Shortcuts MFTE BP:MFTE

2009

October 14

As some of you may have seen recently, there is an iPhone Pokédex application that was recently released, which uses Bulbapedia to supply its content. Due to licensing issues and other concerns, this is a no-no on the app creator's part; Bulbapedia is a non-commercial entity, while said app is decidedly commercial.

As the app's creators have not addressed these concerns despite Bulbagarden's efforts, Bulbapedia has begun to address these concerns for them. For those of you who view the site regularly, this has no effect on you; for those who edit regularly, you may notice that all of the Pokémon species articles have been temporarily protected from edits while we change variables. Don't worry; the wiki is not being vandalized, and all the changes being made are purely non-aesthetic ones.

Bulbagarden and Bulbapedia take content copyrights very seriously; rest assured that we will never allow others to make profit from your hard work and contributions here.

October 10

Bulbagarden is proud to announce the opening of its new Battle Center! The Battle Center is a place to solicit and accept wireless battles for the Generation IV games that are Wi-Fi compatible. Both competitive and casual battlers are welcome, so you'll always fit in. Better yet, you can use the Trade Center to find the Pokémon you need to achieve victory, and then use your new acquisitions to win in the Battle Center!

As a component of this, you can access our new IRC battling chat via your own IRC client (we're on irc.systemnet.info) or through our forums JavaChat. Just type in /join #bulbabattle - it's very easy, and will provide another way for you to find battlers.

As we mentioned during the unveiling of the Trade Center a month and a half ago, the Forums support both Pokémon and non-Pokémon discussion across a wide variety of topics. If you're interested in more in-depth discussion than Bulbapedia allows, we recommend that you register here and enjoy more of the services that Bulbagarden has to offer!

Bulbagarden is always adding exciting new features and offering a better, more engaging experience for Pokémon fans. As always, we thank thank you, the community, for your continued support as we continue to grow. We really couldn't do it without you.

September 20

HeartGold and SoulSilver have arrived in Japan, and, as always, there are new tasks pertaining to the games that Bulbapedia members can work on. See "Ongoing Work" for more details.

Instead of discussing the new games on Bulbapedia talk pages, make sure to keep questions and comments about the games to the new HGSS Discussion Forum on BMGf.

Also, if you haven't already visited it, a new Trade Center has been opened on the forums: a place where users can offer or express interest in certain Pokémon or items and then privately make the trade over Wi-Fi. This will give you the opportunity to connect with other users and expand your Pokédex or enhance your competitive battling team!

September 4

September is here, and HeartGold and SoulSilver are less than a week away. While we know many of you are excited about the remakes, we would like to remind everyone that only information that has been confirmed by an official source is allowed on the articles.

In celebration of the new games, we have created a new party template to replace the one currently in use. We hope to finish changing all the old templates to new ones before the release of HGSS, and any help would be highly appreciated. To see an example of how the new template is used, see Roark. A list of pages in need of update can be found here.

Also, if you haven't already visited it, a new Trade Center has been opened on the forums: a place where users can offer or express interest in certain Pokémon or items and then privately make the trade over Wi-Fi. This will give you the opportunity to connect with other users and expand your Pokédex or enhance your competitive battling team!

August 28

A quick update on Bulbagarden's newest feature:

We are very excited to announce the opening of our new Trade Center on the forums: a place where users can offer or express interest in certain Pokémon or items and then privately make the trade over Wi-Fi. This will give you the opportunity to connect with other users and expand your Pokédex or enhance your competitive battling team!

Also, we'd like to remind everyone that our forums are there for all discussions Pokémon-related, and have boards to discuss many other areas of interest as well, such as current events, entertainment, and much more.

If you haven't already joined, click the link above to visit our forums and create an account. It's as easy as making one on Bulbapedia! We're looking forward to seeing you both in the Trade Center and around our forums!

August 19

We now welcome the seventh wiki in the Encyclopaediae Pokémonis network, Pokéteca, to the table, as our Spanish language counterparts. Though they have more than a thousand pages already, like all wikis, completion and addition are the best things, and so we must all collaborate to our best.

Those on Bulbapedia who speak another language: do not forget that you can help our fellow wikis out, most especially if you speak German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Polish, or Portuguese. Encyclopaediae Pokémonis strives to be as international as the Pokémon franchise itself, a worldwide phenomenon, and expansion of our knowledge of this world is always encouraged.

