PSA: Type Race threads are NOT for trading.

Perhaps a better wording would be "loaning Pokemon for the purpose of breeding during the Type Race." That said, we also draw a difference between the loan of one or two Pokemon for the length of the Type Race, and the permanent trade or gift of a Pokemon in order to form a permanent breeding pair that the player will continue to benefit from after the Type Race is over. Asking for a Pokemon to keep, free or not, isn't a problem IF the other player has already offered to give away Pokemon for that purpose, but why is PMing the player to take them up on their offer not the go-to method for players, instead of posting in the Type Race thread? A private trade like that just... isn't the business of all the other players in the thread?

probably because the idea is, if i publicly state im asking for the pokemon, others know its taken. rather than the person getting multiple pms and having to PM each person back, one comment reply going "oh ill take it" and everyone else knows its gone. if that makes sense. basically i think it is the buisness because its an offer to all the other players on the thread, so its their buisness to know when its gone. the person can edit it, but thats after they pm everyone whos already asked. imo its just cleaner

Thanks for the clarification on the lending rule. WondrlandInSpace has already basically said what my answer was going to be to the PMing thing, but to add to it, which sounds more beneficial to a person? PMing literally everyone on their team for help or putting a singular post on the Type Race thread asking for help? I know which takes less time and would feel less annoying (and awkward if multiple people say yes before you can say in time that someone else said yes). Edit: Realized there's also "check teammates' free fields to see if they have the mon" but that is another case of people trying to save time compared to looking at the fields of all their teammates just to see if someone has the thing they need where a simple question can potentially get it done faster.

I also believe that a large amount of confusion/opposition is coming from the fact that we're allowed to offer to lend out our pre-existing pairs in a type race thread, but not to give away or ask for extra pokemon to make our own pairs with. By the exact letter of the rules definition of trading/begging, it makes sense, but by the "spirit" of the rules, they're all "trade agreements" made to help your teammates to breed more eggs, fill the shelter, hatch more pokemon and score more points. As I mentioned before, it's also very confusing to me that the very-functionally-similar Shelter Passes and Egg Supplier Passes are treated differently, with one being an exception and one not. The suggestion I made to allow Supplier Pass lending in TR threads has gathered an astounding amount of support, with 71(!!!!) upvotes and counting, so I know I'm definitely not alone in feeling this way <3 EDIT: Genuinely, thank you so much for the clarification. And if I could ask for a little bit more clarification: would posts along the lines of "I have free regular [x]-type Pokemon to help you make pairs with, please PM me for them" be allowed in type race threads, or would that be considered a better fit for the trades forum? Asking because the only "exception" in the rules only mentions shiny/albino Pokemon, and not your run-of-the-mill regular pokemon for breeding pairs.

While that makes some sense for unique Pokemon like specials, established breeding pairs or shelter passes, it wouldn't encompass giveaways of the spare Pokemon they're presumably hatching in droves. Someone earlier suggested maintaining a single post with offers that the leader could link to in the first post and update when things were out on loan and therefore unavailable. That makes a lot of sense to me. A lot easier than seeing someone post that they were offering a star pass for loan and needing to check the next couple pages of posts to make sure no one took them up on it. ...it really doesn't help that PFQ forums unfortunately weren't designed for the type of high-traffic, multi-purpose threads that Type Race threads have turned out to be. @skiddo: Players aren't forbidden to offer to give away free Pokemon. The limit is posting the offer once per Type Race thread, because before limits were put into place there were players making the same offering posts every few pages.

@Methos Thank you for this clarification, it's much appreciated. I will continue to keep my thread updated with what is loaned out in the main post to the best of my ability.

I did something similar to this last type race - I ended up expanding the "breeding pair lending" section to a full-on "freebies" section for breeding pair and ditto lending, shelter pass lending, users offering free regular pokemon or pair-making help, and even shiny/albino giveaways. Would this be allowed, or encouraged, in the future? What would be the case if there were two separate offers? Eg, someone offering free regular Pokemon before the TR begins for pairmaking, and then also offering whatever shinies/albinos they hatch during the TR to teammates at the end? Would it be the case that a player could only make one of these offers? Would it be the case that both offers would have to be made in the same post, so any extra offers would need to be edited in? Asking for clarification for my dumb butt.

Maybe it's just me, but seeing all these workarounds, extra threads, and unnecessary work that would have to go into replacing a quick post in the main thread seems like micromanagement and too much hands on work by the TR leader and the people wanting to give things away/help with breeding pairs. Takes all the fun out of being a community. edit I think it should just be left to reasonability. The TR leader should be allowed the freedom to run their thread how they see fit, monitoring it for unrelated sales, spam, etc. If there are too many posts about hatched specials that are taking over the thread, they can post a reminder to tone it down. Or they can post their own guidelines before the TR starts. If someone posts something unrelated to TR, they can report it to the mods. But it's up to them. If it is just building pairs of the same type as the TR, it's up to them and those in the team.

For the first part, if the post includes instructions to PM the player instead of posting in the thread, and does not include sales for profit offers, it's 100% within the current rules. For the 2nd, my understanding is that it's a post per type of offer, though it's not something that comes up all that often. Players should not make two posts giving away shiny/albino Pokemon, for example, but I don't believe one post giving away shinies/albinos and one post loaning out a shelter pass has ever been penalized.

if part of the overall issue is high traffic to TR threads... it might be worth revamping how hatched specials, loaning pairs etc are handled... i've noticed a lot of people talking ab how individual posts about hatched specials feel "spammy" so i feel that it might make more sense in future TR threads to have each person participating on the team to have a messsage where they go back and edit hatched specials for the race. I know a lot of team leaders like to keep track of them though so idk if it would really end up solving a lot but it might limit the traffic to threads because there wont be multiple posts in that regard.. i personally would really like TR threads to be able to be used for all things TR regardless of whether it "belongs" or not because being able to claim a special offered from a teammate on the thread is more transparent than like others have stated, pming the individual offering.. and it would get tricky with permanent pokemon placement but if its done in a TR thread that is going to get deleted why.. would it matter that much in the long run? it should be more about comfortablility of the userbase than "organization" from a moderation standpoint if the posts are all pertaining to TR. again, everyone in this thread appreciates everything the mod team does and strives to do. i think we all just are a bit frustrated because this feels more aimed at stiffling communication on the site rather than bolstering a community event