I don't really know how much I can/should say so let me keep this post as general as possible:

The atmosphere has become, or at least is slowly becoming toxic. It is starting to resemble the old days on the mothership, and that is definitely not a good thing.

This really needs to be handled with care, as in recent weeks we have been bleeding former quality posters from the site. People who added good content are leaving, and being replaced with at best a vacuum, at worst...

Causes:

1) no update to the game is creating a negative environment (nothing to be done by NGA)
2) there are some people on the sub who are clearly trying to cause problems
3) there are regular posters that are getting caught up in the trouble

I've noticed this as well. I think as a general comment that could paint the picture in a very broad stroke, I would say that contributors are being reigned in, and non contributors are being left alone, on a relative basis. The code of conduct should be a guide not a doctrine to enforce like a non empathetic prejudiced police officer. I think the spirit of the code is what should be enforced, and Gobos should exercise common sense freely.

Normally the polite and political way to start a conversation like this is, "look, we don't want to tell you how to do your job," but I think that’s exactly what some of you need to hear.

I realize not all Gobos are created the same so I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater even though that has been common practice in the modding here. I would choose to praise Scarlet as an example who has shown professionalism and understanding. Forum users would more readily follow this person's advice and counsel, and so would I.

As a place to start, I can tell you it wouldn't be off place to actually apologize to individuals you accused of being advocates of rape, as an example. Apologies for such things are not only common place in civilized society, they are absolutely required.

Kudos to DJ for addressing the problem and actually trying to make this a better place, instead of the easier stance of giving up on this board as many others (some really good people too) seem to be doing, and who can blame them. We come here to have fun. This isn't a library.

I have a slightly different view of things.

On one side, a particular poster is posting A LOT, and I mean A LOT, and this is the kind of overwhelming presence in every thread that is just oppressive and wayyyyy too much posting. Their tone is also offputting and offensive to a lot of people, and they have a tendency to bring up Hitler and fascism in the wrong places. And to dig up the horse so they can beat it some more.

This poster also knows that people believe they are doing this and has no intent to stop, despite the fact that they are single-handedly maintaining one side of a two side forum war and knowingly creating content that will continue such a thing.

^ This is bad.


On the other hand, a large number of posters, instead of handling it appropriately, are responding by derailing everything, breaking the COC en masse, and all around being just as bad as what they are complaining about. This is unaceptable and the wrong way to respond to things (and you guys know who you are too). So instead of complaining to the mods and letting them handle it, we are simultaneously resorting to public shaming AND making Garren's like heck.

^ This is also very bad. And this happens whenever someone doesn't like someone else, not just in the case of this one user, so I consider it to be the greater of two apocalyptic problems here.

I'm not just talking about a single situation, I think this is an overal problem. We have an identity crisis and decisions have to be made. If this is going to be representative of the new status quo, it's going to result in me, and frankly a lot of others leaving. I don't want to post in a conflict zone. I don't want to be a part of a fan site where lots of the posts are from non fans who are just there to stir up trouble. And finally, I'm sick and tired of the constant stream of anonymity-induced nastiness.

I've got to run in a minute, be I'll be back later to discuss this further.

I can agree with that.

Since the B4Z delay, every single day it's been something. We've had at least 3 big incidents we can refer to by name, along with an accompany-ment of a bunch of smaller incidents that are just people who don't like each other being mean to each other and then getting mad when the mods won't let you say bad **** about other posters on the forums.

Just as a general reminder, I asked DJ0045 to create this thread to look for long-term solutions.
Try to just name the problems objectively. That's the best way for everyone to look at these things. Try not to let emotions from the problems in those threads leak in here.

This is probably the only thing I'm going to contribute to this thread, but I think it's in everyone's best interest to keep these forums nice (or at least nicer compared to the stuff I heard about the Duels sub)

Good points DJ. I know the right thing to do is to report but I just don't have that in me. On another website that I frequent more than here, there are mods but they don't have to do almost anything cuz we self police. Call out offenders ourselves, shaming, and such. It works, no one steps out of line.

