The Help Room and How to Use It

If you've been around Pokémon Showdown! within the past two months, you've noticed a new official Room named simply "Help." At a glance, the room's premise is simple: come here to find or offer help — but, in practice, we have some additional regulations that keep the room clean, hassle-free, and conducive to help. So, if you are looking for help or want to help others, read on to learn more about this room and how best to join in!

The Help Room's Inception

So, just what is the Help room, and why was it made? In short, the Help room is a place for regular users to get answers to any PS- and Smogon-related questions they might have, as well as find global staff to handle any issues they might have with other users. "Why don't people just ask in the Lobby?" you might ask? The Lobby is both too hectic and uncontrolled — many a time has a user's question been buried by the rapid barrage of chat and gone unnoticed by staff or other helpful users, and even when the question is noticed, it's often answered poorly, whether due to a malicious troll or simply a misinformed regular user. Furthermore, users often have trouble finding global staff to deal with global issues such as spam in battles or PMs, as room staff are not distinguished from global staff outside of commands like /whois, which new users are unlikely to know. This problem was only worsened by the introduction of Lobby Drivers, which made even the Lobby an unreliable place to find global staff. In consideration of these issues, global staff decided that something had to be done to make it easier for regular users to find help, and thus, the Help room was born.

As the saying goes, "Rome was not built in a day" — neither was the Help room. Indeed, global staff went through several ideas before settling on the Help room as the best solution. Our initial concern was the issue of helping users finding global staff to handle global problems, which we hoped to solve by distinguishing them from room staff. One way to do this was by formatting the names of global staff differently from that of room staff in the user list, either through adding italics to global staff members' names, removing the bold from room staff members' names, or changing the symbols denoting room staff or global staff. However, most of these eventually fell through due to problems with implementation.

Through our discussions on the subject, we eventually realized that we had partly missed the point of the root issue: it was hard for regular users to find help, and while distinguishing global and room staff from each other was one way to solve this problem, it was by no means the only one. We then came up with a new idea: a command or button that would allow users to report issues directly to global staff. This command would allow users to send a report with an optional message, which then alerted all global staff with a button that let them contact the user via PM and inform other global staff that the report was dealt with. While this command initially appeared promising and was even implemented on the server, albeit only briefly, we realized that it was far too abusable and still didn't help new users unfamiliar with Pokémon Showdown!'s commands. As a result, this was eventually scrapped in favor of the Help room, which remains today as our best solution to helping users find help.

The Purpose of the Help Room

Still unclear about what exactly the Help room is for? Here's a more detailed explanation.

First, the Help room allows users to get help about Pokémon Showdown!. This includes questions about chat commands — "How do I challenge my friends?" is a common example (for the record, the command is "/challenge [username]") — as well as other functions of the simulator, such as checking your position on the OU Ladder and changing your Pokémon's IVs in the Teambuilder.

Second, the Help room is also a source of information on Smogon and its affiliation with Pokémon Showdown!. We recognize that Smogon is a massive and complicated organization which can be very daunting for a new user, especially one who only battles casually. What do tiers mean? Which Pokémon are in which tier? Who determines what Pokémon are banned from each tier? Such questions are relevant and even integral to the Pokémon Showdown! experience, and the Help room is not only a place to find answers, but also a gateway to the larger Smogon community itself.

Third, the Help room is a place for users to reliably find global staff, whether to report any issues they have with other users, such as PM spam, or just privately ask a question about the simulator, which one might be embarrassed about. The Help room serves as our solution to the issue of distinguishing global staff from room staff: only global staff members have authority positions (indicated by @, & and ~ symbols before their names) in the Help room, and all global staff members automatically join the Help room upon logging in, practically guaranteeing that there will be global staff present and ready to help deal with troublesome users at all times. Savvy users might notice the lack of the % (Driver) position in the Help room, as all global Drivers have the room Moderator rank within the Help room to help them deal with spammers or trolls by banning them from the room completely. Only global staff have the access to global punishment commands such as /lock and /ban, the effects of which even extend to PMs and battles, which is usually necessary to handle problematic users. Room staff can also seek help from global staff for any room-related issues, from banning an evading spammer to looking for someone to watch the room while they are away.

Finally, the Help room also gives regular users a chance to help out themselves. If you are an experienced user looking to help new users integrate into the Pokémon Showdown! community, the Help room is a great place to start by answering the queries of others, even if you are not a global staff member.

As you can see, the Help room can be very helpful for any user, from a complete newbie to an active room Owner and this is, at heart, the purpose of the Help room: to help anyone in need.

What not to do in the Help Room

However, before you rush into the Help room to start asking for or offering your own help, there are a few rules to keep in mind, some of which are unique to the room.

First (and probably the most jarring change for a user familiar with PS or chat rooms in general), no casual chatting is allowed in the Help room. Unlike rooms such as the Lobby or Tournaments, the Help room is designed for a very specific purpose, and any irrelevant chat is strictly forbidden. If users ignore warnings to stop excessive chatting, they can and will be banned from the room. This rule is in place to ensure that the Help room never has the "Lobby problem" of chat moving too rapidly for questions or their answers to be read. Removing the clutter of the Lobby is an integral feature of the Help room that makes it so conducive to its purpose.

Next, one should avoid asking questions about certain topics that would be better asked elsewhere. The most common such topic is battling advice, questions about which the Competitive Tutoring room exists exclusively for answering. In addition, the Help room is not for questions about setting up your own server or just other servers in general. The former is best derived from the instructions that come with the server code on Github (as the roomintro says, if you can't figure them out yourself, you probably shouldn't be running a server), while the latter should be taken to the respective servers in question. If you are unsure whether your question is relevant to the Help room, it's always better to err on the side of caution and PM a staff member, rather than posting it publicly in the room. If your question would be better suited elsewhere, global staff can send you there.

Lastly, the Help room is a public and official room on Pokémon Showdown!, and as such, global rules still apply. In general, anything that wouldn't be allowed elsewhere on PS, such as spam, trolling, and insulting others, should also stay out of the Help room. In fact, in order to maintain a productive environment in the Help room, our staff are likely to be even stricter on such offences and won't hesitate to ban bad users from the room or even globally lock them from talking.

As long as you keep these caveats in mind, you should be able to stay out of trouble, at least where the Help room is concerned.

Tips about Using the Help Room

In closing, here are some useful tips to keep in mind for any user entering the Help room.

First of all, make sure to read the room intro upon entering the room before trying to ask anything. It covers most of what I've mentioned here (and then some) and provides enough information to deal with just about any problem you might need help for. The room intro also usually mentions any recent major issues with the simulator, such as the recent server crash causing loss of ladder and user ranks, so refrain from asking about these topics as we are very much aware of them and working on making things better.

In addition, don't be shy. Specifically, there's no need to get permission to ask a question. The room practically exists for these questions, no matter how obvious their answers might be, and there is no shame in seeking to clarify your doubts. Just ask away, and we will help you.

Last but not least, don't be afraid to help out, either. The Pokémon Showdown! staff could always use more help and having experienced, helpful users keep an eye on the Help room to answer simple queries goes a long way towards giving us more time to moderate elsewhere. If anyone starts to troll or spam the room, even if you are not a staff member, you can still help by alerting staff members present, whether through PMs or just highlighting them in the room.

Ultimately, the Help room exists for the good of users like you. Even if you never need to use it, you can rest assured that there will always be a place to find help on Pokémon Showdown!

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