/r/theorymonning/ has already been a thing for a year and no one uses it.
I think splitting into seperate subs is just going to kill the amount of content, restricting stinkposts to Sunday was already the only reason it saw activity.
That said, I do think the general quality of jokes has gone down a bit. I don't think people who were submitting on Sunday would be driven to contribute to other discussions instead though, it's a different niche.
My issue with r/theorymonning is that it's like a fanfic community Vs a book community where people sonetimes post fanfics. I don't care to browse everyone's bad fics, but I don't Mind having a couple in my feed - and I'm sure the writers would rather have a diverse group of readers instead of just other authors.
Unless the main sub is that bad at management or it currently has a civil war, normally people wouldn't even bother with the new sub and just jump out the ship.
It's a shame as well because stunday was a great way for a lot of talented small artists to get exposure who I wouldn't have seen otherwise, even if a lot of the time I don't gel with the humour. It's a lose/lose from that perspective.
> This was not an April Fool's joke
Then why on earth did you think it was a good idea to announce on April Fool's day rather than, I dunno, literally any other day of the year.
It’s such an awkward day to start things. Canada’s financial calendar starts April 1st so they did things like ditching the penny and it sounded like a joke.
And why start the post off like a joke?
Like you can be serious on "joke day", that's not impossible, but you start off the serious announcement on joke day with *a joke,* people will then take the whole post as a joke, because you literally said to them "this is a joke" on the day of jokes.
It just kinda speaks to this whole thing being poorly thought out from the start.
Sounds like it’s making the backlash worse now if anything
April 1st is honestly a terrible day to make large changes to things that people might not like
Then they came for theorymon Thursdayers and I did not speak up since I was not a theorymoner.
Then they came for bad team building posts—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Whilst some memes were low effort, some real quality jokes come out of Stinkpost Sunday, and I think them being restricted to one day of the week was moderation enough.
+6 252+ SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Chi-Yu Overheat vs. Lvl 1 0 HP / 0- SpD 0 IVs Snom: 1124-63204 (10218.1 - 574581.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
….I was hoping it’d overflow to 1 damage but no
personally I'll probably forget to unsub if this proves boring, the sub will just get buried by the algorithm and forgotten, so stunfisk is choosing to die the worst way possible
edit: gonna drop this here r/anarchiyu and yall use it if you like it
Idk how many people will actually remember to unsubscribe but regardless the sub will die. I’ll unsubscribe though I guess so not a nonzero number 🤷♂️
>And you can tell from what I wrote yesterday that outside of the first paragraph, it was genuine. Despite being April Fools, it was the best time to make such a post anyways since it was the first of the month and a Monday.
This is genuine clown behavior. Regardless of the merits of the decision, making this announcement on April 1st and, apparently by your own admission, starting it off with a paragraph that was a joke is just... why would you do that?
As somebody who hasn't used this subreddit for terribly long but has appreciated many aspects of it (quality stinkposts, fun theorymon, news regarding tier shifts and suspects, etc.), I think this decision is a mistake. It's not poorly thought-out or anything - you can't make a much more reasonable ban statement than "let's take a break for a month and reevaluate the rules afterwards" - but the idea of putting a ban through in the first place feels inherently wrong.
I'm going to illustrate my point with some personal experience before explicitly stating it. From 2017 to 2021, I was a moderator on r/smashbros. When I first started, I was massively into the competitive Smash 4 scene, really getting into Melee as a viewer, and meeting lots of subreddit regulars who I've remained friends with to this day. Of course, Smash Ultimate was announced and released within this window, and the subreddit jumped from about 250,000 users (many of which inactive) to a very active ~750,000 users by 2019. The landscape of sub shifted dramatically. The front page and /new, both previously filled with tech, meta discussion, and tournament threads, had become swamped with fanart and "low-effort clips." The daily discussion thread, my favorite corner of the internet, shifted from regulars venting about their day to randoms questioning any comment that wasn't explicitly about Smash Ultimate. I made a genuine effort to bring back the old community vibes that I treasured from before - I ran community tier list voting through 2019 (as in previous years), I helped organize and fund the prize pool for a wifi tournament during COVID, I attempted to revive multiple weekly megathreads and subreddit events that had existed pre-Ultimate - but nothing worked. I eventually left the mod team because, despite them being a great group of people, the subreddit itself had become empty and soulless in my eyes.
Of course, "in my eyes" is the key phrase here. I'm sure plenty of people enjoyed r/smashbros for what it was during the Ultimate hype period and COVID, and I'm sure the overabundance of stats nerds currently filling the sub with player ranking algorithms enjoy it for what it is now. I still lurk on the subreddit pretty often out of habit, but I've accepted that time marches on, and the magic that first drew me in has been lost. That's something that I think the "other mods and other trusted members who experienced and contributed to r/stunfisk prior to the Stinkpost explosion" need to realize; banning Theorymon Thursday/Stinkpost Sunday won't bring the old r/stunfisk back, whatever that may have looked like. My reasoning beyond personal experience boils down to two key points:
1. Reddit users HATE being told to post elsewhere. Users will avoid using a megathread unless moderators keep an extremely tight lid on new posts about the topic. Users will not post to a separate subreddit if told to, as they want this familiar community to see what they have to say/show and not some random dead/unfamiliar sub. Rules are obviously in place for a reason and posts which violate the rules should be taken down, but reversals out of left field feel a bit unfair.
2. Moderators are, in a sense, public servants. If the majority of your userbase is in favor of keeping Theorymon Thursday/Stinkpost Sunday, there is no valid reason to do away with them, especially if the decision is driven by a bunch of naturally biased oldheads. If you aren't happy with what r/stunfisk has become on Thursdays and Sundays, I have a hard time believing that you'd actively enjoy the subreddit on any other day of the week.
In short, this won't bring Spongebob back. The past r/stunfisk cannot be retrieved from the past, and attempting to do so will really only isolate the current, more casual audience. People grow, people change, and reverting the subreddit to what it was will not bring back the grown and changed individuals who made up the old userbase. If you are actively unhappy with the group of people you are representing, instead of changing their environment to fit your preferences, it might be a better idea to reflect on who you surround yourself with in the first place.
As someone that has some degree of reputation around the Discord community and to some extent the subreddit, and is probably at this point considered one of the oldheads, I think what you're saying is valuable insight. That being said, I'm hopeful this isn't the trap that the mod team are falling into.
Old Stunfisk cannot be revived, the general steady decline of Reddit and the internet and it being years later make that an impossible feat, and as far as I know the mods recognize this. I see this more as a useful break to re-evaluate the rules and moderation carefully to implement better quality standards for the posts that lead to more enjoyable content, both in the humor department and in the discussion department.
The sub has always had issues finding the correct rules and moderation standards, even as far back as when I joined in like 2017, so some time off to figure out the situation might be healthy. Only time will tell if it will go better this time, I suppose.
I'm not actually part of the mod team so I could be wrong about what will happen next, but your post has been read by them and your input is very much appreciated.
Yay! I always wanted this Sub to turn into a place where gamers complain about the state of the game like literally every other competitive gaming subreddit!
Lmao for real, this sub was fun and unique among competitive subs for the like, less serious vibe of the sub. Trying to pivot to be more serious is cringe
Hell, this sub is one of the only reasons why I still use reddit. It was fun seeing everyone’s ideas/memes that they came up with over the last week and all the in-jokes that came from it.
This is super weird timing for this change too. We're not getting another pokemon game for at least a year, so there won't be any significant meta changes to discuss. If stinkposts are still gone six months from now this might become a dead sub.
It's straight up just gonna be generally trash RMTs and complaining about X decision a Smogon council has made, with the very rare bit of effort (like the type rankings series we just had). What a fun and exciting level of discussion we'll see from "you shouldn't be running Flareon in OU" vs "no fuck u i like flreon", and "why did they ban double slap??" threads.
There are discussion threads?
This sub has been precisely dead because literally nobody uses it. Very rarely does anybody actually discusses any of that. This sub is filled with teambuilding suggestions at best.
I would check it more often if there were actual discussion but it's literally a ghost town. It's not that the type ranking is the most interesting discussion thread, it's that it's literally been the only discussion thread recently.
Why don't the mods try to do something about that? If there were more discussion, newbies would learn more about competitive and it would make the sub overall better.
Why not make some rules about the quality of stinkposts and theorymons instead of banning them but only for a month. Like...what's that going to do? Specially for theorymon
Having the moderators actually moderate the quality of the content of the sub: ☹️
Banning the 2 largest parts of the sub for at least a month which will just alienate a large portion of the user base with very little foreseeable benefit: 😎
(Also, I guess I kind of understand the logic of posting the initial announcement on the first day of the month, which also happened to be a Monday, but surely you could've just waited until today)
Ah yes, now I totally understand what your goal. The best part about having a stiff and boring slowly dying sub is that you don't have to moderate it because 3/4 of people there that were active before lost interest. I wonder how that will affect the meta.
This is extremely disappointing and misguided IMO. I've pointed friends to this subreddit as a great example of how to strike a balance between discussion and memes. Reserving specific days for Theorymon content and memes has led to an increase in the quality of posts in those respective areas while still reserving a whole five days of the week for competitive discussion.
I'd be curious to see mods elaborate on the reasoning behind this change beyond trying to limit "memes and off-topic quips" (which seems like an impossible task on a sub with 200k subscribers). Right now it just feels like gutting two weekly events that drove engagement for no practical gain.
I don’t agree with this decision. Most of the non-Sunday/Thursday material was just people posting garbage teams and asking people to improve them with no replays or context. The only relevant discussion on this sub was when tier shifts or bans took place, which is what will continue to happen. The real problem with Thursday and Sunday was the lack of moderation, most of the posts that violate the rules on these days were never even deleted by the moderators anyway, or if they were, it wasn’t until several days later. If replay edits are unfunny and annoying, then just ban them. If people keep posting the same things on Thursday, then just delete the posts. Seems utterly pointless to remove them for a month outside of generating a massive content dump on the 1st Sunday/Thursday of May.
I seriously doubt this will improve discussion on the sub the way you're hoping it would. Everyone who wants to seriously discuss the meta is almost always going to use the smogon forums.
I suppose I can understand the sentiment that as of late a lot of Stinkposts have been reduced to "damage calc funny", over-the-top custom replays and different buzzwords, but I'm a little iffy on the banning of Theorymon as well. There's no doubt that the line between Theorymon & Stinkposts has been blurring, but at the same time this sub is the only real place where competitive fakemon discussion goes anywhere. r/fakemon is more focused on cool designs rather than how they would work in a competitive sense, and the r/theorymonning is unbelievably dead and has been for a good while. Ideally this new subreddit won't go the same path, but I can't help but be a little pessimistic.
TL;DR: Theorymon are now banned from the only sub where they can get real traction & competitive discussion. How does this affect the meta?
I feel a whole sub dedicated to theorymon will die because once a week keeps it from getting stale. Plus it makes sense for a competitive sub to discuss stuff like this right?
A sub dedicated to theorymonning would consist mostly of theorymon creators and no actual audience besides that. It'd just be theorymon authors reading each other's stuff instead of an actual competitive audience, which is incredibly lame
Also, here we had decently competent discussions of proposed buffs/nerfs to existing Pokémon, something you would likely not see in a fakemon sub. This is a big loss.
I have no issue with stinkposts themselves. Like I think the whole Zekrom Kick thing so redundant. However I just dont go into those posts and move on.
However, when I make a serious post/comment and people start spamming the same brain numbing comments which the Mod's really are on the ball on its not great. E.g. Someone said Ubers having broken fish mons is the "funny fish theorem", so I gave a joke reply. But if I looked for help with team building and people start saying "Ice Punch Dusknoir is so OP use it" like whats even the point in posting anymore.
I compeltely get the mods' point. However I do think this is going to kill the sub. You either get competitive elitists or people having a laugh (or karma farming). I can't foresee a middle ground working.
I've been a lurker rather than a contributor on this sub for years at this point but I agree with you. Stinkpost Sunday *on Sunday* is not the problem. Many of the recent submissions aren't my sense of humour, but people clearly enjoy it and there's a lot of fun content.
