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(05-19-2015, 01:42 AM)Oswin Wrote: I really, really don't think the vitriol and bile of the WoW community should be anything we try to be.
I'm not going to even try to argue that there isn't vitriol and bile in the General Discussion forum (which seems to be the least moderated of all the forums). Â But there are extremely healthy forums on that site, too, moderated under the same policy. Â In particular, the Healing Forum and the various Technical Support and Customer Service forums are very healthy, very useful, and seem to function just fine under that moderation system.
Do you have to be able to take people disagreeing with you, sometimes harshly? Â Yes. Â Do you have to be able to live with people dismissing your opinion because of x, y, and z (which are generally incredibly arbitrary and sometimes quite silly)? Yep.
But the conversations are, in general, a lot saner there than the ones that have gone off the rails here. Â And they absolutely do moderate things that get out of hand.
Edited to Add: I was mostly throwing that out there to show that a more hands-off moderation policy that allows for some friction isn't necessarily unhealthy or a bad idea. My concern with what I'm seeing here is that people are being encouraged to be passive-aggressive about things - i.e. to game the system so that they can still get their zingers in but not be dinged for them. The undertone of hostility and malice is not something that can be papered over by having everyone pretend they like each other. I don't know if you've ever had a boil, but I have. You lance a boil. Covering it up and pretending it isn't there just leads to blood poisoning. It needs to be cut open, cleaned out, and allowed to heal, or it will continue to fester and cause issues. I feel like the simmering discontent needs to be treated the same way. Why people are attacking each other needs to be addressed. Handing out warnings over gifs and blunt remarks really isn't doing a lot to help the general atmosphere. At least, in my opinion.
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