Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

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  • Saureco

    #1

    Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

    Before I begin this lecture, let me preface with a small disclaimer:

    I have been known to fuel flames, feed trolls, and fail to refrain from lighting up some ignorant mofo. I apologize for that. I am not a saint, I am human, and I make mistakes. That said, I will continue.


    We are in a forum. A forum is, by definition, a place where people get together to exchange ideas and converse over topics of interest. This forum has thankfully been organized into rooms where specific topics within certain categories can be discussed. Bugs, gameplay, recruiting, and off-topic babble are some of such categories. And with such organization comes administration. The hosts of this site and forum have willingly taken time out of their lives to provide us with a resource to discuss all things BF2. We owe it to them to follow their rules and obey a certain amount of etiquette.

    So why the #$%& are so many smacktards running rampant?

    We could blame the admin, but that's not fair as only so many people can watch so many boards and read through X number of threads at any given time. The smacktard-to-admin ratio is just too high.

    We could blame the mature members of the community. Please note that I make no reference to age, as even young members can exhibit maturity while even adults can digress into childish rants and namecalling. But we all know that the mature members can only restrain themselves for so long, and the desire to participate and respond to a potentially enriching thread is all too intriguing. We inevitably get sucked in.

    So who is left?

    The smacktards themselves. It is a small group of members. All it takes to join a forum is to click the "register" button, give an email address (even a free, make-it-in-a-second address), and then respond to activate your new account. After today's barrage of idiocy, logic would indicate that some smacktards have created more email accounts to simply annoy us with increased proficiency.

    But why? Why bother? Why annoy people? There is nothing to gain from it. The only reponses you are getting are in written form. We all know you want to be yelled at. We know you want to see the looks on our faces and hear the distress in our voices. But you're selling yourselves short by doing it here. And you're only going to a dubbed-down version of antagonization because you're anonymous here. You know if you tried this in public, where people see the real you, the physical you, that they can lock onto the aggressor, see him, and then alter his physical appearance with a few blows from an enraged fist. Here, you're just another made up account to start threads to disperse crap, scalding comments, and just be an ass. All that trouble to still result to not much.

    That's sad. What a pathetic existence. You exist to disrupt. There is no vindication. There is no redemption. There is no justification for your being. You simply participate to disrupt progress. You are the kid the teacher tries to correct, but you take the reprimands as badly needed attention and an opportunity to show your peers you're "cool". You are the young adult who should be off to a good start in life, but you're always coming up short since you just can't seem to connect with people in a proper manner. You are the lost adult who should have found his path in life, but you woke up to the reality that you wasted the first half of life being a **** and are now spending the second half trying to fix it and clean it up.

    And now you've come here. You have come to a place where people are trying to make their gaming experience better by trying to teach the new players, report bugs and technical problems, and just try to get to know the community better. But instead of participating in a constructive manner, you have pulled it down. Instead of us taking steps forward and out, you are pulling us back into the caves. You shame us. You embarass us. You don't make us realize that humanity has its idiots, but you make us realize that we haven't done much to correct it. We're not really sad with ourselves. We're just sad that you haven't "gotten it" yet. You haven't acclimated to the world. You don't know how to interact in a way that makes us want to interact more with you. You are stuck around the same ignorant people that they talk about in standup comedy and political discussions. Get away from them, fix your problems, and then come join us.

    We'll be here for you. Until then, please don't hit the "New Thread" or "Post Reply" buttons.
  • SnuFFeh

    #2
    Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

    Hear hear!

    Comment

    • Slapidus

      #3
      Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

      It could be worse,go to BF2planetfield forums,thats where most of your smacktards are,you will barely find someone posted something nice about the other person,its mostly a flame fest over there,this forum is great not to many smacktards and the one's that are get banned from what ive seen

      Comment

      • imported_Psycho

        #4
        Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

        Yeah great speech but what you fail to recocnise is the fact that anyone you are aimming at are either to lazy or stupid to read it. The average age of this forum is probbaly about 14 and i say that is an average.
        You seem to be not blaiming the administartion which leads me to believe you don't really know much about the board construct, as admins can't do everything i agree, but what they can do is "employee" (i use that word in the lightests of terms) people to keep the forum in control, or to remove some of the irrelivent posts and people from it.
        This board seems to have about 6 admins and about 3 mods, however i can't acutally see a place where i can show you this on this board type, i believe the mod teams and other teams on the forum have the power to look after there own forums but none of the others.
        So the point i am getting to is that the board doesn't have enough moderators as a whole whether that be mods for specific forums or global moderators that can look after the whole board. You can tell this just by looking at the board we are on now, i would expect there to be at least 2 mods minimum to be on at a time as this board as a whole has about an average of 80-100 members on at most time and 3 mods can't look after it because all you need is one smacktard and they can destroy a board until someone else turns up to fix it, but once there here it will only take a few seconds to fix it by either moving it to the board at the bottom of the front page, or just deleting it.

        Anyway thats my point and whereas with yours it doesn't matter that it's long because i would expect the people it's being aimmed at to bother to read it.

        Comment

        • Saureco

          #5
          Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

          But my point is it doesn't matter which forum you go, they are there. It's pandemic. It's a social disease. It's just a new medium for the bullies and loudmouth jerks to come and pick on people. And they feel more comfortable doing it because they are anonymous here. They can still communicate their hatred and ignorance without exposing themselves to the usual social dangers. You know that if some guy went to Starbucks and starting calling everyone fags and coffee-sipping hippies that one of them would put a boot in his neck post-haste. After such an episode, said jerk suddenly learns that doing that in public has severe and swift repercussions. But if he does it in a place where we can't touch him (for now :)), he thinks he's won.

