And yet, a whole bunch of people seemed to imemdiately recognize that there is indeed a problem and knew exactly what I was talking about.
People do indeed notice when posters are agressive and push their agenda; everyone does this to some extent: were the agenda to stick to gaming I don't think there would be that much of a problem.
Do you have to mince around and phrase everything like a lawyer?
But then you run into
ad hominem arguments...
The way I stated that may have been blunt but everyone knows it's true.
And begging the question statements...
Can enworld "handle the truth?"
Prejudicial language...
If thats what y'all like here, so be it.
Associating qualities of the part with the whole...
And other naughty things as you can well imagine. Add to that the tendency for folks to remember how you post (I regard iwatt as well spoken and polite, and so will give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to him potentially being rude; I will not do this with other posters) and you will find ENWorld can be as rude, or as polite, as you yourself are, with allowances for the odd do-gooder and internet villain.
Frankly I have always found ENWorld to be a wonderful forum, where problems arise only when the start of a thread asserts one opinion to be fact (
Jiffy shouldn't sell creamy peanut butter, it's not as good as crunchy), or when an otherwise tame assertion (
I would like the Bard to be more powerful) is presented in an unappealing way.
As for why you haven't seen threads begin politely and responded to politely go on for 8 pages and then get locked is because those threads drop off the first page before they reach a post count of 40.
"I think A is cool."
"Neat. A is cool."
"I don't like A as much as B."
"That's cool man, rock on with B."
It just isn't that interesting and those threads don't survive long. You've an adverse selection problem; you most often see threads that survive, and those threads that survive generally have some conflict within them due to something or other, and don't evince a "Everyone is entitled to their opinion and they're all equally valid" tone.
---
EDIT:
Since I've already used posts in this thread, I figure I'll do something with the opening line:
"Why is it that any time any discussion about D&D comes up which could even remotely somehow be construed as some kind of criticism of D&D as-is, a select few of the forum regulars swoop down with such venomous, vicious spiteful attacks to shut it down?"
Translated to:
Why is "
if A then B" true?
It's hard for me to respond to this question because answering with my opinion wouldn't actually answer the question: I don't beleive that "
If A then B" is true; I can't tell you why it's true. I would argue, "It's actually '
If C or D then B'", and that kind of start isn't healthy for a thread.
A better edit is:
Is it the case that "
If A then B"? Why or why not?
It might seem to be hair-splitting, but I do believe it does make a difference. My proposed edit at least allows the possibility of my opinion being wrong, and that allowance can go a long way with people.
/EDIT