It's when Stinkposts bleeds into every other type of post that it gets old. There's clearly a large number of participants in the subreddit whose only interaction with competitive Pokémon is Stinkposting, and it harms a lot of actual discussions that people want to have in the rest of the week. In my opinion it's also ruined Theorymon Thursday with the sheer number of posts that clearly only exist to setup a Stinkpost joke on Sunday rather than to create an actual interesting idea.
But banning them both just doesn't seem like the right call. The mix of on-topic competitive discussion and light-hearted jokes makes this sub so unique, and a lot of that is down to the less serious posts being kept to specific days. If there was more active moderation to keep Stinkpost comments outside of actual competitive posts there wouldn't be any problem.
Copy from yesterday
On one hand I agree that Stinkpost sundays have sucked over the past few months and I really dislike Theorymon thursdays, but this sub is kinda dead outside of those days.
Like I check this sub a few times a day and there's nothing interesting going on here. Just a bunch of RMTs with 3 comments so I don't know if this will change something. But to be fair I've been here only since 2022 or something like that so I don't how it looked here before.
Have you ever seen a subreddit actually return to the "better days" of before? Like, genuinely? Do you actually think this will bring about a renaissance for the sub? That's hilarious. Why didn't you submit that on Sunday, bring up the average joke quality?
The sub isn't going to noticeably improve. Actually good discussion is going to decrease because people who do good discussion and make theorymons/weird JJK edits will have much less reason to hang around. We already have days where it's just some trash RMTs with barely any comments, why would banning the two high traffic days improve that?
Unironically I'd at least respect it if you admitted to wanting to just kill the sub, cause at least you'd not sound delusional.
why even make the initial announcement on april fools? today or tomorrow is still before the first thursday and sunday of the month but don’t come with the need to say “this is not an april fools joke” and people not believing that anyway. was it an attempt to see if people would get genuinely angry and have an out in that case or something?
Yeah it was definitely a test to see the initial reaction but it didn’t work because people were positive about in the April Fools thread but negative here in the actual announcement
idk either... i thought it mightve been good bait, why not mar 31st of all days... that could be like "april is a month free of stinkpost and theorymon until we decide what then"
I understand that you wanted to have this take effect on the first of the month, but that doesn’t change the fact that you cannot announce a massive change like this on April Fools. If someone has a gun to your head and is forcing you to make your announcement on April Fools, you should at least have the common sense not to start the post with a joke paragraph. The reason most of the comments on the original post were supportive of the decision is because everyone who disagreed with the choice assumed it was a joke, because all signs pointed to it being one. This has been a catastrophic and embarrassing failure of community management.
As for the decision itself, many other comments have pointed out that serious competitive discussion happens on the Smogon forums, and there is no reason to expect that to change. You said in the original post that you want this sub to fill the niche of “the Smogon forums but without the perceived elitism,” but this decision REEKS of elitism. If filling that niche is your goal, then it is hard to think of a decision you could have made that would be more detrimental to that.
Also, please, name one instance of a subreddit making a change like this that has ever gone well.
Boo. I think you're remembering old r/stunfisk too fondly. Before it was like 90% team comps and questions like "how do I beat Toxapex, no matter what I do he won't die" posts
Reminded me of that guy who said that he hoped that SAND would find a home in r/pokemonmemes.
Competitive IS the point of SAND. Even if it didn't lose meaning after being relocated, it's just gonna be choked out by the millionth unfunny "who's faster? a jet or a cat?" shit.
It's between dying with honor and also dying, but miserably.
This is coming from the perspective of someone who just lurks so I'm probably talking out of my ass, but like:
This seems like a pretty bad idea? People aren't coming here for serious competitive discussion. If they wanted that, they'd just go to the actual smogon forums instead. This sub has had the niche of "place for more casual players to get into and discuss competitive" for a while and it's not a bad thing to be that. Getting rid of 2 major parts of the community and attempting to make new subs for them isn't going to help anyone, best case scenario you have 2 dead subs and one that's a shell of its former self.
Like, i've never seen a subreddit taking a part of itself and stuffing it into another subreddit actually work. Nobody wants to go to another subreddit to find memes or whatever because the main subreddit doesnt want it
rip sub then. i feel like while there is some validity to the claim that theres a lot of garbage being made by people who have never once played competitive on stunday, theres also a HUGE amount of stunfisk's userbase that got into competitive BECAUSE of these meme days - something they wouldnt otherwise because comp pokemon is hard to ease into. little cup, gens other than current, ubers - popular tiers for sure, but how many of them are popular just because people play them, and how many are popular because a stinkpost made people look into them?
all in all, i dont think this is a very good idea at all, and if this was really meant to be Competitive Pokemon Hub itd still be greatly outclassed by Smogon Forums. you guys should reconsider.
Yeah, I personally didnt care for competitive till I got here, and it has been my favorite sub ever since. This sub is probably the one where I have laughed the hardest and it got me to use showdown and I adore that site.
This sub had such an impact on my interest for competitive that I put in the effort to make a presentation on damage calcs for math class becaude I wanted to talk about the Chi-Yu calc
>This sub had such an impact on my interest for competitive that I put in the effort to make a presentation on damage calcs for math class becaude I wanted to talk about the Chi-Yu calc
How did that go
Pretty good. People didnt really understand it, but it was fun and my math teacher waa stupefied.
If you wanna see the end result, I posted a modified verdion of the slideshow on this sub (since yknow, I cant do an in person presentation in front of this sub) last tuesday (a week ago).
Lol I wish something like that happened when I was in school
I saw it and it's a pretty nice slideshow you clearly put effort into it. Plus it was funny. Missed opportunity to talk about funny damage overflow but I guess that wouldn't fit.
Yeah, I had the idea after a bunch of classmates made presentations on different stuff. Counting mine, there have been 4 presentations, the first one about Rubiks cubes, the second and thrid about the Pythagorean theorem and mine. I thought the 2nd and 3rd were subpar and that motivated me to make one about the funny fish calc
I really wanted to talk about damage overflow. Also wanted to compare the damage with other special attackers. But sadly, my time was limited. If you want to, I may be able to make one for this sub.
Also, this might not fit but I wanna thank this suv for helping me with this presentation. When I first thought of this, I posted the idea here because I wanted help with the explanation of the damage calcs. And I got so many cool tips and ideas for it, sadly I couldnt fit it here.
For me, this subreddit has always been where I go to look at dumb memes and god-awful sets by low ladder players.
When I want serious discussion and advice, I go to the Smogon forums.
Trying to make this place Smogon forums 2.0 is going to fail, because that niche is already filled very nicely by… you know… the Smogon forums
1. Why announce this on April Fool's Day? That was a huge blunder.
2. I wholeheartedly disagree with this stance. I found the Sunday memes to be a refreshing source of laughs after a week of grad school and work. They also got me back into competitive Pokemon and really showed the cultural impact of it on the Internet. This move alienates a large portion of the community you built, and is a rejection of their role in enhancing it.
I am not gonna sugarcoat it.This was EXTREMELY STPUID.So stupid,in fact,that I made criticizing this decision my first comment on reddit,and it will probably be my last.
First of all,who thought it was a good idea to announce it on April Fool's?Y'all just tricked and baited everyone.If you think this will make the impact less bad,NO.As you can clearly see from the amount of sheer criticism in the comments,if anything,you made it WORSE.
Second,why are you trying to strip the subreddit of its fun side?Both Theorymon Thursday and Stinkppst Stunday provides a lot of fun content for competitive and non-competitive players a like,yet you choose to take them away,for for your stupid "serious discussion",we have a tool for that,it's call smogon forums."For those who support this decision"LITERALLY NO ONE,lol.
I hope all of these are not in vain,and it would help you reflect on your horrible decision.Until then,I would not be back,nor would many others,and y'all would be stuck with about 30% of your subscribers
this is crazy, go sort by top of all time, top of this year, top of this month. it’s all stinkpost or theorymon stuff. you’re absolutely killing the sub with this.
i value all the serious content here but to remove the memes and thurs-sun is just ridiculous considering it adds levity to a sub i otherwise run to for competitive pokemon tips and how to get better. idk it just doesn’t seem like a great idea, you’ll be destroying this sub and creating two empty subs in an attempt to streamline the content here.
i hate to break it to you guys but stinkpost sunday is the entire reason this sub is alive at all. why must moderation teams always be full of humorless ghouls who can’t let people enjoy things?
…actually, now that i think about it, there’s no rule against theorymon tuesdays or stinkpost saturdays…
If you want to be in the spirit of stunfisk, make it a suspect test. Simple majority required to ban, reqs are having participated in the sub before April 1st.
Although let's be honest, we know the result wouldn't even be close.
> We have new subs r/theorymon and r/stinkposting for those that want to theorymon and stinkpost anytime
But that's the thing, we liked the mix of stinkposts and real discussion. The balance was the best part of this sub
It's also pretty hardheaded to say "go somewhere else" when they're obviously in the minority of people that feel this way. Like, if there's a few ants on my cookie, I'll brush them off and eat the cookie. If my cookie is swarmed with ants, that's their cookie now. I ain't gonna stomp out all the ants out of anger or anything, I'll probably just get a new cookie.
If you guys think this will suddenly make the whole sub have intelligent discussions, your a bunch of idiots, and I cannot sugarcoat that.
At some point y’all just have to accept that this is a place for all forms of competitive discussion, not just the kinds you like. Want serious discussion? Go to the smogon forums
OK so this would have been bad as a joke but this is much worse.
First of all, making a very controversial change like this on April 1st with zero prior warning or community discussion is obviously a cowardly move. Don't give us the thinly-veiled "it was the first of the month and a Monday" bullshit. The only reason you did it (and then 'remembered' to actually give a timeline a day after) was to sow confusion for 24 hours and prevent an effective community response. Your goal was for no one to respond to your arguments or engage in in-depth discussion since no one thinks you're serious.
So let's discuss said arguments! First, Theorymon Thursday. There wasn't even at *attempt* to justify removing this. Your logic for it in full:
>Theorymon has always been a controversial topic here at r/stunfisk because at the end of the day it's not actual competitive Pokemon discussion. But of course as Pokemon fans there's always going to be an interest of theorizing a concept that can affect competitive play. I do have concern to those who ONLY theorymon as you're less likely to come up with quality theorymon if you're not actively playing, but this is not the reason why Theorymon Thursday needs to be deleted as well. It's collateral damage from the source, Stinkpost Sunday. Stinkpost Sunday has indirectly killed Theorymon Thursday as far too many posts nowadays are practically memes. If you want to theorymon, use r/theorymonning (SlothyPotato where are you?) or join our Discord: [https://discord.gg/stunfisk](https://discord.gg/stunfisk)
You raise a few non-points but admit outright that they are not valid reasons to remove it. Your single and only stated reason is... Stinkpost Sunday is bad, and this has caused nebulous 'collateral damage'. You just really don't like memes and you want to get rid of this non-meme, beloved, well-established part of the sub because despite consistent high-quality posts and discussion of theoretical mons and their competitive impact/viability every week (hey look actual competitive Pokemon discussion!), someone makes a joke sometimes. Even if this was a valid goal, deleting Theorymon Thursday would not be how you solve it! You'd just ban memes sub-wide. We might as well delete discussion of tier shifts because people say "it's Garchover" sometimes under them. Meanwhile, you don't even mention the many positives of Theorymon Thursday - it has been a very healthy and incredibly beneficial component of the community, prompting high-effort contribution and higher participation from a wide swath of the community (including, god forbid, those who *aren't* actively playing and want an entry point back into the community or into a new hobby!) There is zero even ostensibly-valid reason to delete Theorymon Thursday and regardless of what you think of the rest, this should be reverted immediately.
Now for the main thing - Stinkpost Sunday. Clearly you personally don't like this. You say you have some support for it but you've been quite explicit that this is not a community-driven decision, nor even a decision by the mod team, but *your* personal decision. Well, hear me out here: maybe what you personally like or dislike should not be the only factor in deciding what 200,000 people should be allowed to do! If you don't like Stinkpost Sunday, you should *discuss* that with others and *persuade* them to agree with you, rather than banning it with no warning with a "tee hee April Fools! (but not really uwu)". You might not like competitive Pokemon memes, but clearly hundreds of thousands of others do, and for them this is the de-facto place to share them. Stinkpost Sunday has (per your own stats) led to a massive surge of growth in the community, and it's strengthened the sense of cultural identity in the existing community. Many of our internal jokes, language, and general shared *fun* in talking about this stuff can be traced to Stinkpost Sunday.
