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Interview HIKARI

Do you practice any sport? If yes, which one do you like the most? — lyd

Practiced football for nearly 10 years until I injured my ankle, I did boxing for a bit, and in the in more recent times I have mainly done long distance running, but I have been fairly inactive this year. I have also played lots of sports casually, like volleyball and ping-pong, but no formal training in those. The sports I currently like the most are football and MMA.

Do you still play mons? What're your favorite formats/games? — Darkinium

Yes, but not as often as I would like. UU has been the tier I like the most since I started playing in DPP, but my favorite format will always be RandBats.

Have you ever had trouble balancing your real life with Smogon or Pokémon? — Darkinium

Not really. Real life always takes priority.

Do you feel Smogon has changed since you joined? How so, and in a good or bad direction? — Gweebis

Smogon has changed a lot since I joined. The community is more welcoming now, tournaments are significantly more accessible, and the community in general is way more open to new things.

If you could change any aspect of the site, would you change anything and what would it be? — Leo

I would globally disable signatures. They are ugly and add nothing. Luckily, I can disable them for me.

What advice would you give to a new admin? — Darikinium

Trust your instincts. Delegating is better than micromanaging. No decision pleases everyone, so learn how to deal with being the "bad guy". Don't hold onto the past and learn how to move on.

Do you feel that your perception of Smogon has changed after becoming admin, or has it stayed relatively the same? — pokemon4eva

It has stayed relatively the same. Not the first time I get a position of power in an online community, and I was a supermod for a decent amount of time, so there was nothing surprising about being an admin.

What was the hardest part of your job/personal experience? — Gweebis

Dealing with demotions.

What are your favorite Pokémon? — TJ

In no particular order: Mega Ampharos, Vaporeon, Flareon, Linoone, Sceptile, Gastrodon

Do admins have lives? Legit question I swear. — ayedan

If you consider staying alive in a shithole country as having a life, sure.

How has being an admin changed how you interact over here? — Anish

I have to censor myself a lot more nowadays.

Knowing that the competitive scene is generally stereotyped as "toxic" and "elitist", why do you continue to administrate the higher levels of the competitive scene? — curiosity

All competitive scenes have problems like that. By being an admin I'm in a position to lessen the problem as much as I can.

What was it like to co-lead (or to be a member of the council) alongside people such as Hogg, Pearl, kokoloko, and Sam? — curiosity

It was an enjoyable experience. Everyone has their different ideas and ways of seeing the game, and having a group of mostly competent people focusing on discussing those things is an excellent way of learning new things.

Who are some users that have kept you around in this community and what have they done to make your stay memorable / enjoyable? — curiosity

Mostly people from my UU group of friends. They are fun to talk to and they don't treat me differently for being admin.

Disregarding moderator, site staff, tour director and administrator badges, what do you consider to be the most rewarding badge? — curiosity

Contributor.

Now as an administrator, has your experience on Smogon been more positive or negative? (why?) — Conni

About the same. Not much changed.

Favorite Pokémon spinoff game? — pokemon4eva

Pokémon Snap.

How do regular people become admins? Do we need to submit our SAT scores? — sumwun

I mean I'm pretty regular and I became admin, and I don't even live in the USA, so I don't have an SAT score. A combination of contributing a lot for a long time, participating in policy, and knowing the right people.

Is anime going to prompt the ruin of the entire human race? — TMan87

Anime was a mistake.

What parts of working with other site staff do you enjoy? As a staff member myself in a PS! room, staffing has definitely made an impact on the way I view some things and think. Is this the same for you all? — BrawlMK

Interacting with people from different backgrounds with different personalities. This has helped me learn new things, interact with people I wouldn't have been able to interact with under "normal" circumstances, and broaden my horizons.

Regarding suspect tests, do you believe that there should be a consistent percentage that the community needs to reach in order to ban something among the lower tiers? If so, what do you think that percentage should be and why? — Yoshizilla315

Consistency is fine, but all tiers have different needs and way of doing things. I personally like using 50% + 1 for everything, the suspect tests exist to let the public decide and pleasing the majority should take priority over protecting the status quo by using higher percentages.

Since you're a current member of the Tournament Director team, do you think that the decisions that you've made as a collective group have reflected (some aspects of) what the community wanted? — Yoshizilla315

Mostly yeah, but there's absolutely no way of pleasing everyone and sometimes what people want isn't doable without making drastic changes to our entire tournament circuit, which isn't simple.

Is there a plan to introduce an Anything Goes so you can build strategic teams without dealing with Naganadel and Primal Rayquaza teams?

Anything Goes has potential to become more than an OM and I'm willing to help with that, but at this point it requires the initiative of their leadership. There's only so much I can do.

