What's your worst experience with a non-Escapist forum?

[an annoyed writer]

There was once this little forum based around machinima called VirtualFlicks, and I can honestly say I only know of one person here who might remember it. Anyway, while most of the people were some fine chaps and lasses, the fact that that board doesn't exist anymore should clue you in that all was not well. The staff of the website was in a state of constant warfare with itself. Some, like myself, wanted it to stay as a forum about making cinematic machinima, which was like your Red vs. Blues and the like, while others wanted to make it include gameplay commentaries, which were a growing thing at the time. Anyway, the whole damn forum broke out into all out warfare, with two major figureheads: Sarge, who was the lead programmer and site designer, and Eades, one of the staff heads that took a more active role in management than the website's owner, Craig Kesicke or something like that. Unfortunately things boiled up and Sarge took his leave, and his license to the IPBoard structuring system to form a countering website with a friend of his. VirtualFlicks was swamped with adbots until it up and died. It was a sad day to see it die.

 

[FFP2]

The Escapist is the only forum that I will ever be a part of

I made a BSN account but that was just to get the ME3 OST that came with the Collectors Edition of that POS.

 

[MajorTomServo]

I used to go on reddit from time to time, before I realized how awful it was.

Anyway, someone asked for people's opinions on the webcomic they were starting. I told them that using nothing but memes isn't very good writing, and they need to be more original if they want to stand out.

Well first, the person in question called me a dick-riding asshole. I told them that was a little harsh, since they asked for an opinion and I gave them mine. Then the guy went through my history, saw that I posted in the depression subreddit, and told me to "Do everyone a favor and fucking off yourself, you've clearly thought about it, ****."

Just one of the many reasons why leaving Reddit forever was one of the best decisions I ever made...

 

[Zeraki]

The Escapist is pretty much the only forum I've joined and actually post in. The only other one I use from time to time are the Steam forums... I try not to go there if I can help it though, for the sake of my sanity.

 

[Tiger Sora]

Reddit once down voted one of my comments 10 points. My opinion was crushed, I moved on to try and reap more karma.

Really now. I've only hung out on 2 forums, this and one for a comic, and that one was tiny, like 15 actual active members. I've gotten into a few tussles here and there on both. Though I do carry one scar from here I care not to talk about much. It was just my ideas put forward and crushed cause the dude didn't like it, took it way to seriously.

 

[flarty]

A while back in the Company of Heroes forums the one moderator (it doesn't see that much traffic) went on holiday for a weekend. During that time, there were a swarm of threads that, whenever balance or something came up, ended up with statements that the Russians were evil people and that the game should portray the Germans as the good guys, so a bunch of obvious neo-nazis joined in, it got weird.

Also I got tired having to explain to everyone that the Red Square scene in the beginning of Enemy at the Gates and the first few levels of the Russian campaign in Call of Duty weren't good representations of Russian strategy.

You ended up have a history debate with people who's only knowledge of the time being discussed was Films and video games? You sir are a better and braver man than I.

OT: This is the first forum I've used in years and that is only recently. I previously used the Black Mesa forums before and after they merged with gamernode. There was some good people on their if one or two douches that felt they knew everything about anything. The world would be a better place if everyone was open to the fact that they could be wrong every once in a while.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Gamefaqs is (or at least used to be) totally garbage. You would go to the forums and ask a question and you would get at least 3 meme/in joke/insult responses for every real one. It wasn't like traumatizing or whatever it was just extremely lame.

 

[aba1]

I recently had a bad run-in with the Newgrounds forum, when I decided to post a question on there. I'm sort of used to the nicer people here on The Escapist, so it came as a severe shock to me with how rude these guys were. I decided to post some music in their audio section, just in the hopes of maybe attracting new listeners. I then noticed that there was a download button that just allowed people to take my audio without my consent or even sending me a message.

