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[Morrokain]

Grievous: Thanks I really appreciate that.

At the end of the day, I just think that if we calmly discuss our differences that is the best chance of finding a solution.

[Goumindong]

There is an old(?) saying with regards to bars and it goes roughly like this

If you allow one biker into your bar you now have a biker bar. Sometimes its expressed with Nazi's in place of bikers.

The point of the saying is that there are some people and behaviors that will take over an establishment unless you remove them. The only people who see a nazi getting thrown out of a bar and think "no lets go to the bar where they don't throw anyone out" aren't people you really want to share a drink with.

Internet communities are exactly the same way. You either curate your community or you risk the wrong behaviors taking over and pushing everyone else away, until the only people left are those that have the orthodoxy of the particular crowd that won. As a community gets bigger the "particular crowd that won" tends to be more toxic, it takes fewer people to push the rest away.

This forum is pretty good, all things considered, largely because its a niche forum for a niche game. But also because when belligerent people do come along they get removed. As for swearing? I am indifferent. But i will say that the best internet forum i have ever used has a strict ban on insults, and implementing that policy was the best thing they ever did. It doesn't matter what insult the post used or how nicely it was said. And what happened was that the people who insulted either changed or left. And then we had a much better community.

[Morrokain]

There is an old(?) saying with regards to bars and it goes roughly like this

If you allow one biker into your bar you now have a biker bar. Sometimes its expressed with Nazi's in place of bikers.

The point of the saying is that there are some people and behaviors that will take over an establishment unless you remove them. The only people who see a nazi getting thrown out of a bar and think "no lets go to the bar where they don't throw anyone out" aren't people you really want to share a drink with.

Internet communities are exactly the same way. You either curate your community or you risk the wrong behaviors taking over and pushing everyone else away, until the only people left are those that have the orthodoxy of the particular crowd that won. As a community gets bigger the "particular crowd that won" tends to be more toxic, it takes fewer people to push the rest away.

This forum is pretty good, all things considered, largely because its a niche forum for a niche game. But also because when belligerent people do come along they get removed. As for swearing? I am indifferent. But i will say that the best internet forum i have ever used has a strict ban on insults, and implementing that policy was the best thing they ever did. It doesn't matter what insult the post used or how nicely it was said. And what happened was that the people who insulted either changed or left. And then we had a much better community.

I agree, as long as that doesn't start to have the community view everything through the lense of "anyone I wouldn't want to share a drink with (read as don't agree with) is a nazi and should be removed" or something to that effect. That can be the other side of the extreme. Basically, extremism and a general lack of empathy is bad for everyone.

I think "curate" is the wrong word in this case. Curation is not aggregation and aggregation is fine assuming no bad behavior is taking place. Curation inherently requires expertise under the pretense of curation being "the best among the rest" and I don't think bad behavior = non-expert if that makes sense. I might honestly just not understand curation under the context you meant though.

Just in general, it's important for the community to try and avoid elitism (which I think is your point). That is extremely fracturing to a community. Just to be clear, elitism is very different from pride in that it adds the extra assumption that "nobody but me or others on my level matter because I'm the best and everyone else is garbage" and the elitist response is generally about what you'd think when something outside whatever the elitist deems elite is included.

Its complicated, however, because that's also not to say that any experienced or talented person is inherently an elitist if they respond negatively to an inexperienced person or an experienced person who disagrees with them. Sometimes experts or very knowledgeable people understandably get frustrated at inexperience because it can be difficult or time consuming to convey the necessary knowledge and reasoning behind it. This is especially true if this must be done frequently. And like the example with a new player lashing out because they haven't learned the game yet and have been told that they haven't, sometimes the inexperienced person's response is anger even if the explanation is polite and that can be tiring.

In simpler terms, it would be wrong to assume that anytime someone says that X is bad compared to Y that they are an elitist. That sort of ties back to the idea of destructive people deliberately stirring up trouble, etc. It all goes back to consistency. Consistently putting people down and saying they suck because a person feels they always know better is elitist. Occasionally getting frustrated from a lack of experience and the headaches it can cause is not.

[Goumindong]

Curate just means "actively moderate to have the result you want". You can curate to be elitist just as much as you can curate to be toxic or curate to only have people who want to discuss a certain topic. Moving this discussion to the discussion forum from the general forum is a form of curation. These topics go in these places, not in the other places.