Do you have a favorite battle memory? — SunniDee2

My game vs Zamrock in SPL 7 finals. I had already decided that was going to be my last SPL as a player, the score was 5-6, if I won my team clinched the trophies, and there was some lowkey beef between both teams. The conditions were perfect, the game was alright, and there was some entertaining shit-slinging mid-game. I won the game and retired from SPL on a high note.

Not the greatest game I have ever played, but it's one I won't forget in a long time.

Interview IRONBULLET

How did you get into Smogon? — Leo

In mid-2008, I happened to stumble upon a teambuilding guide on GameFAQs that mentioned competitive terms like EVs, IVs, sweepers, tanks, and other jargon that meant nothing to me. Through the guide, I found out about this whole new side to Pokémon that I never knew existed. It mentioned Smogon a few times so I decided to check the site out. I was pretty amazed at the time that there was an entire website devoted to competitive battling! I downloaded Shoddy Battle, imported a team that I was using in-game, and started battling. Needless to say I got my ass kicked several times, but eventually through studying the strategy dex and testing countless teams I got a reasonable grasp of it. I grew very fond of UU, and lurked around the UU section of Stark Mountain for a few months. I then started posting and contributing, gradually getting into other tiers and becoming more experienced along the way.

Do you think spending these past years contributing to the community has somehow had a positive impact in your life? — Leo

Absolutely. I credit Smogon a lot for teaching me how to be successful in a leadership role, and to become more articulate and professional in my way of communication. I used to be quite a naive person, even after I finished college and was just starting my masters degree, and being promoted to RMT leader was quite intimidating at first, as I didn't feel completely ready for it. As it turns out, pushing myself out of my comfort zone and learning on the job actually helped me to understand people better, and consequently become more confident in dealing with politics, settling disputes, and leading policy. I've applied a lot of the lessons I've learned from contributing to the community to real-life situations.

What do you tend to do outside of Smogon? — Gweebis

When I'm not working (which currently takes up a lot of my time due to how hectic things are at office—around 10 hours a day), I like playing tennis, reading thriller novels / mangas, and watching sports, especially cricket and football. I also play the guitar and piano, and jamming with my flatmate (who's an incredible singer) is one of my favorite pastimes.

How heavy is your workload as an admin, and how different is that from when you were a super mod or section leader? — Quantum Tesseract

My workload actually isn't very different from when I was a supermod. I think the biggest jump in my responsibilities came when I was promoted from global mod to smod, simply because of the amount of trust that is placed in smods to discuss and implement many of the policies that shape the development of the site. As part of the site's most senior decision-making team, being an admin definitely adds another layer of responsibility and authority, but I don't think it is as significant a step up from smod as gmod to smod was.

How does it feel knowing you'll never win best avatar in Smogon Awards? — Gross Sweep

My time will come, just you wait >:( That last one was definitely rigged smh.

Interview LUMARI

Do you feel your way of handling stuff here on Smogon (before and/or after you obtained your current position) has an impact on your real-life behavior? If so, to which extent? — TMan87

Somewhat, but I think most of the changes in that area have been due to only semi-related personal growth that I've undergone in my time on this site, not directly because of contributing or staffing.

What about Smogon do you feel you've had the largest impact on, and where do you feel you could still and/or want to improve the site? What do you think your legacy will be? — Oglemi

Site content (duh) in the broad sense of the term, specifically the editing / uploading part, the less visible stuff. In general I think we should be the ultimate Pokémon site / resource in all aspects, not just competition and strategies; site content goes deeper than just Dex / TFP / translations, and I've always had a soft spot for the "deeper" pages, think in-game stuff (we have like nothing on spinoffs, too) and the tournament hub (where we could at the very least archive major tour scores and results). Not entirely sure how to go about that and how much of that is feasible though, and time constraints with other stuff currently leave me too unreliable to do a proper job there, but, yeah, pipe dreams.

Honestly I've always seen myself as a contributor first and a staff member second, which makes the question of my "legacy" a hard one to answer haha. Nevertheless, if, a couple years after I'm gone, people remember me for the GP work that I've done and my understanding of / views about GP work, for always being there to keep stuff afloat when times got rocky, and for being part of the GP leadership that legitimized GP a lot during its time, then I think I've done well.

For Lumari and Hikari, how do you deal with the reality that neither of you will ever be as handsome, smart, witty, and beloved as IB? — Celticpride34

dry my tears with the 40 extra likes my promotion thread got over his

Do you practice any sport? If yes, which one you like the most? — lyd

I've never been part of a sports club and exercising in general is something I've always preferred doing alone, but in general I've always enjoyed biking and walking semi-long distances, and football / table tennis are fun too I guess.

What parts of working with other site staff do you enjoy? As a staff member myself in a PS! room, staffing has definitely made an impact on the way I view some things and think. Is this the same for you all? — BrawlMK

I enjoy getting to work with like-minded people and getting stuff done together. I've learned a ton from everyone I've worked with, and hopefully I've been able to give them something back too.

