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

[SSJBlastoise]

snip

Seriously, I need to stop clicking links even though I know they will be bad, my curiosity is too great.

 

[Alexander Bradley]

At the risk of getting all philosophical like Batty just before he tries to kill Deckard "I've seen things..." or Cosby-like cantankerous. In my 18 years of using the internet I have had a lot of ups and downs. There is definitely something about my online persona which some people take an instant dislike to as I don't have anyone trying to fight me in real life.

It is good and bad that you can hate people you have never met and completely negate their existence by blocking them on Facebook.

Although I started using the internet in the first years that the web took off, my first introduction to talking to people over the web was through USENET (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet) and also on a tv discussion group that I managed to get a letter from a major media organisation sent to the college IT administrators and temporarily lost my network access while I wrote a letter apologising to the head of the network. The plus side is that I met one of my best friends through it and still talk to them until this day.

USENET even turns up in the first Mission Impossible movie "SCROLL USENET GROUPS" shows the list starting with alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk.

The group I posted on the most throughout that time was alt.religion.kibology, which is nothing like a religion and does have the majority of its users from the USA with people all around the world. A rubber chicken was mailed around the world via the group at one point. I did send a large amount of chocolate to a person in Toronto after she had just been released from hospital and her boyfriend hugged her so hard she had to be re-admitted due to six cracked ribs. Tumbleweeds blowing through the USENET group these days, but it still exists in a smaller form on Facebook and I am friends with a lot of the people from it.

As for the bad experiences, I did try and engage with the SomethingAwful forums, but it left a bad taste in my mouth after everyone piled on in one thread. I only post one thread there per year generally and reply even more rarely. You do really have to watch your bandwidth if post images/video to the site. I have 100Gb of bandwidth per month for my website and people looking at four animated GIFs I had hosted on my website used up 80Gb in four days.

I don't want to name it, but there is a local music forum that irritates me, people hide behind usernames and have even gone as far to make entire threads to annoy me. They still suck up and want photos though, I can see the visitors coming to my site from there.

Facebook is good and bad in that the messages do not come with a subject line so you do not know the content until you click on the icon. When people sent emails without a subject line it is usually bad news. Also the hivemind aspect to Facebook can get quite annoying at times.

I don't really use Twitter as much so I can't really comment on it. I at least post different things to Twitter than Facebook and if you have a bad experience on it is your own fault as you can choose who to follow.

At the risk of bringing down the wrath of the Iron Fist, I am going to mention the Cave Clan forums. You can't get in to them unless you go through a probationary period although that is more for exploring. I joined when you still had to join by a sending a letter to the PO BOX. I am too busy to go exploring now, but it has a large contingent of photographers and its own film festival these days. Due to people confusing what sort of "underground" they are, they do have the occasional problem with people who obsess over them. There is a lot of bagging out people which I don't really support but I still go to see them for the anniversary at the pub each January.

It's pretty interesting that you bring up Twitter and Facebook. I've always kind of viewed them as forums with constantly changing topics. Thanks for posting!

 

[IamQ]

World of Warcraft forums. I'm Swedish, so I used the european forums. So many Hungarians. So many French. So little correct spelling or grammar.

Oh boy, those are a treat. Being Hungarian myself, I feel doubly ashamed at those people (not all of us are like that, i swear). I've had my share of run-ins with my own people. Hell, this one time I was accused of "betraying my homeland" because I was the only poster on the whole thread to use correct english grammar. That was fun.
Also, the fact that I lived a total of 3 years in Hungary, and that my Hungarian is abysmal didn't help.

But hey, you found that bad, just wait till you hear a Hungarian person try to speak english.
Alternatively, if there are no Hungarian people in your vicinity, the experience can be replicated by applying a cheese-grater to ear.

Captcha: Attila the Hun.
oh, swell.

What's the hungarian language sound like? Is it a slavic language, being that hungary is a bit east in Europe, or does it sound nothing like them?

Also, I've always wondered. On my server there were a bunch'o hungarians, and phrase I heard daily was "Magyar vagy?". I've heard it means something along the likes of "Are you hungarian?" or "Do you speak hungarian?". Am I completely off here, or? Just curious since you know the language.

 

[Legion]

The only other forums I have been on are the Epic Games (specifically Gears of War 2 and 3 sections) and the Bioware Social Network (BSN, specifically Mass Effect 2/3 Dragon Age 2).

The Gears forums were normally okay, but you'd get the occasional person trolling about how the PS3 is better, or people who'd get all worked up if you preferred a different game mode to them. Otherwise it was pretty forgettable.

The BSN? Well, the topic section for discussing characters in Mass Effect has actually been closed, that's how bad that got. You'd basically get people flaming each other for preferring one companion character over another. It was pretty worrying to be honest. Basically things like fans of one character going into topics about another and mocking people who liked them, or trying to troll and get those fans worked up (like accusing all Tali fans of being creepy, or saying Ashley is a racist etc.).