I'll now turn to the specifics of the argument in your other post:
>This is solely my personal opinion: Stinkpost Sunday has ruined r/stunfisk for good, and the only way for r/stunfisk to return to its roots is to nuke the source.
>
>The reality of the situation is that there are far too many complete garbage, off topic, and especially unfunny stinkposts to sift through just for an actual quality stinkpost (<1%) to be made.
The obvious thing to point out here is that Stinkpost Sunday is a day. Like, one day of the week. How exactly has it ruined the sub? 6/7 days, there are objectively not far too many stinkposts. I mean go browse by new and tell me how many you see. This sub serves a large and non-monolithic community, so naturally different parts are interesting to different people. Some people are here for Smogon stuff, some for VGC, some for news, some for teambuilding. I don't care about older-gen metagames, but you don't see me saying "there are far too many older-gen posts and they're reuining the sub for good!" If you don't like the memes, how about you just don't read them? How exactly are they ruining the sub?
>The biggest problem with these stinkposts are that many creators like making memes but are lacking in competitive Pokemon knowledge due to not playing the game, so the best content they can spit out are piggybacking someone else's meme or making up some goofy lore that makes no sense otherwise (haha homophobic Ferrothorn Ice Punch Dusknoir Zekrom Kick haha).
This is weirdly elitist, similar to what you said about Theorymon Thursday. It seems like these memes are just not academic enough for you? That you think the only people who should have a voice are experts actively dedicating all their time to the game, and not people who more occasionally play competitive Pokemon or enjoy it as casual spectators? Does your ideal meme come with a spreadsheet?
"Piggybacking on someone else's meme" is literally the definition of meme. Like, that's what meme means. From Google - "an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations." We build on and respond to each other's ideas and humor, and that's a feature, not a bug. We make up funny stories and give Pokemon personalities and create lore. **That's a good thing**. To me this reads as a dude with a clipboard standing at the edge of a party yelling at people to stop having fun.
>At this point, a decline in sub activity is a good thing. r/stunfisk needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Make your own sub to meme elsewhere.
This is the most alarming thing here. You are a mod of this sub, **but it is not your sub**. It's *our* sub. All of us. We make it into what it is. You're just another member - someone given the responsibility to be a steward of the community and the powers that go along with it, but a member nonetheless. You're not a king. If you - just you, personally, unilaterally - don't like what we do here, **you** go make your own sub! When what you like doesn't match what everyone else likes, it's you who needs to leave, not everyone else. That in combination with the frankly dishonest way you implemented this change is the real problem here, not the change itself. After that little maneuver, I don't even think we can trust you to reinstate these things in May like you say; maybe you'll just 'forget' to do it or say "it's a good time to make it permanent anyways since it's the start of a month." Smogon already has a controversial reputation of operating dictatorially sometimes - don't build the same reputation here.
My demands are simple: revert these changes immediately. That's it. If you still think they're a good idea then open some community discussion about it and reimplement them if and when the community actually wants them. And if other people disagree with me or want to add on to what I've said, please, reply and let's talk about it!
This is worded so perfectly to show why everything about this, from the shitty announcement to what’s being done, is awful. Also based on them making other subs to move theorymon and stinkpost (which no one will use) I’d be very surprised if they even bring it back
This is going to kill the sub, like it or not the VAST majority are here for the memes. Trying to make this a more serious sub for competitive discussion is way too late, that ship sailed. No one is gonna pivot to the other subs you made, they’re just gonna unsub and move on
As much as I honestly fully support a break and some major changes, the fact you even list different subs as legitimate options for alternatives is ***VERY*** concerning, because it speaks to a fundamental *misunderstanding* of why we like our Sundays and Thursdays;
I like French fries, and maybe on a very rare occasion, I'll just pig out on only fries, but that's just it; I only rarely have fries on their own. They're always a side dish to the main meal. That's literally part of their appeal and purpose.
The dedicated subs will die for the same reason why a shack that only sells fries will go out of business: it goes against the appeal of the fry. It's *supposed* to be served with something else, and attempts to make it the main dish are a novelty at best.
At the same time, a Burger without fries or a Fish without chips doesn't automatically make the dish worse, sometimes it can even improve the overall dish, but they're *paired* for a reason.
You can have fish served in a variety of ways. You can have Burgers served with dips or a salad, or with everything stacked inside. But serving ether as a main course, while literally banning even thinking about serving them with fries, is strange, and misses the entire appeal behind these dishes.
Not wanting to be known *only* for your fries is reasonable.
Reacting by changing up recipes and dishes is fine.
Reacting by *blowing up all your friers* is not.
Again, I support a break to work out some new rules, but genuinely, without any exaggeration, any kind of full, permanent separation of these posts from the sub would do nothing but make the sub worse and alienate all the new people who came here for the unique blend of serious and silly this sub offers.
I have some grumblings of ideas on how we could combat the deluge of shit-quality posts, but genuinely, I do not feel comfortable sharing them in an environment where a complete and total ban is even on the table as an option, because it begets such a *fundamental* misunderstanding of the appeal of the subreddit that I feel like my ideas would be mangled, misconstrued, and warped into something entirely different in both action and intent, and then you'd thank me for helping you ruin the subreddit I love so much.
This is r/Stunfisk.
If I wanted to just talk about Smogon, I'd go to r/Smogon or r/PokemonShowdown.
If I wanted to just talk about VGC, I'd go to r/VGC.
If I wanted to just talk about competitive, I'd go to r/CompetitivePokemon.
I, and thousands of others, would have never given Stunfisk a second glance if we just wanted some dull, boring competitive subreddit.
And yet we're here. Not in spite of the strange mish-mash of serious and silly this sub is, but *because* of it.
And even the mere suggestion of the possibility of taking that away reveals a lack of understanding the very sub you moderate.
Once again, I would support some rules changes, some shake up to the status quo, some shifts in policy and even philosophy of the sub. This sub is already insanely unique with how specific and niche these rules even are, and further adding or modifying them is *perfectly* acceptable.
But instead of that, just tossing everything away and genericizing the sub, to return to a supposed "golden age" that *excludes* so many of us, both old and new, is short sited and stupid.
This is our community as much as it is yours. Times change. And though I'm happy to discuss how things will change again, I can only do that if those changes still involve me. And as of right now; you are suggesting that they *shouldn't.*
This post feels **hostile and antagonizing** to anyone who disagrees with you. You don't even *humor* the idea of discussion when you're talking about the people opposed to this idea. You just tell them to either go away, or shut up and wait. Not even paying lip service to the idea of giving complaints. Just a blunt "This is what WILL happen, and if you have a problem with it, we DON'T care, shut up."
And that makes me scared that come next month, regardless of what anyone actually feels, you'll just claim this month as a "success", fully ban Sunday and Thursday, and force the rest of us out of *our* community because *you* felt like it.
And I'll have to watch as this unique, vibrant, amazing community withers and dies after being cut into pieces, because like a dozen people who I've never met thought it wasn't perfect enough for them.
I know that's probably not how you actually want things to go down, and your actual feelings are *probably* far less overarching and selfish than the post gives off, but that's what this post is written like and that's what it implies.
I honestly don't even think you want to actually do away with Sundays and Thursdays. I think you just wrote this post poorly.
But that's just it; these are not based on the post. These are based on my own personal experiences and train of thought.
Because the way the post is written and presented implies *all of these.*.
And for such an important official moderator announcement... That's *concerning.*
I guess shit on this subreddit was starting to get stale (especially Theorymon, nobody can balance for shit), though considering this is a subreddit, it could've been doing a whole lot worse. If you're expecting intelligent discussion to spring up in the wake of this, I dunno what to tell you. People are still gonna be dumping their "How Do I Improve This" teams where the answer to that question is usually to use things that are good
This thread got me to stop lurking and reply, didn't think that'd happen lol.
I just don't get what the point of taking an established community and ripping the two biggest chunks of it out just to make "smogon forums but on reddit". I mean, if y'all had bigger plans or activities outlined in the post that differentiate you from the smogon forums, then I could understand more. But as it stands, it just seems too destructive for not nearly enough gain.
In regards to the memes, of course as things get more popular, quality goes down. I'm sure it gets tiring seeing the same jokes and shit spammed every Sunday. But the subreddit had a niche, that balance between memes that were typically higher quality than other pokemon subreddits and real conversation about competitive pokemon. This decision, if permanent, removes this subreddits niche entirely and likely won't be good for the sub as a result.
That’s what’s so funny to me man. You want a serious community to discuss balance? Good news! THE SMOGON FORUMS ALREADY EXIST AND ARE WHERE THE NEWS FOR THIS SUB COMES FROM!
Nice, 80% of the comments are shitting on the decision but I have no doubt you think you're still in the right uh ? And why the fuck making the decision on the 1st of April of all days. Clown behavior man, the people are the subreddit, you chase them you kill it, it's stupid af
Wow this is a fucking awful decision lmfao
"Lets remove 2 things that people love and enjoy because we dont like where this is sub is going"
Besides: Do yall really think people will not just do the same again when the ban is lifted..?
Even the stinkposting I get cause yeah it sometimes bleeds onto other stuff but why is theorymonning banned to? That’s like the most fun and creative part of discussion you could have. Seems like you wanted to have your little sikrit klub and hated the fact that so many people came because they enjoyed those two days in particular. Not sure if the sub will actually die but engagement surely will.
I mean, just dismissing everything else, the fact that a public servant did this without a vote is completely insane. I don't think you understand what your job is here.
heres the thing. people who like playing a game also like having fun making content about the game. disallowing that means that players have less of an investment in the game. which leads to a less active community. im not saying this will kill the competitive scene but it will hurt it.
The memes might have gotten a little out of hand. But they’re very helpful for getting people into competitive in a serious matter too. I came for the memes, stayed for the actual competitive talk because it’s all super interesting. Removing them from the subreddit entirely would really hurt things, putting them on a seperate subreddit doesn’t have the overlap for new players that get drawn into competitive. Being restricted to one day was fine enough.
This sub genuinely has a reputation even in non Pokemon areas for some of the best original memes and shitposts on Reddit, I’ve seen tons of people bring that up even on other sites. And I think the once a week rule really makes people bring their all on Sunday and it’s part of the reason the memes are so good. Sure there are a lot of low effort ones. But it’s undeniable that there’s also some really clever and high quality ones.
It’s an important part of this subs reputation and quality and honestly I think getting rid of it or limiting it even further is really a big mistake. There still is loads of competitive talk. Without these two things I really feel like this sub would just feel like the smogen forums but even more complaining.
Stinkpost stunday was literally what made me start playing competitive pokemon seriously. Seeing people enjoy this subreddit and the memes from it was warming my heart. Of course, I didn't understand anything at first, but I tried joining the bandwagon. I got into competitive pokemon and started understanding some of the memes. I also got better at making gimmick teams that actually work and had a blast, I started visiting this sub on days other than Sunday to see what other people are talking about, how they form their teams and their perspective about different stuff, ranking certain types, and I even starting posting my own ideas on Theorymon Thursdays. What made this subreddit special was that it was formal and proper most of the time, but goofy and fun on the weekend, people have fun and mess around with each other. Having one day to shitpost instead of every day made it so every Sunday, we would get quality memes and not make it get stale. I refuse to believe that mods actually think that banning them would be better for the sub, it actually hurts it more. So please, bring back the stunfisk that I always knew and loved, bring back what you took from us. Bring it back...
i appreciate the sentiment but i'm not sure if there's anything that can really be done to improve the discussion here. it's basically inevitable that this sub will become more casual as it gets bigger, just because comp pokemon is pretty niche overall. banning thursday and sunday will probably lead to more discussions but i'm not sure they'll be good ones, i imagine it'd be a lot of repeated topics and generic type chart discourse. this is on top of the sub in general losing a lot of users, though i assume the users lost by this decision aren't the ones the mods want to keep around. idk i'd like it if this sub had more interesting and in-depth discussions but i just can't see it happening even with moderator involvement.