Do not forget, however, that Bulbapedia itself also needs your help. We may have more than 15,000 articles right now, but many of those can be vastly expanded, and synopses of the more than 600 episodes of the anime are nowhere near complete. So go for it!

July 26

Account creation on Bulbapedia has been unlocked! For any users who have been wanting to register for the last month (vandals excluded, of course), now is the time to do it! And as for information that has been included in past Messages from the Editor but that is still relevant...

Note that a new item has been added to our Userspace policy concerning pages/templates in the userspace that spoof the interface. They are no longer allowed. Most notably, users with the "New Messages" template on their page are advised to remove it immediately. It's annoying and not the least bit funny. Thanks.

Also, starting this month, we are going to revive the featured articles process on Bulbapedia. On the first of every month, one featured article will be featured in this space. The first one will be in August, while July will serve us to try the new system, explained in previous Messages from the Editor. Please nominate and vote on featured articles.

July 16

Account creation is currently disabled on Bulbapedia! Please refrain from e-mailing Archaic and the other staff members about it. Although no date has been set for the resurrection of account creation, rest assured it will not be too long.

Note that a new item has been added to our Userspace policy concerning pages/templates in the userspace that spoof the interface. They are no longer allowed. Most notably, users with the "New Messages" template on their page are advised to remove it immediately. It's annoying and not the least bit funny. Thanks.

Also, starting this month, we are going to revive the featured articles process on Bulbapedia. On the first of every month, one featured article will be featured in this space. The first one will be in August, while July will serve us to try the new system, explained in previous Messages from the Editor. Please nominate and vote on featured articles.

July 10

Note that a new item has been added to our Userspace policy concerning pages/templates in the userspace that spoof the interface. They are no longer allowed. Most notably, users with the "New Messages" template on their page are advised to remove it immediately. It's annoying and not the least bit funny. Thanks.

Also, starting this month, we are going to revive the featured articles process on Bulbapedia. On the first of every month, one featured article will be featured in this space. The first one will be in August, while July will serve us to try the new system:

Every FA nomination will remain open for one month, at the end of which we will decide whether or not to give the article in question Featured Article status or not. Just like before, every user can nominate any article the old way, as long as the article fits the criteria. Every user may vote, provided that they explain their opinion – but note that the topic in question isn’t what the subject of the article is, but how good it is – its prose, details, accuracy, design, and level of interest. The final decision will not be based on the number of votes alone, but on their content as well.

Many of the articles that were nominated up until today have changed a lot in the long time they were nominated, and so many votes became irrelevant. To start off with a clean slate, the nomination page was cleared and all nominees were voted on. History of Pokémon received featured status, and several other articles have been re-nominated with a fresh slate. The rest were rejected for the time being.

July 1

Starting this month, we are going to revive the featured articles process on Bulbapedia. On the first of every month, one featured article will be featured in this space. The first one will be in August, while July will serve us to try the new system:

Every FA nomination will remain open for one month, at the end of which we will decide whether or not to give the article in question Featured Article status or not. Just like before, every user can nominate any article the old way, as long as the article fits the criteria. Every user may vote, provided that they explain their opinion – but note that the topic in question isn’t what the subject of the article is, but how good it is – its prose, details, accuracy, design, and level of interest. The final decision will not be based on the number of votes alone, but on their content as well.

Many of the articles that were nominated up until today have changed a lot in the long time they were nominated, and so many votes became irrelevant. To start off with a clean slate, the nomination page was cleared and all nominees were voted on. History of Pokémon received featured status, and several other articles have been re-nominated with a fresh slate. The rest were rejected for the time being.

Please vote and nominate away!

June 15

Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver are games that we've all been waiting almost five years for, and we're incredibly excited by their approach.

Despite this, please keep in mind that NO SPRITES ARE YET OFFICIAL. All sprites found on the HGSS site are until release beta sprites that may change, much as the sprite for Origin Forme Giratina did between the beta phase and final release of Pokémon Platinum.

Please keep this in mind. New HGSS sprites should be uploaded to the filename Spr 4h ###.png, but should not replace the sprites at the National Dex number at the current time. Platinum sprites are overall better quality than the sprites we can get from HGSS at the current point -- wait for the games to come out, and we should be able to rip the best quality sprites from the games themselves within days, as we did with Platinum.