I don't visit either any more. The Gears forums I only went on when I was hyped for the games releases, and ME and DA have more or less escaped my consciousness except when people bring it up on here.

So this is pretty much my only forum.

 

[Weaver]

I've been on forums and online groups my whole life.
My best and worse experiences were probably both on 4chan.

 

[unindexedsearchengine]

World of Warcraft forums. I'm Swedish, so I used the european forums. So many Hungarians. So many French. So little correct spelling or grammar.

Oh boy, those are a treat. Being Hungarian myself, I feel doubly ashamed at those people (not all of us are like that, i swear). I've had my share of run-ins with my own people. Hell, this one time I was accused of "betraying my homeland" because I was the only poster on the whole thread to use correct english grammar. That was fun.
Also, the fact that I lived a total of 3 years in Hungary, and that my Hungarian is abysmal didn't help.

But hey, you found that bad, just wait till you hear a Hungarian person try to speak english.
Alternatively, if there are no Hungarian people in your vicinity, the experience can be replicated by applying a cheese-grater to ear.

Captcha: Attila the Hun.
oh, swell.

What's the hungarian language sound like? Is it a slavic language, being that hungary is a bit east in Europe, or does it sound nothing like them?

Also, I've always wondered. On my server there were a bunch'o hungarians, and phrase I heard daily was "Magyar vagy?". I've heard it means something along the likes of "Are you hungarian?" or "Do you speak hungarian?". Am I completely off here, or? Just curious since you know the language.

Hungarian ain't slavic, it's in a family-tree called "Finnugor". Our language is related to finnish, as both languages sprouted around the Ural region in what's now Russia. "Magyar vagy?" translates exactly into "Are you Hungarian?"

As I'm Hungarian myself, I can't really describe what Hungarian would sound like to someone who doesn't speak it, but you can always watch a hungarian youtube video, and you'll get the picture.
Fun Fact: according to some study or other back in 2011, Hungarian was chosen as the most difficult language to learn as a foreigner. Our grammar is horrendous, and our rules usually have more exceptions. I'm learning both Hungarian grammar and literature currently, and I'm struggling with it.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Gearbox Software's Aliens: Colonial Marines forum could get quite unpleasant with its Call of Duty bashing. In hindsight, I shouldn't have gone there in the first place.

I'm still active on the GBX forums although only in the Borderlands sections. Damn most of the "fanbase" can be annoying and whining for the slighest f***. Storage overload cappacity is fixed, alot of people whining and actually quitting the game cause it's fixed. Don't gett me started on the ES-fix >.>

 

[eBusiness]

I'm not sure that it is the worst experience I have had, but one of the most depressing.

My first post on Slashdot got voted "Troll", because apparently sharing a little basic knowledge on the topic is what trolls do. http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1655278&cid=32246228

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so that half the upvoted posts were lame jokes with the other half mostly being arguments for the sake of arguing.

Funny thing, there are other forums where I think the voting works quite well, it helps keep flame wars down as people generally don't feel a lot of need to defend their position rigorously against a heavily downvoted opponent. But auto-moderating based on votes seems to be a bad idea in most cases.

 

[Mocmocman]

You mean This one? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.397310-My-favorite-part-of-todays-MLP-FiM-episode-SPOILERS]
EN's threads are a treasure trove of gifs and I can't wait until season four so I can finally participate in one.

OT: This is my only real forum and I only lurk so I got nothing.

Actually I meant This one [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.340123-Poll-Sonic-the-Hedgehogs-friends-or-the-humans-from-the-Transformers-films-Whos-worse] It was an interesting OP and I thiught the images would reflect the subject. I was wrong.

Dear God, why did my curiosity have to get the better of me? Need some time to recover from that.

OT: The only other forum I'm involved in was the Borderlands 2 forum which was good for a few months after the game was released but in the last month or so it seemed to get really average. Not so much in aggressive posts but some of the crap people would talk about was really not needed. The worst part is though, one of the mods was kind of abusive to people he didn't like and locked threads just because he didn't like them. Then there were the couple of users that were practically untouchable because the mods wouldn't want to lose them.

Sorry about that. Don't click this one. It's worse.

He has another one??? Dear god.
Only one of the images showed on the one you posted so I guess I got lucky. It looks as though he posted that one a year before the one I had. I wonder if he's trying to start an Escapist annual tradition.

 

[rob_simple]

I got banned from the Manga Fox forums for asking if anyone knew where I could find a high quality scan of a specific Naruto page. I wanted the scan so I could get it printed on a canvas as a Christmas present for my friend.

I got modded for 'spamming' and when I started a new thread explaining, again, that I was just trying to get a Christmas gift for my friend, I was told, 'not all of us are Christians, you Scotch whiner.' I then got banned for a fortnight.

