How to Not Be a Dipshit on PS!
Disclaimer: I am just a bitter old man nineteen year-old. What I say here are just my personal views (although I'm pretty sure most of the staff agrees with most of these points; they're just way more polite). We wuv you. Unless you're an asshole.
- If staff is on away, it is for a goddamn reason.
- If I'm on away, it's because I don't want to deal with the hassle of being challenged by every user and their mother. SPECIFICALLY YOU. If I'm on away, that doesn't mean I "probably" don't want to battle you, it means I DEFINITELY DON'T. So don't PM me asking, "hey, want to battle?" because if you had any sort of deductive reasoning skills, you'd realize the obvious answer the first time PS! informed you I wasn't taking challenges and that you, randomuser23xslasher, were not going to be the exception to the rule.
- No one gives a shit about your replays.
- No, seriously. I mean it.
- Quit bitching about forfeiting.
- Seriously, what is it with you people and this? It's baffling. It's not like you don't get points if they forfeit, and it's not like you can't just immediately click the find battle button again if you weren't satisfied with the game's length. And yet somehow some of you people treat it like the gravest offense possible. To give you an idea of how stupid people are when it comes to this, I've had people request that others be banned for forfeiting.
- Don't bitch about legendaries.
- I don't know why so many people on PS! still have the mentality that legendary Pokémon are automatically overpowered. What, are you getting steamrolled by Articuno or something? If we were still enforcing COPPA bans, I'd seriously consider banning for statements like "legends are op," because I really doubt anyone over the age of twelve can still have that mentality.
- Gym leaders are just randoms with the phrase "gym leader" in their name.
- They don't have actual badges, and they aren't recognized by PS! at all. If you want to challenge them or run their gauntlet or whatever, then cool, fine, but don't expect anything from it. Same goes for "Elite Four", "Champion", etc. Also, they tend to suck.
- Most of you don't know shit about tiering, so keep your opinions about what's overpowered to yourself.
- Maybe 10% of PS! users have valid opinions on what constitutes a broken Pokémon. The rest of them have no idea what they're talking about. "Heatran is overpowered," "ban Dragonite," "ban Jirachi," and "Lugia should be tested in OU," are all real things I have seen people say in PS!'s chat, and things like this aren't exactly rare occurrences. If you've never even qualified for a suspect test before (hint: not hard), please don't try to argue about this, because you're likely out of your depth. Sorry if that sounds elitist, but when you've been sim authority for as long as I have, you need to keep a certain amount of elitism or the utter asininity and lack of common sense in Pokémon chats will fray away at your sanity.
- Stop using / me for poor role-playing.
- It's not funny or endearing.
- 90% of the time it's not a hacker. You just don't know game mechanics.
- You'd be amazed at how often we get called into battles because someone is "hacking", when most of the time it's just people not understanding how moves like Dragon Dance or phazing moves work. If you don't understand how something happened in a battle, do some research first. Carefully look over the battle log and Google any and every move you think might have had an impact on the turn in question. Occasionally people just miss details, like accidentally Baton Passing an Icy Wind Speed drop with Celebi and consequently getting outsped by something that "shouldn't" outspeed you. Sometimes it is actually a glitch, but not often; glitches tend to be things like a randbat set only having three moves; generally our mechanics work just fine.
- If I don't know you, I'm not your bro.
- Don't expect me to unlock you if I didn't lock you.
- There's a general rule of thumb in staff that we don't overturn each others' moderation. So if you know who locked you or whatever, just talk to them. NOT ME. Either they know the situation better and can make a more sound judgment on it, or you've already tried talking to them and they decided you should stay locked, in which case you're trying to actively subvert them and I'm sure as hell not going to unlock you if that's the case. (It's like some of you guys just don't get how easy it is for staff to communicate and find out if you're lying about that sort of thing.). So just PM the staff member who actually already knows the situation.
- Unless you don't know who locked you, in which case feel free to ask me so I can check the modlog and redirect you to the appropriate party. And if they're offline? Sorry, but tough shit: you're just going to have to wait until the next time they're on unless you have some really compelling evidence towards your innocence.
- Get to the point please.
- If you need to ask a mod or admin something, just ask them it. "Can I ask you a question?" Gee I dunno, YOU KIND OF JUST DID. We're not going to bite your head off (contrary to the tone of this article). If you need our help, don't beat around the bush. Just ask us (as long as we're the relevant party).
- Don't try to plug your YouTube channel.
- Firstly, anyone on Smogon should learn pretty quickly that no one takes any non-VGC Pokémon YouTube activity outside of Smogon's own seriously, with the few rare exceptions. We definitely don't care about random people's YouTube channels, and trust me, you're not going to make it big by advertising on Pokémon Showdown!. That's not even mentioning that signature intro that you staple to every video that I haven't seen yet, but I'd be willing to bet hard cash it's ass and probably involves Shadow the Hedgehog.
- And again, who the hell is shofu?