 But if you don't curate for something then toxicity is going to curate for you whether you like it or not.

I don't think that non-expert -> Bad behavior. I think that bad behavior -> i don't want to deal this this person. And so i want to curate for good behavior.

[Morrokain]

^ Ah ok thanks for further explaining.

I agree with your point about natural curation from toxicity. I've definitely seen that in other games.

As far as elitism, the best example I have of its negative side effects is SC2, which essentially cornered the niche market of RTS gamers. Now unlike Starsector it's a highly competitive game which is worth noting. And I'm not going to pretend that I know all the intimate details of the scene there because I don't, I can only go by what I saw while I was there and from what I learn by following the pro-scene. Take this with a grain of salt as a result of that.

For anyone who is unfamiliar, they use a league system to curate players of different skill levels. When you go on the balance forums it's pretty clear that if you aren't in the very highest leagues you aren't taken seriously if you give feedback. To be fair, I kind of think this is understandable since the game is so complex and the highest level of play is extremely different from the lowest level of play. Obviously, the highest tier players - especially the pros - are more invested in the game. So it's only natural that their opinions are valued higher than someone who just installed and had a bad match and is complaining about something without any real experience.

The issue seems to come from shutting the lower league players down immediately when they speak about something rather than explaining why the pros don't have that issue or some other more diplomatic response. Some will argue and a flame war ensues. Some just shut up. Most agree the forum is pretty toxic and that nothing can really be done about it.

When I hear/read about the game struggling to find fresh players I'm not surprised. Yes, it's 10 years old. Yes, it has a large bar of entry. Yes, you can make a case that RTS as a genre is fading in popularity. But I don't think shutting down new players' opinions helps either. I'd genuinely be interested to see what the game looked like if it had Starsector's moderation and friendly community.

Hopefully that helps to explain where I'm coming from. And to be completely upfront I get that I, personally, am sensitive and prefer civil discussion. So that's a me thing. *shrug*

[Grievous69]

When I hear/read about the game struggling to find fresh players I'm not surprised. Yes, it's 10 years old. Yes, it has a large bar of entry. Yes, you can make a case that RTS as a genre is fading in popularity. But I don't think shutting down new players' opinions helps either. I'd genuinely be interested to see what the game looked like if it had Starsector's moderation and friendly community.

Hopefully that helps to explain where I'm coming from. And to be completely upfront I get that I, personally, am sensitive and prefer civil discussion. So that's a me thing. *shrug*

I think you contradicted yourself a bit, because if I'm not mistaken you agreed that larger communities tend to be more toxic than smaller ones. So a community being toxic and unwelcoming has nothing to do with it. Best example I can give on that is League of Legends, hell I don't even understand why are people playing it. I know so many people who still play it to this day and whenever I ask them about it, a large portion says that they don't even like the game that much, it's just they have lots of friend also playing it so they have a common game. And everyone agrees it's the most toxic hole on Earth. On the other hand I know tons of niche games that have amazing communities but don't see much popularity. To be fair I dare to say RTS game have become a niche pretty much, no one plays them anymore. I love them to death and even I have no reason to play them anymore (no good recent ones, ones that have active scene I don't care much about). Starcraft 2 is losing players due to every other reason other than the ones you listed (except bar of entry). I'm not saying popular games being toxic is a good thing and it shouldn't need attention, but I'd rather have a fun game I can play with friends with a toxic community than a boring experience that has christian boys playing it. Also I'd hate if every game tried to eliminate friendly banter and bad words just because they can be seen as offensive to someone else.

Speaking of elitism, and I know this may be a bit off topic, why exactly do you think it's bad on balance topics? Speaking hypothetically let's say a game is balanced around pro play, now of course immediately shutting down others is both rude and dumb. But realistically those (bad) players can't really contribute to the subject on balance much, since their views on gameplay will wildly vary. Now of course if the game is centered around casuals everyone is equal and their opinions should be heard. Then we get to the question how detrimental to a game is it to have it purely focused on pro play, especially if the gameplay changes significantly through the ranks. But that's a discussion for another day, I went pretty far already.

[Morrokain]

^ Some very good points there. I'm not 100% sure that I necessarily contradicted myself by saying larger communities tend to be more toxic when the point is toxicity, imo, matters at least to some extent in keeping people around.

