Your Thoughts on Forum Culture

My thoughts on forum culture are best expressed by the response given by Ghandi when asked what he thought about western civilization:

"I think it would be a good idea."


Personally, I am behind the suggestion upthread for moderated forums and unmoderated forums. Leave two forums totally unmoderated and moderate the hell out of the rest. Everybody gets what they want.

I run a busy forum elsewhere on the web and make the rules of posting clear to my people. Personal attacks, hostility, ad hominem and other uncivilized behavior are deleted as soon as I find them. The rules are right up front and I give no warnings. If you want your voice heard on my forums, you will argue passionately, without baiting or attacking. This works beautifully for me and people get the message quickly to debate the actual points without resorting to personal attacks. In most places, they call it protocol: a code of correct conduct.

The internet, for better or worse, is an anonymous medium. People will do and say things in anonymity that they would be ashamed of in front of anyone who knew them.

I haven't read this thread in it's entirety. I am going to comment anyway.

Forums are populated by egotists and egomaniacs. Even those who try to act as moderators, consistently asking for people to be nicer, are demonstrating their superiority by claiming thier civility is better than the poster who's behavior they are trying to change.

While I agree that personal attacks shouldn't be a part of the Forums the last person who asked me to be more civil made all kinds of assumptions about who I am, and that was a personal attack in and of itself.

Sometimes people need to be a little less sensitive to passionate voices.

Shut down the forums and make them strictly for content developers and feedback.

The intensity of the self-centered culture is far to great to expect civility on an anonymous medium.

People are also far too defensive to consider other people.

So lets leave the whining, moaning, and cajoling of the masses to their private conversations.

Until the forums are gone, we can all expect more flaming, trolling, and finger-pointing.

Until human beings are gone, we can all expect more of people being human beings.

Damnit. Foiled by clever rhetoric once again!

*returns to moonbase*

I think it's fair to say that sometimes I believe myself to possess more skills in human relations than some folks. I believe this because other people have had enough faith in me in this regard to hire me to teach the subject on a college level. So, if I don't view this as a virtue, but as a skillset (something that gets better with practice) it seems reasonable enough to me to believe myself to possess a little more of this than some others, just as those who have practice at building possess more skill in that regard than I. We all have different skill levels in different areas.

But, this doesn't mean that it is okay to rip someone apart or call names. Calling people names is uncivil and destructive. Therefore, it seems obvious to me that posts that resort to namecalling aren't helping the community or discourse. My level of sensitivity won't impact the other person's destructive behaviour. I can choose to try to ignore the behaviour, but ignoring it doesn't mean it has no impact: it has already had an impact. Minimizing this negative impact by removing posts that attack people through namecalling seems like the kind of thing that forum moderators are for, isn't it?

Anyway, if I were king, I'd remove all namecalling posts as a way of setting expectations around community behaviour. One can be passionate without being cruel.

(I'd be queen, but they have a tendency to lose their heads in not so pleasant ways. )

~ Cherry

To me, the line between "proper" forum posting and improper is simple:

Is the post constructive, or destructive?

There are numerous personal opinions, and a lot of screams about "freedom of speech" etc. Everyone has his own opinion regarding such things. But it all comes down to: what is the purpose of the forum... is it to improve the community or is it to allow people to spout whatever they want to spout, regardless of impact on others or the forum itself.

I've seen excellent threads ruined by "griefer" posts. I've seen users directly attack other users for no other reason than really bad manners and a total lack of respect. If a post serves no purpose but to give the poster sadistic jollies... it really has no place here. To my understanding, this isn't a flamer board... its purpose is to suggest, provide feedback, improve and inform. If a post does none of this and further-- if it serves no other purpose than negativity... why should it remain?

I've seen posts which served to inform and which contained much valid content, but which also crossed the line (in my mind) in terms of personal attacks on a previous poster, who had not themselves been attacking anyone. I suppose such posts could be edited rather than removed. But my point is, the situation is not black and white.

neko

I agree. When someone digresses to such tactics, the post loses its right to be posted, no matter what other "benefits" it may offer. If I find a tiny hairball in the middle of a plate of food, I'm not going to eat my way around it-- I'm going to dump the whole plate.

[ BTW... out of curiosity... are there PLEASANT ways to be beheaded? ]

hehe it is true that beheading is an unpleasant prospect no matter how one slices it (pun intended). However, the words I used were 'losing one's head' which might also be taken to mean something altogether different: running amok for example. While beheading is always unpleasant, running amok might be rather fun from time to time. Good question!

From:
"Making Light"
"Reality-based language, fraud, folly, truth, history, and knitting, etc.)"


9. If you judge that a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it’s important to get rid of it, or at least make it hard to read. Do it as quickly as possible. There’s no more useless advice than to tell people to just ignore such things. We can’t. We automatically read what falls under our eyes.

Nashville replies:
This can't be true, because I've learned to filter/ignore posts while reading SL forums.


7. Things to cherish: Your regulars. A sense of community. Real expertise. Genuine engagement with the subject under discussion. Outstanding performances. Helping others. Cooperation in maintenance of a good conversation. Taking the time to teach newbies the ropes.

Nashville replies:
I hope that this is true!

One problem among many with forum moderation is that it is always unfair. Human moderators make mistakes, and mistakes can be very hurtful or, indeed, cause more damage than the post that is being censored.

