We Need to be Better as a Community

[Nasc]

I posted this in response to another thread, but I think the message is important so I am making it a main thread also, was written in response to a new player who made a bit of a mistake about what he was saying then got a lot of negativity about it :

Having read a lot now of what has been posted in reply to your post, I have the following comments.

It is really not right all the toxicity you have had to endure, and I totally do not accept it. You made a mistake by thinking <whatever not really important>. You said on your post that you were just a casual player. All of the <> you are getting is not right. Just another example of toxicity on this forum. You made a mistake, so what? No excuse for nastiness from those who know better. And we have all been beginners/casual level at one point.

Cant we be better than this, as a community ?

How do you think the OP is going to feel, next time he wants to post something?

Maybe he is going to think twice about it now. Is that REALLY what we want? For voices to be silenced because of all the toxicity that gets thrown around? Because that is for sure what is happening. People need a VERY thick skin to stick around this forum. I know many CMDRs who just wont post here for that very reason, they are fed up with <> that gets thrown their way just for voicing opinion.

Now I am not going to call anyone out, I dont want to embarrass or provoke anyone, and I dont want to get yet another warning for "flaming" aka defending myself when toxicity gets thrown my way.

OP has been put into the "Victim's Dilemma", yet again. Harsh responses elicit both you and toxic poster get a warning and banned from posting to the thread for 3 days + posts removed. Do nothing and mods will just ignore those toxic comments. Happens a lot in life and I call it the "Victim's Dilemma". Someone does something to you and its not serious enough for authority to care but you do something back then you become the criminal and suddenly whole thing is taken seriously. It is a lose-lose scenario.

So what is the solution to all of this, in the context of the Elite: Dangerous official forum ?

The mods have no will to solve it. One can see on the very first page of this thread comments that are clearly disparaging to the OP and his post, and the next a post in response to this thread by a Mod. The moderation team read this comment yet chose to do nothing. Frontier knows these forums have a bad reputation for toxicity yet choose to do nothing.

It is up to us, THE COMMUNITY, to do what we can to solve this problem of chronic toxicity, and what I propose is this :

1. SPEAK UP. If you see someone being denigrated, tone policed, baited, insulted or any of the other words that just mean using words to hurt another person then : SAY SOMETHING. Say it is not right and that you do not agree with it. There is a massive difference between disagreeing with someone thence attacking the premise or logic of their arguments and attacking THAT PERSON as a person. They are alike, yet not alike. Confuse them not.

2. NO NAMING AND SHAMING. This does absolutely no good and just causes fights/flame wars. Dont do it. People might also have a good motive and just made a mistake in their wording, you dont know. Dont call people out, it is just repeating the whole cycle we are trying to break.

3. GIVE THE REASONS WHY TOXICITY ON THESE FORUMS IS A BAD THING
3.1 It is discouraging people from having a voice. Many people are thin skinned and end up banned or just leave these forums because of this. Every voice adds value.
3.2 It is giving these forums a bad reputation. People prefer to post on reddit or face book rather than here and who can blame them? We should be an example to other communities. Compare and contrast to Kerbal Space Program official forums.
3.3 It is causing a lot of anger and bad feeling. Many people who aught be fast friends because of strong shared interest and passion are falling out or getting enmity.
3.4 It makes the forums a generally nasty place, one must always wonder when posting how someone is going to attack, knowing any defence of oneself is likely to elicit a warning
3.5 I know most people dont give a dam about anyone but themselves. But for the odd few who are the exception, knowing the toxicity is upsetting people and making others unhappy aught be reason enough to want to clean these forums up.
3.6 And probably many, many other reasons, I leave it to the ingenium of the individual to work out, state of affairs is good for no-one.

And I know many people will say it cant be done, the will is not there, we wont get everyone on board, etc, etc. It only takes a few respected CMDRs to consistently lend voice when they notice toxicity for things to change for the better. As it was rightly said "One carat of diamond is worth several tons of sand; we dont need the majority". We should be an example in space sim community, not a toxic cess pit.

