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Interview OGLEMI

You're probably in the top 3 of most important users; has it affected you IRL? (Like, are you authoritative IRL as well, always leading and taking charge?) Were you a leader already, and did this reflect on smogon as well, or was it vice versa, i.e. you became leader here and this reflected IRL? — SparksBlade

I am most definitely not in the top 3 most important users of the site lol (off the top of my head chaos, DJD, and X-Act have me beat by a mile), but if anything, it's flattering you think so. Without gloating I may be in the top 3 via sheer contribution volume, but beyond that, I'm simply someone who cares about the site (for who knows what reason) and have striven to get the site to a place where I feel people can continue to contribute, play, and socialize in as harmonious a setting as possible.

But yes, the time I've spent on the site has indeed affected me IRL. When I first became a staff member here, I was an extremely quiet and shy person IRL; I even spent the first month or so in the dorms almost completely isolated from the rest of my floor, focusing purely on my classes. After a while, I decided that I would do two things: use Smogon as a kind of testing ground for pushing myself in a leadership role (i.e. try to make changes where I saw there should be some made, participate in discussions that affected the direction of the site as a whole), and make greater strides to open up IRL and make new friends / get to know people / not be a "floor ninja" as we called them in the dorms.

Since then, I got accepted into the teaching program at the UW, and I felt that I was a much more confident person, was much more sociable, had a lot of friends, and was comfortable teaching kids as an adult figure. I ended up dropping out of the teaching program, though for completely unrelated reasons, but I do feel that my time spent on Smogon was well spent, as it helped me be far more articulate when it came to my writing skills (which helped during the initial application process) and gave me a far different view on what it would be like to be a teacher in a classroom rather than the student, which helped me relate more than I think other teachers might have.

Do you guys care about OM at all? — Brawl MK

I mean, I don't personally participate in any OM at all, simply because I don't play the game a ton anymore. I do play randbats pretty frequently and will hit the ladder for RU or one of the other tiers if a suspect test is happening and I have the time, and I'll play in various silly tournaments (or the lower tier leagues like UUPL and anytime anyone wants to play ADV NU / DPP NU / DPP UU). But I simply don't play our standard tiers very much, and because of that I just don't feel like playing a metagame that usually has a twist on our standard metagame.

But I respect the work Eevee General and the other guys do in the forum and where they've taken various different projects and metagames, such as our OM C&C, so I guess I would say I care about OMs and the communities thriving; it's just one of the few sections of the site that I just don't even look at very often.

Does anyone get paid around here or is all this volunteer work? — DaSpoofy

All volunteer. chaos (and I think Zarel) does get ad money, but that goes towards maintaining the site (and sim).

What happened to Great Sage? — LilOu

Long story short, Great Sage wanted to split the site from chaos with the help of Cathy, he made some convincing arguments and had quite a few "higher-ups" on board with the idea, he ended up making an ass of himself (to put it lightly), Cathy too, his plans fell through, and he was ousted from the community. While I agreed with some to most of his ideas for wanting to split, he wasn't very personable nor a good leader to follow, and he, in his own words, wanted to "kill Smogon and its whole community(/culture)," which ended up biting him in the ass, and then his "letter to chaos" was leaked, which just made him look like a fool, and I didn't agree with a lot that that letter had to say.

When will you have the most posts on this site? — Brawl MK

Probably soon if I keep my current pace, lol. The thing is, while I have made an xk post pretty much every time I've hit a milestone, the # of posts I have means almost nothing to me, nor do I feel they're a marker of a person's contributions on the site in any real manner beyond "huh this person sure does post a lot / not at all." This is why you'll see me double or triple post in situations where I feel that just editing would not be effective or appropriate. How I got this many is simply because I contribute to or post in a LOT of different parts of the site now, so there tends to be a topic or two in every forum or subforum that I'll give a post or two to, particularly the various staff forums.

When was last time you went on the ladder in any tier? — Ksh13

A few weeks ago when I hit the RU ladder a bit to see why Dugtrio had such low usage in the last month's usage stats, determining that not only was Dugtrio horribly underused in the tier, it was also ranked too lowly on the viability rankings, and demanded they move it up to A.

I also hit the randbats ladder tonight and have been most every other night or so for the past month. I'm not as addicted to it as I was when I wrote my last article on it, but I do still play it pretty frequently.

What is the funniest thread you've had to delete? — Brawl MK

We had a spammer once who would make his threads look like legit threads and it'd end up just being a dickspin gif. The titles got creative after a while, though I can't really recall any in particular, since it's been a few years; I just remember laughing at people linking them in #dreamworld and basically having wars with this spammer.

