Today, on this, the eleventh anniversary of Pokémon Gold and Silver’s release, I have come forward to tell you: what you may have heard previously is indeed true. Bulbagarden is no longer under the direct command of Archaic. For nearly two years now, Bulbagarden has been under the ownership of HAVA Media, and with this ownership, its quality has stagnated.
Now, certainly, all sites have their ups and downs, but Bulbagarden has fallen down particularly hard. When I first came to Bulbagarden in 2006, I came intending to fix up the wiki, make it a center for facts and be the best damn Pokémon website it could be. I came with the intention of pushing back against Serebii’s domination of the series’s news. Not, of course, in the same way that most of Bulbagarden’s insiders previously did, with seven-year rivalries driving tensions between the sites, but with the idea that it, like all rivalries in Pokémon, was to be a ”friendly” rivalry. To be better by pushing to be better, not by just jerking our own chains and saying we’re better.
But unfortunately, ultimately, that would be what happened. For two years I served as Editor-in-Chief of Bulbapedia, being one of the top people here on Bulbagarden. I learned many of the inner secrets. Like the secret porn forum, where everyone shared pictures of their penises and boobs, and sometimes more. The horrors I saw in there are not something I would advise anyone look for… and in fact, its ultimate removal from the forums is one of the good things that corporate ownership brought - can’t have a secret porn forum when you’re a website that caters to a children’s game, can we? And of course, this secret, the fact that Archaic no longer is truly in charge of it all, is the big one Bulbagarden tried to hide.
When corporate ownership began here at Bulbagarden, it was shortly before the release of HeartGold and SoulSilver in the US. Almost immediately, the problems began. Ads were more malicious than before, with many containing spyware due to the incompetent nature of the targeting websites. And not to mention the server errors - when HeartGold and SoulSilver were released, I was commanded ”not” to lock the database until the very last second, even though I knew that a ROM of the games would leak, and we, the administration, would have to move pages to their English names so that none of the dumbass kids who would flood in would take the opportunity and royally screw something up, such as, for example, moving Tin Tower to Bell Tower while someone else was doing the exact same thing. And this release’s server problems due to traffic were compounded twofold. Not only was there a massive spike due to interest in my anticipated games, but also, out of the blue, the powers that be approved servers #3 and #4, with zero time to set them up and get them working under normal circumstances.
During the waning year of my reign as Editor-in-Chief, when I should have been happy, due to, for example, graduating college and having my beloved remakes, I was quickly losing power. My tough style and intolerance for incompetence was quickly making me enemies on the Bulbagarden staff, most specifically in the realms of old. I was changing things - I wanted to rid the wiki of shipping, a fanon thing that has no business having 130 articles - especially when Luna is busy maintaining a 1996-compatible text-only list on a separate section of Bulbagarden. I wanted to make certain new users followed the manual of style and knew what they were doing. But these users did not care one bit. They registered for one reason: to get rid of the ads. Gradually, Bulbagarden began to restructure itself. Eventually, what was occurring was that votes that had been taken on the wiki itself were ”irrelevant” to the wiki’s business. The forums had taken charge once more. The vote for whether Pokémon disambiguations would stay or not was decided by ”forums” users, most of which (being that there were 150 or so votes) did not edit Bulbapedia even ”once”, and some of which did not even have a Bulbapedia account!
Agitated with this loss of power, and trapped in an incredibly stressful job when I wasn’t in the middle of four graduate-level classes - double the normal workload for a grad student at my school - I lost my patience. I lost my cool. And was fired from Bulbapedia’s Editor-in-Chief position. Hey, shit happens, I guess. Oh wait. Children’s site. No swearing.
Anyway, after I got kicked to the curb, it’s taken Bulbagarden ”a year and a half” to get the servers fixed. And what’s going on without me? [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w/index.php?title=Viridian_Forest&diff=prev&oldid=1485730 This mess] is getting left on the wiki for ”three months”.
This is why I couldn’t take it. ”This” is why I lost my mind. And this is why I’ve come before you to tell you, today. Bulbagarden will fall. Not because it lacks the talent to beat Serebii, and not because it lacks the traffic to do so, but because it lacks the ability to keep ”good” users who bring talent to the table and chase the bad ones who contribute nothing and couldn’t care less about style away.
Happy anniversary Gold and Silver.
As always, TTEchidna, former Editor-in-Chief, Bulbapedia
This is actually… horrifying to learn ;w; To think I’d used Bulbapedia’s wiki for quite a while now. Ugh. I really don’t...
And this is why I don’t go on Bulbagarden anymore. Seriously, the things they have done are just disgusting. Selling out...
and so, another giant of the fandom falls.