So with a few blogs cropping up with people describing their experience with X amount of time on Temp, I thought I might as well talk about my time here as well.
I joined the site first for Wii hacking purposes and pretty much posted about that exclusively for about six months. I didn't really start getting to know anyone for a long time until I started frequenting the Shoutbox, which somehow encouraged me to participate more actively in all areas of temp. Making friends with a few people there got me to talk about various other stuff on Temp too.
I've mostly loved the place, but I get frustrated with Temp at times. A few years ago we didn't have nearly as many kids spamming the forums or bad memes being passed around, but maybe it's just rose-tinted glasses talking there. I thought the vinsclone thing was funny for a while but it got old fast and almost turned to harassment until vins expressed his desire to stop it. I have a lot of respect for Vins and I don't blame him for a second but I think a lot of dumb kids got drawn into the forum around that time. I know I've matured quite a bit since joining but a lot of people just spend all their time on temp because they're young kids with no jobs, especially during summer when there's no school. Regardless, there's no point in blowing it out of proportion because it's not as big of a problem as people act.
Anyway, I started to take interest in the news and reviews that got posted on the site, having talked about it with a bunch of staff members in the Shoutbox. I wrote a few reviews and then GBAtemp had its 2015 writer applications. Not gonna lie, I was extremely psyched and felt pretty entitled at the time which was wrong. So of course, what happened was that my application got rejected and a couple people that I had beef with got hired. I got pretty pissed and left for a while in my typical immature fashion. Anyway, then that whole drama with Ryukouki happened, and a bunch of spots opened up for writer positions. Luckily the guy I had beef with ended up leaving, so it encouraged me to come back.
I didn't really work on writing anything for a while, but I drafted up some dumb review for Undertale while I was caught up in that ridiculous fanbase. The review itself was pretty good and I got asked to do an official review for Yo-Kai Watch. If you guys don't know how that went for me, this Reddit thread about sums it up. Check the comments on the official review, it was insane and I had no idea what to do. Thankfully I stuck to my guns and was supported by the staff members.
Believe it or not, that Yo-Kai review actually helped me, it gave me a lot of experience in dealing with *ahem* difficult people, and if I could handle that, I could basically handle anything, right? So I basically kept writing reviews and asking the staff for them to be featured, and eventually I got on top of release dates and was actually helping out the staff as a user which felt pretty cool.
After a few more review codes were sent my way, I was eventually asked if I wanted to become a Contributor for the site, and naturally I could hardly contain my excitement for the most part. So I got promoted and here I am.
Which leads me into talking about the current state of users who contribute to the site. There are lots of people who seem to really be begging for staff positions to an almost annoying degree. My advice would be to try to be helping out the staff in whatever you do. If you draft an article in USN, and it's not formatted exactly how we do it on the front page, then a staff member has to go out of his/her way to not only promote the article, but also to fix the formatting to make it presentable. In that situation you're not helping the staff since it would be less effort to just write the article ourselves, we just promote the user threads to be nice and encourage you to do that more.
Another thing I would advise is to not beg for the position at all. I got where I am by writing reviews and posting news and I suggest you do the same. I really didn't go asking for it, and frankly begging is not appealing for us looking for new staff members.
One last suggestion, make sure you both write reviews and post news. Even if you don't have new games to review, do old ones or games that you enjoy. It gives us a way to measure your writing skill since posting a news article takes nothing other than a knowledge of formatting. We don't hire people who only do one or the other.
That's it for now, I hope this helps anyone who's looking to become staff and want to contribute to the site at a higher level. And people, don't shitpost. Your chances of being staff plummet with every worthless post you make.
I joined the site first for Wii hacking purposes and pretty much posted about that exclusively for about six months. I didn't really start getting to know anyone for a long time until I started frequenting the Shoutbox, which somehow encouraged me to participate more actively in all areas of temp. Making friends with a few people there got me to talk about various other stuff on Temp too.
I've mostly loved the place, but I get frustrated with Temp at times. A few years ago we didn't have nearly as many kids spamming the forums or bad memes being passed around, but maybe it's just rose-tinted glasses talking there. I thought the vinsclone thing was funny for a while but it got old fast and almost turned to harassment until vins expressed his desire to stop it. I have a lot of respect for Vins and I don't blame him for a second but I think a lot of dumb kids got drawn into the forum around that time. I know I've matured quite a bit since joining but a lot of people just spend all their time on temp because they're young kids with no jobs, especially during summer when there's no school. Regardless, there's no point in blowing it out of proportion because it's not as big of a problem as people act.
Anyway, I started to take interest in the news and reviews that got posted on the site, having talked about it with a bunch of staff members in the Shoutbox. I wrote a few reviews and then GBAtemp had its 2015 writer applications. Not gonna lie, I was extremely psyched and felt pretty entitled at the time which was wrong. So of course, what happened was that my application got rejected and a couple people that I had beef with got hired. I got pretty pissed and left for a while in my typical immature fashion. Anyway, then that whole drama with Ryukouki happened, and a bunch of spots opened up for writer positions. Luckily the guy I had beef with ended up leaving, so it encouraged me to come back.
I didn't really work on writing anything for a while, but I drafted up some dumb review for Undertale while I was caught up in that ridiculous fanbase. The review itself was pretty good and I got asked to do an official review for Yo-Kai Watch. If you guys don't know how that went for me, this Reddit thread about sums it up. Check the comments on the official review, it was insane and I had no idea what to do. Thankfully I stuck to my guns and was supported by the staff members.
Believe it or not, that Yo-Kai review actually helped me, it gave me a lot of experience in dealing with *ahem* difficult people, and if I could handle that, I could basically handle anything, right? So I basically kept writing reviews and asking the staff for them to be featured, and eventually I got on top of release dates and was actually helping out the staff as a user which felt pretty cool.
After a few more review codes were sent my way, I was eventually asked if I wanted to become a Contributor for the site, and naturally I could hardly contain my excitement for the most part. So I got promoted and here I am.
Which leads me into talking about the current state of users who contribute to the site. There are lots of people who seem to really be begging for staff positions to an almost annoying degree. My advice would be to try to be helping out the staff in whatever you do. If you draft an article in USN, and it's not formatted exactly how we do it on the front page, then a staff member has to go out of his/her way to not only promote the article, but also to fix the formatting to make it presentable. In that situation you're not helping the staff since it would be less effort to just write the article ourselves, we just promote the user threads to be nice and encourage you to do that more.
Another thing I would advise is to not beg for the position at all. I got where I am by writing reviews and posting news and I suggest you do the same. I really didn't go asking for it, and frankly begging is not appealing for us looking for new staff members.
One last suggestion, make sure you both write reviews and post news. Even if you don't have new games to review, do old ones or games that you enjoy. It gives us a way to measure your writing skill since posting a news article takes nothing other than a knowledge of formatting. We don't hire people who only do one or the other.
That's it for now, I hope this helps anyone who's looking to become staff and want to contribute to the site at a higher level. And people, don't shitpost. Your chances of being staff plummet with every worthless post you make.
