Community News: New Forum Management

FadeXF

Ahh there are many of those but you just have to let them go or keep your calm and question them on it and leave it there. See, their game is to stay hidden and make people focus on you, they cannot follow any line of conversation that brings light to their bad ways.

People they will sympathize with the one that is least out of line. So these people they like to poke you just a little bit trying to strike a vein. They enjoy finding that thing which is too annoying to you, but difficult for others to detect.

So, when they strike your vein, you rage at them and they sit there quietly like choirboys pointing fingers at you saying wtf is wrong with you. And people will be people, masses will take the side of the one who is least out of line, and the bigger the difference the more dramatically they will react to you.

So, even if you are right, the further you turn up the heat and rage the more everyone is gonna fight you.

Meanwhile, those who tried to catch you off-balance sit there quietly and revel in the chaos they have caused and the pain you feel. It is a form of psychopathy, they are in it for the game, the aim isn't to damage you, but to win control and they love the game born of their ego.

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Bex_GGG wrote:

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Crackmonster wrote:

Me thinks you have to use your intuition alongside the rules. You have to sense if things are getting out of hand and deal with it accordingly in most cases, while in other cases there are rules which should simply not be broken, such racism or religious discrimination etc.

Some things have to burn out on their own, and some people have to battle it out to resolve things, then i think moderation should be there to prevent things from getting out of hand. I reckon the goal is for people to feel free to express themselves, while at the same time externally-destructive behavior is not accepted.

That sounds pretty reasonable. I like the idea of people being free to express themselves as long as it doesn't ostracize other people, and in return not be ostracized for their expression.

Intuition is a great thing, and I agree it should be followed. The tricky part here is that you have a large team of people working at different times, who will naturally have different intuitions. Finding a way to implement this while keeping the whole team consistent with one another can get a little tricky.

I absolutely agree, the larger the team the harder it gets. All i can say is you are doing a great job at GGG, so whatever you are doing, keep it up! :)

Maintaining order amongst the rabble will take a great deal of intuition.

If you treat everyone as an antagonist it will not work, if you treat everyone as a friend that will also not work. You need to be fair yet firm, you need to allow freedom of expression as long as that expression doesn't cross the line to ostracize or ignore the rules. Not everyone will be happy with every decision, nor will everyone be unhappy.

Just be fair and consistent without a heavy hand and the masses will rally around you.

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FadeXF wrote:

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Thanks for the recommendations Sexcalibure!

@FadeFX - I would like it if severe offences, like making racist remarks, would warrant a probation over a warning.

I would love to see that in action. It's infuriating to hold one's tongue when someone else "took off the gloves" - so to speak.

Listen: if you want to let me fight it out, then that's fine by me. But what's absolutely not ok is that you hold 1 party to a certain standard, while allowing the other party full reign to "low blow" the entire time.

just dont get over the top with it

not every post that is not "politically correct" should be removed and certainly no probation should be issued

I hope the frequently negative attitudes can be reigned in. There are of course a lot of great people here, and we all know there are some people with serious social deficiencies who will not accept or admit it when they are being toxic and churlish.

I've seen it over and over again, where someone will write something obviously antagonistic, and they just defend it to the death instead of accepting it and moving on with their life. I do not envy Bex in this job, I can't imagine what would be the best way to promote healthy and mature discussions in a web forum.

For what it's worth, two of the better communities I lurk at are Neogaf and Hackernews. Both still have their weaker elements, but both generally have a higher signal to noise ratio than what is common in most forums or subreddits. Neogaf in particular is exceptionally well moderated in my opinion. I imagine it's because it's so hard to get in to, and so easy to get banned from, that anyone who has survived there, has generally learned to pick up the subtler aspects of inoffensive online social interaction.

I don't expect it of course, but I'd love if this forum was a lot tougher on passive aggressive whinging, that there were consistent consequences for it, and people found value in elevating the level of conversation.* Even if the topic is as common as "look at this rare drop" and it got no more than five replies, if those five replies were intelligent, I think the community would be better off for it.

In comparison, the way we are now? People seem to post for no purpose other than to amuse themselves, with no real thought put in at all - constantly.

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FadeXF wrote:

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Thanks for the recommendations Sexcalibure!

@FadeFX - I would like it if severe offences, like making racist remarks, would warrant a probation over a warning.

I would love to see that in action. It's infuriating to hold one's tongue when someone else "took off the gloves" - so to speak.

Listen: if you want to let me fight it out, then that's fine by me. But what's absolutely not ok is that you hold 1 party to a certain standard, while allowing the other party full reign to "low blow" the entire time.

I don't know if you read my comment to you a bit up FadeXF?

What you have to understand is, it is not actually just support treating you unfairly. It is also you losing your cool and the battle of subtlety with whoever trolls you. A successful troll will among other things do just what i outlined in the last comment. So basically they win you and you rage, result is onlookers will react normally according to human behavior and blame you because you are most out of line. Support are people too, they do not know all or see all even if they do their best.

You will never escape from that until you get on top of your game and do not allow these people to provoke you, because that is exactly what they want to do and it is how they "win" you.

Just saying, if you don't want to beat them at their own game, you have to at least get used to shaking it off.

what is whinging

thats the second time ive seen it today

is it kind like whining?

A word on Neogaf, if you were to apply their standards, Bex, you would have to close literally half the threads around here and ban half of the users x) I don't think thats feasible.