basically this, it's a long story but probably everyone who cares to know already knows it.
I was pretty well-known around the RMT forum in 4th gen even though i was still in that "OU is too easy i play with my favorite stuff" phase, or, at least I'd like to think so. I know there were a couple people who asked about me when I started to get less active, including the world's second biggest Mismagius fan (that I worked together with on a thread about roles and ended up being friends with (it got added to the reference sticky!)).
Interestingly I was there for much less time than I was on Serebii beforehand (we're talking when I was like 10-11), but ended up with literally ten times as many posts lol. I actually think I stopped at exactly 1000.
tl;dr it was a pretty positive experience for me, even though it was forever ago; so I don't really know what it's like now