"Our Culture on the Road (and Where We're Going Next!) - A Few Words from the Silph Road Team"

#PokemonGO: Hey travelers,As Pokemon GO sits on the eve of its largest update, I wanted to share a few words in the calm before the storm. (Particularly because you may not see us for a little while as our mod team battles the inevitable avalanche of excitement about to hit /new!)The Silph Road is an amazing place. And I hope you've enjoyed your time spent with us as much as I have.Many of the newer faces among us may not know this, but the Road was first envisioned on a cold winter weekend 6 months before the game even launched. We had a dream - to create a place with 3 specific purposes in mind:To build a global network of geolocation players, connected by a worldwide system that operates down to the local neighborhood level. (Initially this included trading!)To create a board for friendly, optimistic, constructive, deeper discussion and analysis of the game and genre - free of venting, whining, rudeness, snark, and cynicism!To help illuminate the greater GO community's understanding of the game - including helping newbies find answers to their (sometimes simple or repetitive) questions!While we'll have more news about that first one very soon (!) #2 and #3 have been a phenomenal success in our eyes.Our Culture on the RoadShortly, we'll see another major feature launch in Pokemon GO. (One we're beyond excited to see!)Every time a major feature is added to the game we love, some will be ecstatic and others will be disappointed. There are many perfectly valid frustrations with this game. But I want to remind our new travelers that these boards are a place we specifically created to keep an optimistic and non-cynical tone.The reality of online anonymous forums is this: cynicism breeds cynicism, snark, and unconstructive venting. In that environment, positivity and camaraderie too often flee and won't co-exist. That's why these boards have long been maintained as a drama-free place to enjoy the game and learn - not vent!This limited content focus has helped the Silph Road remain an awesome place to come learn - through the highs and lows, in peacetime and wartime.Niantic games are a journey, and there are many bumps along the way. But here on the Road, we're here for the long haul. We're excited about what's coming with this update, and with the many future updates in the coming seasons!What's Next for the Silph Road?Firstly, take a gander at the Atlas. We've just finished migrating from raster to vector map tiles to reduce our bandwidth and mobile data footprint, and also so we could do awesome things like bordering potential nests in orange!Many of our sharp-eyed travelers have observed that our sidebar timeline lists 'local centers' coming to the Silph Road.It's true.We'll soon be adding local coordination centers into every small town, big city neighborhood, and across population centers around the world via a global map. We've devised some (pretty awesome) ways to accomplish this, and our hope is that this helps to connect folks who don't have a strong local community in-place yet. Soon, anywhere you travel in the world will have a coordination point to hook into the local scene of legitimate players!We'll be sharing more information about this resource very soon - but it's worth getting excited about. :)Parting WordsI hope you've enjoyed your time on the Road, travelers.The Silph Road team has full-time 'real' jobs, families and spouses, and other pressures. But we still work extremely hard to bring solid resources and community to the Pokemon GO world.Please help us keep our hard-earned culture of friendly helpfulness, camaraderie, and optimism while we study and learn here.The Road is a special thing - and we'll be working our hardest to keep it that way - but your help is invaluable, travelers. Help report content that falls outside our guidelines, or rudeness/snark that doesn't belong here. Upvote well-reasoned, constructive discussion or honest questions in the comments.We have thousands of new faces - many of which are new to Reddit itself (welcome!). Not all our travelers know about the search bar (which is admittedly pretty bad at its job anyway) and many don't spend all day on our boards like our veterans do. Repeat questions are fine - simply answer, then report and our mod team will remove it once answered.Finally, a big thank you to all the friendly folks who answer questions and politely report duplicates in /new. You help make the Road a better place.Now. Back to hitting refresh. ;)Travel safe,- Executive Dronpes - via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2tTg3mw