Again, excitement may be high, but do not make the quality of images take a dive just because Lugia can. Reservations start in July, pointing to a release sooner than any of us expect.

May 22

As many of you have probably noticed, we have been getting a lot of what can be tentatively considered as vandalism the past few days. Namely, lots and lots and lots of sockpuppets created using proxies, likely of the same misguided user. We're currently considering and discussing implementing some sort of system to monitor new users automatically, although how exactly this would work isn't yet figured out. If any of you have any ideas, we'd be happy to listen.

A note to administrators: Watch the Recent Changes like a hawk. Checkuser any new user you see, and block sockpuppets on sight. I know many of you have already been doing this, but we need to be vigilant. Thanks.

May 15

Just as Bulbapedia upgraded in the time leading up to Pokémon Platinum during 2008, we must make certain that we keep ourselves up to date for anything new that occurs in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. We will be continuing to renew the various infoboxes around the wiki, at times breaking them in order to get them to work better, much as the Pokémon games did with the start of Generation III.

At the same time, although we are all excited about the remakes, a warning must remain in place: do not add details if you are unsure of their veracity, and as always make sure not to speculate in articles. When in doubt, bring it up on the talk page, but keep in mind that talk pages are not for wild speculation (save that for the forums). No matter what you think will come of the remakes, nothing is certain until their release (not even their release date).

And a small note to our newer users: please, lurk first and preview edits to see what wikicode does. Find out how the wiki works by watching other edits. Even our editor-in-chief started that way, so there's no telling how far you'll go by watching what works and what doesn't. Unlike other languages, wikicode is quite easy to learn, and other users will be more than happy to help you out with our style if you ask.

May 8

This is a temporary message to all editors of Bulbapedia; a more comprehensive one will soon replace it.

With the remakes of Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions confirmed, we would like to let you know that the administration of Bulbapedia is going through the updating process in a careful and comprehensive way. For the time being, please refrain from updating pages relating to the remakes with information until given the O.K, as we are only human and would like to be able to check all pages and make sure that speculation is not present.

Please keep this in mind for the coming days. Thank you.

May 4

The month of May certainly seems as if it will be an upturn in events relating to Pokémon, with rumors of what's in store already flying around.

We must insist on this from all Bulbapedia users:

DO NOT INSERT SPECULATION INTO ARTICLES. FACTS ONLY.

Whatever the exciting announcement that is to come next Sunday, whether it is the fabled GSDS, PBR2, Stadium 3, or anything, keep the speculation out.

Additionally, questions and comments regarding the subject of the article (as opposed to the article's text) should go on Bulbagarden's forums, accessible from the sidebar on all pages as "Bulbawiki forum".

April 20

In order to keep Bulbapedians up to date, this message has been changed.

The "war" with Wikia is over, meaning everyone can quit spamming their recent changes and vandalizing their pages. You know, the stuff we expressly told you not to do.

Bulbapedia's templates continue to be updated. Next up on the line should be the remaining infobox templates, beginning with those dealing with locations in the Pokémon world. If you have an idea on how to update these templates, please create it as a subpage in your userspace, and bring it to the attention of one of our many administrators.

March 29

As work on Project Overgrow continues, so does Bulbapedia itself. Despite this, some of you may have noticed that we have been having some issues with the server as of late, with Bulbapedia being inaccessible from time to time. This is due to a glitch in the system which we have been investigating to its fullest in order to eliminate as quickly as possible.

Through our continued prosperity, however, we have garnered the attention of a less-than-favorable faction. Wikia's "The Pokémon Encyclopedia" has recently been found to have taken the content of various Bulbapedia articles, changed one or two words (while at the same time remaining formatted overall in the same way), and posted it as their own. While this is not the fault of their administrators at all, the fact that, when this is pointed out to them, the administrators do nothing about the copied content or attempt to hide our comments about it is a very disturbing fact.

The Pokémon Encyclopedia, as a Wikia wiki, is licensed under the standard GNU Free Documentation License, while Bulbapedia's content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, incompatible with Wikia's license. Bulbapedia's license requires strictly that the content is attributed to Bulbapedia and its users, and additionally, the "noncommercial" aspect of the license requires that no money is made off of the content. Wikia's own About page clarifies that it is a commercial entity, while Bulbapedia's ads are in place to keep the massive server we have running.