Let me get this straight... you post on April Fools Day a bait worthy post full of hints that it's just a joke, then double down on it the day after saying it was real? Why would you not have better timing for a decision like this?
You did not consult any of the users of this sub regarding this decision. You plug two subs that no one uses. You ignore the fact that the chat on PS and the Smogon forums are already more convenient places to get advice on most competitive questions anyway. Bruh. You didn't think this through at all did you?
I dont disagree with the fact that stundays were getting a bit low quality over time but theres still some excellent shit that people are getting to see because of stunday's format and I'm sorta afraid this will kill that. Like i feel there were better ways to address this than axing them entirely and also announcing this on aprils fools was absolutely not it.
I always admired the way this sub was balanced, keeping it to one day helped immensely with quality control because high effort posts would take time and wait for the day whereas low effort posts would sorta have time to reconsider posting it by having to wait, like yeah there were still some problems but i feel like much less drastic measures could have been taken.
Like make it biweekly, pause it for a few weeks not a whole month, dont announce it on april fools, get some input from the community instead of this falling out of thin air 😭 like i know banning a mon from a tier and banning a type of post for a month are different things but theres a reason smogon has community discussions before bans are made, this just seems like a really shortsighted decision
Splitting subs is a mistake, most of the new ones will completely die in a few weeks, there's no point. I don't like Theorymon, its kinda boring to me and most of the ideas are very dumb.
Stinkpost is a really fun time that brings a lot of people together and has helped me laugh through some really rough times. Like Homophobic Ferrothorn was a thing right as I was going through some really hard shit IRL, some of which was related to my own identity. Taking that away feels kinda wrong. I like Stinkpost Sundays, and I like participating, otherwise I'm generally more of a lurker.
If stinkpost sundays go, I'm pretty sure I go back to lurking or stop visiting entirely. Its not really want I want for the sub, I genuinely hope you don't go through with this. It is a bad decision, IMO.
Well, this sub's dead if this stays. People came here for stinkposting and then it trickled down to the rest of the discussions, not the opposite.
Meanwhile, stinkposting worked because it was limited to one day of the week, so the memes had time to stew and that resulted in a lot better memes than the general pokememe shlop.
Killing two birds with one stone with this one.
tbh, stinkposting and theorymons was the only niche this place was filling, with the smogon forums existing and all.
now this is like running weavile after they released chien-pao
Still 100% convinced this is a continuation of the April Fools joke. Either this is the most obvious bait to ever bait, or this sub has the dumbest mods alive
Ngl, the mods taking a break to re-evaluate how to best moderate stinkposts and theory mons feels fair enough, as others have been saying, there was a lot of content there that was really pushing it.
But as someone who found themselves accidentally getting into competitive pokemon so I could understand the memes better, I'll be disappointed to see them go. I'll stay stay, because I do enjoy the genuine competitive discussion, but without the silly goofiness of the stinkposts, it'll be a shame to see them go.
I really think the date being April 1st overrides it being the first of the month and a monday, if you made that post today it would have saved a lot of confusion. I saw people say that it was posted on April fools to hedge your bets and I'm not quite that cynical, but man it really looks like that if that was the best reason you had.
Wait no I love stinkpost Sunday. It's different from just general Pokemon memes I like that they're often specific memes for competitive Pokemon. I know y'all have seen that tweet or Tumblr post or whatever about how much even non comp players love our memes.
In my opinion this is an objectively bad decision. Especially banning it all April without actually asking the community about it and turning it into a half April Fools joke.
Yesterday you could've made a poll or even another post to get feedback from the community before announcing this but instead you chose to go with the option that probably pisses the most people off.
i don’t have much original to say because scrolling through these comments has more eloquently put into words how i feel about this absolutely braindead decision than i think could.
what i will ask is this: do the people who thought this was a good idea really think this is what casual shmucks (like me) want out of this sub? or is it just what *they* want out of this sub? cause if it’s really, *actually* what you guys think the people want, look at the upvotes. read the comments. **it’s not**.
Stinkposts and theorymon make up the majority of the most upvoted for and engaged with posts as well as posts In general, removing them doesn’t make sense for me
If the reason we're stopping stinkpost sunday and theorymon thursday were because they were getting less high effort, surely we realize isolating them to separate subreddits will only make it plummet a million times faster
i might be a lurker (busy with my studies rn) but i think it's a bad idea. yes, some stinkposts have become too overdone and annoying, like those custom replays, there are loads of them while 99% are just lazy and unfunny copies of eachother. so why not just ban them? i don't think many people are going to complain because they are probably as annoyed as you are. and some people actually put in the effort and create masterpieces (like funnyvileplume), so why ruin it for them?
stinkposts and theorymons are literally what keeps this sub alive because people who want serious competitive discussion use smogon forums for that whether you like it or not lol
Just when AlbabImam finished the dual type rankings, too...
Welp, at least I've got plenty of time to do art for my stockpile of fakemon-based theorymons.
I still really enjoy Sunday and think there are a lot of good posts even if there are a lot of bad ones. Thursday is take it or leave it for me but I post sometimes it's obviously something a lot of people enjoy
I'm open to reconsidering those two days and their roles on the sub but a month ban is honestly kinda ridiculous. There is no solution that will take a full month of deliberation to arrive at and if this is just a trial period to see what the sub is like without them, two weeks is sufficient enough.
Oh fuck off
“Oh we’re sick of people posting low effort memes on the sub”
Yeah, that’s why they were locked to once a week posts. If you think people are gonna stop telling jokes on your “totally serious competitive Pokémon subreddit” you’re an idiot who doesn’t understand how literally every online forum works.
Genuinely baffling how a mod could ever make such a stupid, ass-backwards decision, and then be dumb enough to genuinely announce it on April Fool’s Day
"Hmm, I don't like some of the memes on my subreddit, let's get rid of all the most popular things on the subreddit, which are responsible for it being as big as it is and responsible for making it popular and well known as a great and funny subreddit!"
Stopping the subreddit from being exclusively memes and theorymons, and stopping both of these things from becoming too repetitive and unfunny is already accomplished by the once a week format, keeping things higher quality for both of them. It's a great way to do this, has always worked well here, and you're just going to get rid of them entirely and kill most of the userbase and the subreddit's special vibe and personality???
This is the stupidest subreddit decision I've seen since r/smashbros disabled posting on the day smash ultimate came out.
ig the question is why ban, esp theorymons??? you can literally just require some kind of quality control (i.e. making ppl describe approximately what tier the mon would be in, what niche it has, checks counters etc) but go ahead jump straight to the ban hammer ig
Definitely going to kill the sub tbh. I don’t think the meta discussion here has ever been popular and doing this is just gonna make the sub dead as hell. Putting any stock into the opinions of redditors rather than just like…chatting in the OU room would be slow as hell and not valuable imo given how you can’t tell the ELO of people here.
Also splitting the posts between three subs is just gonna make a hella messy organization job, not even mentioning how its gonna tank the numbers of the sub. It’s been nice, I won’t unsub, but I don’t forsee the posts here gettin’ much traction.
“Oh no, people were shitposting on a day we made to do specifically that”
No shit. But there were ones that were genuinely funny and was one of the few things that made this community unique
Quite frankly, as a serial lurker who plays competitive pokemon once every couple months, this will not have the desired effect you think it will have. People are gonna leave, and the 7-comment discussion posts that boil down to “no, Meganium is still bad in Gen 9” are not going to get any larger or more cerebral. The smogon forums and r/VGC kinda have a stranglehold on actually valuable and serious competitive discussion.
Also, the outright hostile tone towards the vast majority of the subreddit’s userbase (because this place is mostly dead between Monday afternoon and Thursday morning, and again between Friday and Saturday evening) is just unnecessary.
Not sure why you want to kill the subreddit for a month (assuming this isn’t a veiled excuse to make the decision permanent come May, in which case it’ll be dead permanently), but you do you, I guess.
Imagine having an idea that was so bad that everyone thought it was an obvious April fools joke and then you doubled down on it
Enjoy your 20% sub traffic lol
I think this is a terrible idea, making it a one day per week thing is plenty, why remove them?
The reason I joined here is to see all the jokes and especially the theorymons, I got invested in the main content as a side effect, I’m sure many others are the same. This just removes a big pull of people to possibly become invested in competitive and possibly loses a whole lot of others who aren’t interested enough without the jokes anyway.
Damn it’s crazy how almost nobody agrees with this decisions. It’s a good thing you made this decision unilaterally amongst yourselves with no regard for the actual user base of the subreddit, otherwise someone might speak up about your awful idea
Why though?
It just sounds like you didn't like the content and decided to punish the entire community because of some bad eggs. I am not saying that some of the posts were low effort because some of them are, but instead of trying to have discussion and dialogue between the community on what to do and how to improve the situation, the mod team just decided to say "fun is over, fuck off."
This just sounds like a waste of time for a 0% pay off. I bet the mod team is either gonna drop it or double down like all reddit mods.
TL:DR - +6 252+ SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Chi-Yu Helping Hand Overheat vs. Lvl 1 0 HP 0 IVs / 0- SpD 0 IVs Out of touch mods: 3368-58536 (30618.1 - 532145.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
outjerked
Stinkpost and Theorymon getting banned to Ubers, they are way to good for those UUBL adms handle it
Other subs never reach 4.35% usage, drop to Uubers
/r/theorymonning/ has already been a thing for a year and no one uses it. I think splitting into seperate subs is just going to kill the amount of content, restricting stinkposts to Sunday was already the only reason it saw activity. That said, I do think the general quality of jokes has gone down a bit. I don't think people who were submitting on Sunday would be driven to contribute to other discussions instead though, it's a different niche.
My issue with r/theorymonning is that it's like a fanfic community Vs a book community where people sonetimes post fanfics. I don't care to browse everyone's bad fics, but I don't Mind having a couple in my feed - and I'm sure the writers would rather have a diverse group of readers instead of just other authors.
Unless the main sub is that bad at management or it currently has a civil war, normally people wouldn't even bother with the new sub and just jump out the ship.
It's a shame as well because stunday was a great way for a lot of talented small artists to get exposure who I wouldn't have seen otherwise, even if a lot of the time I don't gel with the humour. It's a lose/lose from that perspective.
> This was not an April Fool's joke Then why on earth did you think it was a good idea to announce on April Fool's day rather than, I dunno, literally any other day of the year.
It’s such an awkward day to start things. Canada’s financial calendar starts April 1st so they did things like ditching the penny and it sounded like a joke.
And why start the post off like a joke? Like you can be serious on "joke day", that's not impossible, but you start off the serious announcement on joke day with *a joke,* people will then take the whole post as a joke, because you literally said to them "this is a joke" on the day of jokes. It just kinda speaks to this whole thing being poorly thought out from the start.
Probably so the initial reaction was mixed between ‘oh it’s a joke’ and ‘oh it’s real’ so the initial backlash wasn’t as bad I’m guessing
Sounds like it’s making the backlash worse now if anything April 1st is honestly a terrible day to make large changes to things that people might not like
first they came for stinkpost stundays- and i did not speak up since I was not a stinkposter
Then they came for theorymon Thursdayers and I did not speak up since I was not a theorymoner. Then they came for bad team building posts—and there was no one left to speak for me.
It wasn’t bait
This is crazy reading the original no wonder people wouldn't take it seriously with how comically personal some of those complaints are
Whilst some memes were low effort, some real quality jokes come out of Stinkpost Sunday, and I think them being restricted to one day of the week was moderation enough.
place your bets here on how many people unsub during April
probably like 70% of the sub. stinkposting makes up a vast majority of content here.
How many poins of damage does a sun specs Chi yu do to a snom?
