Names, Passwords, Rooms, and Servers: Contacting Upper Staff

[HoeenHero]

Pokemon Showdown has a large and varied staff team, but not everything can be easily handled by our lovely drivers and mods. This thread for information on how to request anything that specifically needs a Pokemon Showdown Administrator to handle.

Index:

1) Password & Name resets
2) New Room requests
3) Server requests

When making a post, please state clearly in the title what it is you are requesting if you are not directed to a form so the appropriate staff member can find your request. This can be as simple as "Name Request" "Server Registration" "Room Request" or "Complaint".

Please do not pester Admins to look at your request, this is very tiresome to deal with and will only result in us not wanting to take your request, or you being barred from making requests. We endeavour to answer requests as quickly as possible but please consider that we likely have many other requests we are actively dealing with and we may have to discuss things internally before replying.

 

[HoeenHero]

Name / Password Resets​

Lost Passwords

If you forgot the password to your account, fill out the Password Reset Form. Password resets are done manually by an Administrator so please be patient and allow some time after you have submitted the form to receive an answer. Additionally, please do not respond "idk" to any of the questions on the form, we will need answers for all of the questions to verify your ownership.

Claiming Inactive Names

Numerous users would like like to claim certain "inactive" accounts PS!. However, you will understand that given the size of our userbase, we cannot just give any username to anyone who asks. As such, we restrict account resets to people who meet at least one of the following criterea:

• You are a Smogon badgeholder - see this thread.
• You are a PS! contributor.
  • Developers or artists who have provided any work for PS!
  • Global voices and above that are still actively contributing to PS!
• You are a well-known Smogon tours player and would like the PS! alt that matches your Smogon username.
• You are a well-known VGC player and would like the PS! alt that matches the name you are known by.
• You are a well-known social media influencer and would like the PS! alt to match the name you are known by.
  • Hard minimum requirements for "well-known" social media influencer are 2,500 subscribers/followers on your platform.

Qualifying through the above does not make you automatically eligible to claim any name you would like and the Admin team will evaluate every request on a case-by-case basis. Some usernames are considered higher value than others and as such will be harder to get. Some examples of names that would be considered "high-value" are:

• Pokemon names, names of major Pokémon characters or other Pokémon references.
• Common English names (Ken, Joshua, Anna, etc.).
• Common English words (Dream, Fire, DOOM, etc.).

Some of the other things we are likely to consider when making a decision on your request are:

• Your exact contributions. The more you have contributed, the more likely we are to accept your request. Please try and give as much detail of your contributions as possible when making the request. This includes your current PS! room and global auth, if you have any.
• Your history with the username. If you have been known by a name for a long time without actually owning the account then this is likely to influence our decision making. If you use this name on multiple platforms then please include this in your request.
• Your current community standing. If you've recently been punished or otherwise in some trouble, we're less likely to grant your request.
• Does anyone else in the community go by the name you are requesting or something similar? We are unlikely to accept requests for usernames that are extremely similar to names of current or past PS! users as this could cause problems with identifying who is who.
• For the "well-known" categories, how "well-known" you are.
  • For VGC/Smogon tournament players, please include any relevant tournament placings or other achievements that you think we should consider.
  • For social media influencers, please include links to your social media profiles so we can take a quick look at your current activity as well as verifying your follower counts.

If you have read all of the above and are confident you qualify, feel free to post a motivated request in the Admin Requests Forum.

 

[HoeenHero]

Room Requests

Pokemon Showdown has a great many topical, public rooms but that's not always what people are after. If you want to request a Private Room on Pokemon Showdown, please make sure you fulfill the following criteria.

Requirements for Requesting a Room, Please Read Carefully​

1. The originator of the request must hold global voice (or higher) or room driver (or higher) in a public room that will act as an active Room Owner and overseer for the room's development.
2. Back up your request with proof that there is an active userbase interested in the concept room. This can include an active PS groupchat, Discord group or forum. Note that we look for consistent interest and activity, so please provide examples over an extended period of time.
3. Neither you nor any of your Co-Owners have been punished for anything on Pokemon Showdown recently.
4. You must have a Smogon account you can post with.
5. The room must have a distinct and well-defined concept. Rooms with concepts that overlap with existing rooms are less likely to be approved.
6. The room must have a reason to exist besides just being a casual hangout for your friends. You need to be able to answer "yes" to these questions: "Does this room have the potential to go public at some point under the right circumstances?" And if not, "Does it satisfy demand for a large, established community currently unaffiliated with PS?".

If you cannot fulfill these requirements, don't request the room.

The Rules for Private Rooms and What We Expect of You​

In private rooms, enforcement of Chat Rules section of the rules is up to the room's staff. However, the Main Rules section still applies, and you need to ensure that the room does not disrupt the rest of PS!.

In particular, this means:

1. Nothing sexually explicit, nothing illegal in the US.
2. Don't organize disruptions or harassment of other rooms, events or users.
3. Don't encourage or promote people who are evading a global punishment.
4. While the chat rules will generally end up being more lenient, hateful or intolerant speech should not be a regular topic of discussion.
5. All rooms should try to keep a trusted user at their helm (see requirement #1 above).

Violation of these guidelines may result in the deletion of your room.

If you are able to meet these requirements and are willing to follow these rules, please post a request for a room in the Admin Requests Forum.​

 

[HoeenHero]

Server Requests

IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING MENTIONED BELOW, DO NOT CONTACT AN ADMIN BECAUSE YOUR SERVER WILL NOT BE REGISTERED.
SERVER REGISTRATION IS SPECIFICALLY FOR PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE A SERVER RUNNING. WE DO NOT HOST SERVERS FOR USERS.​

If you are already hosting a server and want it registered with Pokemon Showdown, feel free to fill out the Server Registration Form to request it.

Note: You are allowed to have your own rules: you don't have to use the official PS rules. But in addition to your rules, you MUST ALSO follow these global rules:

1. Do not break US laws and do not have any sexual content. This includes any content on your server that would be illegal to show to children (no porn, no hacking, no DDoSing, etc).​

2. Do not impersonate usernames you don't own. Don't change the code to give yourself an account you don't actually have, don't use Unicode in usernames to impersonate, don't use /a to pretend to be someone you're not, etc.​

3. Do not impersonate staff. Don't claim to be speaking on the authority of PS global staff unless you actually are.​

4. Follow the privacy policy. Keep IP addresses and alt information secret, don't use them for anything other than enforcing bans/punishments.​

5. Don't piss off the Pokémon Company or Google. No charging money for anything, no scamming, no doxxing, etc.​

6. You are expected to be technically competent. Our staff do not have time to be your tech support.​

7. You are expected to have good judgment. If someone you set as server owner takes over your server, your server will be deleted.​

8. The following cannot be used to host your server: Cloud9, glitch.me​

9. We reserve the right to change these rules in case something serious comes up, but we promise that we'll be as fair as possible and we'll pretty much always give you fair warning and opportunities to change.​

10. Do not lift permanent global punishments from the main PS server.​

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We also recommend not changing Config.backdoor; allowing us to control your server helps us deal with accidental rule breakage without having to ban your server.​

Please note that Pokemon Showdown expects all of its registered servers to maintain consistent and reliable uptime. For this reason, do not ask to register a server without having at least 36 hours of continuous uptime.

DO NOT contact chaos or Zarel to get your server registered. They don't deal with server registrations.