I just can't bring myself to report unless I'm really offended which is practically never.

The following are the problems as objectively as I can state them.

1) One user is a majority of traffic and directly posting and creating threads in order to cause tension. They KNOW that they are doing this, they know that people are upset about their posting habits and that they personally are causing a huge amount of the problems on the subforum, and they still have no intention to make any change at all.

2) Several people believe it's a good idea to "call them out" if they don't like how someone is posting. Combined with 1), this ends up every single thread almost now.

3) People aren't using the report button or doing anything constructive because they think that the people doing 2) are going to get punished while the person doing 1) is getting away with it. So far, that has not necessarily been the case but if it continues and people DO start reporting this stuff either the person from 1) is going to change their posting habits, the person from 1) is going to get perma-banned, the people from 2) are going to get banned, or the people from 2) are just going to up and leave.



Now quite a bit of this is blowing things out of proportion instead of handling it in a healthier manner. But that's about what is happening right now. And I'm starting to get concerned because some people are talking about "falling on their sword" to try and force a situation where 1) will get banned. It's about 2 or 3 times worse than the time Hakeem threatened to exodus to the mothership because he didn't like my posting habits.

1) I'd be very interested to hear more information on your particular take on this problem, and how to resolve it.
2) You grossly underestimate how many people simply don't post when this stuff is going on. The tragedy isn't the drama, the tragedy is the people that walk away because of the drama, and the fact that the people in group 1 you are referring to garner so much attention that 'Several people [in group 2] believe it's a good idea to "call them out."' I sincerely doubt any of the people in the second group you describe want to be in that group.
3) Those options are NOT equal.

My particular take is that the real problem here is the proclivity for bringing up right-wing conspiracy theory level segways into otherwise relateively calm situations. We experienced Godwin's law on a Blu-ray vs DVD debate for heaven's sake. I don't need to hear how the soulless masses are letting our fascist overlords deceive us when the person bringing this up is really just trying to convince me that everyone should switch to Blu-Ray. There's a complete lack of tact and situational awareness going on on a regular basis that is serving as a force multiplier for whatever apocalyptic meltdown our forum is going to go through before the next thread gets locked.

Except it, by admission, is not a lack of situational awareness but a lack of caring about the situation they are aware of.

Edit: I'm sorry but I don't know what the long term solution is to this. If someone doesn't break the COC, there isn't anything we can really do about it right now as far as I know.

self-policing is a really bad system for a community that wants to grow. people adapt to each other, and over time a self-policing community will cut itself off. I saw this on WM and on KK: the mods did very little because we were all ok with each other and we all knew each other, but that meant we were all getting away with a bunch of things that made the environment pretty hostile to people who weren't already immersed in it. it also creates a lot of unwritten rules, which again is pretty hostile to new posters because they don't know them. with a moderated system, our rules are spelled out so anyone can see them, and as long as people actually use the report function they seem pretty consistently enforced. new people know what's expected of them, and they aren't attacked or shamed when they screw up. in fact, they aren't even banned when they screw up, the first hard warning carries no ban time. it allows people to learn what we accept without being jerks to them in the meantime, which creates a much more welcoming atmosphere.

basically, if you know you should be reporting something, try reporting it.

Mjack, I meant your take on how to deal with: One user is a majority of traffic and directly posting and creating threads in order to cause tensiony. They KNOW that they are doing this, they know that people are upset about their posting habits and that they personally are causing a huge amount of the problems on the subforum, and they still have no intention to make any change at all.

Sounds like you back in the day. Why did you do it then, why did you stop, what did it take? This is honest curiosity, by no means should you take it as an attack. You should have a fairly unique perspective on this subject.

