So you're offended, get over it.

Unless that person was inciting violence or wishing you harm, you'll live.

Your delicateness doesn't outweigh other people's rights.

And I'm sure you've worked out by now which member's posts will likely offend you, so that makes it easy to avoid them.

It's quite easy.

For example, when I see one of your posts, I immediately know it will be an incoherent mess and composed by a dyslexic 10 year old.

Keep him going.
The more he talks, the quicker he'll be gone.

lolz.

This coming from the person who has wished people and their parents harm and said the most despicable things.

Nobody here has posted more disgraceful things than you.

I'm happy to be banned, as long as you go first as you deserve it more than anyone here.

Even your bestest buddy banned you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n03g8nsaBro
Only the clever will figure this out:)

Relevant.

I particularly like the title text of that one.

Besides all that jazz about forum regulating and the rep system, what can we ourselves do to make this forum a better place? I mean, the quality of a forum is a direct result of what we chose to write in it. The only force making this forum better or worse is ourselves.

Also, I think the General forum suffers from too much traffic. This may sound weird, but I think the fast flow of the forum makes the users try to be fast too, skimming the posts faster and replying before they have had the time to think things over. Also, when post disappear quickly, it feels less important to pour your soul into them.

So ... to reduce the massive traffic in "General", it could perhaps be seperated into "Gaming" and "Offtopic"?

It would be nice if we could somehow direct some traffic towards the game-specific forums. I Don't know how, exactly. There seem to be some way of marking those as "Favorites", but I don't know what that does. Ideally, there would be a "All my games" forum containing treads related to games I own.

It's exactly what I was wondering about. The first obvious answer is, of course, maintain the level of decency that are defined by forum rules (here and in general), but that is already instinctive to most of us. This means : not qualifying as subhuman trash or congenital criminals or freaks of nature the people of a certain nationality, broad religion, sexual orientation, skin colour, gender, salary, origin, etc. In practice, not advocating discrimination, hatred, contempt, disgust or general hostility to such categories. Should go without saying (doesn't).

But then, the thorny question is : how should we react to those who do.

So far we could :

- Ignore them. It's what the forum used to do, and I (naively) adored that. Turns out it only encouraged it, and let it settle as a little subcultural norm, hence all the issues that followed.

- Chastize them. It's what the forum was supposed to do, when it was relying on "self-moderation". But again, once the proponents of such discourse had a solid enough, legotimizing enough, foothold, it just made things worse, fracturing the forum along flamewar trenches.

- Report them. But to many people, allergic to whatever resembles denunciation no matter the cause, this feels terribly awkward, and goes quite against our reflexes. Heck, some of us were even refusing to aknowledge the "red minus" button (I must have hit it twice during my stay, spambots apart), so "reporting" may just feel prohibitively whiny.

But now, the configuration is different. With rules and moderation, the forum is given a second chance. And it would be nice to not ruin it again. Based on the idea of existing moderation, supposedly able to take care of these issues and to break its vicious circles, what becomes the best attitude ?

There are, right now, practical exemples going on, with a user ranting about homosexuality being a sick perversion akin to pedophilia. It's an interesting test of the new system. How are forumgoers supposed to react to it ?

I'd really like Fables22, who ultimately ends up having to deal with whatever disaster would ensue, to tell us what the most constructive -or least destructive- attitude would be.

[Edit: 22, not 32]

Another possibility: Try to educate the user who posted such ignorant statements.

If you can successfully educate Kleetus I will buy you a Ferrari. :P

You laugh, but apparently someone did tech him to read and write. And I admire, hate and feel sorry for that person all at the same time.

I believed in that, a few years ago. But do you ? It assumes a certain mindset that is usually very absent from the authors of such rants, whose motivations are very distinct from scientific curiosity. It devolves almost always into empty rhetorics, rationalizations, self-justifications, denials, because the stakes are elsewhere (political identity, preexisting involvement, etc) and the exchange is purely formal.

And there's the issue of anti-intellectualism. You know that demagogy just requires one sentence, one lazy prejudice-flattering slogan, while honest explanations, education, take pages, time, effort. A gaming forum is no better than an infotainment tv debate for that. People won't engage in a discussion to actually "work", to learn, and, worse, to "lose face" by changing their mind publicly in what is perceived as an arena with spectators. And if you feel like typing two pages to deconstruct all the implicit elements of one demagogic sentence, you'll end up with one demagogic answer to each one of your sentences. It snowballs impossibly.

You should know, by know, the genuine problems arising from rhetorical dishonesty, from actual idiocy, and from the whole array of psychological factors that anchor people in traditional viewpoints (enforced by their groups of references). You can get lucky with a couple of online discussions, but in the majority of cases, it becomes quite obvious after a couple of sentences that your "educative presentations" miss the point (which is in short : "hatred is its own reward"). The pseudo-dialogue happens on two levels, with two frames of references, which prevents the mutual acknowledgement of any element. Like the rational/spiritual debates on God, or the esthetics/ethics debates on corrida.

True discussions can happen on any subject (because all subjects are complex and interesting), but usually, when you reach the sort of discourses that raise moderation problems, you're already facing endoctrinated extremists venting out. And the "discussion" is purely theatrical.

At this point, when the approach is clearly anti-intellectual, when you're reminded that you are not in a university auditorium, or in a friendly discussion amongst mutually trusted curious humans, how should you react ?

Providing we indeed have working moderation as a permanent fixture- report to Fables and move on to talking about games or movies or whatever fortune_p_dawg's brainfarts for us today ;)

I like fortune's threads.

They aren't political and they aren't mean spirited.

I don't see why some people get bent out of shape about them.