Rant #1: Face-Offs
The Serebiiforums (linked to on the sidebar) have a section called "Face-Offs". It houses various voting polls about the most popular Pokémon, best-looking character, best type, etc. Most have a certain theme. There is for example a Gym Leader Face-Off, a Shiny Face-Off, and an Attack Face-Off.
One thing bothers me in the Face-Offs. There is a thing called "Anti-Kantoism" and it is basically people who have seen how popular the Kanto Pokémon are in all the Face-Offs and think, "It's unfair that Kanto is so popular, I'm going to vote against it." In its time, Anti-Kantoism was basically a huge organization within the Face-Offs - I haven't seen as much of it recently in signatures and such, but the spirit is still there. All of those people would in every case, if the vote was between a Kanto Pokémon and a Johto or Hoenn Pokémon, vote against the Kanto one.
Why does this irk me? Well, firstly, it means that your votes stop being votes for a Pokémon and become votes against a Pokémon instead. Secondly, you are no longer voting for the Pokémon - you are voting for the Pokémon's generation. When faced with two Pokémon you couldn't care less about, you pick one only because it happens to be originated in Johto or Hoenn. It's bad enough when people in the Shiny Face-Off vote for a Pokémon because they think it's strong, completely irrelevant of the shiny colors, but this is just deliberately making the results of the Face-Offs inaccurate. What do you expect to find out at the end of a Face-Off? They are popular voting polls - the result is supposed to show which shiny, Gym Leader, attack or whatever is most popular.
But what about when a group of people gangs up on the real most popular ones and vote against them in every situation they can? It simply makes the result inaccurate. That's all you're achieving. And before you stand up and whine about how all the n00bs just vote for Kanto and Charizard and their votes shouldn't count, I like both Kanto and Charizard for my own personal reasons and do not believe that this makes my votes in Face-Offs less valid.
I've also noticed in Face-Off threads a lot of general disrespect for others' opinions, especially concerning Kanto and Charizard. Somebody in a Charizard versus Typhlosion Face-Off said, "Charizard has a movepool as shallow as the people who voted for him." Say, I like Charizard because I loved the one on my Yellow version. I cried when my relative deleted my Yellow save. Meanwhile, you dislike Charizard because... what? It has a bad movepool? Which of us is the shallow one? -_-;
Charizard isn't a Pokémon for n00bs. Kanto isn't a region for n00bs. Stop the mindless bashing and fanatical leagues against the popular. Face-Offs ARE about what is the most popular, whether you like it or not.
Questions? Comments? Protests? Just PM me over at the forums.