BEGINNER'S CORNER

CALO SEER

I believe a small sticky-ed area or blanket message sent out to new users would be greatly beneficial. I just registered as a new user and I am completely and utterly lost. : P
By the way I registered to get help and maybe some practice in for the '11 us VGCs. Any direction towards who to talk to would also be greatly appreciated but that's beside the point.
 
I didn't mean specifically fhe VGCs. I meant the forums/site in general. The amount of useful information is a bit overwhelming.
 
I've said it before. There are new users who would greatly benefit from a breif introduction into the forums and rules, and here is one supporting that idea. It would do a lot to cut down on stupid first posts and infractions, and it would mean that the mods would spend less time modding newbies. It wouldn't even take that long. And the argument that no one would read it and that people who are going to become good users will anyone clearly doesn't hold because here is a new user trying to get into the site and he thinks that it is a good idea.
 
Any amount of not knowing where to go or how to get integrated into the community can be cured simply by lurking.
 
So your argument is that people who want to contribute should delay contributing for an extended period of time in order to learn by observing, instead of reading a simple guide and contributing right away?
 
I've actually been lurking for a few months reading articles etc. And I can honestly say the forum is still quite a bit confusing no offense. :3
 
Well here's an example. I'll use myself. Lol
I'm a 20 something player. Been playing since (American) day 1 and never really thought about or knew there was an organized metagame and didn't give it much thought until the VGCs started a few years ago. Being a massive fan and player of nearly every main game and branch off game I was interested in getting involved and battling competitively an being part of the community and have no idea where to start except IV breeding like crazy, ev training as much and just jumping in.
 
Yes, it can come about by lurking. However, it is quicker and easier to have a guide ready, and it wouldn't take much to implement. A Welcome to Smogon page on sign-up would do it, and it wouldn't be hard to write. I don't see why people would be against the idea.
 
Hey, I see how it could be confusing, but I think your problem is that you're not familiar with the forums yet. In due time, you will learn where a lot of stuff is and how to use it as long as you are committed to doing so. You may also try PMing a badged member, and I'm sure they can help you or direct you to someone who can help if they can't.
 
A badged member? Once again lost. @_@'
I know this is getting a little off topic but anyone want to help me? Lol

But all that aside I think a welcom page with a brief description of all the tools, areas etc would be a huge asset and stop people from just registering doing a couple posts and dropping off the face of the earth.
 
A badged member has little icons under their name. Check this post: see the heart and stone under my name? That means I'm a badge member. There are other badged members too. I don't know a ton about VGC, but I can help you with other stuff you need via PM.
 
Badges. Teams. Lol. I stand by my opinion of a welcome page.
But yeah. Who's online for a while for me to PM. I'm only offline maybe 6 hours a day. I'm an Internet ninja. Heh
 
I don't really see the point of an introduction. There are many article's describing the point of Smogon including its goals and such, and each forum has rules with guidelines.
 
theres an FAQ button at the top that explains the badge system

and every subforum has at least a rules sticky and maybe an announcement that explains the basics for new users

that should be enough to get you started

hopping on IRC to ask simple questions directly is not a bad idea either, there's an IRC guide on the main smogon site
 
I support the idea of a site guide. Pretty much a basic overview of everything on Smogon. Have a short description of each forum, what goes there, examples of good, okay, and poor posts, etc. Add in some site definitions, like what begin badged means, what Articles are, info about QC and GP, and just something that a new member could read for about half an hour and get the gist of what's acceptable, what's not, and how a newbie can participate actively and become respected.

It might be a pretty long article, but it seems like it would make the moderators' jobs easier, the quality of the site batter, but the downside is that there might be fewer posts in Trou... :(

Maybe even just compiling all the stuff Fate mentioned into one document and putting it in a really obvious place would work.
 
I remember when I first joined the forums, I had no idea where anything was. I was constantly confused, and couldn't seem to find any information on the stuff I needed. Smogon was my first forum though, so I wasn't all that used to navigating them, which I'm sure contributed to some of my confusion.
Then I lurked, and it was all alright.
 
I support this. In my opinion, lurking does teach you the ropes eventually, but why not make the new users' lives easier. I like the idea of including it in FAQS; just like each badge has its small explanation, why not each forum(no need for subforums that would make it extremely cluttered). The annoying thing is even if the info was included in FAQS, the new users would probably look at it too late. That could be fixed by giving a welcome notice when you sign up linking you to FAQS and other useful information.

Just my two cents.
 
Yeah, I agree with this too. It'd make the place a tad more new user friendly. I know, I know, "lurk more" but I still think it'd be useful
 
there's an faq and each forum has a little blurb about what should be posted there
not to mention once you actually get into the forum, it has a stickied rule thread

I'm not sure why a beginner's guide is necessary
 
I'm not sure I really understand what a guide like this would contain that would not be a rehash of the forum descriptions that you read by going here.

Using the original posters question regarding VGC -- I'd go to the VGC forum and start to read. First the rules, and then some of threads. I am not sure what a guide to doing that would really even look like. Help?
 
Guide said:
Hi, welcome to Smogon!

We're probably the biggest online Pokemon battling website on the internet, and you'll find all sorts of stuff here to help you out. We have forums analyses of all each of the Pokemon which can be found here, as well as a series of forums which can be found here. However, the site can be a daunting place the first time you see it because of everything on it, so we've got an introduction to each of the main features below:

...

The primary suggestion, though, is to lurk a bit to learn how everything rolls and then jump in, keeping in mind everything above. It should help you not make an idiot of yourself when you first appear, and you'll be a well-respected member of the community soon!
Click to expand...


or something like that. It would probably pop up when you create an account, and there would want to be a link to it somewhere as well.
 
I support this as well. Yes, each forum has its own rule thread, but a newbie guide would be fairly simple and could help reinforce rules as well as make sure people know where to start depending on what they want in Smogon. It could help consolidate a lot of the info that's scattered around the site to make us more accessible to newer players.
 
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