"Welcome to the Silph Road! Here's what you need to know about this community."

#PokemonGO: Welcome travelers!Seeing as the Silph Road is trending today, and we've seen tens of thousands of new subscribers in the past weeks, we wanted to give a warm welcome to the new faces! And also give an overview of the Silph Road so you can get up to speed.What is /r/TheSilphRoad?The Silph Road is primarily focused on constructing an in-person network of Pokemon GO enthusiasts. The Silph web app (launching soon) will offer geolocated, local centers for the Road community. At these local headquarters, you will be able to request backup taking out a gym, meet new faces, learn local spawning anomalies/nests, check out the Traveler card of a username you see on a gym, and (when trading is launched) see everything for trade in the neighborhood.Anywhere you travel to in the world will have a friendly, local Silph Road community to help you learn about Pokemon nests nearby or trade a bunch of local species!And should there be a need for cross-continent trading (perhaps when the remaining 500 species are launched, for example) then the Road's network will enable long-distance, multi-step trades similar to a FedEx system of shipping!Silph Road Content PolicyFor many months, our subreddit has been a hub for the Road's development plans/updates and a place for deeper discussion about the game in general. We remove photo posts (e.g. "Look what I just caught") and frequently asked beginner questions.If you have questions about Pokemon GO basics, check our sidebar search! We have a wealth of information available in historical posts here. Or, if you'd prefer to get an answer to your specific question, click the Discord link in our sidebar and head to the #boot_camp channel - where helpful travelers are standing by to answer questions.The Silph Road is heavily moderated to promote civility/courtesy, and high-quality content and discussion. You can read our full policies in the sidebar, but don't be surprised if a comment is removed for being rude to another traveler (or a mod)! We are first and foremost a network of real people, not "internet experts" and this network is being built by volunteers!The CommunityThe community has stepped up to construct this network in a big way. We have a leadership structure in place all over the world. Our backend infrastructure is being improved by world-class experts, and the many developers in the community are always eager to help.The culture of our subreddit over the months has been a real outlier on Reddit. Folks have been courteous and friendly here. With the new influx of subscribers and PokeFans, we want to encourage our newest travelers to help us keep the culture on the Road one of friendly, constructive dialogue.ResearchThe Silph web app has collected a vast amount of sighting reports. Learn more about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4PDm_TIqvsThe community culture here also attracts the more analytically-minded element of Pokemon GO. Consequently, the Silph Research group was formed to align this brainpower and leverage the massive Silph datasets that the community can gather. We post our findings in infographics, videos, and walls of text on Reddit. Our most recent research output was a video on combat, currently on our front page!Access Codes to the Web App?Stay tuned to the subreddit over the next 24 hours when we'll drop big group of access codes, travelers. We've been busy beefing up our servers, and (now that we're a trending sub today) we need to beef up even more!Final wordsFinally, welcome once more! We're glad to have you join us in helping to grow the Road's reach. The Road is fast becoming a massive network. We have an opportunity to become something rather unique, and add a layer of community to the GO experience that can only make things better.See you on the Road!- The Silph Executives - via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2aqPTPM