Bulbapedia and Bulbagarden's administrators heavily discourage vandalism of The Pokémon Encyclopedia, despite their refusal to comply to our request to remove the copied content. However, we do encourage dialog with those in charge. So please, ask them, why are you taking content that we worked on?

February 28

Although Bulbapedia has been as prosperous as ever as of late, one issue has repeatedly occurred that, although not the end of the world, needs to stop. I would like to remind everyone that having multiple accounts, commonly referred to as "sockpuppets," are not allowed if not authorized by the Editorial Board. Lately, a number of users have been caught abusing multiple accounts by random IP checks. Although these users will not be harshly reprimanded, let me stress again that this is not allowed. Even if you don't edit from your "other" account, it's still against the rules and shouldn't be occurring.

If you currently have an unauthorized additional account, please report it to an administrator so they can disable it. Failure to do so and subsequent discovery of the account may lead to a minimal block or verbal warning. Thank you all for abiding by this and only keeping one account. If you would like to rename your account or have any questions about sockpuppets, contact a staff member.

February 14

Happy anniversary to Bulbapedia! We've been going strong for four years now, with over 14,000 articles since our public opening.

It is here where I announce Phase III of Project Overgrow: the upgrading and cleanup of Bulbapedia itself! With the English release of Pokémon Platinum imminent, and the revelation of the 493rd (and currently final) Pokémon in the National Dex, Arceus, having happened, we need to make certain that we have all of the best information we can.

Older episodes of the Pokémon anime, as well as several current ones, are in need of synopses, which can be added by anyone. A style guide as well as an example episode synopsis will be upcoming. These should not be too brief, while at the same time, should not be a script of the episode.

Our coverage of the various Pokémon manga as well as many other things is also in need of improvement. Pick a stub, find its subject matter, and expand the article. You may find new areas of Pokémon canon you otherwise would have no knowledge of.

As you may have noted as well, many of Bulbapedia's templates, as well as the style in general, have been upgraded to feature rounded corners (though these do not appear in some browsers). The ability to change back to the old skin will become available soon in your preferences, however, it is not currently.

And so, in closing, Bulbapedia's contributors must ignore the easy-to-know details of the front-and-center parts of the Pokémon world, and focus on the more ignored facets. We aim to make Bulbapedia the largest bastion of knowledge about Pokémon that the web has to offer, and we can only do it with your help.

February 9

The third phase of Project Overgrow will be beginning soon. Are you ready? Be prepared as this one is the one that pertains most to you, the users of Bulbapedia.

Bulbapedia's image policy has been updated, of course. For episode articles, the header image must be a png file, and should be uploaded at the episode's epicode rather than elsewhere. This discourages stealing images from other sites and encourages better quality for images. It also keeps edit warring to a minimum, as we've had many problems with that in the past. So keep this in mind and help us as we prepare for the start of phase III!

January 14

Project Overgrow's second phase has begun, and that is none other than a revamp of the forums! Not only have they been upgraded to the latest version of vBulletin, but several things have been reorganized, including an expanded space for Bulbapedia discussion!

A new forum has been opened specifically for social discussion regarding the Pedia, so enjoy it now rather than using talk pages for this. Also, keep in mind that on the forums, a [bp] tag exists for direct, quick links to Bulbapedia pages, and works much in the same way as other standard forum tags.

Also, effective immediately, there will no longer be a strictly-enforced userspace edit limit of four per day, or any other number. Use this wisely, and don't go absolutely crazy with the amount of edits daily– use the preview button instead. Abusers will, as always, be punished, but the enforcement of any limit will be much less strict, with administrators and others free to decide on their own smartly what constitutes far more edits than necessary.

The Bulbagarden forums have a blog system which can be easily used to detail your daily life, as well, negating the absolute need for a constantly-edited userpage.

January 3

Happy new year to all, and welcome to 2009!

Being a new year, Bulbapedia asks its users to begin by turning over a new leaf, and reading over the code of conduct that we have introduced. This will help all of Bulbapedia's users to get along better with each other, and at the same time, make sure that we in administrative positions also stay nice.

