OK, we're gettng a little annoyed here!

[Sacrificial Lamb]

Speaking for myself and from personal experience, it's that this is a time when there are a lot of new posters here with very heated, very stupid opinions. It overloaded my self-censor.

And yes, I do believe that people need to be publicly called on the carpet from time to time-- as I did.

And as was quickly done to me, by a mod.

The time-out did wonders for my attitude.

Scratch that: It didn't help my attitude, but it did reboot my self-censor.

Many, many times since, I have spent minute upon minute typing and retyping brutally eviscerating replies, only to delete them at last. It ain't worth it.

So I guess I am coming down on the side of heavier enforcement after all. :\

I'm not. I say, "let people flame out". And no, I'm not kidding. When message boards are too strictly moderated, it encourages passive-aggressive behavior. ENWorld was the exception to this rule, but I think that's about to change forever. This type of behavior has been happening at RPG.net for a while now. For years there....people would flame, people would fight, and yet it was cathartic. Posters would get the bile out of their systems, and then they'd be done with it.

Sometime later, the moderation there became more suffocating, and it got a little boring. The place just didn't have the "magic" that it used to have. Even worse, the change in moderation encouraged people to flame each other without overtly breaking the "rules". I put "rules" in quotes, because the "rules" were and are different for each poster. You had people getting a free pass on trollish behavior based on how much they sucked up to the mods, and how well they got along with the right "clique".

Anyway, this atmosphere created a climate of passive-aggressiveness that was simply POISON for the forums. The snark actually INCREASED, even though people were less overtly insulting. Conversation became less constructive from the more restrictive moderation, so out of frustration, posters resorted to passive-aggressiveness. When they couldn't flame an annoying poster directly, they'd never get the bile out of their system, so the flames would go on and on. RPG.net isn't quite as bad now, but quite frankly, it's one-fourth as fun as it was just a few years ago, and that's a shame, as it used to be the first place I'd visit on the Internet.

I'm saying this as a person who never got warned or banned, so I'm not just some random banned poster out to settle a score. I still visit there, because the site is still good, but it is no longer great. :\

If you want to visit a nearly unmoderated forum on rpgs, go to www.therpgsite.com . People were slagging it because of its owner, but honestly, the flames there are much less than here, and the moderation is almost nil. There are three rules there:

1.) No racial epithets.
2.) No sock puppet accounts without permission.
3.) No spam.

I don't know if there's a rule against pornography, but people generally don't post porn there. I think I saw one thread in the past year that had nudity in it, and that's it.

So there we go. There's an actual forum where posters talk about rpgs, have fun and constructive conversation, and they do it with almost zero moderation. Now....do people flame each other in those forums? Yep! It happens from time to time. But eventually they get over it for two reasons:

1.) Other posters can deride a troll when he's being obnoxious.
2.) Because moderation is almost non-existent, people don't go into passive-aggressive mode nearly so much. They flame out, get the bile out of their systems, and move on. Flame-bait threads are long threads, but THEY'RE CONFINED TO THE INDIVIDUAL THREAD. Because of this "hands-off" style of moderation, the flames don't spread everywhere, because people are getting their "thirst for blood" in the flame thread.

What we see now on ENWorld, is a situation where people cannot overtly flame each other, thus, they're unable or unwilling to get the frustration of their systems. So now we have this fighting spilling out all over the place, with many posters fighting in a passive-aggressive way, and it goes on and on...

An "enforced politeness code" makes this continue, so this will continue, guaranteed. I know this isn't what you'd like to hear, but this is my belief. If 4e hadn't arrived so soon, or in this way, it might have been avoided, and ENWorld could have returned to its old, sweet self, but now I have my doubts.

 

[Maggan]

But eventually they get over it for two reasons:

1.) Other posters can deride a troll when he's being obnoxious.
2.) Because moderation is almost non-existent, people don't go into passive-aggressive mode nearly so much. They flame out, get the bile out of their systems, and move on.

In my opinion it seems as if they don't so much get it out of their system, as embrace it, and because many other posters are of the same persuasion, it works there. They have found a common ground, where they can be aggressive at each other.

I don't think it would work here.

/M

 

[Holy Bovine]

Speaking for myself and from personal experience, it's that this is a time when there are a lot of new posters here with very heated, very stupid opinions. It overloaded my self-censor.

And yes, I do believe that people need to be publicly called on the carpet from time to time-- as I did.

And as was quickly done to me, by a mod.

The time-out did wonders for my attitude.

Scratch that: It didn't help my attitude, but it did reboot my self-censor.

Many, many times since, I have spent minute upon minute typing and retyping brutally eviscerating replies, only to delete them at last. It ain't worth it.

So I guess I am coming down on the side of heavier enforcement after all. :\

I would pay real money to see those posts before you editted them

My self-censor is a malfunctioning bit of hardware right now. Worse, it is spreading over to other boards where I fly off the handle for the stupdiest things.

Maybe I need a ban

 

[Charwoman Gene]

And yes, I do believe that people need to be publicly called on the carpet from time to time-- as I did.

And as was quickly done to me, by a mod.

Same thing happened to me.

 

[MojoGM]

I'm not. I say, "let people flame out". And no, I'm not kidding. When message boards are too strictly moderated, it encourages passive-aggressive behavior. ENWorld was the exception to this rule, but I think that's about to change forever. This type of behavior has been happening at RPG.net for a while now. For years there....people would flame, people would fight, and yet it was cathartic. Posters would get the bile out of their systems, and then they'd be done with it.

This is what I would like to see, and I agree completely with the notion that by clamping down on "flames" people get passive-aggressive and try to snipe at each other without overtly breaking the "rules".

And I HAVE seen different standards apply to different people, but that happens everywhere.

Honestly, I see many a thread get closed JUST when it was getting interesting...

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Same thing happened to me.

What a coincidence.

 

[Wormwood]

Same thing happened to me.

Same here.

I was being a jerk---a mod called me on it---and now my posting habits are better for it.

(I hope)

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Yeah, I got an email that adjusted my posting & thinking (I'd like to think) - an email I specifically thanked the mod for going to rather than straight to a ban.

It works, mods. At least, for most of us. But so would random bannings.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

I'm not. I say, "let people flame out". And no, I'm not kidding. When message boards are too strictly moderated, it encourages passive-aggressive behavior. ENWorld was the exception to this rule

When? EN World has long been a bastion of passive-aggressive behavior. It's what the rules allow and is the preferred weapon of many posters.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Sacrificial Lamb said what I was trying to say, only better. In particular, I think the "no personal attacks" always leads to a bunch of people finding a way to communicate their disdain via implication. I find that they usually succeed.

The only reason I've never been banned from a forum is that I frequently "ban myself" for a few days. The nice thing about a self ban is that you can make it as focused or as broad, as short or as long, as is necessary to accomplish the purpose.