Your point about friends kind of serves as evidence of that, actually. Friends (good ones anyway) are generally not toxic with each other even when they disagree. That's not to say they don't give each other trouble or anything. And correct that's not to say the game itself has nothing to do with it. I'd say the game quality is reason number one people stay so no argument there.

*EDIT* Oh and friendly banter - I have no problem with that and wouldn't advocate removing it. I don't think that's what I'd equate with toxicity. It kind of goes back to the idea of moderation being lenient and any reports being investigated before action is taken. At the end of the day, there are still those that will take advantage of that and create toxicity. But, like, that's always going to be a risk. I'd also say that civility isn't linked with any religion though I don't think that was your point or anything. It's more philosophy.

(Off topic but I'm genuinely curious.)

Spoiler

So, what do you think the reasons are why SC2 is losing players? Other competitive games or simply the dying genre, for instance? Or just it being old news?

Elitism and balance: I don't think its bad in the sense that you want your experts to weigh in on important things and, as I said, their opinion does have a larger weight since they have expertise. There's no question there. I think its bad when that turns into shutting down alternate opinions because sometimes, though arguably rare, a fresh perspective can be objectively better. In other words, sometimes thinking outside the box is good and experts, understandably, tend to think along the lines that gave them their expertise in the first place - within the box.

*EDIT* To give a concrete example: Take the economy changes from Legacy of the Void. Arguably, that made the game faster paced and better overall. It also made it more attractive from a spectator perspective. Now, if you would have suggested that on the forums prior to that expansion, I'd bet most of the pros would have disagreed - because they are already used to the economy of Heart of the Swarm. They aren't going to want to completely reinvent their play - or the meta.

[close]

[Grievous69]

Yeah fair point about fresh ideas. Even someone completely new who downloaded the game a week ago may have a cool idea or something unique.

SC2 just demands so so much of a player that it's honestly not worth getting into it. Every player there probably knows so much about the game and is on a completely different level that you can't even hope to catch up. I mean sure you may play it vs your friends but I don't think it's the best party game.

Second big thing is the focus on 1v1 fights. From the trends I noticed in recent years, the vast majority of popular games have some sort of teamplay, be it a coop game, a team vs team game, some asymmetric multiplayer etc. Especially now since most of the folks are stuck in their homes, so only interaction with your friends are playing games together. 1v1 games I think suffer from that, since you're just fighting a stranger all alone, and then move on to the next stranger. (Yeah I know SC can be play in teams but honestly I haven't seen much of it, ever)

And the last thing is, it's an RTS. There's no denying that it's a dying genre. Before at least a lot of people played Age of Mythology, Warcraft 3 and such games, today you have to remind people what RTS means. But I can't blame them, it's a genre that's pretty one dimensional, and you can only innovate so much. Similar story with tower defense games.

Even I get a nostalgia boner sometimes and go play an old RTS I love. Then after a few games I get bored since it become repetitive. Shame. But hey at least we have Starsector (please don't take too long Mr. Developer, at this point I'm gonna have kids before 1.0 comes out).

[outdated]

Oh noes, people are saying naughty words on the internet, we must have someone take hours out of their life, and without any compensation, no less, to read through entirety of the form and educate them on why naughty words are bad mmkay.

[Goumindong]

Oh noes, people are saying naughty words on the internet, we must have someone take hours out of their life, and without any compensation, no less, to read through entirety of the form and educate them on why naughty words are bad mmkay.

Moderators don’t need to read through an entire forum. They just need to respond to reports and restrict the posting of people who post rude and insulting content, delete things if they’re egregious, and ban users if they do not correct their behavior. 

Over time we would get less posts in the vein of yours and more posts that are constructively discussing things.

[Eji1700]

All i'm going to say is i have been on many forums over the years with more than successful moderation.  The ones with weak moderation generally imploded eventually and the ones with good moderation only "died" as people moved on to discuss something else. 

The implosion almost always being because first more rational members leave as the loud and obnoxious ones harass them out, often with stuff that doesn't even further discussion, and then finally the loud and obnoxious ones turn on each other and it all blows up.

