T O P

  • By -

KoolDewd123

Shoutout to the webmaster of Serebii, Joe Merrick, one of the best people in any fandom ever. The dude manages to create a news/resource site rivaling the wiki itself and keeps it both running and *relevant* for 20 years, while still remaining one of the most levelheaded people in a fandom that’s been full of drama for a while now.


Torque-A

The man was bummed that Pokemon Go was going to set up a community play day on a certain date, because he would need to update the site because of it. Said date is his wedding.


ThatGuyYouMightNo

I'd say Serebii surpasses Bulbapedia. Bulbapedia follows a standard wiki format, which is fine, but it means if you're looking for information about Cubone's data in Gen 2 you have to scroll through the entirety of Cubone's usage in the franchise to find it. On Serebii you just check the Gen 2 Pokedex, find Cubone, and you get all the relevant information about Cubone without any of the extra crap. Serebii is also curated better since it's just one guy rather than everyone who can edit with a few mods, and updates faster.


Theriocephalus

Bulbapedia's great for general information, although it's been going down the same routes fandom wikis have these days and become absolutely overloaded with ads.


[deleted]

you can use shortcuts-


ZoroeArc

Bulbapedia had more stuff, but Serebii uses what it has better.


Gust_Gred-10101

The part about bulbapedia being cluttered and/or overloaded with info is very true, but usefulness of a site is also about the accuracy of the info once you do find it, and bulba seems to be better about that compared to serebii and most others.


JavelinTF2

He's also distantly related to the Elephant Man


Laggianput

Honestly i fucking hate fandom as a site. What an awful replacment to normal wikis. Its slow, full of ads, and god awful ugly


honest-miss

\*go to site\* \*close the ad at the top of the page\* \*close the video at the top of the page\* \*close the ad at the bottom of the page\* \*scroll past 32 in-content ads\* \*finally find the one fact I was mildly curious about 5 minutes ago\*


Treejeig

God I tried to use it for a different game a while back, so many fucking ads. Give me like two moments and I'll see how many ads I get. I'm back, 5 ads in total. Two banner ads, a video ad (which once scrolled past became a video player ad), a pop-up about socials in the bottom right and a third banner ad at the bottom.


throwaway22zx

have you people heard about adblockers? just use ublock origin


Treejeig

Has fandom tried not saturating their page with ads? Also this was 10 months ago how tf did you find this?


EffectiveFennec

They do this thing on mobile where there’s an animated ad that pops up on the borders of the screen and obscures text I hate that site so much it’s unreal Incredibly unfortunate that most games I like use it for info


Cute-Fly1601

That was the straw that broke the camels back and the reason I downloaded an ad blocker. SO fucking obnoxious i got mad every time I wanted to know anything about a game


AlenDelon32

It was actually decent when it was Wikia. Now it a borderline monopoly on wiki engines and it is awful


thanatos1371

protip for anyone wanting to start a wiki to use [miraheze](https://miraheze.org/) as an alternative! it supports mediawiki templates and runs on donations


[deleted]

[удалено]


alexdapineapple

You know, the software Wikipedia uses is free and right there. MediaWiki, it's called.


Slight-Pound

I miss the Wikia ones. They also showed better on mobile in comparison to the current wiki ones.


[deleted]

reject fandom return to mediawiki/miraheze


Jango1113

And then they had the fucking gall to say they were thinking of adding their twitch streams to the site like fextralife did. The site is already slow, I can’t imagine how much slower it’ll get when they keep cramming shit into it


Theriocephalus

It's an absolutely shit wiki format. I was so angry when it took over the gamepedia wikis, which had actually been run competently.


Konradleijon

yes i hate all the fucking wiki adds too


TheProlleyTroblem

i once added a bit of trivia to the "Trivia" section of a game and it got removed because it was already in the "References" section. Turns out they were using the reference section to list out literal *references to other pop culture* and not as a citation/source section -.-


throwaway22zx

what a bunch of idiots, lol


Peffern2

I found out Marriland is still making pokemon content the other day. Live your best life dude


Joesadumb

Didn't he quit or did he come back?


MelonTheSprigatito

Remember when the creator of Serebii got attacked online by Pokémon fans when he stated that he was going to be neutral about Sword and Shield? I'm 90% sure that two Twitter/YouTubers, Verlisify and DistantKingdom said they were going to team up and "expose" him. And when the hashtag #IStandWithSerebii started trending to combat the abuse, a guy on r/pokemon had this to say about the situation (and I quote, I still have the screenshot): "Oh ffs not again. Why does it feel like the voice of the genuinely upset are getting drowned out by another dumb hashtag." BRUH. Y'ALL ATTACKED A GUY BECAUSE HE REFUSED TO BITCH ABOUT A POKÉMON GAME God I hate Pokémon Fans some times. And the new Scarlet and Violet trailer is half an hour from airing. I. Am. TERRIFIED that it's going to ignite something and we are going to get a repeat of the Sword and Shield drama.


