Tony: Yes, lots of reading!

Kyle: Actually, I don’t spend as much time as I’d like in the paintball oriented areas of the site. When I am browsing, it’s typically in the Talk to Mods section or Bug Reports, trying to keep people happy, and squashing any bugs they might find. The rest of my day is spent coding new features for the site, or performing maintenance on the servers that keep things running.

Tony: It’s become quite the task trying to keep up with all the happenings on PbNation. As you know, the site is the largest paintball website and is also one of the largest message boards on the internet. Trying to stay on top of all those new posts is a daunting task. It’s impossible for our entire staff combined to read every post so we rely on our users to report when other users are pushing the envelope. We’ve actually made some major changes to the way the software underneath the site works to handle the amount of traffic that we see. My duties these days mostly involve programming, helping with technical issues, answering emails and being a sort of “gatekeeper”. I’ll also help the staff on difficult rulings or unusual situations.

How much do you guys play now?

Kyle: Sadly, not nearly as much as I’d like. I know a lot of people who work in the industry who can’t find the time to get out there and play. I think that it’s important not to lose touch with the reason you got involved in the first place. That being said, I probably only get out on the field about 2-3 times per year right now, but I’m trying to change that. We have a couple PbNation events every year where we try to gather as many moderators on the site together as we can and blow off a little steam, but they are few and far between unfortunately.

Tony: Ugh, the truth is like Kyle it’s only a couple times a year. I know John (Dresser) on staff still plays Pro and he actually plays a couple times a week when it’s warm out. I’d say most of our mods also play much more regularly than I do; I’m not really indicative of how much the rest the mod staff plays. I obviously would never miss one of the get togethers with the mod staff though. I’ve found that playing only a few times a year really puts a lot of the adrenaline back into it.

When you started the site, did you ever imagine it'd turn into the size that it is now?

Tony: I thought it would be bigger by now. :dodgy: Most definitely not! It’s been a real eye opening experience to see it grow and change from the beginning to where it is now.
I played paintball first at a friend’s birthday party when I was 14. That was pretty young back them but now I see 14 year olds playing all the time.

Kyle: I came on board a little while after Tony and crew started the site. The whole thing has been an uphill battle, keeping up with the traffic and trying to make things run smoothly. The site pretty much got huge without us noticing, we were too busy behind the scenes. One day it sort of hit us that we’d become this behemoth, and we didn’t know what else to say but pause for a second and say “Cool”, before we got back to work.

Tony: The site was started on Christmas break in 2001 with two friends, one of whom even played paintball with me at that same birthday party 4 years before. I was 18 and still in high school up late each night working with a passion to simply improve the site. I remember staying up all night before going back to school in early January and then showing people in school this little paintball forum we’d created. We bought a server for it and everything and put it in my friend’s bedroom. That same passion is all throughout PbNation. We have Pros who are striving to be the best at what they do and it’s the same passion we see throughout the site as people contribute and post. People help other people for free on the site with tech problems and issues all the time. There’s a massive amount of good being done on the site every day for no other reason than someone had a question and another user knew the answer.

Your keen to stress the input of the mod team, how do you manage that number of mods?

Kyle: At some point we decided that Tony and I just didn’t have the time to manage the mods, and we brought additional staff on board to help keep the mods happy, and to try to get them all into thinking alike when it comes to running the site. Our mod-staff comes from all over the United States, Canada, and even as far away as Norway. Trying to keep everyone informed on policy changes, and making sure they deal with users in a consistent manner is not an easy task. We’re not perfect, but there’s just so much going on with the site that it’s impossible to catch all of the abuse, and make sure everyone is dealt with appropriately.

Tony: Since the moderation staff is actually made up of volunteers it’s very difficult for us to tell them to make moderating a priority. We know they have lives and often make sacrifices to help us with the site. Many of our mods log as much time on PbN each day as they do at their real jobs that actually pay! Because they are volunteers, the management tends to be pretty loose compared to a typical job. Most of the moderators started as regular users who were spending a great deal of time posting and helping on PbNation. We asked the majority of our mods to join to staff because we saw them continually contributing on the site. Many of them are true experts in the forums they moderate. We don’t ask very many people to be a moderator and I can’t think anyone offhand who has outright turned us down. They see it as an honor and we think we’re lucky to have them. We owe a great deal of gratitude to them. They are the ones who help keep the users posting within the guidelines, keep the insults to a minimum and prevent the site from being overrun by spam. If you are ever at an event and come across a PbNation moderator there’s a good chance they’ll be friendly and helpful in person as well.

Was it hard taking the step of trusting that number of mods with the governance of the site, one you started yourselves?

Kyle: Surprisingly? No. We only bring people into the fold that have proven themselves to be an asset to the site. The problem is that this is a slow process, so we’re continually understaffed and on the hunt for more people.

Tony: As a mod you do your best to try and not be too overbearing and egotistical, and we have created an ever evolving set of rules that mods also have to adhere to in order to maintain some sanity and sense of order on the site. We have a checks and balances system in place for mods too. I do remember there was a day when it really dawned on me that I sort-of wasn’t really in control anymore. Then I remembered there was a reason why we made these people into mods. We really do trust them to make many decisions a day that will eventually reflect back on PbNation as a whole. They really do a great job so it makes relinquishing that control a lot easier.

What are your interests outside of paintball?