[GenericGoose]

I disagree. People talk about 'wrong behavior' pushing people away. In reality, posting freedom lets the community decide what behavior is wrong and push it away. Internet is about the last place you can have freedom (for now), and the sterile, mercantile corporate culture of 'everything has to be nice and marketable' is seeping into everything, and ruining it. Can't say bad words, can't have bad thoughts, can't express yourself. Long lists of rules suck, rules are often vague, often on purpose, so you can be banned on a whim. Bans in general are lame, there are probably better ways of punishing unwanted behavior, like making fun of the guy. My personal ideal ruleset I've used in a chat to great effect is: don't turn conversations into pure insults, no porn, no politics, no illegal stuff. Simple, straightforward rules give people freedom to discuss things, however they want. Sure, it pushes away people not open-minded enough, but wouldn't they leave eventually anyway, once someone slips up? It creates pure, authentic, human discussion, instead of something sterile, formal and artificial (kind of like what I'm writing right now), where you have no ambiguity, having to ask yourself 'will posting this get me banned?'. Strict rules, especially bans on swearing, will just make people tip-toe around what they really want to say and posts will be passive-aggressive, which, in my opinion, is a lot more obnoxious than someone openly calling you a bad word, and you will have even less ambiguity, not having to ask 'is he insulting me?'.
In addition, any place of power, however minor, can, and will, eventually, be corrupted. I've seen countless communities die, because the staff got filled by incompetent, petty people or straight up sexual predators. They never recovered. As for this specific forum, community seems nice, but the rules are a bit too restrictive. Also the sample conversations are pure strawman.
People need to learn to be respectful to each other, but also to take a banter or an insult once in a while, without admin involvement. People are way too sensitive about words on a screen from someone thousands of miles away, who they will never meet.

[Morrokain]

Honestly, I'd say your argument is pure strawman. Nobody here is suggesting banning someone for a single insult so I'm not sure where that is coming from. The idea that certain communities get ban-happy is a valid concern, true, but that has never been the case here to my knowledge nor do I see it becoming an issue in the future.

Also you are proposing self-moderation by making fun of someone then talk about open mindedness? It's truly bizarre to me that you think that would actually be effective and not make things worse in that situation. That's just the targeted clique-like behavior that quickly steamrolls into toxicity that most of us are talking about.

You can have a "pure, authentic human discussion" without insulting someone. You don't need to be wooden and formal. Admin involvement is not needed most of the time unless it becomes a back and forth kind of thing (which it often does and that's the entire point.)

[Grievous69]

I disagree. People talk about 'wrong behavior' pushing people away. In reality, posting freedom lets the community decide what behavior is wrong and push it away. Internet is about the last place you can have freedom (for now), and the sterile, mercantile corporate culture of 'everything has to be nice and marketable' is seeping into everything, and ruining it.

Yeah I feel you, when a game still has a cheater problem but the devs somehow think a priority is banning people who curse regularly (IN PARTY CHAT) then it gets kinda ridiculous. I mean I'm all for banning people who often ruin games, like hackers, griefers, feeders and so on. Someone telling me in all chat that I suck ass and should uninstall couldn't hit me less, and is nowhere near as "game ruining" as the rest of the stuff I mentioned. And the stricter the rules are, the more robotic that community will seem. You can't say "oh you don't have to be wooden and formal" when there's danger behind every word and sentence because someone might interpret it the wrong way and it might offend them.

Having to analyse the way I write and watch out what specific words I use is a chore, obviously different people will have different experiences with it. And I'd like to repeat your final statement, respect goes a long way and is of course always appreciated, but getting triggered over a word someone you'll probably never ever meet in life and has no impact on you whatsoever is silly. Don't be dead serious, it's bad for your health.

[GenericGoose]

Honestly, I'd say your argument is pure strawman. Nobody here is suggesting banning someone for a single insult so I'm not sure where that is coming from.

I'm not talking about here, I'm talking in general. For 'here' read the 'as for this specific forum' part. whatever you have going on sems to work, at a glance, so there's no need to fix what isn't broken.

Also you are proposing self-moderation by making fun of someone then talk about open mindedness? It's truly bizarre to me that you think that would actually be effective and not make things worse in that situation. That's just the targeted clique-like behavior that quickly steamrolls into toxicity that most of us are talking about.

And banning people who's behavior you don't like is not clique-like? It is no different, other than it's not limited to admins, is fun and still allows people to participate, instead of outright removing them. If you don't want to be made fun of, be respectful to others, it's that simple. Have respect for others, have respect for yourself and don't take things too seriously.

You can have a "pure, authentic human discussion" without insulting someone.

Sure, I was talking more about all the other rules that restrict language. Having to write around arbitrary, unclear constraints is extremely uncomfortable.