The Community Mentoring Room

Introduction

Have you ever visited Smogon and didn't know where to start? Do you want to contribute, but just don't know where to jump in? Well, the Smogon Mentorship is the perfect place to go! Smogon Mentors are friendly veterans of the site that can help you learn the ropes of the community. You can contact them through a PM on the forums, or even talk to them on #mentor on IRC. There, you can meet many users that mentor in starkly different parts of the site, ranging from C&C to Orange Islands to Neverused. Over time, the Mentor leaders thought it would be beneficial to add another venue to contact mentors: a room on Pokémon Showdown!, Smogon's battling simulator.

History

The room started out as the brainchild of of the Mentor leaders, and it was soon implemented on Pokémon Showdown! as the "Mentoring" room. It started out as a place for people to hang out and get involved with the Smogon community, but as it became too similar to another room, Competitive Tutoring, it was on the verge of being shut down. After a major change in the rules, we relaunched the room, now named "Community Mentoring", to see how things would end up. After a lack of any sort of activity on the side of both Mentors and Mentees, the room was deleted on poor Minus's birthday. :'[

After some time, the Mentor leaders and Pokémon Showdown! staff believed that it was time again to give the room another chance.

Participating in the Room as a user

Chatting in the room

There is nothing that is necessarily needed for you to participate and chat with the other users in the room. You certainly don't need experience in any of the tiers or to be a well-known user. The Community Mentoring room serves as an introduction towards starting your Smogon experience, making new friends, and learning new things. After you become settled in, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's time for you to leave the room. Stay and share the experience with new users coming up that wish to get the same welcoming that you got when first entering.

Lurking and rules

The mentors you find in the room are Room Moderators, and while you may not actually see them talking in the chat, you can easily find them lurking in the chat room on the user list. They have the @ symbol beside their name and are usually at the top of the chat if no Room Owners are currently present. We understand that there are new users and we are open to all questions apart from the ones where people are deliberately trying to cause a disruption. When here, you have to patient with people, because we represent Smogon and give users first impressions of what to expect from the experience.

What to talk about

Community Mentoring opens up so many topics. Why? It's because there is so much to talk about Smogon, since the forums are constantly getting updated. It's never left without a post on the site for more than an hour. You can discuss things from tier changes in the Competitive section to the Firebot Development Lab and its humorous threads. When posting, you can definitely tell the good users apart from the bad, the ones who are actually trying to help/learn about Smogon and the others who don't give a crap and are there to annoyingly try and make the room chat terrible.

Participating in the Room as a Mentor

What the mentors do

We interact with the users in the room, host tournaments, and introduce people to the forums. Different mentors, depending on what they mentor in, do different things; however, we all fall under one category, which is trying to help people in any way we can. Xylen has been doing multiple tournaments in the room called Mentorship Mentours, in which random tiers are played daily in a tournament for a chance to win a custom title without a badge. We also have our tier Mentor specialists, who are experts in giving advice to those wanting to try out a new tier and are in need of some assistance.

How to contact them

You click on one of our names, which can be either in the chat or on the user list on the left. To see the official Smogon Mentors, you can type /roomauth, and from there you can see all of the Room Moderators. If you are specifically looking for what they mentor in, you'll either have to look at their Mentor Profile or send them a message on either Pokémon Showdown! or Smogon. It is recommended to take a look at the profiles, though, as it could save you quite a bit of time. Anyways, after clicking on their name, click the 'Chat' button, and from there it is self-explanatory.

How to be mentored

Ask tons of questions. Anything you don't understand, the mentor will either answer or redirect you to someone/something that should give you the information. Mentoring can last from one day to over a period of weeks/months. In the end, the aim of teaching you about what you want to be mentored in should have been completed, whether it be on the Pokémon Showdown! site or in a tier that you wanted to learn, maybe about the different sections in the forums and finding the one that appeals to you the most. Mentoring can be done in the chat of the Community Mentoring room for multiple people or one-on-one messages between you and the mentor in Smogon/Showdown/IRC PMs.

Effect on the Community

Launch pad into the community

The room itself gets you to talk to and interact with the users around you. It shows you the users that use the Smogon forums on a regular basis and gets you involved and socializing. Community Mentoring room teaches you, not the Smogon site in general, but gets to know you as a person, finding out what specifically interests you. It gets you to make new friends and have fun along the way.

How to get a badge through the Mentorship Program

When going for a badge within the Mentorship Program, you have to be both patient and helpful towards the new users, as they may not understand things as quickly as you do. You need to stay active on Pokémon Showdown!, but contribute to Smogon and visit IRC as well. Help in any sort of way you can, answer questions in the SQSA thread for the new users, and try your very best to get involved with the community. Make sure to enjoy yourself while doing it, and don't start slacking off once you do get the badge.

Conclusion

That's it, guys, hopefully you've got a glimpse of what we do in the Community Mentoring room, from introductions to tournaments with great prizes to be won. Make sure to come and visit us sometime!

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