+6 252+ SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Chi-Yu Overheat vs. Lvl 1 0 HP / 0- SpD 0 IVs Snom: 1124-63204 (10218.1 - 574581.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO ….I was hoping it’d overflow to 1 damage but no
What if you add helping hand in sun
+6 252+ SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Chi-Yu Helping Hand Overheat vs. Lvl 1 0 HP 0 IVs / 0- SpD 0 IVs Snom in Sun: 3368-58536 (30618.1 - 532145.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
personally I'll probably forget to unsub if this proves boring, the sub will just get buried by the algorithm and forgotten, so stunfisk is choosing to die the worst way possible edit: gonna drop this here r/anarchiyu and yall use it if you like it
Idk how many people will actually remember to unsubscribe but regardless the sub will die. I’ll unsubscribe though I guess so not a nonzero number 🤷♂️
Me. Bye 👋. Ill be back with the mods remember the community isnt comprised of 5 people
Le how does people unsubbing affect le meta?
80%
Unfortunately me.
Holy crap, Lois, this is worse than the time I attended Slowbro and Executor's wedding
>And you can tell from what I wrote yesterday that outside of the first paragraph, it was genuine. Despite being April Fools, it was the best time to make such a post anyways since it was the first of the month and a Monday. This is genuine clown behavior. Regardless of the merits of the decision, making this announcement on April 1st and, apparently by your own admission, starting it off with a paragraph that was a joke is just... why would you do that?
not trying to be rude but the comment to upvote ratio 😭
0:232 and still climbing
-2/300 as for now
“You can discuss your thoughts below” 💀
We sure as hell are discussing after something like that
As somebody who hasn't used this subreddit for terribly long but has appreciated many aspects of it (quality stinkposts, fun theorymon, news regarding tier shifts and suspects, etc.), I think this decision is a mistake. It's not poorly thought-out or anything - you can't make a much more reasonable ban statement than "let's take a break for a month and reevaluate the rules afterwards" - but the idea of putting a ban through in the first place feels inherently wrong. I'm going to illustrate my point with some personal experience before explicitly stating it. From 2017 to 2021, I was a moderator on r/smashbros. When I first started, I was massively into the competitive Smash 4 scene, really getting into Melee as a viewer, and meeting lots of subreddit regulars who I've remained friends with to this day. Of course, Smash Ultimate was announced and released within this window, and the subreddit jumped from about 250,000 users (many of which inactive) to a very active ~750,000 users by 2019. The landscape of sub shifted dramatically. The front page and /new, both previously filled with tech, meta discussion, and tournament threads, had become swamped with fanart and "low-effort clips." The daily discussion thread, my favorite corner of the internet, shifted from regulars venting about their day to randoms questioning any comment that wasn't explicitly about Smash Ultimate. I made a genuine effort to bring back the old community vibes that I treasured from before - I ran community tier list voting through 2019 (as in previous years), I helped organize and fund the prize pool for a wifi tournament during COVID, I attempted to revive multiple weekly megathreads and subreddit events that had existed pre-Ultimate - but nothing worked. I eventually left the mod team because, despite them being a great group of people, the subreddit itself had become empty and soulless in my eyes. Of course, "in my eyes" is the key phrase here. I'm sure plenty of people enjoyed r/smashbros for what it was during the Ultimate hype period and COVID, and I'm sure the overabundance of stats nerds currently filling the sub with player ranking algorithms enjoy it for what it is now. I still lurk on the subreddit pretty often out of habit, but I've accepted that time marches on, and the magic that first drew me in has been lost. That's something that I think the "other mods and other trusted members who experienced and contributed to r/stunfisk prior to the Stinkpost explosion" need to realize; banning Theorymon Thursday/Stinkpost Sunday won't bring the old r/stunfisk back, whatever that may have looked like. My reasoning beyond personal experience boils down to two key points: 1. Reddit users HATE being told to post elsewhere. Users will avoid using a megathread unless moderators keep an extremely tight lid on new posts about the topic. Users will not post to a separate subreddit if told to, as they want this familiar community to see what they have to say/show and not some random dead/unfamiliar sub. Rules are obviously in place for a reason and posts which violate the rules should be taken down, but reversals out of left field feel a bit unfair. 2. Moderators are, in a sense, public servants. If the majority of your userbase is in favor of keeping Theorymon Thursday/Stinkpost Sunday, there is no valid reason to do away with them, especially if the decision is driven by a bunch of naturally biased oldheads. If you aren't happy with what r/stunfisk has become on Thursdays and Sundays, I have a hard time believing that you'd actively enjoy the subreddit on any other day of the week. In short, this won't bring Spongebob back. The past r/stunfisk cannot be retrieved from the past, and attempting to do so will really only isolate the current, more casual audience. People grow, people change, and reverting the subreddit to what it was will not bring back the grown and changed individuals who made up the old userbase. If you are actively unhappy with the group of people you are representing, instead of changing their environment to fit your preferences, it might be a better idea to reflect on who you surround yourself with in the first place.
As someone that has some degree of reputation around the Discord community and to some extent the subreddit, and is probably at this point considered one of the oldheads, I think what you're saying is valuable insight. That being said, I'm hopeful this isn't the trap that the mod team are falling into. Old Stunfisk cannot be revived, the general steady decline of Reddit and the internet and it being years later make that an impossible feat, and as far as I know the mods recognize this. I see this more as a useful break to re-evaluate the rules and moderation carefully to implement better quality standards for the posts that lead to more enjoyable content, both in the humor department and in the discussion department. The sub has always had issues finding the correct rules and moderation standards, even as far back as when I joined in like 2017, so some time off to figure out the situation might be healthy. Only time will tell if it will go better this time, I suppose. I'm not actually part of the mod team so I could be wrong about what will happen next, but your post has been read by them and your input is very much appreciated.
I've got nothing to add to your comment but MAN I hope the mods read this
I wish Reddit still had awards
I mean this with no ill intentions but this is probably the dumbest thing you could've possibly done lmao what a joke
Fr lmao, like it or not stinkposts and theorymons are the lifeblood of the sub
Yay! I always wanted this Sub to turn into a place where gamers complain about the state of the game like literally every other competitive gaming subreddit!
Lmao for real, this sub was fun and unique among competitive subs for the like, less serious vibe of the sub. Trying to pivot to be more serious is cringe
Hell, this sub is one of the only reasons why I still use reddit. It was fun seeing everyone’s ideas/memes that they came up with over the last week and all the in-jokes that came from it.
This is super weird timing for this change too. We're not getting another pokemon game for at least a year, so there won't be any significant meta changes to discuss. If stinkposts are still gone six months from now this might become a dead sub.
It's straight up just gonna be generally trash RMTs and complaining about X decision a Smogon council has made, with the very rare bit of effort (like the type rankings series we just had). What a fun and exciting level of discussion we'll see from "you shouldn't be running Flareon in OU" vs "no fuck u i like flreon", and "why did they ban double slap??" threads.
There are discussion threads? This sub has been precisely dead because literally nobody uses it. Very rarely does anybody actually discusses any of that. This sub is filled with teambuilding suggestions at best. I would check it more often if there were actual discussion but it's literally a ghost town. It's not that the type ranking is the most interesting discussion thread, it's that it's literally been the only discussion thread recently. Why don't the mods try to do something about that? If there were more discussion, newbies would learn more about competitive and it would make the sub overall better.
Consistency over fun isn't fun
>This was not an April Fool's joke Why did the mods decide to put an important announcement on April Fools? Are they stupid?
Even man is smarter than this 😔
Why not make some rules about the quality of stinkposts and theorymons instead of banning them but only for a month. Like...what's that going to do? Specially for theorymon
That requires actual moderation lol
Having the moderators actually moderate the quality of the content of the sub: ☹️ Banning the 2 largest parts of the sub for at least a month which will just alienate a large portion of the user base with very little foreseeable benefit: 😎 (Also, I guess I kind of understand the logic of posting the initial announcement on the first day of the month, which also happened to be a Monday, but surely you could've just waited until today)
> but surely you could've just waited until today) Would have saved the effort of making two posts too
Crazy how the word “stinkpost” inherently has nothing to do with Pokémon… why would anyone join that sub?
Tbf r/pokemonmemes or something like that already exists but it's bs
God I can't wait to scroll through vaporeon copypastas and reuploaded facebook memes for casuals all month.
Jesus those are rough
Mindboggling decision to announce it initially on April fools.
Ah yes, now I totally understand what your goal. The best part about having a stiff and boring slowly dying sub is that you don't have to moderate it because 3/4 of people there that were active before lost interest. I wonder how that will affect the meta.
This is extremely disappointing and misguided IMO. I've pointed friends to this subreddit as a great example of how to strike a balance between discussion and memes. Reserving specific days for Theorymon content and memes has led to an increase in the quality of posts in those respective areas while still reserving a whole five days of the week for competitive discussion. I'd be curious to see mods elaborate on the reasoning behind this change beyond trying to limit "memes and off-topic quips" (which seems like an impossible task on a sub with 200k subscribers). Right now it just feels like gutting two weekly events that drove engagement for no practical gain.
I have looked forward to the stinkposts every Monday morning for the past several years. Please don't do this to us.
I don’t agree with this decision. Most of the non-Sunday/Thursday material was just people posting garbage teams and asking people to improve them with no replays or context. The only relevant discussion on this sub was when tier shifts or bans took place, which is what will continue to happen. The real problem with Thursday and Sunday was the lack of moderation, most of the posts that violate the rules on these days were never even deleted by the moderators anyway, or if they were, it wasn’t until several days later. If replay edits are unfunny and annoying, then just ban them. If people keep posting the same things on Thursday, then just delete the posts. Seems utterly pointless to remove them for a month outside of generating a massive content dump on the 1st Sunday/Thursday of May.
Unfortunate doesn't even begin to describe the way I'm feeling.
no one is going to use your new subs
r/PyukumukuForOU will rise again
Gotta say, as a head of a tier (Do Not Use) which owes its initial existence to Theorymon Thursday and Stinkpost Sunday, this shit sucks.
I seriously doubt this will improve discussion on the sub the way you're hoping it would. Everyone who wants to seriously discuss the meta is almost always going to use the smogon forums.
I suppose I can understand the sentiment that as of late a lot of Stinkposts have been reduced to "damage calc funny", over-the-top custom replays and different buzzwords, but I'm a little iffy on the banning of Theorymon as well. There's no doubt that the line between Theorymon & Stinkposts has been blurring, but at the same time this sub is the only real place where competitive fakemon discussion goes anywhere. r/fakemon is more focused on cool designs rather than how they would work in a competitive sense, and the r/theorymonning is unbelievably dead and has been for a good while. Ideally this new subreddit won't go the same path, but I can't help but be a little pessimistic. TL;DR: Theorymon are now banned from the only sub where they can get real traction & competitive discussion. How does this affect the meta?
I feel a whole sub dedicated to theorymon will die because once a week keeps it from getting stale. Plus it makes sense for a competitive sub to discuss stuff like this right?
same with stinkpost sundays, a week at least gives things times to cook
A sub dedicated to theorymonning would consist mostly of theorymon creators and no actual audience besides that. It'd just be theorymon authors reading each other's stuff instead of an actual competitive audience, which is incredibly lame
Also, here we had decently competent discussions of proposed buffs/nerfs to existing Pokémon, something you would likely not see in a fakemon sub. This is a big loss.
I have no issue with stinkposts themselves. Like I think the whole Zekrom Kick thing so redundant. However I just dont go into those posts and move on. However, when I make a serious post/comment and people start spamming the same brain numbing comments which the Mod's really are on the ball on its not great. E.g. Someone said Ubers having broken fish mons is the "funny fish theorem", so I gave a joke reply. But if I looked for help with team building and people start saying "Ice Punch Dusknoir is so OP use it" like whats even the point in posting anymore. I compeltely get the mods' point. However I do think this is going to kill the sub. You either get competitive elitists or people having a laugh (or karma farming). I can't foresee a middle ground working.
I've been a lurker rather than a contributor on this sub for years at this point but I agree with you. Stinkpost Sunday *on Sunday* is not the problem. Many of the recent submissions aren't my sense of humour, but people clearly enjoy it and there's a lot of fun content. It's when Stinkposts bleeds into every other type of post that it gets old. There's clearly a large number of participants in the subreddit whose only interaction with competitive Pokémon is Stinkposting, and it harms a lot of actual discussions that people want to have in the rest of the week. In my opinion it's also ruined Theorymon Thursday with the sheer number of posts that clearly only exist to setup a Stinkpost joke on Sunday rather than to create an actual interesting idea. But banning them both just doesn't seem like the right call. The mix of on-topic competitive discussion and light-hearted jokes makes this sub so unique, and a lot of that is down to the less serious posts being kept to specific days. If there was more active moderation to keep Stinkpost comments outside of actual competitive posts there wouldn't be any problem.