CMDR Gavin786

You were told in that forum too, the OP was being accusatory and rude.
People should speak up and people should name and shame, especially people who make false accusations.
"Discouraging people from having a voice" -This can be summed up easily:

Everyone has a right to say what they want, but that doesn't mean they should be listened to.

 

[Sup3rfluiD]

Pffft. I didnt even tell him to git gud.

 

[M00ka]

Pffft. I didnt even tell him to git gud.

Going by the original OP's manner, he already thinks he is so Gud that he can't Git any Gudder

 

[znôrt]

the referred thread is not a good example.

this forum is actually not at all that bad. it has, however, its idiosyncrasy, and some people might adapt easier than others. it also depends a lot on the opening attitude. is it a newcomer with real interest in the community, a one-shot solve-my-problem visit or someone just wanting to vent?

another factor is overreaction to what is perceived as attacks on the game. or which may actually be attacks or strong criticism of the game, whatever. this is really where most of the confrontation starts. some people feel very attached to this game and are very sensitive to this. we've even had several spontaneous 'group therapy' threads calling out toxicity or doomsaying for what is perfectly valid criticism, or really inexcusable screw ups from frontier. those i think are the local monument to 'slandering the slander'. and then we have all those california hotels: open/solo, scary tales from griefland, steamcharts, etc ...

other than that, if anybody is ready to stay here for a while and get to know the routines and profiles of people, it's a quite nice place to chat, and to read about a lot of interesting stuff.

regarding beginner questions in dd ... that would actually be the job of moderators. that said, i think i have never used the front-page and never really cared much about sections. a post is a post is a post, i'm interested or at least curious about all aspects and since i rarely create new threads it doesn't matter to me where it is. frontier moving around stuff and mixing it up it with dinosaurs and rollercoasters definitely doesn't help.

and yes, a lot of people here are quite willing and helpful with beginners. it lacks a good 'faq', though. otoh, it would be a quite large faq and, yeah, would people even use it? imo a majority of players don't even know a manual exists (or zombieapocalypse's begginers guide, which i just noticed right now), nor would bother reading it if they did. much of the other information is obsolete and understandably not immediately maintained, so that doesn't help either. maybe a collection of links to snippets about the really frequent basic questions could be useful. but that's ... work work work.

 

[Stigbob]

The thread that triggered this wasn't a newbie error though.

The dude just wanted to rant and bash the devs about something he didn't actually understand and ignored all the useful posts he received and called the people making them names. So they teased him and it got worse.

This is him :

I don't need to learn anything I said the community goal system did not work like it is supposed to. Now the commodity market could be crappy design sure but it still didn't work right did it. Still sounds like some one has a problem to look into.

 

[lokvette]

Strong suspicion that this game has a hacker problem

So, I have a strong suspicion that this game has a hacker problem. I went to participate in the community goal this week for the first time in a long time. An going back two days ago and the mission board did not have a active community goal at the Lucent Embrace. It just ended yesterday so...

forums.frontier.co.uk

To the OP.
The replies in that thread were far from toxic, as is this forum and its community.

Been playing online for over 20 yrs and seen stuff that really has no place in a games forum. Its the internet people need to grew some, or do what any rational person would do and ignore it.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

This is a sad thread.
The OP takes the time to explain his thoughts about how the community of this forum could become better. He offers examples of what can be done to improve the mood of the forum by standing up against what he calls "toxicity" and by countering the arguments/statement and not attacking the person making the argument/statement.

And yet, a lot of the postings in this thread attack the OP personally and/or the way he presented his opinion. Doing exactly what the OP describes as the problem.

In addition to what the OP wrote I would like to add some points to consider:

- Not everybody on this forum is a native English speaker.
Writing about more abstract concepts in a foreign language is quite difficult as it often requires words that are usually not taught in school. Getting complex thoughts across often done by using idioms and this is something non-native writes probably don't know about.
On the flip side, it's easy to miss the finer aspects of the meaning of words and as a result ending up using the wrong word that has a much harsher or weaker or simply not right meaning.
It might help everybody to keep those things in mind.