          So, from now on, when one of these guys starts one of their flame fests, shotgun spam links, or racist rampages, just ignore him. The thread will eventually fall to the 80048th page and he will have lost. His cause will die. The smart and nice people of the forum will win. Then he'll either 1) change his attitude or 2) leave the forum altoghether.

          Comment

          • DezemoDova

            #6
            Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

            someone really pi$$ed you off eh?

            Comment

            • imported_Psycho

              #7
              Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

              Originally posted by [47R]Saureco
              But my point is it doesn't matter which forum you go, they are there. It's pandemic. It's a social disease. It's just a new medium for the bullies and loudmouth jerks to come and pick on people. And they feel more comfortable doing it because they are anonymous here. They can still communicate their hatred and ignorance without exposing themselves to the usual social dangers. You know that if some guy went to Starbucks and starting calling everyone fags and coffee-sipping hippies that one of them would put a boot in his neck post-haste. After such an episode, said jerk suddenly learns that doing that in public has severe and swift repercussions. But if he does it in a place where we can't touch him (for now :)), he thinks he's won.

              So, from now on, when one of these guys starts one of their flame fests, shotgun spam links, or racist rampages, just ignore him. The thread will eventually fall to the 80048th page and he will have lost. His cause will die. The smart and nice people of the forum will win. Then he'll either 1) change his attitude or 2) leave the forum altoghether.

              Well maybe you should go on some of the other Forum before generalising like that, you will notice that most of the team forums (eg mod ones) don't have this problem due to the fact they have a constant presences from there team coming in and out checking that there forum isn't going into disrepute, because if there forum does become in that state it may hinder to an exsent the popularity of there mod.
              Where as the general forums (ones to do with BF2) are full of these people i agree and i do see your point but i have to give credit where credit is due and the mod teams are keeping there houses in order, where as the lack of moderators and admins (admins are busy doing othe stuff probbaly) means that the forums just go to a poor standard.
              You can even see it in this topic to a sence where people are just posting for the sake of posting with no real content to the post or any real help to keep the convasation flowing.

              Comment

              • Fullforce

                #8
                Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                I could not agree more. Todays show of immaturity has been off the chart - and I'm going mad with it. Nice one.

                BTW, how did you peeps using Firefox block all the popups from that Sm0keh git? my Firefox didn't

                Comment

                • imported_Master Shake

                  #9
                  Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                  FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT TTTTTTTttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!

                  Tee-Hee............................................... .


                  Jk, I feel your pain, but it is what it is...

                  Comment

                  • Fullforce

                    #10
                    Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                    hehe, i just checked my PM inbox - seems that Sm0keh understands one thing - Geography!

                    Originally posted by Sm0keh
                    i live near you you ******
                    Thats it. nice to know, what do you want me to do? quiver in my boots? what a tool.

                    Comment

                    • Saureco

                      #11
                      Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                      Psycho, I could claim you're backing the smacktards, but I'm not going to take the discussion. The fact of the matter is that public boards have smacktards, regardless of count or potency. Trying to play down my lecture as a generalization or "other boards have it worse" is only deflecting the matter. You're patronizing the guys trying to keep this place civil and excusing the guys disrupting it.

                      Comment

                      • imported_Psycho

                        #12
                        Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                        Originally posted by [47R]Saureco
                        Psycho, I could claim you're backing the smacktards, but I'm not going to take the discussion. The fact of the matter is that public boards have smacktards, regardless of count or potency. Trying to play down my lecture as a generalization or "other boards have it worse" is only deflecting the matter. You're patronizing the guys trying to keep this place civil and excusing the guys disrupting it.
                        You could claim that, i could claim that you were backing the smacktards, both statements would be completly incorrect and a ridculous conclusion to make after reading the statements we have made.
                        I personnaly think your problem is you don't understand the definition of the words i am using (not trying to be patronising).

                        Board - Mutiple Forums all on one site.
                        Forum - A group of threads separted into a section
                        Thread - A place for disscusion about a specific topic
                        Post - A message from a member about a topic.

                        That would be the definition and i personnaly think you are getting forum and board confused as no where have a commented on extenal boards, where you may have been confused also is the mod team boards and i meant the ones intergrated into this sites forum not external ones.

                        Comment

                        • BeerStein

                          #13
                          Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                          So in other words you both agree there need to be a few more moderators in here? Pretty much?

                          Spank you, spank you very much helpy helperton.

                          Aye Aye - agreed - more helpers please.

                          Comment

                          • Saureco

                            #14
                            Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                            This is completely non-value-added. You are now attacking the thread starter over semantics of word use. I can't be supporting the smacktards BECAUSE I STARTED THE THREAD THAT ADMONISHES THEM.

                            Anyone else see his flawed logic? Please stop posting if you have nothing constructive to add.

                            Comment

                            • vbl

                              #15
                              Re: Forum maturity, and the lack thereof

                              I truly believe that the quality of discussion in this forum is directly related to the amount of time people spend playing the game.

                              When people play more, they have more thoughtful, relevant things to say.

                              Right now the game is in a serious lull, with many players killing time until BF2:SF comes out. Thusly, people make stupid posts simply because they're bored.

                              Comment

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