Avoiding people you don't want to meet on PS!

So what is this article about?

Pokémon Showdown!, known for being a top quality battle simulator, is a wonderful website where there's a lot to do. On your travels around PS!, you'll encounter many people you'd rather not have. There's a lot of variety, but some common archetypes stick out like a sore thumb.

As a staff member, you have the joy to interact with numerous kinds of bad users on the simulator. The nicknames for them are just me being creative, but from the description you'll be able to easily identify some of them when you see them in the chat.

The Bait Quitters

You're just trying to whittle away a couple of hours by laddering, probably hoping to get a higher rating with a decent team you've made. Unfortunately, there are those people on the ladder that try to ruin it for you and everyone else. They usually travel in groups with other friends, and when they all enter at once, you can find it hard to concentrate. This can especially happen when they are trash-talking about your team or your lack of knowledge of the tier, or trying to motivate their friend by spamming in some way.

Nearing the end of the battle, if you are beating the opponent who you are facing with the mass of spectators, some of those people may start typing things like this:

I know it may seem pretty simple to ignore, but you would be surprised by the reports that we get from people doing this; we do take action and proceed to lock the person as this is not to be tolerated at all. If you do see this, please ignore it. If you find spectators annoying in general there is a 'Ignore Spectators' option found in the top right, however you'll have to re-enable every battle. Make sure to continue battling normally and report it to a global staff member. The command /concede was actually removed, as too many people were using it to trick people into forfeiting and it was hardly used anyway.

Shitposters

Everyone is trying to have a nice conversation about a particular Pokémon that might be getting a suspect test, or about one that has become more usable since the ban of another. The point is, it is a reasonable topic filled with people sharing their thoughts. The kind of thing you'd expect to see on, you know, a pokemon simulator.

Shitposters. They contribute towards the chat, fair enough. However, they don't do it in a good way. They lure in the chat and wait for something to argue against. They defend their argument with invalid points that aren't sensible at all. They can turn a reasonable topic bad really quickly. Users tend to get influenced sometimes without realizing it, therefore making the whole chat bad

Do they seriously not have anything better to do with their lives? Guess not. These people will usually get muted, and depending on whether or not they continue, further punishments may be issued.

The Highlighters

This isn't really a problem for you guys as regular users, but I still feel like including these types of people in. You get those people who feel that it's funny to go from each chat and mass highlight the staff in the room. They usually receive a warning for doing it in one chat, however if they proceed to leave the room and do it again, it is obvious that they are doing this to annoy people and will be issued with a lock to stop them from talking.

Another thing has to be greetbots who feel the need to highlight every global staff that comes into the room. We understand some people don't intentionally try to annoy the staff which is why I don't find this as bad at times, but it's frustrating for us and worth considering when you're highlighting us.

Spammers

It is pretty easy to identify spammers in the chat. Just because it isn't bold or capitals doesn't mean that it isn't spam.

We understand that you want to help, but when you see people spamming, please don't go "OMG SPAM" and "MODS" because you're only adding towards it. Saying "Stop spamming" doesn't help either, it's just mini-modding and it is quite obvious that they aren't going to listen to you saying that. Mini-modding is also very annoying to the staff that are actually trying to moderate the chat. Simply highlight us once by tabbing our name or sending us a message, as we really do appreciate it when you try to help. If you do plan on highlighting, do multiple staff rather than highlighting the same one. If we find the spam is getting out of hand we'll turn on modchat which nobody wants or namedrop autoconfirmed.

The Asses

You tend to come across these people a lot when being staff member in any room, not just globally. When you send out a punishment, they will not rest until they prove that it wasn't reasonable and that their punishment should be taken away, when instead, it was a perfectly made decision. They will continue to annoy you and harass you in PMs until they see that their punishment is lifted. For global staff, it seems much easier to deal with because you can simply ban them after you've asked them to stop multiple times and they continue to try and PM you.

There was no reason for it to have ended with a ban as they could have simply stopped sending the messages, but they felt that they had to win in the end. Most of the time, they end up trying to make a ban appeal linking it towards mod abuse, but it isn't our fault that they're incompetent at following our instructions. If you're a room staff member dealing with this and you've sent a proper reason as to why they got punished, yet they are still harassing you, get a global staff member to lock them.

Format Abusers

There are people who think that the rules don't apply to them. They want to stand out from everyone else and cause a scene in the chat. They usually do this by abusing text formats. Formats such as bold were added to the simulator to get people to stand out, but only in certain circumstances. In the Lobby is not one of them which is why bold is disabled in there. A perfect example is the Tournaments room, where users want to advertise their tournaments. You don't need to draw attention to yourself by abusing capitals or stretching out letters either. You may feel like you won't get noticed in the chat, but you would be surprised by how many people want to join in on the conversation if you contribute positively. Make sure to avoid trouble.

This was not needed at all. Try to think about what would happen if everyone did that when they had an issue with someone, and how much trouble it would lead to in the chat. Don't give them the satisfaction of being recognized by responding to them. The simple thing to do would be to ask in the chat, how to ignore someone. In a way, this could easily be linked to shitposting, which faces the same consequences of getting a warning or a mute, depending on how much you do it in a sentence, and further punishment if it escalates.

Sore Losers

You're just trying to have a normal ladder battle and everything is going fine. At the end, you're happy with the result because you won, but your opponent may not respond so positively towards it for a simple reason: they lost. Whether it be from a critical hit, an untimely miss, skill, or some other form of luck, they won't be happy. Some people simply say a few things out of rage and then leave before you get a chance to reply.

That isn't too bad. They should've responded better, honestly, but be the better man and ignore it, don't go and then PM them. Now for another situation. The battle has ended and you have left before saying anything to them and them saying anything to you. They then feel the need to find your name and start messaging you.

At the end of the day, you did win. Don't listen to them; /ignore them if you have to, and continue with your laddering. If you feel like they are getting feel offensive, report it to a global staff member and they will take care of it.

Conclusion

Well guys, that's it. Hopefully this has given you an inside look on how to avoid certain people on Pokémon Showdown, because they can really drag down everyone's experience of the sim. Thanks for reading, and have fun on the simulator.