I worried for a long time about whether or not I should post this, but I figured that there's always someone out there who worries about the same thing and who doesn't want to ask.
While I know that it's not the intent of the site, sometimes it can seem very intimidating to suddenly become a part of a big, established community with many regulars and an established ranking system.
If I'm anything to go by (though you'd have to go far to find someone more neurotic), it can be hard to just challenge someone to a randbat, much less register a permanent username on Showdown. With a site that has so many badges, so many now-unavailable titles and so many regular big-name users, a system where you lose your badges if you aren't perpetually active, chatrooms where someone comes in and the whole chatroom greets them merrily by name, a ranking/voting system where your opinions are only welcome if you're already a skilled player, a connected Discord in addition to a hundred-plus different forums and Showdown chatrooms, a mentor system that's only open to people who already have ladder experience and a lot of people who're very vocal about maintaining the quality of the community, there's often the feeling that people have it just fine as is and newbies are an unwelcome distraction at best.
I've been reading analyses and articles since back about The Smog issue #37, which is already a good four and a half years ago, and sure, I've had a few randbats, but mostly I've ended up only using Showdown for matches with friends.
The reason why is that as soon as you go into a chatroom, you're faced with dozens of people chatting constantly like old friends, being online almost perpetually and maintaining contacts with each other. It's not rare that they're saying all sorts of unpleasant things about people in lower ranks or those trying their own teams, either (though I'm not going so far as to say it's all that common, either). In addition, there's a Discord on top of this, meaning that someone trying to get a foot in the door would have to resign themselves to a phone that pings all night in order to have even the remotest chance of getting recognized.
The people who get more than three upvotes on the forums usually have a sparkling ribbon of badges that would make a four-starred general blush.
When you predict something wrong in a randbat or don't know an intricate mechanic, like Prankster not working on Dark-types, your opponent often just says "gg" even if you're two turns in like you've already lost.
The more I write, the more I realize that it's unnecessarily rude and distrustful to the community to run my mouth, and that half of it is probably (provably) me being a sore loser and too self-conscious, but in short it often feels to me like Smogon and by extension Showdown are sites and communities that would by far prefer it if you waited for some big-name user like Zarel to personally take a liking to you and invite you to the community.
The amount of socialization and what could less flatteringly be called Discord brown-nosing seems intimidating and ultimately pointless, since your badges will be taken away if you aren't a constant contributor.
Your votes are only welcome if you're ranked highly on the ladder, but you pause for even one day and your rating slides down and down and down.
It just feels to me as if Smogon is a community that would be the happiest if the homepage was a password prompt. It feels like so many members feel pressured by newbies to be welcoming and open to new players when they'd rather just have the opportunity to be left alone with their friends and chat and play without constantly being besieged by people who only want to play a few matches a week.
I do want to play, but it feels like I have to prepare myself for an eternity of waking up in the middle of the night because the Discord pinged and there's a tournament/someone like Zarel came on and now it's do or die.
Smogon is an incredibly interesting and informative community, but once in a while it seems like people are genuinely not needed or wanted unless they're the friend of someone who can mentor them and introduce them to other people in the community before they even have their first randbat.
I really apologize for posting stuff like this in a thread that's explicitly about "simple questions and suggestions", but the Showdown chatroom for advice and personal conversation is off-limits unless you've already won a ranked battle, and I can't imagine any other reason for that than that you're not desired there unless you already have someone else you know personally and can ask to tutor you. This is the closest place I can find.
TL;DR: I'm the kind of person who worries too much about too little, and want an honest answer for both my sake and other newbies' as to whether I can just pop in a few times a week for a randbat, or go for a rank without constantly maintaining my chatroom contacts and being on Discord, because once in a while it really seems as if what the Smogon community longs for the most is the opportunity to say "get out, we're full, if we want you we'll tell you" and getting miserable because it can't.