- Cultural differences in the way people discuss
Discussing topics on a forum is already difficult. Getting subtle things like irony, joking or friendliness across in written form is not easy.
Differences in what is considered polite, acceptable or normal discussion differs from country to country. This can result in friction between posters since both sided will inevitably feel attacked.

Overall I think we all could be more mindful of how we interact with other forum posters.

 

[Nasc]

This is a sad thread.
The OP takes the time to explain his thoughts about how the community of this forum could become better. He offers examples of what can be done to improve the mood of the forum by standing up against what he calls "toxicity" and by countering the arguments/statement and not attacking the person making the argument/statement.

And yet, a lot of the postings in this thread attack the OP personally and/or the way he presented his opinion. Doing exactly what the OP describes as the problem.

In addition to what the OP wrote I would like to add some points to consider:

- Not everybody on this forum is a native English speaker.
Writing about more abstract concepts in a foreign language is quite difficult as it often requires words that are usually not taught in school. Getting complex thoughts across often done by using idioms and this is something non-native writes probably don't know about.
On the flip side, it's easy to miss the finer aspects of the meaning of words and as a result ending up using the wrong word that has a much harsher or weaker or simply not right meaning.
It might help everybody to keep those things in mind.

- Cultural differences in the way people discuss
Discussing topics on a forum is already difficult. Getting subtle things like irony, joking or friendliness across in written form is not easy.
Differences in what is considered polite, acceptable or normal discussion differs from country to country. This can result in friction between posters since both sided will inevitably feel attacked.

Overall I think we all could be more mindful of how we interact with other forum posters.

No.
Pretty much because OP's thread (and initial reply in another thread) was based off something presuming to know things and reacting to criticism by being rude and accusative.
Coming from NL, I'm tired of people using language barriers as an excuse for doing this or being selective over what they're outraged about.
Same thing for cultural differences.

 

[TheSynopticVision]

I agree, but I also think that by now this forum is beyond redemption.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

No.
Pretty much because OP's thread (and initial reply in another thread) was based off something presuming to know things and reacting to criticism by being rude and accusative.
Coming from NL, I'm tired of people using language barriers as an excuse for doing this or being selective over what they're outraged about.
Same thing for cultural differences.

Using language barriers and cultural differences as an excuse for something is different from taking those things into account when reacting to something someone wrote.
Pointing out the problem - why the words used or the way the point is presented is considered rude or problematic would be a good start.

 

[M00ka]

This is a sad thread.
The OP takes the time to explain his thoughts about how the community of this forum could become better. He offers examples of what can be done to improve the mood of the forum by standing up against what he calls "toxicity" and by countering the arguments/statement and not attacking the person making the argument/statement.

And yet, a lot of the postings in this thread attack the OP personally and/or the way he presented his opinion. Doing exactly what the OP describes as the problem.

In addition to what the OP wrote I would like to add some points to consider:

- Not everybody on this forum is a native English speaker.
Writing about more abstract concepts in a foreign language is quite difficult as it often requires words that are usually not taught in school. Getting complex thoughts across often done by using idioms and this is something non-native writes probably don't know about.
On the flip side, it's easy to miss the finer aspects of the meaning of words and as a result ending up using the wrong word that has a much harsher or weaker or simply not right meaning.
It might help everybody to keep those things in mind.

- Cultural differences in the way people discuss
Discussing topics on a forum is already difficult. Getting subtle things like irony, joking or friendliness across in written form is not easy.
Differences in what is considered polite, acceptable or normal discussion differs from country to country. This can result in friction between posters since both sided will inevitably feel attacked.

Overall I think we all could be more mindful of how we interact with other forum posters.