I guess I must've overlooked a clause in the Terms of Agreement that states all music posted to the site fell under a Creative Commons License. I didn't find out until I posted the question on the forums and received a huge bombardment of insults. I can take some people being mean, but these people were down-right ignorant and rude about answering a legitimate question. I made sure to state that I felt I might have overlooked something in the ToA and that all I wanted to do was see if there was a way to disable the download button.

Needless to say, I'm not using Newgrounds anymore, considering how everyone, including the mods, ruthlessly kicked my teeth in for trying to get help. So what's your worst experience with a forum other than The Escapist?

Captcha: time will tell.... ominous much?

Really I am a long time Newgrounds user myself and while it can be vulgar they aren't usually that needlessly rude. Though it is kinda common sense that if you are posting your music on the net that people will have access to it man. The whole point of the Newgrounds Audio portal is for the music to be used to both give the musicians exposure as well as give resources to the artists.

Either way they aren't usually that bad.

 

[infernovolver]

On the now nonexistent 2moons forums (an english translated korean mmo published initially by the now defunct Acclaim Games), the worst experience I've had was when the community manager got hacked. He was called "Damned_One" or something along those lines, and the hacker locked the general discussion for the game, and posted one locked stickied thread. The thread contained a download he said you should install to enable ads in game and in turn you'd be given bonus exp.

The download was a keylogger.

I didn't download it personally because I'm not retarded, but it was bad. Damned got his account back briefly after a week or something, then he got hacked again. The thread lasted all the way up until the forums died, and not long after Acclaim died too. Which was several weeks time. All the while god knows how many people actually installed the thing and had their characters stripped of anything valuable. That's probably the worst story I have from that forum, but it's one among many.

 

[hermes]

I used to visit the DBZ Budokai 3 forum in gamespot, a long time ago... until I got sent away by the group of people taking the game way too seriously and the harem of followers performing fellatio to them.

 

[DoPo]

Gamefaqs is (or at least used to be) totally garbage. You would go to the forums and ask a question and you would get at least 3 meme/in joke/insult responses for every real one. It wasn't like traumatizing or whatever it was just extremely lame.

Probably on larger boards, but I've found that smaller ones are better at being helpful. Not saying GameFAQs is all happiness and sunshine, though, just noting this specific thing.

 

[hazabaza1]

One forum I went to someone specifically made a thread to insult me. That was fun.

Other than that... not much. There has been the few times I went to /v/ to see what all the fuss was about, and surprise surprise it's a really shitty place.

 

[NightmareExpress]

Steam Powered User Forums is full of imbeciles.
I don't even post there, but have on occasion wondered what people thought of balance in TF2 and etc.
What I was greeted with was entire pages devoted to the encouragement of misanthropy. No community could be so stupid on such a consistent basis, surely.

If they weren't idiotic and confrontational over the most minuscule things, they were narcissistic and confrontational over the most minuscule things. It's incredibly rare to find a well thought out, non-rude post on any given page or thread. The only equivalent I could fathom would be the League of Legends forums, I guess? A bunch of bronze leaguers imagining themselves to be diamond and that their words are of wisdom, authority and law.

It's places like those that make me appreciate places like these much more.

 

[Fappy]

The reason why I stick around here all the time is because everywhere else I have gone sucks complete and total assballs.

Okay, the CBR forums weren't completely terrible, but their moderators were assholes. The mods here are great, imo.

Also, I agree with what many of you guys have said about the BSN. Horrible place.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

Don't really have any. The escapist has always been my forum home, even when I just lurked, and I never really went to the forums of other sites. I was a mod of a couple small time game and clan/group/guild sites but the user base was almost always small and the users very nice to each other.

I guess my most unfortunate experience was on an mmo guild website. I shall withhold the names of the game, site, guild and users in case the member in question also goes here.

I was one of the original members of the guild, only the founder and one guy that joined after me were left of the original group. We got about a dozen more people after the original group disappeared and one of them was made a mod and leader of the guild. I had personally stepped down for this person since at the time I was unable to be all that active in the forums and I wouldn't have been able to afford the subscription to the game (it wasn;t out yet at the time).