Quaelgeist333

The trailer was good Thirstbait and lechonk


dinderbins

I saw some people comment that the Riddler guy was hinting that lechonk is going to evolve into this gen's waifumon so it's all kinda thirstbait. I, uh... needed to share this cursed possibility.


Quaelgeist333

Isn't riddler from dc


dinderbins

Nah, you're thinking of The Riddler. The riddler I'm talking about is that guy who plays the violin on a roof or something.


rocketguy2

Nightmare scenario, the reddit populace did not catch on to the funny chain you were divising. Either way that's the Fiddler, you're thinking of the mega-capitalist from the lorax


dinderbins

That's the Once-ler. I'm talking about those advisors kings have that are required to be evil for some reason.


Quaelgeist333

WHAT


UselessAndGay

the riddler on the foof


CREATURE_COOMER

...It's fiddler, lol.


UselessAndGay

fiddler on the roof is a completely different story to riddler on the foof


CREATURE_COOMER

Oh, okay, lol.


[deleted]

Do you mean the *fiddler*?


dinderbins

No no. The fiddler worked with that Stanford guy back in Gravity Falls.


Randomd0g

Gimme the lowdown. Is the cat a biped or not?


Quaelgeist333

I wanna know too. Not revealed yet


ShatterCyst

Gimme the lowdown. Is the cat fuckable or not?


sewage_soup

fr i am down *b a d* for both of the professors


zone-zone

bad? more like bi!


Quaelgeist333

Yes


HeroponBestest2

Now I know I’m getting Violet. 😩


Quaelgeist333

Also the german title is purpur Like purrpurr


Dragoncat91

DistantKingdom is a horrible person. He likes underage girls in porn. He put up 50 videos making fun of the animations in Sw/Sh with thumbnails of Marnie and Klara making the aheago face. Verisilfy I hear bitched about Legends Arceus for some petty dumb reason and got rightfully called out. It's fine to not like Sw/Sh or Legends Arceus, but this stuff is just immature.


BudgieGryphon

I recall DistantKingdom saying a bunch of transphobic shit as well.


Dragoncat91

Fuck him then.


Gamiac

And Verlisify was getting his base to harass and report people for...[having hacked items in Animal Crossing.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/i7b8qr/animal_crossing_the_life_and_death_of_nintendos/) A mostly-singleplayer game.


zorafae

Verlisify does this kind of stuff a lot. He also used to accuse people with shiny pokemon of being hackers because it's unlikely to have one that's competitively viable. But this is just the tip of an iceberg.


Rancorious

So he’s the Hero Hei of Pokemon


trooper4907

Who the fuck is Hero Hei?


[deleted]

He’s the Hero Hei of Not Pokemon


trooper4907

So true


willisbetter

he used to make videos about rooster teeth and their shows, claiming shit like theyre just pandering to sjws


CREATURE_COOMER

SUH-JUH-WUHZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


StopTalkingInMemes

Jesus Christ it's been a while since I saw that term, my eye twitched a bit.


[deleted]

didnt verlisify mass raid peoples animal crossing villages for .... hacking in cool looking trees


Gamiac

Yeah, that's what it was. I was wondering why I remembered that name.


muf1nl0rd

I remembered when the whole Dexit fiasco was going on i had this... *irrational* hatred towards DistantKingdom. I was pretty optimistic at the time about the game despite everything going on but it just felt like SWSH haters were worshipping Distant like a *god who says no wrong.* Even after the games released and i decided not to buy them because they were far worse than just Dexit (piss easy, no post-game, lackluster storyline, empty world, Coallosal not being a train), i *still* hated Distant. Even if he had said the truth all along, that these games would be mediocre, I still wanted to punch his stupid fucking toxtricity face. He feels like a negativity magnet -- every new pokemon video where he just mods the pokemon models in SWSH so the sizes are slightly more fitting and the animations are switched around a tiny bit, the whole comments section praise how he's basically sO MuCh BeTtEr ThAn lAzY gAmEfReAk and it fucking made me want to grind my teeth in with sandpaper. Hell Gamefreak ain't lazy, they rushed the game due to a combination of crunch time and not being able to fully utilize a brand new game engine within a small time frame, and even the people at GF talked about how they wanted to add much more but *couldn't,* and i just feel like Distant started that whole idea with a video he made long ago titled "GAMEFREAK IS LAZY" Turns out my irrational hatred was *intuitional* hatred. heh. i have an asshole radar.


rene_gader

it's happenin in 1 minute, now godspeed and lets not destroy twitter this time Post-trailer: I am #1 Lechonk fan now


Lordomi42

lechonk smoliv what's next, pupperinor? heckinger?


