What makes Doomworld nicer than some forums?

[Memfis]

I've seen quite a few Doomworlders saying that they find this place much better than an average internet community. Is it because it's dedicated to an old game? But there are quite a few younger members as well... Do we have just the right user count for things to work without getting too chaotic? Or did the old guys already establish the etiquette and so now we're following it?

[Linguica]

The obvious way to make a place nicer is to drive away the jerks.

[Benjogami]

Yeah, all of the above I think.

[40oz]

Where are all the jerks supposed to go?

[anotak]

7 minutes ago, 40oz said:

Where are all the jerks supposed to go?

nowhere to run on the internet once you become blacklisted from the doomworld.com

life becomes ruined

[[McD] James]

I think part of this is because political firestorms get locked almost immediately. I kind of see this as a double edged sword. I'm Canadian, but I follow US Federal politics fairly closely, and on a couple of occasions I felt compelled to chime in on some of the issues being discussed here (but didn't, as the threads got locked right before I responded). So while I do enjoy having a fiery debate about sensitive issues once in awhile, is it really worth having this place littered with 20+ page threads that ultimately devolve into mud slinging? You be the judge. 

 

I used to post on The Escapist for awhile, and left maybe about a year ago. Even though the moderating there was overly strict, the place was replete with toxicity. Usually arguments about Gamergate, and what have you. I remember seeing one person getting inexplicably banned for saying they didn't like Diablo 3, and I once got a warning when all I did was cordially talk about how bad the DOS ports of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games are. I contacted the mods to inquire why I received a warning, but never got a response. Here, I find the moderating to be precisely as strict as I think it should be.

 

 

Edited October 8, 2017 by Ajora

[Nine Inch Heels]

18 minutes ago, 40oz said:

Where are all the jerks supposed to go?

Facebook

[doomslayer11122]

Everyone is nice here, and since everyone here loves Doom we all get along really well.

[Agentbromsnor]

I like how reasonable this board is being moderated. I'm actually having trouble remembering non-Doom related boards that weren't regulated like North Korea.

 

When you're constantly being told what you cannot do, it ruins any fun and it prevents you from getting involved in the community. Just my two cents.

[Chezza]

The mods and rules here are great. I still see enough funny comments and the odd argument to be entertaining and most hairtearing threads / members removed.

[Endless]

I have not been here for a long time, but if something I have noticed is that the trolls or flamers are handled correctly and almost all discussions are carried out in a rational and respectable manner, something admirable, I do not know if it is because many have been here for years or perhaps because the fan base of Doom seems to be made by a majority of mature people. Whatever it is, I love it.

[SOSU]

It's probably because we have the edgy neo-nazi phase behind us since the Doom community is over 20 years old and most fandoms/communities are usually terrible at their start [there are a few exceptions however like the sonic fanbase as an example(said the sonic fan)].

[Reisal]

26 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Facebook

 

And myself and a few others hold down the unofficial DW group and keep out the bullshit.

 

To answer the OP's question: A no-bullshit moderator approach.

[printz]

10 minutes ago, Ajora said:

I think part of this is because political firestorms get locked almost immediately. I kind of see this as a double edged sword. I'm Canadian, but I follow US Federal politics fairly closely, and on a couple of occasions I felt compelled to chime in on some of the issues being discussed here (but didn't, as the threads got locked right before I responded). So while I do enjoy having a fiery debate about sensitive issues once in awhile, is it really worth having this place littered with 20+ page threads that ultimately devolve into mud slinging? 

Doomworld used to be more self-moderating / self-policing than it is now, though. I guess it's because highly skilled moderators like Grazza or myk have become less active. Moderation was really subtle (but in control), which made the place feel way more natural than ZDoom's forums, for example.