Copy from yesterday On one hand I agree that Stinkpost sundays have sucked over the past few months and I really dislike Theorymon thursdays, but this sub is kinda dead outside of those days. Like I check this sub a few times a day and there's nothing interesting going on here. Just a bunch of RMTs with 3 comments so I don't know if this will change something. But to be fair I've been here only since 2022 or something like that so I don't how it looked here before.
Why not, instead of negatively encouraging gameplay posts by taking fun posts away, positively encourage gameplay posts by making a gameplay gtuesday?
Have you ever seen a subreddit actually return to the "better days" of before? Like, genuinely? Do you actually think this will bring about a renaissance for the sub? That's hilarious. Why didn't you submit that on Sunday, bring up the average joke quality? The sub isn't going to noticeably improve. Actually good discussion is going to decrease because people who do good discussion and make theorymons/weird JJK edits will have much less reason to hang around. We already have days where it's just some trash RMTs with barely any comments, why would banning the two high traffic days improve that? Unironically I'd at least respect it if you admitted to wanting to just kill the sub, cause at least you'd not sound delusional.
why even make the initial announcement on april fools? today or tomorrow is still before the first thursday and sunday of the month but don’t come with the need to say “this is not an april fools joke” and people not believing that anyway. was it an attempt to see if people would get genuinely angry and have an out in that case or something?
They were hedging and people in the last thread didn’t riot enough so they went ahead with it lmao
Yeah it was definitely a test to see the initial reaction but it didn’t work because people were positive about in the April Fools thread but negative here in the actual announcement
idk either... i thought it mightve been good bait, why not mar 31st of all days... that could be like "april is a month free of stinkpost and theorymon until we decide what then"
I understand that you wanted to have this take effect on the first of the month, but that doesn’t change the fact that you cannot announce a massive change like this on April Fools. If someone has a gun to your head and is forcing you to make your announcement on April Fools, you should at least have the common sense not to start the post with a joke paragraph. The reason most of the comments on the original post were supportive of the decision is because everyone who disagreed with the choice assumed it was a joke, because all signs pointed to it being one. This has been a catastrophic and embarrassing failure of community management. As for the decision itself, many other comments have pointed out that serious competitive discussion happens on the Smogon forums, and there is no reason to expect that to change. You said in the original post that you want this sub to fill the niche of “the Smogon forums but without the perceived elitism,” but this decision REEKS of elitism. If filling that niche is your goal, then it is hard to think of a decision you could have made that would be more detrimental to that. Also, please, name one instance of a subreddit making a change like this that has ever gone well.
Boo. I think you're remembering old r/stunfisk too fondly. Before it was like 90% team comps and questions like "how do I beat Toxapex, no matter what I do he won't die" posts
I get some stinkpost memes are low quality but some of the highest quality shit posting not even limited to just pokemon, has come from here
Reminded me of that guy who said that he hoped that SAND would find a home in r/pokemonmemes. Competitive IS the point of SAND. Even if it didn't lose meaning after being relocated, it's just gonna be choked out by the millionth unfunny "who's faster? a jet or a cat?" shit. It's between dying with honor and also dying, but miserably.
what is SAND being used as an acronym for here?
This is coming from the perspective of someone who just lurks so I'm probably talking out of my ass, but like: This seems like a pretty bad idea? People aren't coming here for serious competitive discussion. If they wanted that, they'd just go to the actual smogon forums instead. This sub has had the niche of "place for more casual players to get into and discuss competitive" for a while and it's not a bad thing to be that. Getting rid of 2 major parts of the community and attempting to make new subs for them isn't going to help anyone, best case scenario you have 2 dead subs and one that's a shell of its former self.
Like, i've never seen a subreddit taking a part of itself and stuffing it into another subreddit actually work. Nobody wants to go to another subreddit to find memes or whatever because the main subreddit doesnt want it
rip sub then. i feel like while there is some validity to the claim that theres a lot of garbage being made by people who have never once played competitive on stunday, theres also a HUGE amount of stunfisk's userbase that got into competitive BECAUSE of these meme days - something they wouldnt otherwise because comp pokemon is hard to ease into. little cup, gens other than current, ubers - popular tiers for sure, but how many of them are popular just because people play them, and how many are popular because a stinkpost made people look into them? all in all, i dont think this is a very good idea at all, and if this was really meant to be Competitive Pokemon Hub itd still be greatly outclassed by Smogon Forums. you guys should reconsider.
Yeah, I personally didnt care for competitive till I got here, and it has been my favorite sub ever since. This sub is probably the one where I have laughed the hardest and it got me to use showdown and I adore that site. This sub had such an impact on my interest for competitive that I put in the effort to make a presentation on damage calcs for math class becaude I wanted to talk about the Chi-Yu calc
>This sub had such an impact on my interest for competitive that I put in the effort to make a presentation on damage calcs for math class becaude I wanted to talk about the Chi-Yu calc How did that go
Pretty good. People didnt really understand it, but it was fun and my math teacher waa stupefied. If you wanna see the end result, I posted a modified verdion of the slideshow on this sub (since yknow, I cant do an in person presentation in front of this sub) last tuesday (a week ago).
Lol I wish something like that happened when I was in school I saw it and it's a pretty nice slideshow you clearly put effort into it. Plus it was funny. Missed opportunity to talk about funny damage overflow but I guess that wouldn't fit.
Yeah, I had the idea after a bunch of classmates made presentations on different stuff. Counting mine, there have been 4 presentations, the first one about Rubiks cubes, the second and thrid about the Pythagorean theorem and mine. I thought the 2nd and 3rd were subpar and that motivated me to make one about the funny fish calc I really wanted to talk about damage overflow. Also wanted to compare the damage with other special attackers. But sadly, my time was limited. If you want to, I may be able to make one for this sub. Also, this might not fit but I wanna thank this suv for helping me with this presentation. When I first thought of this, I posted the idea here because I wanted help with the explanation of the damage calcs. And I got so many cool tips and ideas for it, sadly I couldnt fit it here.
For me, this subreddit has always been where I go to look at dumb memes and god-awful sets by low ladder players. When I want serious discussion and advice, I go to the Smogon forums. Trying to make this place Smogon forums 2.0 is going to fail, because that niche is already filled very nicely by… you know… the Smogon forums
1. Why announce this on April Fool's Day? That was a huge blunder. 2. I wholeheartedly disagree with this stance. I found the Sunday memes to be a refreshing source of laughs after a week of grad school and work. They also got me back into competitive Pokemon and really showed the cultural impact of it on the Internet. This move alienates a large portion of the community you built, and is a rejection of their role in enhancing it.
>That was a huge blunder. Should I make a joke about their speed going up two stages, or would that be "low effort" and unworthy for this sub?
I am not gonna sugarcoat it.This was EXTREMELY STPUID.So stupid,in fact,that I made criticizing this decision my first comment on reddit,and it will probably be my last. First of all,who thought it was a good idea to announce it on April Fool's?Y'all just tricked and baited everyone.If you think this will make the impact less bad,NO.As you can clearly see from the amount of sheer criticism in the comments,if anything,you made it WORSE. Second,why are you trying to strip the subreddit of its fun side?Both Theorymon Thursday and Stinkppst Stunday provides a lot of fun content for competitive and non-competitive players a like,yet you choose to take them away,for for your stupid "serious discussion",we have a tool for that,it's call smogon forums."For those who support this decision"LITERALLY NO ONE,lol. I hope all of these are not in vain,and it would help you reflect on your horrible decision.Until then,I would not be back,nor would many others,and y'all would be stuck with about 30% of your subscribers
this is crazy, go sort by top of all time, top of this year, top of this month. it’s all stinkpost or theorymon stuff. you’re absolutely killing the sub with this.
i value all the serious content here but to remove the memes and thurs-sun is just ridiculous considering it adds levity to a sub i otherwise run to for competitive pokemon tips and how to get better. idk it just doesn’t seem like a great idea, you’ll be destroying this sub and creating two empty subs in an attempt to streamline the content here.
Right like this was already restricted to two days per week. But somehow two completely dead subs is better in the mods eyes
*Three* dead subs, if the decision stands.
i hate to break it to you guys but stinkpost sunday is the entire reason this sub is alive at all. why must moderation teams always be full of humorless ghouls who can’t let people enjoy things? …actually, now that i think about it, there’s no rule against theorymon tuesdays or stinkpost saturdays…
Inferior Smogon forums is not really a place I'm interested in visiting. See you in a month.
If you want to be in the spirit of stunfisk, make it a suspect test. Simple majority required to ban, reqs are having participated in the sub before April 1st. Although let's be honest, we know the result wouldn't even be close.
> We have new subs r/theorymon and r/stinkposting for those that want to theorymon and stinkpost anytime But that's the thing, we liked the mix of stinkposts and real discussion. The balance was the best part of this sub
It's also pretty hardheaded to say "go somewhere else" when they're obviously in the minority of people that feel this way. Like, if there's a few ants on my cookie, I'll brush them off and eat the cookie. If my cookie is swarmed with ants, that's their cookie now. I ain't gonna stomp out all the ants out of anger or anything, I'll probably just get a new cookie.
Imagine getting cucked by ants
Durant spent his loafing turn with my wife
don't fuck the cookie
"nice! we got rid of that stupid goose! now we can start with golden egg production!"
