I am so glad that this was posted, because I think that it opens the door for a lot of critical discussion points to be made, as these are defined intersectionalities within the UPCCC culture that each individual may or may not be aware of. So if you would hear me out, I’m going to break down a ton of stuff right here for you all. 
In the earliest days of UPCCC, the forum was private. It was created as a getaway. A private abode to discuss, in detail and at length, anything on the minds of collectors that were known to be high tier. It was a community driven by the need for a safe place for advanced, adult discussion on a hobby that people had a lot of time, money, and heart invested in. Individuals might be invited, but by and large the community was unknown. But that conversation can only get so far and the question became: Do we open this up to the public?
You heard the same back and forth. Does this attract the right type of people? Do we want to have our information available to everyone? Will this lower the quality of the forum itself? What is the value in growth, as growth for growth’s sake does not appeal to us. This is not an exhaustive list, but you can imagine the kinds of questions that came up. Ultimately, it was decided that other people could join. This brought about a “wave 2” of forum users, so to speak. And it brought some important community members. Heck, even I’m a wave 2 forum member. I started lurking early-mid 2011 and joined in September of the same year. There were challenges, but they were handled one by one.
The growth continued. Slowly, but surely, the forum became something bigger than it once was. And new decisions had to be made. Administration was expanded, to start. Any time you look to poise yourself for growth, you have to look at the manpower you have to handle the growth. Every post, ideally, needs to be read by two people with the power and authority to change it and address it if it violates the community standards. This needs to happen quickly, to make sure that people don’t think the administration is ineffective. Additionally, most of the things that happen will be a result of ignorance stemming from new member use. When you can help point them in the right direction early and kindly, they’ll become a better poster and also feel included/mentored, rather than punished. We believe this was one of PokeGym’s greatest downfalls. They didn’t cultivate community with their administrative actions. They instituted a rigorous penal system. We love and respect PokeGym, but we feel this is one way we’ve learned from their mistakes.
So let’s fast forward a little bit. We’ve balanced, in the mean time, the community guidance versus seeking to expand all along. Insider Bureau has always remained because we feel it gives individuals something to feel connected to. We cut out selling because it generated the wrong activity and drew in the wrong kinds of members. We’re aware of what that means and have made hard decisions to correct for that. Even when they were unpopular with the majority of the forum upon their institution. Removing selling was, however, one of our most effective decisions ever. Activity has increased greatly, the quality of posts has increased greatly, and member focus on collecting has increased greatly. It has been an all-around win. We’ve even had multiple example of individuals who we considered low-quality posters make incredible turnarounds. There are problem behaviors in young collectors that have to be curbed. Not all have to be present, but here are some examples:
-Purchasing high value cards for the sake of value alone
-Unsustainable rate of purchase
-Purchasing all over the place with no common theme
-Buying cards and then immediately selling them frequently
-Every card they claim to love is for sale on eBay right now
These are not points we view as condemnable, even if they would be present in “the wrong kind of collector.” Also, note that young collector doesn’t mean age in life, but length of involvement in the hobby. We view these behaviors as something born of an ignorance that we, a community of experienced, engaged collectors, have the power to help correct for. We push community values and strategically build a policy that encourages people to not only avoid these behaviors, but once formatively matured into a collector proper, help others who are new to the hobby avoid the same types of behavior. We are a formative community. This cannot be separated from the UPCCC name. Also note that none of this is done out of some “holier than thou” mentality. We don’t do this because we think everyone ought to collect as we do. To even identify “collect as we do” would be impossible because we have magnificent individuals collecting in all sorts of ways. People after one Pokemon, people after certain eras, certain languages, certain categories, so on and so forth. But the quality of a collector is not determined by the price tag or type of his collection. The quality of a collector is determined by his attitude, his behaviors, and his love of Pokemon. And so we’ve set out to make sure that as the community expands, we never lose those original values and that original vision of what we have to offer.
As we’ve reached a new level of growth, we’ve been confronted with some new challenges. We’ve addressed some of them already, which I won’t share in detail, but just know that the changes are real. You can see the evidence in the quiet addition of new moderators. You can see it in the cropping up of new faces. We have people join the forum every single day, even if they aren’t regularly posting. We’re better developing roles and administrative hierarchy gradually as well as we figure out what that needs to look like. You see titles like “Founder, WebDev, Moderator” now, which you didn’t see this time last year. These are real changes occurring out of necessity to continue to adapt to the greater collector base and also maintain what is so special about UPCCC. But some challenges remain unaddressed. First: this forum is not free. It might be free to use, but there is a real, monetary cost being paid for the use of it. As we continue to do good work in documenting and discussing, the storage space demands of the community are ever-increasing. That has already jumped a tier in expense and it will continue to do so.
In order to keep providing everyone with what they love so much, we need to look into some different innovative options. We cannot draw profit so long as our logo and name infringe on trademarks and copyrights. Making it a pay service completely undermines the free access to quality information and formative community that we stand by. If you can think of a way to draw in money, I assure you that we have thought about it as well. This has been extensively discussed with handfuls of different parties of varying ideology and expertise on the matter. But we are not giving up. We have ideas. We have more access to resources we’ve struggled heavily to recruit in the past, such as coding and graphics resources, right now. We’ve got area experts who are deeply aware of the pros and cons of different methods and who are thoroughly involved in every other type of Pokemon community budding right now. They want to be involved in our community, and we’re letting them. It’s going to be a group effort that propels the community forward because a community that fails to adapt fails to survive.
So what does this massive, interwoven system look like on the outside in the short term? That’s a great question. You’re going to see some things that appear surface level, but they have much broader, deeper implications. We really need your trust on them. Right now it is giveaways, but I assure you there is more going on there. We love the idea of being able to test out some back-end things we need to know while also literally giving free stuff to young collectors. You might come to see us being involved in some different forms of content production. And you might even have to stick by our side when we get new members who need mentoring. Anyone that has been here for more than a year knows that there are no exceptions. Each one of us matures as a collector here and each one of us helps along the newer members so they can have a better overall experience. Everyone wins, but everyone also puts some sweat and tears into it. That is truly communal in nature and we need everyone to do their part to make it work.
But you can guarantee we won’t ever sacrifice our core missional values. Everything we do is targeted at helping maintain this culture. We want to see a vibrant community that keeps what we do alive. There is value inherent to the shared experiences we have. The questions people are asking right now are not foreign. We’ve asked the same ones time and again since the forum started, albeit in nuanced ways. But my being here, your being here, and the future members are testament to the system’s continued success. Each step is calculated. It just doesn’t always look polished in final form as it is coming to be.
Hopefully, this sheds a little light on everything.