As an example, I had a post deleted which went into the etymological derivation of a word for the female genitals. The purpose of the post was to show that at one time the word was respectful and had the dignity of any word describing part of the body. But Jeska saw fit to delete it.

About a week later I saw another post in which the same word was used as a swear word, and that was allowed by the forum censors.

Needless to say I wasn't pleased. When that sort of thing happens it makes you less inclined to post on the forums.

Not criticising an individual here, but just the principle. When human moderators start censoring that which is not illegal, then unfairness automatically comes in, because none of us is infallible.

Can't quite agree with this one Selador. Yes, errors in moderation sometimes occur, but NO moderation is far worse. I've seen boards that were not moderated... and they were nothing but flamer/griefer boards. I've seen boards where earnest, valuable threads have been turned into foolishness by people who couldn't put together an intelligent thought if you gave them instant glue.

Forum Culture... Jumbo Shrimp....? Oxymorons. oops.. did i say "morons"?

*yawns

Perhaps we could keep this forum and have a second one which is moderated?

Perhaps we could use a wiki, instead, so as to facilitate community moderation?
I am willing to believe that folks here can disagree vigorously, without having to worry about malicious deleting.

The "Purpose" section of the forum guidelines describes what these forums are for.

It says:
"The purpose of the Second Life Forums is to promote discussion and education about Second Life."

The etymological derivation of a word for the female genitals is not relevant to the topic of Linden Lab's virtual environment service. Not being allowed to use these forums to talk about matters irrelevant to Second Life is not censorship.

If one insisted one had a right or a need to discuss such matters in a forum provided by General Electric for customers to discuss problems with electric appliances I strongly doubt they would get far with the G.E. forum moderators.

There are forums for those who wish to write and read about such topics, such as the one at NewSpeakDictionary

Suzanne,

If the contents of these forums were restricted entirely to matters concerning second life, they would a a lot smaller and a lot more boring than they are.

I don't much like censorship.

I think the "mute" or "ignore" facility deserves more credit here.
I'm pretty new to it, finally and sadly muting my first poster yesterday.

The problem is worst when a poster combines the making of good points with bad ego-maniac behaviour. Probably many of us can think of a famous example.

I muted this person with great reluctance, but I find that in fact I still get to see just his/her best bits, by kind courtesy of the rest of you. If a person you have muted says something really valuable and on topic, chances are someone will quote it, and you will see it.

Rare for anyone to quote offensive, paranoid illogical ego stuff, so you don't see it.
Sorted !

Yes, I think Lindhar's posts with their CAPITAL LETTERS LIKE THIS REPEATING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER let us know that he's gotten a tad unhinged on his crusade to kill island sellers LOL. However, whatever ego-maniacal behaviour that might signal to me, I wouldn't put someone like Lindhar on ignore because I find that a troublesome practice in a liberal democratic society.

I find that a funny unintended by-product of this "shun" stuff is that the people who feel -- for ego-maniacal reasons no doubt -- a compulsion to invade every thread I'm in and answer every post I make with an ad hominem attack and often with a fruit or ass picture are now self-screened.

That leaves me free to talk to the small but important percentage of adults on the forums

Sorted.

It's easier to ease up from a strict moderation policy than to clamp down on a forum that's out of control. Err on the side of being too restrictive.

There are posts that combine both inflamatory and useful content. These are best hidden/locked by the moderators, who can pass the useful stuff to the developers and dispose of the explosives safely without damage to the forum.

If the forum is tightly monitored, it becomes safer to increase the forum presence of developers. That's critical, because it reassures the community that reasonable voices are being heard. Engaging directly with somebody who has the power to make things happen is infinitely more satisfying than composing a monologue and just vaguely hoping that maybe the developers are reading it.

The current industry trend of insulating developers behind a wall of customer service reps is damaging to the development of community and needs brave devs to buck the trend. SL does better than most in this regard, but I'd like to see more.

Yeah. I guess thats probably what Stalin said too. Thanks for the insight!

I think the developers will participate if they want to; and have time. Let the community be itself.

I can't believe this post continues.

The forums are fine. They're filled with people who makes asses of themselves and people who are so self-important they feel the need to show off their moral high ground. It's all completely ridiculous.

I will say this, though. I created a thread (1.6 Blows) that received some attention, because people didn't enjoy how strongly I worded things. The result? Today I got personally IMed by one of the Linden bug fixers, and invited to join his preview group for the next release. The moral of this story is that sometimes creating a stink can result in some good. If I had been moderated due to some irrational beliefs that I was hurting developers feelings then perhaps I wouldn't have received that personal attention.

Clamp down! Hard!

Oh wait that was for something else.

boards are fine the way they are

You've convinced me yet again that what most people are doing in their calls to change forum rules or content or behaviour are posturing in front of game devs.

If they can show off to the game devs that they "tamed the forums" or "bested the forums," so their thinking goes, they will win points in the meta-game.

One of the most fun games of a game is seeing who gets to influence the game dev. Fun!

Game devs and even the CEO are sometimes seen logged into the forum where they probably just do a little browsing and a little damage control but forums are a vent for the chattering classes among players, and not a serious place, and more for posturing than really influencing game devs, I imagine, though I'm not a student of this subject.

People who are complaining that they are so *busy* and so *important* and doing such *important things* in the game and don't have time to *sift through all the crap in the forums* really mean to say: why won't the forums let me and my ideas for the game devs shine brighter?