 

"Everything Else" now is mostly just about games and entertainment (and the occasional obituary), which is only interesting if you want to play games or watch movies. It used to be more varied in topics, and I don't mean just politics. Scientific, social, opinion, trivia debates appeared there. I guess people lost interest in debating on the forums, when you can talk about stuff in real-life (with colleagues) or on Facebook. May also be because lots of people who posted frequently on "Everything Else" have moved on.

[Nine Inch Heels]

8 minutes ago, Glaice said:

And myself and a few others hold down the unofficial DW group and keep out the bullshit

I wasn't referring to the unofficial facebook group, but to facebook in general

[Poorchop]

I'm kind of new here but I see angry people all of the time. If there's a thread where the topic calls for speculation, there's always someone saying "these threads need to stop." I've seen thread creators getting lambasted for asking genuine questions. There is a ton of hostility on these forums and it has kind of steered me away from the more general subforums.

 

On the other hand, the mapping end editing forums are full of really nice and helpful people so that's more of where I tend to lurk. I don't really browse a lot of other forums so I guess I can't make much of a comparison but excluding the creative subforums, there's just as much hostility here and there is in other forums I've checked out.

[geo]

Its an old forum for an old game. Lots of adults here. Then again a lot of forums now are old, but the majority of their audience is young or at least stupid.

 

Last jerk I remember was Coolkids and he was thrown out like a mafia sendoff. Wait then there was a different person that said some bad and unpleasant things. Especially about American McGee's sister who disappeared. He was thrown out. Good riddance.

Edited October 9, 2017 by geo

[Tristan]

It doesn't seem so long ago that Doomworld moderators were complained about more than praised. Or at least that's how it used to look to me, but still I'm glad to see it's swung the other way.

 

Perhaps I'm not going crazy. This forum feels like it's become a nicer place in recent months, and I have no doubt the decline of political threads and the like have helped with that. I generally never got involved with them, but you'd see people on both sides of any argument trading expletives and insults back and forth, and every now and then I would make some aggressive post towards someone, but over the course of this year really I've had this growing feeling that I didn't want to do that anymore. What did those debates and arguments ever achieve? Why get involved? Why the division with people over something neither you have any actual control over when you might otherwise get along with them just fine?

 

The decline of such threads here has helped me with that, because it's not often that I even need to consider that as it's a non-issue. I'm not looking in every other EE thread and thinking "argh you fucking helmet!" It's gone. Good riddance.

[Nevander]

This forum is nicer than most because we are that awesome.

[Uncle 80]

Balanced and good moderation is key! Too strict modding, and the users will stop posting. On the other hand, I have seen forums with too little moderation become just as, or even more deserted; where "backseat modding" is the norm, and a select group of "highly regarded" users often gang up on newcomers or older users with unpopular or just differing opinions, until all users but the few "exalted" have had enough & leave. Doomworld's policy against backseat modding and such prevents most of these kinds of oustings, I beleive.

[Da Werecat]

Hostility, forum politics, retardation, double standarts. It's all present here, to some extent. It's just that the rest of the web is even worse.

[mrthejoshmon]

^{It's "nice" to most, real nasty to certain others (granted, 9 times outa 10 they deserve it).}

^{Hostile actions here are not wise but not exactly non-existent and typically end in bitterness between specific people (key case being two specific guys who might be into scat because they couldn't help but shit on each other whenever they saw each other like some horrific public kink riddled relationship reliant on anger and beatings before mashing pissers furiously)...}

Yeah Doomworld's alright.

[EmotionalFelineinaMadstate]

The more calmer members here.

[Voros]

1 hour ago, geo said:

Wait then there was a different person that said some bad and unpleasant things. Especially about American McGee's sister who disappeared. He was thrown out. Good riddance.

I'm still here.

[fraggle]

Doomworld has been around for a long time and has never been afraid to ban the jerks who make online discussion unpleasant. In recent years a lot of discussion websites have fallen into this maximalist-free speech trap where moderators aren't allowed to exert any power or they'll be derided as biased or "suppressing free speech".