Hope you don't mind but I will take a small measure of umbrage regarding your post. The OP in effect said this forum is toxic and the posters of this forum are guilty of toxicity - correct? So he can belittle us yet we can't respond to put forward our own opinions on the matter? It seems that you consider the OP attacking anyone who responded to the thread that started all of this is okay, yet anyone disagreeing with the OP's opinion is wrong - would that be a fair assessment of your post Commander?

As for the rest of your points, yes you do raise some valid issues. But personally - yes talking for myself, I don't presume to talk on behalf of anyone else - I have found that anyone that it is evident that English is not their first language will be treated with a lot of compassion and questions trying to ascertain exactly what the problem is. It is very rare that someone will be attacked solely on their comprehension skills, especially if it is known that they communicated via Google Translate.

As for the claim of toxicity as others have said, the OP in question asked for it. Right from the onset anyone who didn't agree with his theory that the game is hacked was abused, told they didn't know what they were talking about. In hindsight, the correct thing to do was have everyone block the poster immediately, there would not have been any replies but that didn't seem to matter to him - he ignored everything anyway.

Please be cognizant of the standard trope of this forum - anyone can post anything relating to the game (the hint is in the forum title), even if they haven't played the game for years. Yet anyone who disagrees with a OP is labelled a White Knight - do you think that is fair Commander? In effect it means that any response is worthless as it is evidently coming from a 'fanboi' - but that isn't toxic that is just someone having an opinion right!

Proud member of the fanboi groupie pompom throwing hacker collective

 

[LordFerret]

Oh my how times have changed.

Yup...

Too much?...

 

[znôrt]

This is a sad thread.

to be honest, i didn't read the op in full. not here and not in the original thread where it was, as stated, missing the point (with the best intentions, sure). besides i found it too moralizing and that just bores me. i just responded to the general vibe.

i can't help but agree with the second part of your post, though.

 

[Stigbob]

Hope you don't mind but I will take a small measure of umbrage regarding your post. The OP in effect said this forum is toxic and the posters of this forum are guilty of toxicity - correct? So he can belittle us yet we can't respond to put forward our own opinions on the matter? It seems that you consider the OP attacking anyone who responded to the thread that started all of this is okay, yet anyone disagreeing with the OP's opinion is wrong - would that be a fair assessment of your post Commander?

As for the rest of your points, yes you do raise some valid issues. But personally - yes talking for myself, I don't presume to talk on behalf of anyone else - I have found that anyone that it is evident that English is not their first language will be treated with a lot of compassion and questions trying to ascertain exactly what the problem is. It is very rare that someone will be attacked solely on their comprehension skills, especially if it is known that they communicated via Google Translate.

As for the claim of toxicity as others have said, the OP in question asked for it. Right from the onset anyone who didn't agree with his theory that the game is hacked was abused, told they didn't know what they were talking about. In hindsight, the correct thing to do was have everyone block the poster immediately, there would not have been any replies but that didn't seem to matter to him - he ignored everything anyway.

Please be cognizant of the standard trope of this forum - anyone can post anything relating to the game (the hint is in the forum title), even if they haven't played the game for years. Yet anyone who disagrees with a OP is labelled a White Knight - do you think that is fair Commander? In effect it means that any response is worthless as it is evidently coming from a 'fanboi' - but that isn't toxic that is just someone having an opinion right!

Proud member of the fanboi groupie pompom throwing hacker collective

Exactly this isn't a sad thread its a funny thread.

 

[M00ka]

Exactly this isn't a sad thread its a funny thread.

Thanks, but I will still cop flak for having an opinion, but rest assured not one of the comments will be 'toxic' they will all be full of unicorns and daisy's lol.

 

[znôrt]

And yet, a lot of the postings in this thread attack the OP personally and/or the way he presented his opinion. Doing exactly what the OP describes as the problem.

and getting back to this, could you clarify which posts in this thread are an attack to either the op or the way he presented his opinion? i see only 2 possible candidates, and i have my doubts. if irony, sarcasm or mere dissent are considered attacks i don't know what we are even talking about here.