In addition, Bulbagarden's Project Overgrow has begun, which will be a major part of activities around the entirety of the website for approximately the next four months. The first part of Project Overgrow is a swath of new hires--if you're interested in joining the Bulbagarden staff, check out that post!

2008

December 24

Happy Holidays and a healthy New Year from all of us at Bulbagarden!

December 11

I hope you're all enjoying the new layout celebrating our sixth anniversary.

I would like to take a moment to remind our users that uploading media to our archives for a banned user is the same thing as ban evading. Not only would the user who told you to upload the media would be punished further, the user who did the uploading would also receive a ban.

So use your head; don't help someone break the rules.

December 10

Yet again, a new color scheme is added to the Main Page, which has received a redesign. This color scheme is not the permanent one, however, but a recolored one in celebration of Bulbagarden's sixth anniversary.

Bulbapedia's fourth anniversary is also upcoming this month, though we officially opened our doors on February 14 of 2005, the Bulbawiki project officially began on December 21, 2004.

As the English release date of Pokémon Platinum has been leaked, we will attempt to accelerate our plans to revamp several old templates to include new data and perhaps have a new look, much like the updated evolution, sprite, and stat templates.

Please be warned, however, that the English names given by the Circuit City ad are not confirmed as official, and thus pages will not yet be moving.

November 29

We hope everyone enjoyed the color scheme we had on November 21st to celebrate the 9th anniversary of the release of Pokémon Gold and Silver in Japan. We also hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving (where celebrated).

Editing wise, we have been updating numerous old templates including, but not limited to, party templates (which can be seen on Brock's page), evolution templates (which can be seen on Bulbasaur's page), and we are currently looking for a new Welcome template, but, we need the help of our users. Visit this page to view the candidates and vote.

October 29

In addition to the still fairly new policies on image reversion and userspace quantity and content, Bulbapedia has developed a tentative policy on talk page abuse. Be sure to check out the guidelines illustrated in these pages, as it could save everyone a lot of trouble.

Lastly, Bulbapedia would like to offer a belated congratulations to TTEchidna on his promotion to Editor-in-Chief, while at the same time expressing our gratitude for the time and energy Zhen Lin devoted to Bulbapedia during his time as Editor-in-Chief.

October 21

Bulbapedia now has official policies for image reversion and userspace quantity and content. Be sure to read both, as they make clear the official stance of the administrators and Editorial board regarding those important topics. If everyone reads those, there will be fewer conflicts around here and a lesser server load.

October 1

Due to the amount of edits done solely to revert images used on Bulbapedic articles over and over, a policy has now been created to attempt to prevent this from occurring again. From now on, any Users who are caught reverting each other because of an image will be subsequently blocked for an amount of days equal to the amount of reverts by both opposing parties made solely to change the image. Furthermore, the image will be replaced with the previous image. Hopefully, this will teach the opposing parties to discuss their concerns on the talk page, instead of causing ugly, pointless, revert wars that clutter the database. If no change is seen in the behavior of Users, this policy will be revised in order to reflect a harsher punishment.

Also, keep in mind that the current limit on Userspace edits is three; this not only covers your main Userspace page, but any subpages you may have, and any other User’s page. However, editing others' pages is almost always not allowed, so try to keep your edits to your own page.

September 12

While Bulbapedia may be celebrating the release of Pokémon Platinum, users should keep in mind several things when editing:

• If you do not have the game, do not assume based on appearances. Have faith in fellow contributors, however, as they may in fact have the game.
• The Platinum sprites of all Pokémon have already been ripped from the game and saved as pngs, in the 80×80 standard size. Taking screenshots and cropping them is frowned upon, as their quality may be low.
• The updating of moves to Platinum standard is still not finished. Why not contribute to that?
• Some menusprite images may look a bit "off". This is due to your computer reading the image data from cache, while we very recently updated all menusprite images to png format. In addition, some animated menusprites may link to an image that does not yet exist. Do not panic; this is part of the Platinum updates.
• The move tutor moves on Pokémon pages may display incorrectly. This is due to an upgrade we are doing to them so as to make them compatible with Platinum and XD move tutors, and will be done shortly.

Despite this, continue to enjoy Bulbapedia as we expand our information about the fifteenth main series Pokémon game.

July 27

As some of you have noticed, the much awaited return of the User: namespace has finally occurred.