Now, ignoring the fact I'm not a Christian, nor are large portion of people who celebrate Christmas, I was delighted to find that asking for help on a forum was a bannable offense, but being a racist bag of dicks (I failed to see how my being Scottish had any bearing on the situation) was an absolutely encouragable practice.

Then again, since Mangafox are a gang of thieving shits, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[Gameguy20100]

oh were do I begin many forums have issues but the worst and the only one where I believe has no good people what so ever *4chan!!!* get rid of it get rid of 4chan delete it all.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I got modded for 'spamming' and when I started a new thread explaining, again, that I was just trying to get a Christmas gift for my friend, I was told, 'not all of us are Christians, you Scotch whiner.' I then got banned for a fortnight.

Did you at least become a little enraged at them calling you 'Scotch' as opposed to 'Scottish'?

 

[rob_simple]

I got modded for 'spamming' and when I started a new thread explaining, again, that I was just trying to get a Christmas gift for my friend, I was told, 'not all of us are Christians, you Scotch whiner.' I then got banned for a fortnight.

Did you at least become a little enraged at them calling you 'Scotch' as opposed to 'Scottish'?

Honestly, that part annoyed me the most, as I am neither a whisky nor an egg rolled in breadcrumbs.

 

[Nikolaz72]

Gianttool. Went there when one of my players created a thread to talk smack behind my back (He quit half a year later for unrelated reasons), wanted to clear up some of the bad air as I wanted to become a regular there aswell as I read the comics.

Ugh, not so fun times were had. After 30 pages of defending myself against at least a 100+ posters, being told to commit suicide, get raped, and die at least several times, not to mention the at least dozen times I was compared to Stalin for railroading ('dictatoring the campaing'). I figured it was better to just call it quits, just aswell as I was apparently banned 2 weeks after the last post was made.

Whom could have known Dungeons and Dragons players could be so hostile.

 

[Angie7F]

teen girls forums are scary.
it is like a one way road. no one give a f@@k what other right and just want to rant

 

[Alcamonic]

I used to be somewhat active on the official World of Warcraft EU forum when I was playing.

I... don't wanna talk about it anymore than just mentioning (seriously, the endless army of spambots where the least of the problem).

 

[Drizzitdude]

politicalforum.com (seriously that is what it is called), I used to be really into politics and debate but I eventually came to a few conclusions that caused me to scram after staying there for a few years.

First: People will argue about the same topic over and over and it till always be a very typical hot topic thread (like religion or something where an typical answer is easy to give out.

Two: Topics that require intense thinking and problem solving (such as world governments, utopian society, government reformation and the like) will usually be ignored.

Three:Religion wars 24/7: On this site, Atheists and theists are both complete dickweeds to one another, yet both feel as if they are in the right in being a total dickhead. Theists on the site will argue they are defending themselves and their faith by giving stereotypical answers and ignoring parts of their faith they don't enjoy while calling athiests blasphemous hellions and such. And on the athiests side the atheists will completely ignore the opinion of a theist who attempts to join in on a conversation without even reading their post, will berate them for being illogical, will call them stupid, mindless brainwashing sheep and be some of the most hateful people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting.

It was because of how radical each side was on that site that I found myself exploring different belief systems (just to simply not be affiliated with them) and found out that I could best be considered agnostic (as well as a lot of other people who consider themselves atheists would be). So I guess something good came from it but all in all for every 1 nice helpful person who is there for the discussion there are eight more trying to start an arguement about one tiny detail.

 

[Chromatic Aberration]

I really don't participate in forums or read around in forums that much and the Escapist was and is actually the only forum I know I can hang out without getting an aneurysm simply by reading.....for the most part that is. My prime example of where that isn't the case would be the comment section of Spiegel Online - I think it's the biggest German news site - and damn does it want me to throw my computer out of the nearest window: it's literally one soapbox comment right next to each other that read like the commenters just want to advertise their own hyperbolic/fanatical blogs and don't care about anything else...and when I hate one thing it's having manipulative, proselytizing, arrogant and unconditionally hyperbolic rhetoric in place of actual data or discussion...

 

[Strazdas]

I wont name names, but there was a forum in which an administrator told me he is looking to change the rules specifically so he could ban me.

Gamefaqs forums are full of people with no brains or people that, for example, claim that they love DRM and want every game to have it.

there were many other forums where a topic would reieve a "lol" as a reply and that would be considered good.

strangely, 4chan does not fit into the worst list, though its far from being a good forum.

i however was pleasantly surprised by neoseeker forum and their people extreme knowledge about everything. it has helped me with game problems the most of all forums.

I used to be somewhat active on the official World of Warcraft EU forum when I was playing.

I... don't wanna talk about it anymore than just mentioning (seriously, the endless army of spambots where the least of the problem).

the spambots are kinda gone, and the people there.... well.... some sections are clean... others not realy nice. i dont post there much, but when i do, i make sure i dont belong to that category.