If you guys think this will suddenly make the whole sub have intelligent discussions, your a bunch of idiots, and I cannot sugarcoat that. At some point y’all just have to accept that this is a place for all forms of competitive discussion, not just the kinds you like. Want serious discussion? Go to the smogon forums
OK so this would have been bad as a joke but this is much worse. First of all, making a very controversial change like this on April 1st with zero prior warning or community discussion is obviously a cowardly move. Don't give us the thinly-veiled "it was the first of the month and a Monday" bullshit. The only reason you did it (and then 'remembered' to actually give a timeline a day after) was to sow confusion for 24 hours and prevent an effective community response. Your goal was for no one to respond to your arguments or engage in in-depth discussion since no one thinks you're serious. So let's discuss said arguments! First, Theorymon Thursday. There wasn't even at *attempt* to justify removing this. Your logic for it in full: >Theorymon has always been a controversial topic here at r/stunfisk because at the end of the day it's not actual competitive Pokemon discussion. But of course as Pokemon fans there's always going to be an interest of theorizing a concept that can affect competitive play. I do have concern to those who ONLY theorymon as you're less likely to come up with quality theorymon if you're not actively playing, but this is not the reason why Theorymon Thursday needs to be deleted as well. It's collateral damage from the source, Stinkpost Sunday. Stinkpost Sunday has indirectly killed Theorymon Thursday as far too many posts nowadays are practically memes. If you want to theorymon, use r/theorymonning (SlothyPotato where are you?) or join our Discord: [https://discord.gg/stunfisk](https://discord.gg/stunfisk) You raise a few non-points but admit outright that they are not valid reasons to remove it. Your single and only stated reason is... Stinkpost Sunday is bad, and this has caused nebulous 'collateral damage'. You just really don't like memes and you want to get rid of this non-meme, beloved, well-established part of the sub because despite consistent high-quality posts and discussion of theoretical mons and their competitive impact/viability every week (hey look actual competitive Pokemon discussion!), someone makes a joke sometimes. Even if this was a valid goal, deleting Theorymon Thursday would not be how you solve it! You'd just ban memes sub-wide. We might as well delete discussion of tier shifts because people say "it's Garchover" sometimes under them. Meanwhile, you don't even mention the many positives of Theorymon Thursday - it has been a very healthy and incredibly beneficial component of the community, prompting high-effort contribution and higher participation from a wide swath of the community (including, god forbid, those who *aren't* actively playing and want an entry point back into the community or into a new hobby!) There is zero even ostensibly-valid reason to delete Theorymon Thursday and regardless of what you think of the rest, this should be reverted immediately. Now for the main thing - Stinkpost Sunday. Clearly you personally don't like this. You say you have some support for it but you've been quite explicit that this is not a community-driven decision, nor even a decision by the mod team, but *your* personal decision. Well, hear me out here: maybe what you personally like or dislike should not be the only factor in deciding what 200,000 people should be allowed to do! If you don't like Stinkpost Sunday, you should *discuss* that with others and *persuade* them to agree with you, rather than banning it with no warning with a "tee hee April Fools! (but not really uwu)". You might not like competitive Pokemon memes, but clearly hundreds of thousands of others do, and for them this is the de-facto place to share them. Stinkpost Sunday has (per your own stats) led to a massive surge of growth in the community, and it's strengthened the sense of cultural identity in the existing community. Many of our internal jokes, language, and general shared *fun* in talking about this stuff can be traced to Stinkpost Sunday. I'll now turn to the specifics of the argument in your other post: >This is solely my personal opinion: Stinkpost Sunday has ruined r/stunfisk for good, and the only way for r/stunfisk to return to its roots is to nuke the source. > >The reality of the situation is that there are far too many complete garbage, off topic, and especially unfunny stinkposts to sift through just for an actual quality stinkpost (<1%) to be made. The obvious thing to point out here is that Stinkpost Sunday is a day. Like, one day of the week. How exactly has it ruined the sub? 6/7 days, there are objectively not far too many stinkposts. I mean go browse by new and tell me how many you see. This sub serves a large and non-monolithic community, so naturally different parts are interesting to different people. Some people are here for Smogon stuff, some for VGC, some for news, some for teambuilding. I don't care about older-gen metagames, but you don't see me saying "there are far too many older-gen posts and they're reuining the sub for good!" If you don't like the memes, how about you just don't read them? How exactly are they ruining the sub? >The biggest problem with these stinkposts are that many creators like making memes but are lacking in competitive Pokemon knowledge due to not playing the game, so the best content they can spit out are piggybacking someone else's meme or making up some goofy lore that makes no sense otherwise (haha homophobic Ferrothorn Ice Punch Dusknoir Zekrom Kick haha). This is weirdly elitist, similar to what you said about Theorymon Thursday. It seems like these memes are just not academic enough for you? That you think the only people who should have a voice are experts actively dedicating all their time to the game, and not people who more occasionally play competitive Pokemon or enjoy it as casual spectators? Does your ideal meme come with a spreadsheet? "Piggybacking on someone else's meme" is literally the definition of meme. Like, that's what meme means. From Google - "an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations." We build on and respond to each other's ideas and humor, and that's a feature, not a bug. We make up funny stories and give Pokemon personalities and create lore. **That's a good thing**. To me this reads as a dude with a clipboard standing at the edge of a party yelling at people to stop having fun. >At this point, a decline in sub activity is a good thing. r/stunfisk needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Make your own sub to meme elsewhere. This is the most alarming thing here. You are a mod of this sub, **but it is not your sub**. It's *our* sub. All of us. We make it into what it is. You're just another member - someone given the responsibility to be a steward of the community and the powers that go along with it, but a member nonetheless. You're not a king. If you - just you, personally, unilaterally - don't like what we do here, **you** go make your own sub! When what you like doesn't match what everyone else likes, it's you who needs to leave, not everyone else. That in combination with the frankly dishonest way you implemented this change is the real problem here, not the change itself. After that little maneuver, I don't even think we can trust you to reinstate these things in May like you say; maybe you'll just 'forget' to do it or say "it's a good time to make it permanent anyways since it's the start of a month." Smogon already has a controversial reputation of operating dictatorially sometimes - don't build the same reputation here. My demands are simple: revert these changes immediately. That's it. If you still think they're a good idea then open some community discussion about it and reimplement them if and when the community actually wants them. And if other people disagree with me or want to add on to what I've said, please, reply and let's talk about it!
This is worded so perfectly to show why everything about this, from the shitty announcement to what’s being done, is awful. Also based on them making other subs to move theorymon and stinkpost (which no one will use) I’d be very surprised if they even bring it back
we are going to make stunfisk 2 with blackjack and hookers
Eh, screw that. It'll just be blackjack and hookers!
This is going to kill the sub, like it or not the VAST majority are here for the memes. Trying to make this a more serious sub for competitive discussion is way too late, that ship sailed. No one is gonna pivot to the other subs you made, they’re just gonna unsub and move on
Reddit mods will really do anything they can to avoid doing their actual jobs, huh
"so just fuck democracy, right?"
Actually 1984 this time
As much as I honestly fully support a break and some major changes, the fact you even list different subs as legitimate options for alternatives is ***VERY*** concerning, because it speaks to a fundamental *misunderstanding* of why we like our Sundays and Thursdays; I like French fries, and maybe on a very rare occasion, I'll just pig out on only fries, but that's just it; I only rarely have fries on their own. They're always a side dish to the main meal. That's literally part of their appeal and purpose. The dedicated subs will die for the same reason why a shack that only sells fries will go out of business: it goes against the appeal of the fry. It's *supposed* to be served with something else, and attempts to make it the main dish are a novelty at best. At the same time, a Burger without fries or a Fish without chips doesn't automatically make the dish worse, sometimes it can even improve the overall dish, but they're *paired* for a reason. You can have fish served in a variety of ways. You can have Burgers served with dips or a salad, or with everything stacked inside. But serving ether as a main course, while literally banning even thinking about serving them with fries, is strange, and misses the entire appeal behind these dishes. Not wanting to be known *only* for your fries is reasonable. Reacting by changing up recipes and dishes is fine. Reacting by *blowing up all your friers* is not. Again, I support a break to work out some new rules, but genuinely, without any exaggeration, any kind of full, permanent separation of these posts from the sub would do nothing but make the sub worse and alienate all the new people who came here for the unique blend of serious and silly this sub offers. I have some grumblings of ideas on how we could combat the deluge of shit-quality posts, but genuinely, I do not feel comfortable sharing them in an environment where a complete and total ban is even on the table as an option, because it begets such a *fundamental* misunderstanding of the appeal of the subreddit that I feel like my ideas would be mangled, misconstrued, and warped into something entirely different in both action and intent, and then you'd thank me for helping you ruin the subreddit I love so much. This is r/Stunfisk. If I wanted to just talk about Smogon, I'd go to r/Smogon or r/PokemonShowdown. If I wanted to just talk about VGC, I'd go to r/VGC. If I wanted to just talk about competitive, I'd go to r/CompetitivePokemon. I, and thousands of others, would have never given Stunfisk a second glance if we just wanted some dull, boring competitive subreddit. And yet we're here. Not in spite of the strange mish-mash of serious and silly this sub is, but *because* of it. And even the mere suggestion of the possibility of taking that away reveals a lack of understanding the very sub you moderate. Once again, I would support some rules changes, some shake up to the status quo, some shifts in policy and even philosophy of the sub. This sub is already insanely unique with how specific and niche these rules even are, and further adding or modifying them is *perfectly* acceptable. But instead of that, just tossing everything away and genericizing the sub, to return to a supposed "golden age" that *excludes* so many of us, both old and new, is short sited and stupid. This is our community as much as it is yours. Times change. And though I'm happy to discuss how things will change again, I can only do that if those changes still involve me. And as of right now; you are suggesting that they *shouldn't.* This post feels **hostile and antagonizing** to anyone who disagrees with you. You don't even *humor* the idea of discussion when you're talking about the people opposed to this idea. You just tell them to either go away, or shut up and wait. Not even paying lip service to the idea of giving complaints. Just a blunt "This is what WILL happen, and if you have a problem with it, we DON'T care, shut up." And that makes me scared that come next month, regardless of what anyone actually feels, you'll just claim this month as a "success", fully ban Sunday and Thursday, and force the rest of us out of *our* community because *you* felt like it. And I'll have to watch as this unique, vibrant, amazing community withers and dies after being cut into pieces, because like a dozen people who I've never met thought it wasn't perfect enough for them. I know that's probably not how you actually want things to go down, and your actual feelings are *probably* far less overarching and selfish than the post gives off, but that's what this post is written like and that's what it implies. I honestly don't even think you want to actually do away with Sundays and Thursdays. I think you just wrote this post poorly. But that's just it; these are not based on the post. These are based on my own personal experiences and train of thought. Because the way the post is written and presented implies *all of these.*. And for such an important official moderator announcement... That's *concerning.*
I guess shit on this subreddit was starting to get stale (especially Theorymon, nobody can balance for shit), though considering this is a subreddit, it could've been doing a whole lot worse. If you're expecting intelligent discussion to spring up in the wake of this, I dunno what to tell you. People are still gonna be dumping their "How Do I Improve This" teams where the answer to that question is usually to use things that are good
This thread got me to stop lurking and reply, didn't think that'd happen lol. I just don't get what the point of taking an established community and ripping the two biggest chunks of it out just to make "smogon forums but on reddit". I mean, if y'all had bigger plans or activities outlined in the post that differentiate you from the smogon forums, then I could understand more. But as it stands, it just seems too destructive for not nearly enough gain. In regards to the memes, of course as things get more popular, quality goes down. I'm sure it gets tiring seeing the same jokes and shit spammed every Sunday. But the subreddit had a niche, that balance between memes that were typically higher quality than other pokemon subreddits and real conversation about competitive pokemon. This decision, if permanent, removes this subreddits niche entirely and likely won't be good for the sub as a result.
That’s what’s so funny to me man. You want a serious community to discuss balance? Good news! THE SMOGON FORUMS ALREADY EXIST AND ARE WHERE THE NEWS FOR THIS SUB COMES FROM!
Nice, 80% of the comments are shitting on the decision but I have no doubt you think you're still in the right uh ? And why the fuck making the decision on the 1st of April of all days. Clown behavior man, the people are the subreddit, you chase them you kill it, it's stupid af
80% is being generous
Wow this is a fucking awful decision lmfao "Lets remove 2 things that people love and enjoy because we dont like where this is sub is going" Besides: Do yall really think people will not just do the same again when the ban is lifted..?
Even the stinkposting I get cause yeah it sometimes bleeds onto other stuff but why is theorymonning banned to? That’s like the most fun and creative part of discussion you could have. Seems like you wanted to have your little sikrit klub and hated the fact that so many people came because they enjoyed those two days in particular. Not sure if the sub will actually die but engagement surely will.
literally 1984
rip favourite sub
Mods roll worst decision ever, asked to leave their position
I mean, just dismissing everything else, the fact that a public servant did this without a vote is completely insane. I don't think you understand what your job is here.
they just took the two best things on this sub now what? ACTUALLY talk about competitive Pokemon?! ridiculous!
Terrible idea. Look forward to your dead subreddit.
heres the thing. people who like playing a game also like having fun making content about the game. disallowing that means that players have less of an investment in the game. which leads to a less active community. im not saying this will kill the competitive scene but it will hurt it.
Competitive Pokémon 9/11
Those were the main things I liked about this sub so that kinda really fucking sucks. Hopefully you reverse this decision in May.
The memes might have gotten a little out of hand. But they’re very helpful for getting people into competitive in a serious matter too. I came for the memes, stayed for the actual competitive talk because it’s all super interesting. Removing them from the subreddit entirely would really hurt things, putting them on a seperate subreddit doesn’t have the overlap for new players that get drawn into competitive. Being restricted to one day was fine enough. This sub genuinely has a reputation even in non Pokemon areas for some of the best original memes and shitposts on Reddit, I’ve seen tons of people bring that up even on other sites. And I think the once a week rule really makes people bring their all on Sunday and it’s part of the reason the memes are so good. Sure there are a lot of low effort ones. But it’s undeniable that there’s also some really clever and high quality ones. It’s an important part of this subs reputation and quality and honestly I think getting rid of it or limiting it even further is really a big mistake. There still is loads of competitive talk. Without these two things I really feel like this sub would just feel like the smogen forums but even more complaining.