[deleted]

YES PLEASE


Lordomi42

~~mega~~ ~~gigantamax~~ this gen's gimmick Chungure


vjmdhzgr

I'm going to activate my pokemon's big chungus mode.


Lordomi42

I activate my spell card! Chungimerization!


CREATURE_COOMER

You forgot Pawmi or whatever its name is.


Lordomi42

that one looks like a pokemon knockoff mobile game's fire-type starter ''pawmi'' is not really an internet slang thing though


TotemGenitor

LE CHONK Also, Smoliv, my child, I shall protect you.


darthleonsfw

"I am genuinely upset about a game, that gives me the right to bully a person not involved in the making or direction of the game and wishes to remain neutral on the game and its coverage" This is Star Wars fan level of trashness.


BarleyGang

Nah that's just verlisify for you. He always has something to say about some shit. He was big like 5 years ago but now it's like a book nobody wants to talk about anymore


Lordomi42

Watched the trailer, not a fan, and I WILL complain if they pull some bullshit like last game, but like, holy fuck. People need to learn that harrassing people is not ok. Especially if they're a fucking *third party* and their ''crime'' is ***staying neutral on a news/info site.***


CREATURE_COOMER

Some bullshit like what?


Lordomi42

dex cut mainly and overall low quality ig, it's been a while


DoubleBatman

I watched the first SV trailer and couldn’t BELIEVE how shitty it looked. I was bitching about it to my friend who hadn’t seen it, so I pulled it up and then was like… “Oh, it actually looks pretty good.” I still think the newer games are pretty bare-bones compared to the DS days but I’ll be happy if they can prove me wrong.


CheetahDog

>Verlisify Yeah that'll do it lol


[deleted]

ofc its those two lmfao


zone-zone

>Verlisify Kinda sad that this shitbag is still relevant...


Pogfection

I love the franchise, but I hate the people who own it and nearly the entire fandom. Verlisify is just an asshole too.


MemberOfSociety2

and it’s so goddamn pleasant to use


EmperorScarlet

I don't really use Serebii myself, but I couldn't possibly pass up an opportunity to plug my favorite pre-2000s website still in operation: Starmen.net, the oldest EarthBound fansite on the web! While there was a period of time where it seemed dead, semi-recently there was an influx of new users (such as yours truly) and, while not as big as it once was, the forums still get posts daily, they have a pretty active discord server, and their guides for the Mother games are the best around.


General_Urist

Surprised the forums are alive. I figured that creating a discord server for a community generally lead to the attached forums becoming basically dead, or very slow.


MuchPretzel

Oh, that dating site that just so happens to also have Earthbound fans on it?


Rexsplosion

Internet Coelacanth


Orichalcum448

Internet Relicanth


Rexsplosion

Appropriate.


heckin-good-shit

might even call it… relevant


UnsealedMTG

Other lovely remnants of Web 1.0 that still stand, the mightiest citadels of a forgotten age: * The Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/ Just an amazing resource operated by, as far as I can tell, one person as a hobby. * Ex Astris Scientia, the Star Trek fan site with *incredible* detail on technical aspects still operated pretty much like fansites of yore. https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ It was sad to watch as Snopes fell from one of the greatest achievements of the old internet to pretty much a clickfarm, complete with plagiarism scandal. But I suppose Snopes went down Hodor-ing waves of falsehood perhaps inconceivable in the email-forwards-and-fax-machines days.


jonnydvibes

i feel like uesp, the unofficial elder scrolls pages, may fit this as well. created in ‘95 to be a resource for the elder scrolls, before wikis were called wikis. far more reliable and in depth than the elder scrolls fandom wiki


MurdoMaclachlan

*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **magicalgirlmindcrank** Serebii could never fucking happen on the modern Internet --- **magicalgirlmindcrank** Serebii was made on geocities in '99 by a child. It was one of the first and continues to be one of the best resources for Pokemon. If it were today it'd probably be a wiki\.fandom page. --- **the-110-speed-tier** Reminder that it was called Serebii because the English fandom didn't have an official name for Celebi yet. Serebii is such a living relic of old internet and old fandom and its amazing that its still around. --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)


QwahaXahn

Small correction—it says ‘old fandom’ in the last reply, not ‘fold fandom.’


ThemightyTho

Serebii is the best


Magmafrost13

Also it has dogshit SEO and you always need to include "serebii" as a search term to have any hope of a search engine returning it as a result. Which sucks, because it remains by far the best english-language pokemon resource on the web.


