Ask the Admins

jdarden: To me, the main drawback is that it's hard to kind of hang on PS! just to chill and be a normal user; as soon as you log on, you're getting very regular PMs from people. You can always hang on alts, but I feel kind of bad to sit on an alt while other members of staff are on and moderating. It's something you get used to, and it doesn't bother me very much any more unless I'm having a bad day or something, but at first it was pretty bothersome.

And yeah, there's definitely some amount of responsibility. It's all volunteering, so none of it is super stressful, but I do think that as long as I'm staff it's important for me to keep an eye on both users and staff and make sure everything is running smoothly.

jdarden: Well, I do own Health & Fitness, which is great for me because it covers a big interest of mine. I generally stick to there and Lobby as far as chatting goes, but if I had to pick another room in which to hang out, it would be Academics. They have a lot of fun stuff going on, and there's a great range of topics for discussion.

When I'm not on PS!: I spend time working (I recently graduated from college with a degree in biomedical engineering and am working at a local engineering firm while I look for other opportunities), lifting weights/swimming (I coached a swim team this summer and will be helping out with a high school team this winter), and hanging out with the few friends I have that are still bumming around my hometown (;-;).

jdarden: I'd say about every other day I get at least one of the following (poorly worded) messages: "Hey can we battle if I win you give me voice if I lose you ban me" etc. It baffles me that this crosses the minds of so many people. Drives me insane.

jdarden: Honestly, in the first few days I joined PS! I thought being a Leader would be cool because they had all the fun commands (this was back in the days of commands like /forcerenameto and /namelock). Obviously I got over that, but I still wanted to be part of staff because I really liked the environment on Showdown and thought the staff seemed like a solid bunch (since then, my judgement has improved, heh). As a Driver/Moderator, I wasn't really concerned about joining senior staff - I just wanted to do what I could to contribute. Now that I'm a Leader, though, I'm very glad to be aboard.

jdarden: The good part about working on PS! staff is that it's a voluntary job. We don't want anyone to moderate more than they want to — Showdown is about fun, after all. As such, if I get super busy for a week or two, I know that I don't have to worry about getting online every single day. We have a lot of great staff we can rely on to pick up our slack in those sorts of situations. Being on PS! is something that I enjoy, though, so given that I usually have some down time at work and in the evening, it isn't too hard to find time to jump on.

jdarden: My man hangman (h_n_g_m_n) gets a shoutout here for being a stellar co-owner of the health/fitness room and also currently being a 2-0 boss for our PSPL team :^) Not many tournament players are on PS! very frequently (or at least not in the rooms I frequent), but there is my buddy Sweep on staff, who is an excellent battler and a great staff member.

jdarden: SANIC/sonic oc

When I was 6 (or 5? something like that), I was just getting into video games. I had just gotten my Game Boy Pocket after knocking my brick style Game Boy into a (mercifully unused) toilet at the dentist's office, which I realize is a weird tragedy to befall a Game Boy. Anyway, after several weeks of begging my dad, who was a big fan of now-retro games like Pac-Man, Centipede, and Arkanoid, he finally brought home a copy of Pokémon Blue version. I destroyed the Elite 4 and Gary with my monofire Charizard and became pretty hooked. My interest petered off after Gen III, but when I was a junior in high school I picked up Diamond Version for nostalgia's sake and got re-interested. Eventually, that lead me to Smogon/PS! as well.

jdarden: I guess this one is for Zarel/TI, but PS! is a site that we're always trying to improve and will generally be in constant development (especially with new gens coming out occasionally), so expect the BETA tag to be part of the look for some time to come!

jdarden: A few of my friends and classmates know and have made PS! accounts of their own because of it (my roommate got voice through the random battle challenge a year and a half or so ago). Beyond friends with whom I'm in constant contact (as in, people who have seen me on it at some point), I don't really talk about it, just because people generally don't care or find it particularly interesting. As for family and parents, nah, it's not really something I bring up, just because again, it's not something they really care about. I don't imagine there would be any particularly interesting response if I told them.