Board 8 Ranks Pokemon

Board 8 Ranks Pokemon is a meta-project with the goal of getting an accurate representation of Board 8's tastes in Pokemon.

This project was partially inspired by junk's "Most Excellent Pokemon Contest", which was criticized for meta voting and questionable rules for each round. starfox2245 and others discussed more accurate ways of determining what Board 8's favorite Pokemon are, which led to the idea of having each user rank every Pokemon.

Since there were over 700 Pokemon, they had to be divided up into their gens for this project to actually be feasible. For each gen, Board 8 users would submit lists that rank every Pokemon from 1 to X, where X is the number of Pokemon in that gen. The Pokemon at #1 is that user's favorite Pokemon of that gen, while the biggest number corresponds to their most hated. The host then adds up all of the lists to create a master list, which is once again from 1 to X. The #1 Pokemon is the board's favorite Pokemon, and so on.

While this ranking process required quite a bit of time and thought from users (hopefully), and a lot of time from the host, the end result would ideally be much more accurate than other contests since it factors in love, hate, and even apathy. For example, Arcanine normally does great in other contests, but was only #14 in Gen 1 due to receiving lots of middling ranks.

In addition to ranking Pokemon, starfox and Steiner invited users to submit writeups on each Pokemon as well. A user could write no writeups whatsoever, 1 for every Pokemon, or anything in between. These were meant to be short, although some users would go on long stories about Pokemon they felt strongly about one way or the other.

starfox2245 created and hosted the first 4 generations, and opened list submissions for Gen V. However, perhaps due to the enormous amount of work that hosting this project demanded, starfox left GameFAQs and closed his account. He offered to send and explain his spreadsheet tools to someone who wanted to take over the project, and Steiner stepped up to the task.

Board 8 Ranks the Generation I Pokemon
starfox2245 hosted this project, and 41 users sent in lists.

Sadly, no one had thought of saving data on this gen on the Wiki. starfox2245 also seemed to avoid requests to repost the list for whatever reason. However, a few of the rankings are still common knowledge:

151 - Gloom

14 - Arcanine

1 - Squirtle

Board 8 Ranks the Generation II Pokemon
Main Article: Board 8 Ranks Generation II Pokemon

Board 8 Ranks the Generation III Pokemon
Main Article: Board 8 Ranks Generation III Pokemon

Board 8 Ranks the Generation IV Pokemon
Main Article: Board 8 Ranks Generation IV Pokemon

Board 8 Ranks the Generation V Pokemon
Main Article: Board 8 Ranks Generation V Pokemon

Future Plans
There should be a "Board 8 Ranks the Generation VI Pokemon" sometime after Gen V wraps up.

Someone suggested ranking Megas, and starfox seemed to like the idea. Steiner may have different thoughts on it.

After the individual gens are done, starfox wanted to do a Best of the Best ranking, which would include 100 Pokemon that were at the top of their respective gens. The number of Pokemon per gen was planned to be proportional to the total number of Pokemon in each gen; i.e. Gen I would have twice as many reps as Gen VI due to having twice as many Pokemon total, while Gens I and V would have roughly the same number of reps.

Nick's and Ermine's Pokecasts
Nick and Ermine made a series of podcasts for this project, where they discussed each Pokemon in the order they were ranked and discussed each gen's rankings in general. The first episode was released after Gen II, and looked back at that gen and forward to Gen III.

Pokecast Episode 1

Pokecast Episode 2.5

Pokecast Episode 4

Pokecast Episode 5

Pokecast Episode 6/7

Pokecast Episode 8

starfox's Outliers, Wickle's Stats, and Steiner's Spreadsheets
Every 10-20 rankings, starfox2245 (or later Steiner) would post outliers that showed how close each user's list was to the main list. The user with the lowest score (usually Mcflubbin) had the most conventional list, while the user with the highest score (usually lefty or Sanity) had the weirdest list.

Wickle posted various other stats during and after each gen, such as how many people still had their lowest ranked Pokemon not eliminated yet and so on. In Gen V, and with the help of Steiner, they created a spreadsheet that made this information more accessible.

Gen V Stats

Preston's and OrangeCrush's Copypasta
Preston copied the rankings and writeups for Gen II to the Wiki, along with a picture for each Pokemon. He also did the beginning of Gen III, but left Board 8 due to some issues. OrangeCrush took over for the rest of Gen III and beyond.

Users Who Submitted a List
Thanks for participating and making this a successful meta-project!

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