 

Reddit is a good example of this - if you've ever read through the comments on one of the big subreddits for example, you'll notice that it's mostly a sea of garbage: casual sexism and racism, people posting repetitive catchphrases for the 10,000,000th time, boring unoriginal attempts at humor that just aren't funny. Sometimes you can find interesting or intelligent discussion, but it's pretty rare. I'm fairly convinced that this attitude to moderation is to blame: there are whole communities on that site dedicated to attacking any moderators who try to clean things up. Small subreddits can easily be ruined by a single toxic individual and moderators who are scared to intervene (I've seen this happen). The *chan sites are another example that's even worse; at least Reddit doesn't allow anonymous posting.

 

This kind of attitude is very much a new thing that's appeared in the last ~10 years, but it wasn't always this way. Doomworld in particular is a very old forum that dates back to the '90s and takes a lot of its inspiration from the SomethingAwful Forums, which have never been afraid to recognize that trolls and other toxic idiots exist and must be actively excluded in order to protect interesting discussion. Honestly, what Linguica said earlier in this thread is 100% true, I think that comparatively speaking these forums have some pretty good quality discussion, and you have him to thank for it.

[Quasar]

Even on well-behaved reddits (like the Doom one for example, never been offended by anything I read there so far) I just find that there's no scope for extended discussion because the entire thing basically functions like a news feed and not a forum. Everybody's rating and clicking the newest topics as they come up and if they get three or four actual replies it's unusual. Topics that have fallen off the front page will stop being responded to or even read by most people, and more often than not they get duplicated in within a few days because there's zero expectation for anybody to ever go past that first page boundary apparently. It feels like being awash in a sea of ADHD, frankly.

[Jaxxoon R]

42 minutes ago, fraggle said:

Doomworld in particular is a very old forum that dates back to the '90s and takes a lot of its inspiration from the SomethingAwful Forums, which have never been afraid to recognize that trolls and other toxic idiots exist and must be actively excluded in order to protect interesting discussion. 

SomethingAwful may not be the most flattering comparison to make, considering the state it and its owner are in now.

[Neurosis]

I like you guys, I think you can all be very chill. I think there's some bullshit rules sometimes, sure. Plus the arguing can be a bit much at times. I'm not gonna act like I'm a saint on here, but it's a good place, I try to contribute because I have places like twitter and FB where I can spew my nonsense. So I hope you all feel comfortable here and comfortable enough to speak your mind with me as well as other members of the forum. Maybe the discord helps sort these things out, and maybe I will join it someday. For now, I like it right here. 

[geo]

3 hours ago, Eris Falling said:

It doesn't seem so long ago that Doomworld moderators were complained about more than praised. Or at least that's how it used to look to me, but still I'm glad to see it's swung the other way.

 

Perhaps I'm not going crazy. This forum feels like it's become a nicer place in recent months, and I have no doubt the decline of political threads and the like have helped with that. I generally never got involved with them, but you'd see people on both sides of any argument trading expletives and insults back and forth, and every now and then I would make some aggressive post towards someone, but over the course of this year really I've had this growing feeling that I didn't want to do that anymore. What did those debates and arguments ever achieve? Why get involved? Why the division with people over something neither you have any actual control over when you might otherwise get along with them just fine?

 

The decline of such threads here has helped me with that, because it's not often that I even need to consider that as it's a non-issue. I'm not looking in every other EE thread and thinking "argh you fucking helmet!" It's gone. Good riddance.

I think its because the rebels with their political talks formed their own Doom forum. While I have no issue with their politics, I miss them even if they rebel against Doomworld for not allowing specific discussions.

[geo]

2 hours ago, Voros said:

I'm still here.

I don't think it was you. He was banned. I can go dig up the thread....

 

Yeah you're not the one I was talking about. There were 2 threads. One when it first happened and a second one when I decided to dig a little back in January. In the second one you apologized for being a shithead in the first.