority of older threads (more than three months old for most forums, six months for Fanfic, etc.) had to be archived, or else this whole revamp would have been simply impossible. If there's an older thread you'd like us to bring back, please PM one of the admins, and we'll look into it - provided you know the thread title (so we can use the admins search engine to look for it).
Now, to look at each of these changes in depth :
1) No more General Discussion; Pokémon News forums. Between the creation of Club, Games, and the rise of World as the central theme of BMG, General Discussion has lost most of its uses in the past short while. As such, it was cut. Any thread that doesn't fit any of the existing forum belongs in Outside the Box for the time being. Pokémon News, which is now the first Pokémon-related forum on the list, will give us a centralized location to discuss new information as it is revealed, rather than having to dig through several separate forums.
2) "Current Event" series of forum. This is one of our newest idea: The point of it is to provide a centralized and highly visible forum to discuss important current issues, both Pokémon and non-Pokémon. As you can see we now have one for the ongoing devastation in the Gulf of Mexico (Rita now, and Katrina before); we will have one for Pearl/Diamond as soon as more information begin filtering. These forums will not be permanent fixtures: The hurricane one will be merged back in Outside the Box in a few weeks, and the P/D one will similarly be merged back with Games some time after the release (English, probably). On the other hand, new forums - perhaps for the ninth movie, or the 2008 elections if we last that long - will surface as ncessary. If you know of an issue which you believe should get its own "Current Event" forum, feel free to contact an admin. We can't (and won't) guarantee we'll give you one, but we'll certainly listen.
3) Expanding the Universe As you can see, Pokémon World is no longer a small forum at the bottom of the "Pokémon" Category: It is now its very own category, and a top-level one too, with forums to cover a variety of topics, from the creatures that inhabits the pokémon world to the people (as well as their types, their attacks, etc), with the creatures and places as well as the technologies in-between. There are thousands of topics to cover in each of these forums, and we hope you'll enjoy the discussions! Also, as you can note, Pokémon fanfiction and fanart has been brought in-line with World.
4) Splitting of Anime. OK. THIS is a highly experimental change. We're not sure we're goign to keep it. We're trying it out, and, well. The basic idea is to provide the fans of the dubbed version a forum where they don't have to put up with purists too much, and fans of the Japanese version a forum where they don't have to put up with dub atrocities (too much).
5) The Games area Some changes there as well: What used to be "Random Games" is now split in two- a forum for more lighthearted games ("Party Games"), and a forum for the more intelectually minded games ("Mind Games"). In addition, all our old stalwarts (Fizzy Bubbles, DiploGame, ASB) are still around, of course.
6) Culture and Art A whole new category dedicated to art, culture, language and all those kind of things we've shown we loved time and time again! Whether you want to talk about music, movies and books (Entertainment), to showcase your non-pokémon creations (music, writing, art) (Creative Corner), to practice your foreign language skills or learn about exotic languages from other members (Tower of Bulba), or just to scream your love of all things Japanese on all rooftops (Land of the Rising Sun), this place should prove interesting to members.
7) Technology An old category back from the grave from the early days of Bulba. With a general technology forums to discuss everything from new IM devices to airborne lasers and the space race, and our good old Webasters Forum, Multimedia forum and Other Video Games making another comeback, this should prove an interesting forum.
8) Club Sandwich You asked for a Club forum, and now you have it.
9) Community-Created Communities Have an idea for a forum you'd like to operate and share with your BMG friends (and potentialy to bring more people to)? Harry Potter, or maybe InuYasha, or Civilization? Now you can have it. CCC is what you want it to be: The forums you want, when you want them. All you have to do is contact an admin, and provided the request is within reason (ie, not a duplicate of somethign we already have, and nothing (too) explicit or offensive), we'll (probably) provide,
There have also been some changes to the staff to go along with this:
-Pie and Jigglysama are now moderators.
-Barb has now been promoted to administrator.
Congratulations to all of you!
I think that's about all. I hope you'll enjoy the new changes!