Worth reading

[Qie Niangao]

This is in the vernacular, but it's important, apropos the challenges faced -- and correct decisions made -- in keeping these Forums civil and productive.

Or the reader may have a different reaction.  Those reactions could be worth reading, too.

[valerie Inshan]

Worth reading indeed! I would predict this guy a brilliant career if he should apply for a management job in LL...

[Venus Petrov]

What prompted you to write this OP?  I think these fora are very civil. 

[Qie Niangao]

Hard to believe, I know, but for once I wasn't being ironic.  I actually meant it as positive feedback.  I really do think that LL has done mostly the right things with these Forums, and followed much the same approach as counseled in the blog article I linked.

In fact, the Forums were not always this civil, and I think they've been much improved by some hands-on management of the sort outlined in that blog.  

I guess my motivation was to provide the context that it's not only LL who considers these measures to be necessary.  

 

[valerie Inshan]

You know what? When I started reading, I actually thought this man WAS WORKING FOR LL.

@ Venus, I enterely agree with you: these fora have never been so civil. /me sighs in relief remembering those awful fights in the old GD!...

[Freecilla Kuhn]

"We are not responsible for comments..." is a perfectly valid disclaimer that really should not be needed. We should all already know having comments will attract goodies and baddies and individuals will take advantage of this which ever way they see fit. They are responsible for representing themselves meaning it is not the comment or the web site but the person we are learning about that wrote it. Limiting this will only limit learning the true nature of all humans, their development and their interactions with others.

It's usually young internet users that make nasty comments with name calling and hatred, I can not say kids since they are not always only kids. It's a passing phase, like any bully their actions will stop out of sheer boredom or when a little maturity comes their way. It takes a community to raise a child and ignoring or banning someone does not help them grow, it can in fact stunt their growth. Negativity will always hurt and it does not matter who it is directed to or if it comes from the child or the adult.

It is not a matter of us against them, it is matter of us helping them, no matter who or where they are when we encounter them including on the internet. Being civil is not an action we do when everyone is getting along, it is a way of responding to all individuals in any situation.

 

 

[Peewee Musytari]

Before the interweb, if people read something in a newspaper or saw something on TV that made them want to rant, they needed to actually sit down and write a letter or make a phonecall, which involved at least some passage of time, which could make all the difference to the actual words they choose to express their opinion.

Nowadays, we can see things and respond to them in seconds & often have clicked enter before our brains are even in gear. I wonder if there was a posting delay in some places whether it would reduce the amount of vitriol posted.

[Void Singer]

in theory... in reality for some people the longer it takes the angrier they get.... and it shows both in what makes it into the editorials (the smaller the readership, the nastier it can get, due to less material to choose from) , and much more so in what gets thrown out...

I had a friend who worked at a paper sifting through that insanity years back; they called it the dung heap.... he had a file cabinet full of the dumbest and most vile examples in the hopes that he could use them later to write a book and used to share some of them with the rest of us.... some of it made usenet look polite and cultured

 

ETA:
@OP, I agree with the sentiment expressed.... if a community is full of pricks, you need only look as far as the people running it to see why.

[Qie Niangao]

Now for something completely different.

The StackExchange sites are a bit like Answers, but it's broader than that: any measurement of repeated social behavior -- posting on the Forums, for example -- is going to follow some power law, to some degree.

If one were monitoring the health of these Forums, it might be one way to analyze usage statistics.

[Peewee Musytari]

Good point Void, maybe the trashtalk is just as bad but we don`t get to see it in those media formats. On the web its seen faster by more people & often emailed to them as well, before the mods can get to them.