Interview with PokéCommunity
An interview with Sheep from the long-running Pokémon message board, PokéCommunity, which launched in October 2002
PokéCommunity (PC) is a Pokémon discussion forum that launched on October 10th, 2002. It is one of the longest-running Pokémon message boards still online today. It was originally created by Master Kwesi Nkromah. This thriving fan community offers a wide range of boards which encourage discussion about Pokémon video games and creative endeavours.
I’m excited to share our interview with Sheep, the current owner of PokéCommunity, who has kindly agreed to answer my questions!
It is fantastic to be speaking with you, Sheep! Can you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little bit about PokéCommunity?
Sheep:
Hi there, my name is Sheep! I'm a huge Pokémon fan who has been into the series since the late 1990s, starting with the Red & Blue versions and the anime. It helped me learn the English language when I first moved to the US at 7 years old, and it has been a very important part of my life since. Other than Pokémon, I'm also a huge fan of bubble tea, Sanrio, and cats!
PokéCommunity originally got started in late 2002 – it's crazy to think it has been more than 20 years now! We're a forum that focuses on discussion of all things Pokémon, including the official games, merchandise, anime, and fan games among others. We also have an active community who enjoy the off-topic aspect of the forum, such as video games as a whole, or general life discussions. We love all of our users and are thrilled to have so many people still sticking with us now, as well as all of our wonderful new users!
You joined PC in October 2006, four years after the community was first created. How were you first introduced to PC?
Sheep:
Originally, I found the site because I stumbled upon a fan game I wanted to check out, but I quickly ended up branching out to wanting to share my Pokémon art with the rest of the community and look at theirs. I was trying to practice drawing Pokémon in the Sugimori art style back in the day (I remember thinking my attempted imitation was pretty good at the time and looking back on that it certainly wasn't, haha), and sharing it on PC seemed like a great option for me! The art side of this community is where I made some of my first friends on the site.
PC originally started as a collection of different community websites coming together to create one large discussion forum. This later changed, and the community is now independent. What was the reason for this change?
Sheep:
Back when there were still many, many smaller Pokémon fansites rather than a few really big ones, it was very typical for each site to have its own forums. PC was originally created as a way to get rid of forum and staff redundancy by pooling resources and combining the forums of several large sites. Sites were invited to join based on criteria like size, activity, and popularity. As time went on, however, the PokéCommunity Forums gained a life of their own and most people joining were not relayed from any of the community websites, many of which had gone inactive and without updates. Most of its members and staff had discovered the site on the merit of the forums alone and decided to stay and build its community, so eventually the sites were discontinued and PC has been independently run as its own community ever since.
One of my favourite things about PC is the creativity of its users. Creators can showcase their works, which include art and fanfiction, and work together to make exciting projects. What have been some of the biggest success stories that have come out of this?
Sheep:
We've had so many success stories happen for users who got started on PC!
One of our users – a former Administrator – first began their programming journey in the realm of fan games here and is now earning a living as a full-fledged programmer. We are always so happy seeing them come online in our Discord server and share how their life has been going! This has actually happened multiple times, and we have seen multiple people begin their journey with programming for fan games that went on to do related work down the line. Same thing goes for designers and artists – there are multiple users who got started on PC who are now graphic designers or artists for a living.
Our child site, PokéCommunity Daily, is another success story. Originally starting in 2016, it started as a site where we could post news, guides, reviews, interesting observations, and other such content in article form. Over time, it grew and evolved to what it is today – not just a site for Pokémon-related news, guides, and updates, but also a place where the creators in our community can showcase their work. This would not have been possible without the creative energy and effort provided by both our team and members. On its own, it boasts millions of views!
And although we cannot reveal them by name and or give additional details to protect their privacy, another former staff member is now a well-known voice actor and streamer. They were a very important part of our community back in the day, and we're so thrilled to see how far they have come since every time we see their name pop up as credit for a character's voice.
On a side note, I would just like to say how grateful I was to be featured in PokéCommunity Daily back in May 2023, just a few short months after Johto Times launched. It was a helpful start to help us get the word out there! What have been some of your favourite articles from your child site?
Sheep:
You're very welcome! We were so happy to feature you!
For some of our favorite articles that I think a lot of people can enjoy, I'm a huge fan of our 'Pokémon Husbands' article series. Yes, you read that right! In this series, one of our talented writers (Rivvon) discusses the many 'husbands' across the Pokémon series, which includes fun rankings for them based on various factors. :)
Rivvon is a very talented individual and has done many other amazing works for us. If any of [your] readers are fans of the Black & White games, as well as Unova as a region, we implore them to check out the wonderful 'A Dream of Your Own: The Formulas of Unova—Black & White' mega-essay article – this is an incredible in-depth tribute to the Black and White games!