Do you feel Smogon has changed since you joined? How so, and in a good or bad direction? — Darkinium

Honestly this is a pretty bad question to ask someone with a 2014 joindate haha, for obvious reasons. Last time we did an Ask the Admins, one of the then-admins answered that Smogon and IS (our badgeholder forum) had become a lot more calm than they used to be, which judging by old threads was extremely accurate ( ,_, ), and I think that's a trend that has continued since; I still remember a good chunk of drama from my first 1-2 years but more recently things have been a lot quieter in that department, which is absolutely a good thing.

How did you get into Smogon? — Leo

I had known it existed for a few years from googling "<x Pokémon> moveset" a few times, but I only found the Dex and never actually made it to the forums until early Gen 6, when there was no new Dex yet and the forum was the only place where I could read the new strategies. One thing just kind of led to another from that point, ended up lurking C&C hardcore for the next 6 months, and especially the GP stage caught my eye because I figured that was where I'd be able to do at least something right, lol. The actual impetus for registering my account was the Battle Maison thread though, I had been looking around online for help with the Maison for quite some time, and Smogon's thread seemed very high quality compared to the rest and was a pretty amazing read. Best thing was how they also seemed to take it as a legit, fair challenge rather than just as a "pray not to get haxed" kind of deal. Of course, since I'm a procrastinator, I didn't actually register my account until I had already beaten all the non-multi formats, lol, but you get the idea.

Do you think spending these past years contributing to the community has somehow had a positive impact in your life? — Leo

Yes easily, I've learned a ton about editing / coding / leadership / teamwork that is helping me learn other new stuff irl as we speak, and through contributing I've met some of the best friends that I'll ever have.

Do you feel that your perception of Smogon has changed after becoming admin, or has it stayed relatively the same? — Gweebis

Nah. Perception does change the further one moves up the ladder, but it's more of a gradual thing that correlates with increase in responsibilities / access, and since the smod -> admin jump comes with pretty much no additional access there's also not a lot of room for perception to change. Especially in a case like mine, where it was just attaching a label to the stuff I was pretty much already doing as a smod.

What are your favorite Pokémon? — TJ

It used to be Raichu back when I was little because I was contrarian beyond belief, making it the only logical choice when everyone loved Pikachu, but I fell in love with Starmie when I was playing the Frontier on Emerald. Not sure how exactly it went tbh but I probably just really liked the way it played and then realized I had been overlooking its design for so long. I think my top 5 at this point is Starmie / Gliscor / Weavile / Scizor / Zapdos, with honorable mentions to Shaymin, Manaphy, Marowak, and Ponyta. I still appreciate Raichu too though.

Do you play any instruments? Which ones, and are there any new ones you'd like to pick up? — Darkinium

Not currently, used to play saxophone and piano but have been "sidetracked" out of those for a while. I also tried to pick up guitar and flute once, but at this point if I'm gonna get back to it I should probably be picking up my old ones again and make sure this time I get better than just decent at best tbh.

Have you ever had trouble balancing your real life with Smogon or Pokémon? — Darkinium

Not really? I definitely have had a couple of "don't try this at home" moments, but in general I've always been pretty good at timing important stuff so that I get it finished in time / procrastinating without notable damage if you want a less charitable wording, and this has been no different.

What advice would you give to a new admin? — Darkinium

Don't forget where you came from, and always stay in touch with your contributors. And don't feel like you need to carry the weight of the entire site on your shoulders, you've got people willing to help you so let them help you.

What do you take from being an admin of Smogon to real life? — Anish

Not much, but the fact that people apparently value my opinions and attitude enough to trust me with this kind of position is a nice confidence / assertiveness booster.

Which badge is the best/worst looking out of them all? Similarly, is there any badge you would want but wouldn't realistically obtain? — Kalalokki

Worst looking are TC/CC/sim staff easily, TD isn't thaaaat bad but it really suffers from being the clearly inferior flame compared to site staff. Site staff and researcher are the best looking ones by far, researcher would also be the only one I'd like to have myself, but I no longer "need" it as much to complete a nice color scheme now that I don't have a yellow badge anymore :(

What has lead to your heavy involvement with the Grammar-Prose team? — curiosity

it's fun

I was honestly just gonna leave this at that, because in the end it's really that simple, but for a less contentless answer, I like "untangling" things and enjoy working with language, so it only made sense I'd give it a try. Then one thing led to another basically. I started off kinda slowly but got really active when I made more friends and got to have fun contributing with them. I also have a strong sense of responsibility that perhaps gets a little too strong for my own good when it involves stuff that I care about, so I've always found it important to personally help with giving stuff the last push it needed to get on-site.