Now, before you all get down to the epic celebration of this, we as a community must focus on the project at hand. Bulbapedia still needs work to prepare itself for the release of Pokémon Platinum, and as well needs to continue in its commitment to providing the best and most up-to-date Pokémon information. We cannot do this without you, the users. We must insist, therefore, that you do abide by the policies of the userspace, such as not editing it too much, keeping games off and subpages to a minimum, and finally, adequately contributing to the main namespace. These past four months have been absolutely bounteous with growth, and all of us would hate to see the quality of Bulbapedia suffer again as it did in the weeks and months leading up to the ban on the User: namespace.

This unblocking of the namespace is a temporary measure to gauge how users treat it. If it is unsatisfactory, the block will be reinstated as we continue to develop a system to prevent abuse.

June 30

Congratulations to all of us--Bulbapedia has reached its 10,000th article!

June 27

We certainly have been having a lot of these recently.

Additionally, Zhen Lin will be out of town for the week. All questions and such can be directed to TTEchidna or any of the other administrators.

June 15

With immediate effect, administrators are authorised and advised to remove any content that is inappropriate use of User or User talk pages. Users restoring content so deleted may be warned once before being blocked for abuse of Bulbapedia. The determination of "inappropriate" is presently left to individual administrators, but we will codify guidelines in the near future. Appeals to the editorial board over the interpretation of "inappropriate" are possible.

June 12

Guys, seriously. Stop using your user talk pages for meaningless MySpace junk.

June 9

After two years, we have finally managed to link the accounts on all three of our wikis: Bulbapedia, Bulbanews, and Bulbagarden Archives.

There may still be some issues with the linkage of accounts, such as having to still log in separately, but overall, the linkage should be in place. If your account has not been merged correctly, see Special:Mergeaccount or talk to Zhen Lin.

And yes, the userspace is still disabled from editing. We're sorry, but the server already has a lot of load and editing userpages every five minutes would destroy it and cause Bulbagarden to be down a lot longer than the two days it was at the end of May.

March 24

Due to an overwhelmingly large amount of edits going on in the User: namespace, we have disabled edits to all pages within it for the time being. We are monitoring how much the lack of ability to edit personal pages will affect the server, and when the results come in, we will make a decision on what to do.

If you feel the need to create a userpage or edit it now, you will have to wait. Do not create a page in the main namespace to move to the User: namespace under any circumstances. The results will likely be conclusive after about a week, and you will be informed with another message from the editor about the return of functionality.

Additionally, a policy on signatures is being discussed on the Bulbapedia forum on BMGf, so please, take a look at it even if you are not a member.

February 14

It's now three years since we opened Bulbapedia to the public and we are very proud to announce that Bulbapedia now has over 8,000 articles. That's nearly double the number we had this time last year! Congratulations and thank you to everyone who has helped us achieve this incredible milestone.

We are also announcing today the appointment of TTEchidna as Deputy Editor-in-Chief, in recognition of his continuing and vigilant watch over Bulbapedia.

2007

December 25

On this day, we celebrate the enlargement of the Encyclopaediae Pokémonis group by welcoming the Brazillian Portuguese LANDpedia – bem vindo from all of us here at Bulbapedia!

As Bulbapedia enters its fourth year, we also celebrate Bulbapedia's 100 millionth page view, recorded just last week on the 18th. To everyone, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

September 28

Let us all say bienvenue to Poképédia, which joins Encyclopaediae Pokémonis as its French member. This is but one of the many happy events of September 2007, which includes the creation of the 6,000th, then 6,500th article on Bulbapedia, as well as the 70,000,000th page view since we first began this project way back in December 2004.

The only event which clouds this otherwise incredible month is the controversy surrounding the implementation of advertising on Bulbapedia. We hope that our readers and contributors will bear with us and will not find the advertisements overly off-putting or intrusive - please do report any inappropriate ads you see to Archaic.

April 6

Please welcome the Polish Wikinezka, who have today joined the Encyclopaediae Pokémonis group of open-content Pokémon encyclopedias. We wish them the best of luck, and hope that the spirit of international cooperation will continue to grow in the international Pokémon fan community.

