Poll: Civility of discussion with others on the site.

[Kevlar Eater]

Civility in this site gone? Of course. It's why I have such a large ignore list. All I've seen from my ignore list since gamergate, is vitriol and vitriolic users, regardless of topic.

One topic that creates tension: Feminism. It's the 'f' word that rustles jimmies, turns female and white knight male users into fire-breathing dragons, and essentially digs the trench lines that create the no man's land in the middle, with any unfortunates stepping over the lines getting shot down.

And about the mods: I don't trust them, like, at all. Not to be unbiased, not to punish those they're friends with when they've broken rules while dropping crap on those they don't like, not to help air out of passive-aggressive miasma that permeates this place... nothing.

This is mostly from observation, but with some firsthand experience sprinkled in.

 

[Ishal]

Civility?

Yeah, there's still civility. The rules pretty much guarantee that. But little else.

Lately this place has become a haunt for apparently failed comedians, who are fortunate enough to work day jobs that allow them to practice their craft on here. Then there is the political sphere(s). Though I don't know why i bothered to include the plural option there, as it's mainly just left and center-left progressives around here.

At the worst of times this place is little better than 4chan, where we just snipe sarcastic and witty remarks rather than calling each other shit eating twats. Personally I'd prefer the latter, at least it's more to the point than a quote chain of petty passive aggression half a page long.

Then there are the ideologues. And they exist on all sides of every topic.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

People are still pretty chill here, because you still have to put some effort into what you're communicating.

Doesn't stop certain people from getting banned then complaining about mods, but whatever.

 

[Pickles]

I'm more of a lurker than a poster so I've probably got a fairly narrow view of it. From what I've seen attitudes have may have gotten a little worse, but its mostly the sheer number of GG threads that get made which make the place in general seem a lot more hostile. (Note im not singling out pro GG here, there are plenty of threads that get made by people for and against it that turn into a flame war pretty quickly)
Unfortunately a lot of discussions either directly or indirectly related to GG, as well as some that have nothing to do with it fall victim to this pretty quickly.

I think the vast majority of users tend to remain pretty civil, which is probably rarer than it should be on the internet.

 

[IceForce]

After all, if people don't trust the mods around here that's... Going to make any toxic situations seem even worse...

The way I understand it, a mod was fired from this site for abusing their powers, just very recently. So any problems of mistrust towards the mods would have been made 100x worse by that.

 

[CrystalShadow]

After all, if people don't trust the mods around here that's... Going to make any toxic situations seem even worse...

The way I understand it, a mod was fired from this site for abusing their powers, just very recently. So any problems of mistrust towards the mods would have been made 100x worse by that.

Yeah... I heard about that. Didn't hear much about the supposed issue, or see any evidence of it, but it certainly wouldn't help.

I know which mod it was too. Didn't seem particularly bad from what I could make out. But I guess it's hard to say without being able to observe what they did.
I mean, even if you know a mod relatively well, you still don't really get much of an impression of what they actually spend their time doing (eg. What their moderator duties actually consist of).
No way to really know I guess unless you see the system from the inside.
Which... Only a handful of people would be able to...

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

People are still pretty chill here, because you still have to put some effort into what you're communicating.

Doesn't stop certain people from getting banned then complaining about mods, but whatever.

I actually play a little game every now and then. Either go way back in the pages of a Forum or go read really old quotes from a few years back and just count how many people you used to talk to have gotten banned.
Its always a staggering number. Re-reading early GamerGate pages is hysterical. Its basically entire pages of "User received a Warning" and "User was Banned for this post".
Or seeing that one person who called you a f*g for not liking The Last of Us got banned. Always brings a smile to my face.

 

[grey_space]

Since I first came here, a very 'them or us' attitude seems to have creeped into the forums.

Everything appears to be very polarised to me.

Since I consider myself a bit of a moderate, and like to looking at both sides of an arguement, I tend to post less nowadays since if I do espouse an opinion I seem to annoy...somebody. Or indeed possibly everybody.

Recently, if I do post I tend not to respond to anyone who quotes me too often as I always get the feeling that they are nitpcking and trying to incite.

Which is a shame, because I love an old intellectual debate from time to time


In saying that, I still like the place and it is still one of the more less-toxic places in the internet.

 

[IceForce]

After all, if people don't trust the mods around here that's... Going to make any toxic situations seem even worse...

The way I understand it, a mod was fired from this site for abusing their powers, just very recently. So any problems of mistrust towards the mods would have been made 100x worse by that.

Yeah... I heard about that. Didn't hear much about the supposed issue, or see any evidence of it, but it certainly wouldn't help.

I know which mod it was too. Didn't seem particularly bad from what I could make out. But I guess it's hard to say without being able to observe what they did.
I mean, even if you know a mod relatively well, you still don't really get much of an impression of what they actually spend their time doing (eg. What their moderator duties actually consist of).
No way to really know I guess unless you see the system from the inside.
Which... Only a handful of people would be able to...

Well, you know what they say. "Power corrupts" and all that jazz.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Not really. There have always been topics that pushed people's buttons, and because the site's rules allow pretty much anything but direct insults, civility when it comes to those topics has been a thin veneer at best. It just so happens that the current debate is more on topic for this site than usual, so you see it crop up in a more widespread manner.

It's entirely possible to have civil conversation on the site even now. Just monitor your own tone when in a discussion, and refuse to engage those who don't do likewise. Also, stay out of GID and R&P.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yes, yes it has. There seen to be more controversal stuff than there was several years ago (GG, Anita, ME3 ending, MM and etc).

 

[Sleepy Sol]

Yeah, probably. But you can still be pretty chill with people who disagree. And in the past year it's obvious what plenty of disagreements arose over. Some people on this forum are anything but chill when you disagree, though. Tends not to matter what labels they carry.

 

[Evil Moo]

I don't even like coming here any more. I'm not sure why I still do. I should probably just remove this place from my favourites and never look back...

 

[Tilly]

This forum seems fine on the whole. It depends on a number of things. In my experience, there are 3 different kinds of internet forums. Forums where....
1)Political issues are never discussed.
2)Political issues are discussed and 1 side vastly outnumbers the other, wearing them out by sheer numbers and creating an echo chamber.
3) Political issues are discussed and there's no particularly dominant position, so there's often both sides represented in any given issue. Therefore arguments.

Escapist is a 3). That's all it is.

 

[Olas]

I haven't really noticed anything. I've gotten 2 warnings in the last 2 weeks which is a LOT for me, so it's hard to believe the moderation's getting more lax than in the past.

I think it might be attributable to an increase in impassioned discussion in general in the last year or so, especially with regards to Gamergate/Feminism/MRAs. I really kinda hope this boils over because I'm absolutely sick of it.

 

[09philj]

I go here and IGN. In my view, IGN has more unpleasantness as a proportion of it's comments, but the unpleasantness here is much more vicious and nasty when it does occur.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Discussion's been very passive aggressive for as long as I've visited. It's both frustrating and amusing how harsh the rules are on direct aggression (however light) but those rules can do nothing about the passive aggression.

 

[EvilRoy]

For quite a while I actually thought things were getting better with certain controvosies slowing down, and certain people feeling less and less need to antagonize either side constantly. And then we got a new crop, apparently, and things went straight back to hell. Seriously, look at a few of the top threads in GID. Long ass time since I've seen that many warnings and suspensions.