Full disclosure: I'm on PokeBeach's staff.
Let's wait and see if he keeps his word this time.
"This time"? When did he ever say he wasn't going to post prerelease scans anymore and then went back and did it? Ummm.... never.
gotta love the slaps at not only the PTOs, but the 'gym and team compendium...=/
Would you explain how his post could in any way be interpreted as a slap to the PTOs and whomever else? Because it seemed to me the
whole point of the post was to apologize to those people. I really do not see how it could be interpreted any other way. He made some mistakes along the way and he's trying to let people see what he did wrong and why he was wrong. This kind of post is unhealthy.
cynical me is cynical: with the coming world-wide simultaneous release of X and Y, i'm guessing he fears he won't be the big source of news from japan anymore...so he's trying to get back into OP's good graces to keep his info streams from drying up. jmho....
Believe me, the site grows more and more each day. I hardly doubt WPM is worried about hits as much as you people would like to believe. During the X/Y announcement I believe the main page got around 20 million hits.
WPM has been actively talking to his higher staff about stopping prerelease scans for at least a year now. I know he has also talked to an admin here (at pokegym) about it since the summer and that for the last set he refused to use any scans from any of the sources that usually send them to him. This has been a long time coming. PokeBeach is going through some drastic changes this coming year and it's pretty clear he's been carrying this guilt with him for a while now and wanted to address it before then. When he told our staff about this a year or so ago a lot of them were against it, but we all knew he didn't care what we thought in this instance and was going to do what he thought was right.
My first thought, reading through the essay was, "and he miraculously rolled over one day and decided not to upload prerelease scans?" It really didn't feel believable for him to have changed his mind on the matter, because he's never shown any signs of feeling bad for doing it.
Funny, I thought people might think this when I read it too. This has just been a long time coming for him and I don't think there really is a single point he can acknowledge for his change of heart. He spent many a night up talking about it with us. His essay does make it seem a little too "I used to think like this" and "now I think like this", with nothing really in the middle. But I think that's really the only way to communicate to his audiences why he did what he did and why he was wrong. If he wanted to REALLY explain things, I'm sure his post would be 3x as long, and no one wants that... He's not writing a book here.
I know he talked to someone from TCPI at regionals this past weekend for a tiny bit, but I don't know if that had anything to do with his deciding to stop it with this set. Maybe because it introduces plasma stuff and it would be something exciting for the kids? Who freakin' knows. The point is, he's been wanting to stop for a long time.
It's especially strange because of this, uploaded not 3 months ago, and then replaced...
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mclw2sSRrv1ri4y2do2_500.jpg
All of the pre-release scans get replaced after a few weeks when we get our higher quality versions in. That is so not new.
If it wasn't already clearly established that he's burned bridges, then this would be a good place to assume to be the "point of no return..."
I think you guys take things way, way too seriously here. WPM is like Yoda when it comes to his personality. Sometimes he's fun loving and jokes around, sometimes he is dead serious and passionate. I'll admit that sometimes it's hard to tell. With that scan, it was pretty obvious to me and many of our forum visitors that he was just joking around. That's why the scan is kinda exaggerated. Even if he wasn't joking around, it's a valid point of discussion that he's bringing up that many people often bring up. So I don't see the problem. WPM said something similar to what you're discussing here in his essay of sorts. Why are you blaming WPM for calling out what the company has just done, but not blaming the company? Are the fans not allowed to point out what the company is doing wrong? Are they supposed to be silent and la de dah, everything is great? I don't think that's how the real world works. The prereleases had already taken place for that set too in Singapore, so WPM also had every right to post that edited scans and make that call.
Also I just wanted to say that I know WPM fairly well. He is a pretty open book. But all I ever see are other people posting petty stuff about him, or what they've heard, or guessing games. I've also seen a lot of small things said about him evolve and become a whole monster of their own. Many times these silly rumors come back to the site and me, and then I have a huge "LOL" moment. WPM said that one time at Nats he had said something to the effect of "I feel drunk" when he was tired (and this is someone who never has had a drop), and a year later on our forums we saw someone mentioning how WPM was partying hardcore at a Nats party (which is such a hilarious image since that's not him at all). People misremember things all the time, hate clouds our perception, and bad opinions take on a life of their own over time. I'm hoping that if you guys want to actually learn about WPM (you guys being the TOs or whoever), you actually talk to WPM. I know he has reached out to a few of you many times.