Tony: After spending days on end in front of a computer it’s great to be completely disconnected. I’ve grown to really appreciate the wilderness. I live in Arizona so I’ve been on dozens trips to areas where the suburbs haven’t taken over, hiking and camping within the state. I actually keep a list of places I haven’t yet been to that I will someday experience like the Organ Pipe Wilderness at the border of Arizona and Mexico, the White Mountains or even Havasu Falls, which is on the Havasupai Indian Reservation near the Grand Canyon. It has this crazy blue/turquoise water that I have to see in person. Of course, not so cheesy pastimes include having a very cold beer with my friends or one of my six room mates. I also like listening to new music. I know it’s a cliché and people like to say, “I like anything but country” but most those people are full of it. I actually do like virtually everything that isn’t country. I’m currently listening to the new Aesop Rock and thinking the Icelandic group Múm might have to be next.

Kyle: I’m a bit of an audiophile, with a soft spot for things with blinking lights. I’ve got a wicked music habit and listen to a lot of electronic and indie music. I’m also into gourmet cooking, German cars, and outdoorsy stuff like mountain biking and backpacking.

What are you most proud of regarding PBN?

Kyle: I think that being the largest sports forum of any sort is a pretty huge accomplishment. You’d really think that there would be some football or NASCAR forum out there that would dwarf us in size, but paintballers are a truly passionate and dedicated bunch. The users are what makes PbNation what it is, and I’m proud of being able to enable them to gather and have fun.

Tony: The friendships and people I’ve met through it and knowing there are so many thousands of other people who’ve done the same. I still see people say, “it’s just the Internet” as if it can’t really have an impact on the outside world that it exists in. I think with the advent of the large social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook the youth of today and more people in general are starting to understand that the connection extends way past online. There’s a very real chance you will meet and play paintball with those same people you “met” first online.

Do you regret PBN getting so big at all? What has it's size both been a positive influence on? And a negative one?

Tony: No regrets here. PbNation has grown into the world’s largest paintball news and tech resource. Numerous shops, manufacturers and distributors use it to find manuals, o-rings sizes, fixes, potential issues and details on guns daily. Before you had to listen to
your friend who was a paintball "expert" and hope he wasn't half an idiot. Now if you post incorrect info on the 'Nation, you'll probably get called out on it pretty quickly. The diversity of people that are on PbNation is the result of it gaining in size and that’s something I find very positive.

Kyle: Sometimes I do think we’re too big. Whenever a site gets popular, you get a lot of haters. You can’t please everyone, and it’s sometimes discouraging when you work hard on something and people are hellbent on hating on it. On the upside, being the size we are means that we’ve got more content than anyone else out there. It may be hard to find
sometimes, but it’s there.

PbNation has taken a few principled stands, notably against the NPPL's filming at Boston recently, what other causes or issues within paintball do you feel passionately about?

Tony: Let me start by saying we had nothing against the TV cameras filming in Boston. We had an issue with the NPPL excluding other forms of media. We actually hope the show succeeds and brings more players into this game we all love. Our issue was that it was unfair to cast aside DVD companies at the last second and only allow TV cameras and the NPPL cameras on the most important field at the event. The DVD companies had not only been promised they could film, they paid money to be there and were prevented from filming at the last minute. Paintball has made it this far with the help of the DVD companies and turning our backs on them in the quest for TV is wrong on many levels. We know the superstars of our sport through looking at pictures in magazines and watching DVDs and videos online, not through TV coverage. No matter what TV could potentially do for us in the future, we have to protect the companies that have brought paintball this far. The NPPL found a way to work with both the DVD companies and TV in the past and I believe the ESPN show was better because of that collaboration. This was a step backwards.

One of the things that I believe will help the sport as a whole is if more players at the tournament level were more respectful of each other and especially to newer players. Tournament players need to take the time to help introduce newer players to the game instead of just blowing their heads off and laughing about it to each other. Just a little friendly conversation in the staging area can lead to people staying in the sport for longer. It has to be a grass roots effort that starts locally. Tournament players should be helping newer players fix their guns, coaching them through fixing on field mistakes and helping the sport grow by being true representatives of our game.

Kyle: This is a tough one. There’s a different side to the sport that a lot of people don’t see. I personally don’t tolerate companies that partake in shady business practices regardless of if it happens on PbNation or not. When you’ve been in the sport as long as some of us have been, you get to meet some truly amazing people, and I’m more than happy to flex whatever muscle I may have to make sure those people aren’t getting beat up by the big dogs out there. You may not agree with my stance on a lot of things, but you have to respect that I’m willing to stand up for the people I believe in.

Where do you see paintball in three years time, and what part will PBN play in that?

Kyle: I hope to see paintball continuing to grow and become more mainstream over the next few years. Whenever people ask me what I do for a living, I love being able to say that I work in the Paintball industry, because most of the time their faces light up and they start telling me a story about the time they played paintball, and how much fun they had. Even if the sport stagnates from a technology perspective, we have a long ways to go when it comes to being able to share the sport we’re all so passionate about with the rest of the world.

Tony: I don’t think paintball will change much as a sport in three years. Maybe there will be a couple of new tournament formats. Maybe there will be less if the big tournament series will figure out how to collaborate. If there is going to be a revolutionary product that will drastically change the sport of paintball, it’s not something that I’ve been able to foresee. I do believe that if anyone can figure out how to make paintball cheaper they will do well for themselves and the rest of us too. Whatever happens, you can bet PbNation will be a part of it!