A case of you reap what you sow?
Theres a current popular topic on the UKFUR forums right now about the levels of trouble and rudeness and general animosity/crap spammage that the forums seem to breed. A theory Ive always had is that any online community usually seems to take its que from its leaders as to how to act. Ive certainly seen it on places like furcadia, where the attitudes of the owners seemed to permiate the whole game..and to some extent the same applies here.
Most of the admins and mods, not entirely, but most seem to have the attitude that they are in charge for the users own good, and have a brusque, profane or dismissive attitude any time they intervene in a discussion. Closing topics is the standard mode of response when something goes wrong, and usually with some comment putting the original poster or the rest of the forum down when they do.
This is the attitude most of the users seem to have now adopted to each other, flame wars, rudeness, lack of respect abound all over and everyone is getting upset and throwing their toys out of their prams.
Im sure the admins/mods do belive they are doing the right thing, and on the whole their decisions to address certain threads seem solid. Its their methods that let them down and only create more animosity and greater disruption than the original thread did. Well this is the nature of forums to some extent, you get nice friendly places where everyone cooperates, and you get nasty places where this kinda shit goes down - but I always think the mods should lead by example and hope the rest follow.
Most of the admins and mods, not entirely, but most seem to have the attitude that they are in charge for the users own good, and have a brusque, profane or dismissive attitude any time they intervene in a discussion. Closing topics is the standard mode of response when something goes wrong, and usually with some comment putting the original poster or the rest of the forum down when they do.
This is the attitude most of the users seem to have now adopted to each other, flame wars, rudeness, lack of respect abound all over and everyone is getting upset and throwing their toys out of their prams.
Im sure the admins/mods do belive they are doing the right thing, and on the whole their decisions to address certain threads seem solid. Its their methods that let them down and only create more animosity and greater disruption than the original thread did. Well this is the nature of forums to some extent, you get nice friendly places where everyone cooperates, and you get nasty places where this kinda shit goes down - but I always think the mods should lead by example and hope the rest follow.