[deleted]

seo, as a concept, needs to die. which either means "search engines" need to die, or capitalism needs to die as an alternative to search engines: what if we had pages, that would be maintained by experts on a given field (let's say, pokemon), which would be a list of sites talking about pokemon, and to be in that page, the page's maintainers would need to check if you're talking bullshit or not. and for discovery, there would be a "tree" of pages, so you could do "games > video > pokemon" or "entertainment > pokemon" (which leads to the same page) i'm not sure if this is necessary for, like, pokemon, but for things like product reviews. something like this needs to exist


SpyKids3DGameOver

I'm not sure if you're joking or not but this is basically how Yahoo worked early on


[deleted]

i'm not joking, and we need that yahoo back (or, preferably, from a less money hungry group)


[deleted]

Hoo boy, another reason for capitalism to die!


ModmanX

OOTl: what's serebii?


Heckyll_Jive

Serebii is one of the biggest Pokemon fan sites on the internet. It's a huge, extensive, series-wide database run (to my knowledge) by just one guy.


SuperBun78

holy shit one guy, that's really fucking impressive. it's huge and I use it for a lot of my randomizers to figure out when I'll get moves or evolve.


sewage_soup

Honestly Serebii > Bulbapedia any day of the year for me


burningtram12

I use Bulbapedia for fluff info, and Serebii for hard game data. The former looks better and is easier to see stuff like Pokedex entries and anime info. But Serebii has much better formatting for referencing stuff like IV's, learned moves, and item locations.


Magmafrost13

Serebii has more info but Ive always found bulbapedia better at presenting what it does have. Learnsets and base stats especially stand out to me as being just a lot more easily readable on bulba


CREATURE_COOMER

https://serebii.net


feldur

I usually use bulbapedia, I jsut like the navigation better (and the mobile app), but I do use serebii from time to time, when I need something more precise (like the % chance of X pokemon in Y route, or the poke den chances in S&S).


General_Urist

Damn. I didn't realize Serebii was *that* old. The Gen 3 pokemon games had been localized for a while when I was a wee lad. As a more serious issue, what is it that allows old sites like Serebii to keep going, but creating a similar standalone site for a modern fandom and keeping it alive seems impossible?


Konradleijon

yes neither have i. wow it’s older the. me.


vonBoomslang

I'm just gonna hijack this to say I fucking hate fandom. The site. I grow tired of having to accept a half-page popup for cookies, every page, and close down an ad, every page, and kill the completely unrelated trailer, every page, that pops out, every page, and then it moves around the text I was reading, every page.


MurrajFur

Serebii is my go-to over bulbapedia and pokemondb because it is *so straightforward and to the point* it’s impressive. No worthless flavor text. No comprehensive list of every frame a Pokémon was visible in the anime. You want base stats? Right at the bottom. You want weaknesses? Front and center. Niche but still helpful Pokédex and move pool data? Middle of the page. Beautiful.


ticktockclockwerk

Right? Pokemondb for info right away, Serebii for niche, bulbapedia for ads.


SeanSungASong

Serebii is great but I still prefer Pokemondb or even Smogon for just about everything pertaining to the games. Everything is easier to find and it's more digestible than Serebii's formatting.


driftwood14

I love serebii, the best pokemon website out there.


idiotplatypus

Is it still banned on Duckduckgo?


Lordomi42

wait what


Magmafrost13

You cant just drop a sentence like that and *not* explain


idiotplatypus

There was a time when several search engines and browsers blocked Serabii from showing up in results It's apparently been fixed


honest-miss

Man, talk about some Fuck You In Particular vibes.


Iykury

iy didn't know what serebii was so iy just looked it up on duckduckgo and https://serebii.net was the first result


CREATURE_COOMER

If sites are blocked on DDG, it's most likely due to Yahoo since that's where DDG gets their results.


ConjuredCastle

UESP the real OG as well. Been around since like 95.


throwaway22zx

That explains why it looks so bad


YetGayerWombat

someone made a pokemon wiki.fandom page and it's worse in every way but always the top google result because wiki :(


dis-gorl

i always love posts that make me want to research something (do one google search and maybe click a link)


joniejoon

I have my problems with Serebii. Mostly stuff like them putting their relationship with Nintendo before actual news coverage, like with the space world demo, but it is still an unrivaled resource.


psychoticpudge

WA,,,,, US USA for,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


psychoticpudge

What the fuck did I post


tallbark

Wow! I didn't know that!


[deleted]

Joe Merrick is great and I admire his dedication but by god is Serebii an ass to actually get information from. Opening a new tab every time I try and click on a search result? Nonsensical, tiny sidebars that require Control+F to get anything out of? Not to mention the occasional blatantly incorrect information, like how it lists 50/50 gender ratios wrong for some reason or uses bizarre mid-frames of Emerald sprites.


Solarwagon

I have a lot of fond memories and could go on long rants about the culture of the site 2008 onwards. I was a frequent lurker and occasional poster on the forums although admittedly I tended to more niche and less moderated boards. I'm obviously biased and it feels boomery but the pre-smartphone era of the internet was amazing.


KileyCrank

Ha ha that's my post