2006

December 30

At 4:52PM (UTC) today, the 4,000th Bulbapedia article was created. Over the course of this year alone, an amazing 1,364 articles were created at a rate of 3.758 articles per day - and it's been just only over two years since this project was started in December 21, 2004, and the two-year anniversary of its opening to the public is still ahead of us.

Congratulations and thank you to everyone who has participated in this collaborative project!

June 26

We are pleased to announce that the Japanese Pokémon encyclopedia, Pokémon Wiki (ポケモンWiki) has joined our German affiliate PokéWiki and us in Encyclopaediae Pokémonis, a group of open-content Pokémon encyclopedias in different languages.

The first person to conceive of a Pokémon website that visitors could edit and update was Meowth346 of Pokémon Forever. Inspired by Wikipedia, one implemenation of that idea was founded on December 22, 2004: Bulbapedia. After a period of secret development, we opened it to the public on February 14, 2005.

Two months later, German Pokémon fan nYoo launched an inquiry into the possibility of opening a German Pokémon encyclopedia in the spirit of Bulbapedia. Though nothing came of that discussion, another inquiry was made in early August, and that resulted in PokéWiki.

Naturally, the two open-content Pokémon encyclopedias agreed to affiliate. Expecting more affiliates in other languages, Encyclopaediae Pokémonis, Latin for Encylopedias of Pokémon, was proposed shortly thereafter, but it would be a long time before the group expanded.

Pokémon Wiki was founded early April 2006, and was first brought to our attention mid-June. Ten days and many e-mail messages later, Pokémon Wiki joined Encyclopaediae Pokémonis.

February 14

In the one year since we opened Bulbapedia to the public, there has been amazing growth - we have gone from 114 articles to 2,642 - that's 6.9 articles per day!

Admittedly, I initially had my doubts about whether such a radical idea would even work in the context of Pokémon - but here we are. On behalf of Bulbagarden, I would like to thank all who have contributed and supported this project.

The editorial board would like to thank a few of you, in particular. Congratulations and thank you to all award recipients, and to all of you as well for supporting Bulbapedia!

January 9

The Bulbapedia editorial board wishes all our readers, contributors and staff a belated happy new year. Please welcome our new Research Editor, Unown Lord, who will offering us fresh insight on a variety of topics. His personal aspiration is "for Bulbapedia to turn into a plethora of informative resources viewed by readers as enlightening."

We have also added (Modern) Hebrew to our collection of Babel tags. If you would like your language there, please make your request at Category talk:Babel tags - with the text to be used in them, if you wish to supply your own.

Finally, we would like to remind you that Bulbapedia is approaching the 1-year anniversary of its opening to the public.

2005

September 19

Bulbapedians can now indicate their linguistic capabilities on their user pages with Babel tags. Currently, languages available are English, Japanese, German, French, and Spanish. If you would like to see your language on the list, please make a request to Argy, evkl, or Zhen Lin.

June 21

The Future of Bulbapedia:

Bulbapedia and the Bulbawiki networks as a whole have come a long way since their inception and release to the public. Starting out at barely over a hundred articles at public release, the current article count on Bulbapedia (As of today, June 21, 2005) stands at over 23 times that number. The Bulbawiki networks now include a news site, Bulbanews, and the Bulbagarden Archives, a repository for all pictures and other non-text data files with relevancy to Bulbagarden.net and its side projects.

June 1

Please take a moment to visit the Where from here? post in the Bulbapedia Discussion forum on BMGf.

April 29

Bulbanews has opened to the public with exclusive information on AG126. The Bulbapedia editorial staff invite you to make use of this new resource for your daily Poké-News fix. Enjoy!

April 23

• Bulbagarden Archives has been opened to the public.

April 16

• Recently, a large number of pages were vandalized. Although a mass reversion/deletion has been done, there may be traces remaining. We would greatly appreciate it if you could help us correct that.
• Congratulations to Zeta and Woopert, who have been granted sysopship for their past work on Bulbapedia and assistance in dealing with the attack.

April 9

• Henceforth any and all articles directly pertaining to Serebii and Serebii.net are placed under strict protection. All edits must be approved by evkl or Damian Silverblade.

March 28

• Although a number of articles have been created for People who have not had an impact on the Pokémon canon, i.e. fans, please do not take this a signal to create encyclopedic articles on yourself. The subjects of the aforementioned articles should also take note of the difference between a personal page, such as User:Jimbo Wales and an encyclopedic article, such as Jimmy Wales, and strive to maintain NPOV in the latter.