 

[Jack Schitt]

This forum is definitely not what it once was; on that I agree with the content of the OP if not the tone. Almost every thread has the potential to -- and often does -- descend into a series of escalating ad hominems, while the moderation team -- either through a lack of numbers or sheer volume of posts -- does not seem to be nearly as proactive as it once was. I suspect there is a feedback loop of sorts between these two factors.

Having said that, the linked thread is -- as others have pointed out -- not the best example from which to argue. The originator of that thread comes across almost immediately as someone who isn't prepared to listen to advice, and while some of that initial advice was offered in a tone that could best be described as short, it didn't to my eyes appear to be particularly aggressive or nasty. As the thread goes on the inevitable happens and it becomes a bit more tribal, but even then the bulk of the posts read to me as typical British or British-influenced snark rather than out-and-out toxicity, but I will concede that those with different language and cultural backgrounds may see it differently.

The bottom line for me is that this "community" is clearly not as cohesive as it once was -- which could simply be a result of its growth in numbers -- and these forums are no longer the relative nastiness-free zone they were in their heyday. But the choice of thread on which to highlight these observations seems very odd to me, given what a divisive example it already is.

 

[Deareim]

Stop complaining but i can complain. Is it fair resume OP ?

 

[Deareim]

This forum is definitely not what it once was; on that I agree with the content of the OP if not the tone. Almost every thread has the potential to -- and often does -- descend into a series of escalating ad hominems, while the moderation team -- either through a lack of numbers or sheer volume of posts -- does not seem to be nearly as proactive as it once was. I suspect there is a feedback loop of sorts between these two factors.

Having said that, the linked thread is -- as others have pointed out -- not the best example from which to argue. The originator of that thread comes across almost immediately as someone who isn't prepared to listen to advice, and while some of that initial advice was offered in a tone that could best be described as short, it didn't to my eyes appear to be particularly aggressive or nasty. As the thread goes on the inevitable happens and it becomes a bit more tribal, but even then the bulk of the posts read to me as typical British or British-influenced snark rather than out-and-out toxicity, but I will concede that those with different language and cultural backgrounds may see it differently.

The bottom line for me is that this "community" is clearly not as cohesive as it once was -- which could simply be a result of its growth in numbers -- and these forums are no longer the relative nastiness-free zone they were in their heyday. But the choice of thread on which to highlight these observations seems very odd to me, given what a divisive example it already is.

Fair representation of the game status.

 

[Stigbob]

This forum is definitely not what it once was; on that I agree with the content of the OP if not the tone. Almost every thread has the potential to -- and often does -- descend into a series of escalating ad hominems, while the moderation team -- either through a lack of numbers or sheer volume of posts -- does not seem to be nearly as proactive as it once was. I suspect there is a feedback loop of sorts between these two factors.

Having said that, the linked thread is -- as others have pointed out -- not the best example from which to argue. The originator of that thread comes across almost immediately as someone who isn't prepared to listen to advice, and while some of that initial advice was offered in a tone that could best be described as short, it didn't to my eyes appear to be particularly aggressive or nasty. As the thread goes on the inevitable happens and it becomes a bit more tribal, but even then the bulk of the posts read to me as typical British or British-influenced snark rather than out-and-out toxicity, but I will concede that those with different language and cultural backgrounds may see it differently.

The bottom line for me is that this "community" is clearly not as cohesive as it once was -- which could simply be a result of its growth in numbers -- and these forums are no longer the relative nastiness-free zone they were in their heyday. But the choice of thread on which to highlight these observations seems very odd to me, given what a divisive example it already is.

This forums been outright hostile towards people who like the game and dare to say so since around the launch of horizons. Some people are baffled by the presence of fans of a thing in the things own forum and they really are just setting themselves up to fail.

Its the one place on the entire internet you are absolutely guaranteed to meet people who like ED so expecting anything else is just unrealistic.

It doesn't help that the more consistently negative people start out upset and are looking for reasons to feign a swoon and demand the smelling salts.