Additionally, one of our former Administrators, Went, crafted a beautiful article discussing the evolution of Gen II maps titled 'A tale of three Johtos: the evolution of the Gen II maps'. It's very thorough and has a lot of detailed information Johto region fans may enjoy.
Lastly, for some great reads for those interested in deep dives on Pokémon background and lore, I highly recommend the following three articles:
icycatelf's 'Deep Dive: Why Sneasel is a cat': This article, as the title implies, discusses the feline-like Pokémon Sneasel and why it may be based on a cat.
bobandbill's 'The lore behind all the Hisuian Pokémon in Legends: Arceus': This article discusses the background of all the Hisuian Pokémon, including their potential origins with listed references. A lot of research went into crafting this.
And lastly, in a similar vein, we also have 'Umbreon's toxic origins', also written by bobandbill - this article discusses how Umbreon was initially meant to be a Poison type, and has some really interesting information to share that not everyone may have been aware of. Feel free to check it out!
PokéCommunity runs annual "Get-Together" events, which originally began in 2009 and are held on the forum during the summer time. How did the idea for these events first begin?
Sheep:
In the beginning, staff created the Get-Togethers to try and 'push the envelope' to see how many users we could get to be online at the same time. It was surprisingly successful; random members saw the announcements and joined in a heavily-advertised thread and conversed. After that, the second and third threads, which happened within the space of a year or two since the first, weren't as popular (as well as one failed attempt by a non-staff member), but some moderator at the time felt it quickly lost any real steam.
After that, one of moderators, Hiroshi Sotomura (now an Administrator), in conversation with other mods, figured we should try the concept again for the fourth event, and we got the current event-based structure out of it – what ideas from each section of PC could we pull that would be fun and put together into a major event? After some consensus and heavy advertising across the site, as well as emails, we managed to relaunch the 4th Get-Together and amassed a record number of online users participating in each event. Since then, our Get-Togethers have been an important annual event that many people continue to look forward to!
For those who haven’t been involved with a Get-Together event, what can users expect out of them?
Sheep:
Our Get-Togethers are one of the most iconic parts of the site, and we put a lot of thought into planning them each year!
To sum up, the Get-Togethers are yearly events where users are assigned to a team and participate in multiple community events – this varies from writing competitions, to puzzles, to music guessing games, and even an event where users pick one Egg from their Pokémon game to swap around with other users. At the end of this Egg Swap event, we all hatch our Eggs to see what we ended up with!
It's very entertaining, and there is something for everyone to participate in depending on their interests. Each assigned team often has its own channel on the Discord server, where they can discuss the games with other team members. The GT is generally a competitive event, but also very light-hearted and fun! We recently released an updated badge system to the forum as well, so future Get-Togethers will have their own unique badge rewards for participation (and potentially winning certain events), too!
Running a community can be hard work, and one as large as PokéCommunity is no exception. What are some of the challenges you have faced in running the community, and how have you overcome them?
Sheep:
Our migration from our previous forum software, vBulletin, to our current one, XenForo, immediately comes up as one of the most challenging experiences I've faced. The complexity of a migration process like this one isn't something most people think about, but it was especially difficult for a community like ours due to the amount of custom-coded content we had on the site. One of our most important features – post flairs (where users can customize their postbit in a variety of different ways) – required a complete redo given the new software, which took our developer quite a while to complete. Multiple other features required similar work, on top of the many other tests we had to do to ensure all user content would migrate without issue. It took many, many months of planning, and a lot of stress on me, before we finally did the migration, and being honest, I was worried we wouldn't be able to at many points given the complexity of the work involved.
This whole situation required a lot of planning on my part, as well as coordination with our developer on timelines and issues, both expected and unexpected. I fortunately was able to dedicate a lot of time to make this process possible, but it wouldn't have happened without the help of our amazing staff who helped test things and ask questions regarding certain features I may not have immediately thought of.
What have been some of your highlights and fondest memories of running PokéCommunity so far?
Sheep:
The many things I've learned – and continue to learn – along the way are at the absolute forefront. :) Being webmaster, I have to engage with a lot of different things; it could be to make a banner/graphic, to make a post on our social platforms, create a write-up for a major announcement, or even tinker with some code on the back-end. While I would not consider myself a master at all of these aspects, I have certainly become a lot better at a lot of them. Without PC, I would not have engaged much with some of these things, and I'm thankful to come out with this extra experience. It's hard not to see this as the definite highlight!