March 24

• A thread has been established for requesting Bots and Templates.
• A new policy on what defines mass editing has been established; ignoring it is grounds for being temporarily blocked. Please read the definition of "minor" and "major" edits for future reference.
• Making mass changes as described in the above "mass editing" thread can be first discussed by making a post in the Bulbapedia Forum; rules for those posts can be found here.

March 19

• As a guideline, do not create any move articles without filling in most if not all of the Infobox, as well as the Template talk:MoveProperties. Make a positive effort to do so. You may wish to refer to [1] to find out the Japanese name and the move number.
• A basic structure for the Bulbapedia:Community Portal has been set up.
• Make use of the abbreviated link syntax: [[Ruby (Special)|]] is equivalent to [[Ruby (Special)|Ruby]], similarly, [[wp:Satoshi Tajiri|]] is equivalent to [[wp:Satoshi Tajiri|Satoshi Tajiri]].
• Avoid coding in HTML unless absolutely necessary. Wikicode is documented at [2] and [3]; please note that some things are Wikipedia-specific.

— Zhen Lin

March 6

• We now have all of the pages in the Category:Pokémon listing. You can feel free to expand any of the pages to include general information on that specific Pokémon. Specific, useful Pokédex-like pages will be established shortly. We're working on it--and we greatly appreciate the help of all those who made the Poké-pages possible.
• BMG had a minor virus problem earlier in the day; please run any antivirus software you may have to see if you were infected unknowingly.
• Character pages can still use more information. The Community Portal will shortly have a number of features which point to things that address community-based projects and pages that need attention.
• That Bulbapedia button is on the way, I should have it uploaded within a few days.

February 27

• PLEASE temporarily refrain from making any Pokémon or Move pages for the next couple of days. Our templates are being enhanced, and we don't want to have to fix any more than we have to as it is.
• If you didn't already notice, Episode Guides are starting to go up. If you personally have any to contribute, it's always welcome. Remember to use the numbering guidelines put forth in the Manual of Style.
• We'll be coming out with a Bulbapedia button very, so if you want to link to us from any site, it'll become possible.

February 22

• Please remember to link to games with their full name, i.e. [[Pokémon Red|Red version]] instead of just linking [[Red]]
• Remember to use the Macro tag for Pokémon Meta and use Pokémon Infobox where applicable. Thanks to everyone who's been working on Macro conversion.
• While the link to it has disappeared from our revamped front page, remember the List of wanted pages is still there.
• The Items list needs filled out.
• Remember to add the appropriate stub tags to any article, via the {{ }} stub macro formatting.

February 18

• Only the first instance of a term in an article's actual text (excluding sidebars, lists, etc) should be linked to that term's matching article.
• Keep up the good work! It seems like every day, there's less and less conflict and more and more cooperation.
• So long as you include the Pokémon Infobox with a Pokémon article (see the talk page for usage notes), you may go ahead and fill in all ____ (Pokémon) articles, but don't make them too expansive. Any more information than what we currently have in Geodude or Bulbasaur's entry would be overly much. Please use the {{p|(name of Pokémon)}} macro to link to Pokémon pages, as we may choose to change the article titles for Pokémon species pages in the future.
• Elements pages should still look like the Grass-type page.
• There are still many articles that need worked on! Consult the list of wanted articles to see what people most want filled in.
• Make sure pages are appropriately linked to others.

February 14

Welcome to Bulbapedia! All of the instructions on use, semantics, and the like can be found either below in Getting Started or via one of our quick links in the green toolbar to the right.

The staff of Bulbapedia has worked very hard in getting it to this point, but there's only so far any one small group can expand an encyclopedia, and after it tops out in size from our knowledge base or ability to work on it, the public is of more help than the staff in expanding and growing. That's the philosophy of a Wiki-based encyclopedia, and we're taking that to heart. We know there'll be differences of opinion, we know there'll be hard times and heated arguments, but we're going ahead with this project anyway, because it is our goal to compile the best, most comprehensive Pokémon database on the planet.

We're not there yet, but we're working on it, and you can help us. The staff of Bulbagarden.net and Bulbapedia hope you enjoy, contribute to, and use our newest service!