Now this member turned leader and mod suddenly became a power mad dick. we had these little tests we gave to members to "promote" them so to speak, mostly just for fun since ya know game wasn;t even out yet.

This guy however screwed over everybody that didn;t do exactly as he wanted. He would purposefully make test that would require the taker to act like a complete idiot to pass (in short always do as he says even if it would cause perma death and failure of you and your group) and if you ever criticized his methods, spelling, grammar, or bias he would flame you into the ground and suspend/ban you. The other mods were busy doing there thang and didn;t really notice anything was wrong since he would ban a member and then delete the thread and make up some story about how the member in question broke the rules.

We lost about half of our user base because of him driving away members (only like 3 were banned the rest were driven off by how much of a prick he was). I come back to full activity after a few months of sporadic activity and see that the place is deserted and I have dozens of PMs from users I was chummy with asking for help/explaining the situation etc. They were mostly all gone but I responded to them all anyway saying I'd see what I could do.
I end up taking one of the tests and he fails to promote me because I did something smart instead of be an idiot and he flipped the fuck out on me and practically locked me in the lowest rank possible. Friction grew with other members and with my support one of them launched a written assault on the user and it was brought to the immediate attention of the other, sporadically active, mods and leaders.

The mod in question was demoted (but not banned), I was re-promoted and we gained some users back after I unbanned them and sent apology emails to them.

The user still flamed me and the other user who lead the charge to "Dethrone" him and complained incessantly.
Lots of insults were thrown my way and I was kind of upset about it but it wasn't anything too bad.

Sadly the group dwindled and died shortly before and after release of the game for reasons unknown.

 

[Radoh]

I forget what forum it was, but it was tied to some browser game I used to play a lot. I was making a suggestion in the forums for the next update and what would make the most sense from my point of view. It was up for all of ten seconds before it was removed by some dumb kid mod who was drunk on power saying the reason for it's removal was because I'm not allowed to order or threaten (wtf seriously) the devs to do anything and that I should be grateful I was only let off with a warning.
Naturally I decided to say some words to that child (Yes I know he was a child, his age readout said he was fourteen) and never went back to those forums, I assumed my profile was banned anyways.
Shortly thereafter I lost interest in that game and left for greener pastures, eventually stumbling onto this site.
Never looked back.

 

[Scarim Coral]

The only other forum I visited (had a membership) was PSO World so please excuse for the event being minor compared to everyone else.
I signed up to that site only to try to find some people to co-op during online and for some guides/ tips. There was this smug guy who had an obnoxious attitude with his comment. Anyway when he did made a thread claiming that the claw the best weapon in the game, everyone dimissive him including me. He pretty much left after that but the sad thing was that it was ture (the claw PA Bite Stamp pecentage was the highest out of all the weapons which mean he was right).

Other than that I had read worse from GameFAQ and this topic on Blizzard forum in the Diablo 3 section.

 

[Easton Dark]

At the end of my being at a L4D site, one of the mods took to changing my avatar to a crying black man I think and changing my posts around, while some other members were posting troll images at me, and though they broke the rules of the site nothing was done by any of the other moderators to help, so even though I had a few friends from there, I just said fuck it and left, only one person from there do I consider a good person and I play League of Legends with him sometimes.

They really did not like bronies, and that was when it was first starting. Luckily I had made my account here already, so I just made the transition.

 

[SwimmingRock]

I've never really been active on any other forum but the Escapist.

Also...

10.000 posts, woooo!!!

What is that from and where do I find more of it, good sir? If you don't mind telling me, that is.

OT: I've only been on three other forums that I can recall. Valve and Warframe were fine, but not very usefull.

The old Ecchi Attack forum was horrible, because everybody seemed to be there purely to make one another miserable. That was over a decade ago, though, so I couldn't tell you specifics. It did put me off forums for a good 8 years; until I signed up for the Escapist. So, worst forum experience in general.