And it might not directly be related to running the community itself, but meeting my amazing friends definitely is the most prominent highlight! I met some of my closest friends on the forum, and we still talk regularly today. I also met my husband here on PC, which is something a lot of people don't realize!
I'm so thankful for all of these experiences as they really, really helped me grow as a person.
Many Pokémon forums that existed around the time of PC’s creation have since disappeared. What do you believe is the secret to PokéCommunity’s longevity?
Sheep:
The creativity of the community is definitely a major aspect, with many of our users being so incredibly talented in this regard. Users either come here to make use of their creative talents or, alternatively, join to learn! We've amassed a lot of users who initially joined and stayed for the creative aspects, which includes learning how to code fan games, draw, and write among other things. The fan games in particular are a very beloved aspect of the community that keeps people coming back. We're really thankful users continue to return and showcase their talents here, even after all these years!
One of my biggest goals for Johto Times is the documentation and preservation of Pokémon and its fan community. PokéCommunity has a long history, with a significant amount of content showing the creativity and culture of Pokémon fans. As we touched on earlier, many Pokémon forums have disappeared over the years. What steps are you and the team taking to archive the community, to ensure that the Pokémon fan community never loses this content?
Sheep:
If we ever have to close down the website, we have plans to keep it up in an [archived] mode so the myriad of information that has been accumulating over the last 20 years can continue to be accessed. Although we can't promise this is guaranteed to happen depending on the reason we have to go offline, we will do our best to ensure it can so nothing can be lost! There is so much history in the site, and we would absolutely hate to lose it, not just for us as staff, but for everyone else as well who finds value in all the information and fandom history.
Of course, we make sure to run frequent backups so our content can remain accessible and restorable if anything were to happen!
I always like to learn what kinds of Pokémon-related items and merchandise our guests hold dear. What are some of yours that you can share with us?
Sheep:
Being big Pokémon fans, my husband and I attended a quick gaming meet-up a few years ago! It was there that we had a little workshop to craft Pokémon terrariums, and we were provided with cheap, third-party merchandise to use for this. The final product was admittedly not great, and the items used were clearly a bit cheap, but we found these terrariums to be a cute and fun memory of our first few years living in Australia together. Even if the figurines are a little frightening!
I also have two adorable Wooloo plushies that are some of my favorite pieces of merchandise ever. They're not massively old - Wooloo itself isn't, after all - but they sit at my desk and remind me every day of how cute they are.
I personally joined the community in 2003, and it is wonderful to see that it is still active and thriving. As a member, I am curious to know what the future holds for the community. What are your hopes and aspirations for PokéCommunity moving forward?
Sheep:
We'd like to continue staying modern and evolving with the times, especially now that we're using more modern forum software! I'd like for us to bring back many of the forum themes we sadly had to lose upon our transition from vBulletin to XenForo, so users of those old themes can get to enjoy them again. This is one of my biggest wishes currently, though as we are working on an upgrade to XenForo 2.3, we cannot actively work on new styles right now until that upgrade is complete. But I absolutely cannot wait for that moment!
I am also hoping to bring a little more excitement to posting. While we do have more 'rewards' now for achieving certain post milestones, a lot more can be done and it's something I'll actively be investigating upon completion of our upgrade. This involves having an on-site 'shop' added that will allow users to purchase little 'trinkets'/'items' with points earned via various methods – such as posting, for example. I don't have the exact details yet, but being on forum software that allows for the installation and creation of add-ons opens the door for a lot of creative possibilities for us that weren't possible before.
Sheep, I truly appreciate you taking the time to speak to me about PokéCommunity and sharing some information about its history. I have enjoyed seeing it grow over the years. Before we end this, do you have any closing comments you would like to make to Johto Times readers and to those who have visited PokéCommunity throughout the years?
Sheep:
I really want to thank everyone that has ever visited the site, be it one time or many! Every single visit has been a contributing factor to our growth over these last two decades, and we couldn't have done it without every single one of you. For those that have shared their creative projects with us at any point: thank you for trusting us to showcase your work for you, and for being an inspiration for so many others to do the same.
And of course, thank you to Johto Times for being an incredible resource for Pokémon fans that we truly want to see succeed. Without you, it would have been a lot more difficult to learn about the fandom and the wonderful people behind so many amazing individual communities!
I am highly thankful to Sheep and the PokéCommunity team for their help in providing answers to my questions. As one of the largest and longest-running Pokémon forums that is still active to this day, I wish Sheep and the team all the very best of luck for its future and hope that it will continue to be a place where fans can come together to share their passion and creativity for Pokémon.
Interview conducted on: May 18th, 2025
Interview published on: July 17th, 2025
I remember being an active user of PokeCommunity many years ago. I haven't visited in a while though.