@razorborne, that's a solid point, and you may be hitting something on the nail here. Thanks for bringing it up.

razor, you're totally right and we're seeing that on the other website where the self-policing takes place. We don't see as many new users and growth as we used to. To put it in the words of several people that have tried integrating into that site, "It feels like I'm at a party and i wasn't invited"

That said, while that might be a small element of our problem here, we still have other issues. For one thing, we have had multiple instances of (different) people getting around the CoC, and causing harm without 'breaking' any rules. We have had even more instances of people smashing the CoC to smithereens, lol.

What I can't decide: are they the symptoms or the causes?

In other words, do we have a negative vibe here, and is it causing people to act like jerks, or do we have people that act like jerks causing a negative vibe. It's clear that one feeds the other, but the solution is subtly different.

The first begs for an adjustment of the CoC, and a request out to all regular posters to chill, with occasional reminders until things start to settle.

The second begs for permanent bans, and a system that stops people from coming back to do harm over and over again (which clearly has happened, both from banned people and people that probably should be banned but aren't).

Unfortunately, I bet we need both.

Btw, at what point can/should I make the Duels board aware that this discussion is going on. We have 2 others from our board involved currently, but there are others (maybe all) that should be in here too.

I'd be perfectly happy for more people to know about this particular discussion. It involves the Duels board so there really isn't a reason they shouldn't know about it's existence.

without knowing the Duels forum all that well, I can say that these sorts of things don't seem to happen with any sort of frequency in any other community on the site. General recently had an issue with a persistent troll, but I think the mods dealt with that in a pretty reasonable manner and the community mostly ignored them or used them as a springboard for real discussions anyway. I can't speak to the specifics of the Duels community, but the fact that the same set of rules hasn't produced the same sort of toxic environment anywhere else seems to indicate that it's a problem of the specific cohort, not one of the overarching structure. it may be that the CoC isn't being enforced properly in that area, which would be an important distinguishing feature, but given that you guys only have one mod who's posted since June that's not surprising, especially when apparently there's a strong current within the culture against reporting posts and toward vigilante moderation. maybe it's worth discussing getting a second active moderator in Duels to cover Gear's back?

Another thing to keep in mind is that the duels forum is the most active subforum maybe the other forums haven't experienced this problem because they just haven't reached the critical mass duels is at currently

I think the best way to improve morale on the forum, would be a rule that you may not criticise or even discuss another poster. If everyone was forced to talk about the topic of each thread, instead of eachother, the majority of problems would go away. This would require though, that people who don't like heated debates or have problems with certain things being discussed, would just suck it up deal with it.

We know who this user is. We know they are deliberately inciting the board as a whole and pushing individual member's buttons who try to expose them. Ignoring the threads they post WILL NOT make those threads vanish from public view, since we can all agree nothing new is being created (whether due to BFZ delay, toxic behavior, past conflicts etc).

I get that you do not want to raise your hands because the CoC haven't been "directly" violated. I get that it will look like favoritism to outsiders. But it's coming to a point where you have to realize the impact, realize the damage it is causing, and do as Black Barney suggested by using the CoC as a "target" rather than the "means" to get there. We can try and ignore it forever, but until someone with the power to delete threads takes that action, I 100% guarantee you that ignoring them will result in spam.

I won't pretend that we haven't all seen the type before in other forums we've contributed to. You KNOW what can happen, what is very likely to happen, and I personally do not want to see it get to that point when there is power to stop it now.

I came here after most of you because Force (bless his misplays) recommended this site for deck builds. I saw a community I could interact with that focused on new crazy deck ideas. Whilst we have to be patient for that aspect to become as populous again as it did for previous games, a little damage control now will mean new players can get to enjoy that content that drew me in.

Just like BBB said I'm here because of Force and had I seen what's going on now when I first joined... Well I don't know if I'd be here to have this discussion

Heck I had considered just silently leaving a few times in the past week

This person is now the first person to get into my ignore box (which I figured out because of him I wasn't even aware I could ignore people till about 2 weeks ago)