If you were picking a person for a staff position, what qualities would you look for? — The Pokemon Engineer

Maturity, activity, and ability to work with others. Those are the big three for me when it comes to filling any staff position.

Interview JOIM

Name a person in your life who really made a difference. — The Pokemon Engineer

There are many people who have marked me, but I can't say anyone specifically has made a big difference or marked a turning point. I've always been pretty individualistic and likely to do what I felt I had to do, so I've moved around in life by doing what my guts felt pretty often. However, I have to say that I am who I am mainly due to two people: first, a neighbor, the husband of a mom's friend who allowed me to play with his computer and showed me what a command line looked like. He got me hooked on what defines most of my life nowadays. Then, there's my best friend, who actually introduced me to programming and game design.

If you were picking a person to have a staff position, what qualities would you look for? — The Pokemon Engineer

Loyalty, levelheadedness, a positive attitude, and, of course, the ability to be active and work with others to achieve the objectives.

Favorite meme / joke? — The Pokemon Engineer

I used to love Advice Dog.

How much time usually goes into your duties as admin? And what motivates you to keep contributing to this website so consistently despite the not always thankful reception? — Cretacerus
What inspired you to dedicate so much IRL time and effort to a Pokemon server? — truedrew

I can work six hours a day for weeks and then less than an hour a week. It depends a lot on my IRL mood and free time. What drives me to contribute is a deep desire to help people and work on something that people are going to use and enjoy. It's a good purpose, something to work on, something that gives you a sense of accomplishment just for the sake of doing it. I've been involved in free projects like this one since my early teens. I've helped with programming, forum administration, translations... Plus I've really liked Pokémon since the very first Pokémon Red.

Can you get a custom avatar on Showdown whenever you feel like getting one? — TheSkyAboveUs

Not really. It's actually quite hard to get one; people with one are handpicked and approved.

once you got semi involved with the community and started contributing, where did you see yourselves ending up? I can't imagine anybody thought they'd become admins and or lead huge sections of the site! — GatoDelFuego

I didn't think I'd ever get a position lol.

Do you ever feel like you don't want the pressure of leading the site and would rather just be another contributor than the guys everyone looks to? — Freeroamer

Is anyone looking up to me? I don't know, I don't really feel any pressure, but I don't really have a strong leadership position like other admins who do more "people work".

Is it ever a hassle trying to balance real life and Pokemon when I assume many many people are always trying to contact you and you always have stuff to do? — Freeroamer

Most of the requests can be answered by a single line. In fact, what I reply most is "Please post this on Admin Requests, thanks".

What's more frustating? Multiple requests for simple stuff people should be able to do themselves or should be asking somewhere else (for example, people posting on your wall for name changes or PS name unlocks) or individual requests that require a ton of effort (overhauling stuff, etc.) — Freeroamer

The former, because sometimes I feel people don't even care and don't bother to read up on how things are done. The latter is necessary for the good development of an application.

what do you do besides smogon? — anto

I work full-time as a programmer, working on web and servers for an application, I write novels, even though it's been a while since I had any real advance with the current one, I work on some projects of my own, and I also have beers with co-workers and friends pretty often.

Interview TENNISACE

any particular hobbies? — anto

i treat smogon (and pokemon in general) like a hobby, not as a job.

What were you doing during your first year or so on Smogon, and what back then do you think played a major role in getting to where you are today? — DragonWhale

i was trying to get a ladybug for doing CAP work, and then i got a ladybug, and i haven't ever been badgeless since. the ability to see inside scoop and contribute to site discussions for years helped me broaden my horizons and start contributing to different parts of the site.

favorite type of music? — anto

Gregorian chant.

If you were to retire today, do you think anyone currently would be fit to replace you? Not just as an admin, but also considering your other responsibilities (social media, C&C leader, programming, w/e) — P Squared

yes, but most of those people already have a bunch of other site responsibilities, because they're good workers / leaders.

You've all been here for a while; in what ways is "today's" Smogon different from how it was before? — P Squared

people get offended for the wrong reasons. showing a little sass in a discussion was always a way to keep people from getting too serious. nowadays, if you do that, people get pissy and take it as a personal attack. on the flip side, some people go in the opposite direction and actually go out of their way to insult people, which is just as bad.

Contribution or achievement you're most proud of? — P Squared

i'm proud of all my work. if you don't take pride in your work, then you're not putting in effort.

Decisions you've made here that you regret? — P Squared

some decisions i may realize were wrong in hindsight, but as long as the decision i make is defensible at the time then i don't regret it now.

Any users you looked up to when you were a new user? — P Squared

chaos, DJD, DM, IggyBot, X-Act (in alphabetical order)