Quote:Nat, could you provide a clear and concrete example of what you consider to be "unsanitized" good-faith discussion? It doesn't have to be something from the RPC itself, but I'm hesitant to say we've fallen from some Platonic model of what the community "should be" without knowing what the "should be" was or if it ever existed at some point.
http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=7486
I feel like this was a reasonable and honest discussion about a topic that could have very easily exploded. Now some threads did explode back then, it is true. Some threads can talk about sensitive topics now with no problems. It seems to be an issue of trends rather than absolutes.
Quote:Regarding the rest of the topic, I have spoken in the past about why I have engaged in hostilities. I don't feel I need to go into that a second time. I can, however, explain why I avoid threads which appear to exist purely for the purpose of promoting positivity: many times, they feel false.
Kellach (and I name him only because I am still grappling with nesting quotations) explained why he prefers the Compliment thread over, say, the Kudos thread. I've reviewed both. I've posted in the Kudos thread, but never in the Compliment thread. The material in the Kudos thread feels more earned, more genuine, and usually comes from posting good content. Those in the compliment thread feel very superficial - in the past ten pages of that thread, the overwhelming theme of them, with some variation, is "X is a good person." I don't really need to hear that. I'd rather hear "X posted good content for X, Y, and Z reasons."
I agree with Kellach that they're necessary. I don't agree that they're necessary as a counterbalance. Rather, I think they're important because they highlight the fact that this is not a single community. Rather, it is multiple separate communities bashing against each other on the same website, confusing themselves into believing they are a contiguous group. I will likely never interact with the majority of the posters in the Compliments thread in roleplay, especially those who make a point of posting regularly, because we expect different things out of the website in terms of content and purpose.
So what you see, Nat, as a sanitizing and a splitting of the community when it comes to discussions, I see as people realizing that there isn't - can't be - a single community. People are still fighting to believe it is, hence "why have people gotten so mean/so relentlessly positive, why can't things go back to how they were." It's wiser to accept that it can't be so. Acknowledge the difference, recognize posters who fall outside your conception of what the website's community "ought to be," and steer clear.
Interesting, I don't ever thing I've quite thought of it that way. I agree about the relentlessly positive threads (I suppose that is a far more neutral term than hug box). To me there is no point in praise and compliments for their own sake. However I do not begrudge people for making them. If that is what makes people happy then they are welcome to it.
Also as you say, there are groups of people who do not care about that, and come to the RPC for different reasons.
However how then do you fix the fact that we are, if two communities, we are two communities on adjacent seats on a long distance flight. We have one website and one set of forums, and I for one have no desire for the community to fragment. If one group of people thinks threads should avoid conflict and negativity, and the other thinks it is ok if the gloves come off. How do we prevent both sides from having a shitty time?
It's a slightly rhetorical question, because I made this thread to both discuss and experiment if different rules could help on certain threads.
There are however deeper issues that the two group theory unmasks. Issues that also cause problems in the community, such as the different groups and their different ideas of RP excluding people who believe otherwise. Though I don't think there are really /any/ solutions to that.