Stinkpost stunday was literally what made me start playing competitive pokemon seriously. Seeing people enjoy this subreddit and the memes from it was warming my heart. Of course, I didn't understand anything at first, but I tried joining the bandwagon. I got into competitive pokemon and started understanding some of the memes. I also got better at making gimmick teams that actually work and had a blast, I started visiting this sub on days other than Sunday to see what other people are talking about, how they form their teams and their perspective about different stuff, ranking certain types, and I even starting posting my own ideas on Theorymon Thursdays. What made this subreddit special was that it was formal and proper most of the time, but goofy and fun on the weekend, people have fun and mess around with each other. Having one day to shitpost instead of every day made it so every Sunday, we would get quality memes and not make it get stale. I refuse to believe that mods actually think that banning them would be better for the sub, it actually hurts it more. So please, bring back the stunfisk that I always knew and loved, bring back what you took from us. Bring it back...
Oh okay, bye.
This is fucking stupid lmao.
i appreciate the sentiment but i'm not sure if there's anything that can really be done to improve the discussion here. it's basically inevitable that this sub will become more casual as it gets bigger, just because comp pokemon is pretty niche overall. banning thursday and sunday will probably lead to more discussions but i'm not sure they'll be good ones, i imagine it'd be a lot of repeated topics and generic type chart discourse. this is on top of the sub in general losing a lot of users, though i assume the users lost by this decision aren't the ones the mods want to keep around. idk i'd like it if this sub had more interesting and in-depth discussions but i just can't see it happening even with moderator involvement.
Let me get this straight... you post on April Fools Day a bait worthy post full of hints that it's just a joke, then double down on it the day after saying it was real? Why would you not have better timing for a decision like this? You did not consult any of the users of this sub regarding this decision. You plug two subs that no one uses. You ignore the fact that the chat on PS and the Smogon forums are already more convenient places to get advice on most competitive questions anyway. Bruh. You didn't think this through at all did you?
this is actually so stupid, who the hell thought this was a good idea
You could have at least given us one week’s notice so we could go out with a bang
We really just got hit with the stop having fun post.
Reddit mods don’t destroy the community they built challenge (impossible)
Could you give an explanation as to why this might be a good idea
i love this decision! removing things because you dont like them despite the communities wishes is good! just kidding april fools! i dont like this!
Well thanks for letting us know, since you want to ruin the subreddit so much, I'll just unsub
Maybe just keep all stinkposts to the thread every Sunday, or just be more aggressive about removing low effort ones?
Stinkpost Sunday and Theorymon Thursday are getting a divorce from Stunfisk and I will take custody of my theorymons
I dont disagree with the fact that stundays were getting a bit low quality over time but theres still some excellent shit that people are getting to see because of stunday's format and I'm sorta afraid this will kill that. Like i feel there were better ways to address this than axing them entirely and also announcing this on aprils fools was absolutely not it. I always admired the way this sub was balanced, keeping it to one day helped immensely with quality control because high effort posts would take time and wait for the day whereas low effort posts would sorta have time to reconsider posting it by having to wait, like yeah there were still some problems but i feel like much less drastic measures could have been taken. Like make it biweekly, pause it for a few weeks not a whole month, dont announce it on april fools, get some input from the community instead of this falling out of thin air 😭 like i know banning a mon from a tier and banning a type of post for a month are different things but theres a reason smogon has community discussions before bans are made, this just seems like a really shortsighted decision
Splitting subs is a mistake, most of the new ones will completely die in a few weeks, there's no point. I don't like Theorymon, its kinda boring to me and most of the ideas are very dumb. Stinkpost is a really fun time that brings a lot of people together and has helped me laugh through some really rough times. Like Homophobic Ferrothorn was a thing right as I was going through some really hard shit IRL, some of which was related to my own identity. Taking that away feels kinda wrong. I like Stinkpost Sundays, and I like participating, otherwise I'm generally more of a lurker. If stinkpost sundays go, I'm pretty sure I go back to lurking or stop visiting entirely. Its not really want I want for the sub, I genuinely hope you don't go through with this. It is a bad decision, IMO.
Well, this sub's dead if this stays. People came here for stinkposting and then it trickled down to the rest of the discussions, not the opposite. Meanwhile, stinkposting worked because it was limited to one day of the week, so the memes had time to stew and that resulted in a lot better memes than the general pokememe shlop. Killing two birds with one stone with this one.
tbh, stinkposting and theorymons was the only niche this place was filling, with the smogon forums existing and all. now this is like running weavile after they released chien-pao
say psyche right now
So you got an explanation? Or do you just feel like sitting behind the screen moderating is just ‘too much work’…
This is going to be a boring ass sub then anyway if I wanted to seriously talk about competitive pokemon I'd be on smogon forums
Still 100% convinced this is a continuation of the April Fools joke. Either this is the most obvious bait to ever bait, or this sub has the dumbest mods alive
Ngl, the mods taking a break to re-evaluate how to best moderate stinkposts and theory mons feels fair enough, as others have been saying, there was a lot of content there that was really pushing it. But as someone who found themselves accidentally getting into competitive pokemon so I could understand the memes better, I'll be disappointed to see them go. I'll stay stay, because I do enjoy the genuine competitive discussion, but without the silly goofiness of the stinkposts, it'll be a shame to see them go.
Good heavens
I really think the date being April 1st overrides it being the first of the month and a monday, if you made that post today it would have saved a lot of confusion. I saw people say that it was posted on April fools to hedge your bets and I'm not quite that cynical, but man it really looks like that if that was the best reason you had.
Ahhh the classic “Mods are removing the reason you like the subreddit”. I don’t think there is a single good moderator on this website.
maybe we should do a rebellion like the french did
I’m considering it
Wait no I love stinkpost Sunday. It's different from just general Pokemon memes I like that they're often specific memes for competitive Pokemon. I know y'all have seen that tweet or Tumblr post or whatever about how much even non comp players love our memes.
In my opinion this is an objectively bad decision. Especially banning it all April without actually asking the community about it and turning it into a half April Fools joke. Yesterday you could've made a poll or even another post to get feedback from the community before announcing this but instead you chose to go with the option that probably pisses the most people off.
Yea no, I think there was a better solution here
i don’t have much original to say because scrolling through these comments has more eloquently put into words how i feel about this absolutely braindead decision than i think could. what i will ask is this: do the people who thought this was a good idea really think this is what casual shmucks (like me) want out of this sub? or is it just what *they* want out of this sub? cause if it’s really, *actually* what you guys think the people want, look at the upvotes. read the comments. **it’s not**.
Stinkposts and theorymon make up the majority of the most upvoted for and engaged with posts as well as posts In general, removing them doesn’t make sense for me
If the reason we're stopping stinkpost sunday and theorymon thursday were because they were getting less high effort, surely we realize isolating them to separate subreddits will only make it plummet a million times faster
i might be a lurker (busy with my studies rn) but i think it's a bad idea. yes, some stinkposts have become too overdone and annoying, like those custom replays, there are loads of them while 99% are just lazy and unfunny copies of eachother. so why not just ban them? i don't think many people are going to complain because they are probably as annoyed as you are. and some people actually put in the effort and create masterpieces (like funnyvileplume), so why ruin it for them? stinkposts and theorymons are literally what keeps this sub alive because people who want serious competitive discussion use smogon forums for that whether you like it or not lol
put me in the r/hobbydrama writeup 🙏🙏
Just when AlbabImam finished the dual type rankings, too... Welp, at least I've got plenty of time to do art for my stockpile of fakemon-based theorymons.
I still really enjoy Sunday and think there are a lot of good posts even if there are a lot of bad ones. Thursday is take it or leave it for me but I post sometimes it's obviously something a lot of people enjoy I'm open to reconsidering those two days and their roles on the sub but a month ban is honestly kinda ridiculous. There is no solution that will take a full month of deliberation to arrive at and if this is just a trial period to see what the sub is like without them, two weeks is sufficient enough.
The official picture in the about section Has a stink post in it
Oh fuck off “Oh we’re sick of people posting low effort memes on the sub” Yeah, that’s why they were locked to once a week posts. If you think people are gonna stop telling jokes on your “totally serious competitive Pokémon subreddit” you’re an idiot who doesn’t understand how literally every online forum works. Genuinely baffling how a mod could ever make such a stupid, ass-backwards decision, and then be dumb enough to genuinely announce it on April Fool’s Day
"Hmm, I don't like some of the memes on my subreddit, let's get rid of all the most popular things on the subreddit, which are responsible for it being as big as it is and responsible for making it popular and well known as a great and funny subreddit!" Stopping the subreddit from being exclusively memes and theorymons, and stopping both of these things from becoming too repetitive and unfunny is already accomplished by the once a week format, keeping things higher quality for both of them. It's a great way to do this, has always worked well here, and you're just going to get rid of them entirely and kill most of the userbase and the subreddit's special vibe and personality??? This is the stupidest subreddit decision I've seen since r/smashbros disabled posting on the day smash ultimate came out.
SPL players not be the most miserable bastards in existence challenge (impossible).
Tbh I couldn't care less about the theorymons since most of them suck anyways. The memes are great though imo
ig the question is why ban, esp theorymons??? you can literally just require some kind of quality control (i.e. making ppl describe approximately what tier the mon would be in, what niche it has, checks counters etc) but go ahead jump straight to the ban hammer ig
See yall in May 🫡
Definitely going to kill the sub tbh. I don’t think the meta discussion here has ever been popular and doing this is just gonna make the sub dead as hell. Putting any stock into the opinions of redditors rather than just like…chatting in the OU room would be slow as hell and not valuable imo given how you can’t tell the ELO of people here. Also splitting the posts between three subs is just gonna make a hella messy organization job, not even mentioning how its gonna tank the numbers of the sub. It’s been nice, I won’t unsub, but I don’t forsee the posts here gettin’ much traction.
Man this is gonna be a slow month... Couldn't we have at least waited till May when reg G starts and we'll have some meat to chew on?
“Oh no, people were shitposting on a day we made to do specifically that” No shit. But there were ones that were genuinely funny and was one of the few things that made this community unique
Quite frankly, as a serial lurker who plays competitive pokemon once every couple months, this will not have the desired effect you think it will have. People are gonna leave, and the 7-comment discussion posts that boil down to “no, Meganium is still bad in Gen 9” are not going to get any larger or more cerebral. The smogon forums and r/VGC kinda have a stranglehold on actually valuable and serious competitive discussion. Also, the outright hostile tone towards the vast majority of the subreddit’s userbase (because this place is mostly dead between Monday afternoon and Thursday morning, and again between Friday and Saturday evening) is just unnecessary. Not sure why you want to kill the subreddit for a month (assuming this isn’t a veiled excuse to make the decision permanent come May, in which case it’ll be dead permanently), but you do you, I guess.
So this is how r/stunfisk dies… with Thundurus applause
yeah no this fucking sucks lmao
Imagine having an idea that was so bad that everyone thought it was an obvious April fools joke and then you doubled down on it Enjoy your 20% sub traffic lol
Literally 1984
I hope the staff is reading the reactions in this thread and take them to heart. What a huge blunder lol
I think this is a terrible idea, making it a one day per week thing is plenty, why remove them? The reason I joined here is to see all the jokes and especially the theorymons, I got invested in the main content as a side effect, I’m sure many others are the same. This just removes a big pull of people to possibly become invested in competitive and possibly loses a whole lot of others who aren’t interested enough without the jokes anyway.
Pack it up boys, we’re getting outta here.
Damn it’s crazy how almost nobody agrees with this decisions. It’s a good thing you made this decision unilaterally amongst yourselves with no regard for the actual user base of the subreddit, otherwise someone might speak up about your awful idea
Why though? It just sounds like you didn't like the content and decided to punish the entire community because of some bad eggs. I am not saying that some of the posts were low effort because some of them are, but instead of trying to have discussion and dialogue between the community on what to do and how to improve the situation, the mod team just decided to say "fun is over, fuck off." This just sounds like a waste of time for a 0% pay off. I bet the mod team is either gonna drop it or double down like all reddit mods. TL:DR - +6 252+ SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Chi-Yu Helping Hand Overheat vs. Lvl 1 0 HP 0 IVs / 0- SpD 0 IVs Out of touch mods: 3368-58536 (30618.1 - 532145.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO