The Road Less Travelled

[Cauldron]

Hy,

One of the major reasons I moved from ASL to CM was because the so called ASL Forum was nothing less than a vehicle for the "ASL Net Nazi's" to spout forth thier own opinion and to belittle everybody else. :mad:

This at times got beyond a joke, the abuse of newbies for example was not uncommon.

On becomeing a contributer and reader of the CM Forunm I could see little of this egotisitcal, and rank behaviour.

I hope for everyone's sake this continues, believe me when I say: a) you are really going to hate it if it does'nt,( a lot more threads will be flame threads which are about as much fun as talking about holidays to New York atm); b)people will just_plain_give_up CM and c) a lot of people in ( might be great scenario designer and/ or mappers or mod's guys etc.

I agree with BTS, keep the abusers well away from here....

If what makes you happy is "being right", at the expence of making someone wrong maybe you should follow the old adage " Engage brain before opening mouth" .

eric

[Ellros]

Well, seeing as how we don't have that problem, and haven't, except for the tragedy bringing out some sometimes odd behavior in some people , I really don't see this forum becoming anything like that.

[Spook]

Greetings, Cauldron. (Perth = Perth, Australia for your home?)

I concur with the primary points of your post, And a bit of what you've described is true in the recent months regarding CM "contributors" leaving when growing weary of some of the "head games" played here. In effect, what you've related as your fears will occasionally transpire even here.

What helps, of course, is keeping perspective. First off, being opinionated is not a sin in itself. Rather, it's holding an opinion with no tact granted to others, or holding an opinion that has little basis in logic or historical correlation, that usually gets tempers up.

Part of the trick is knowing who to converse with here, because there are always a few that like to stir things up or, not listen to reason when his opinion on a CM element is challenged to be proven better.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cauldron:

Hy,

One of the major reasons I moved from ASL to CM was because the so called ASL Forum was nothing less than a vehicle for the "ASL Net Nazi's" to spout forth thier own opinion and to belittle everybody else. :mad:

This at times got beyond a joke, the abuse of newbies for example was not uncommon.

On becomeing a contributer and reader of the CM Forunm I could see little of this egotisitcal, and rank behaviour.

I hope for everyone's sake this continues, believe me when I say: a) you are really going to hate it if it does'nt,( a lot more threads will be flame threads which are about as much fun as talking about holidays to New York atm); b)people will just_plain_give_up CM and c) a lot of people in ( might be great scenario designer and/ or mappers or mod's guys etc.

I agree with BTS, keep the abusers well away from here....

If what makes you happy is "being right", at the expence of making someone wrong maybe you should follow the old adage " Engage brain before opening mouth" .

eric

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is very true in many cases, but there is a great core of very intellectual people who like to discuss hard, but never get irked with each other. Spook and I by far rarely agree, but we debate like adults.

The two largest problems right now are bomb throwers and Slammers (both terms from Usenet discussions on this very topic).

A bomb thrower is a person who posts once to a thread, or even starts the thread his or herself, with no intentions of starting a real conversation, instead just trying to make trouble. Generally a bomb thrower becomes known because he rarely posts more than once to a thread, starts endless threads but never replies to the discussion, spawns threads on the same subject several times, and often choose thread subject not appropriate to the forum they are in (for example, constantly starting discussions on the WTC in the CM:BO forum).

A "Slammer" is someone who posts an opinion which he of she is not really able to support, then gets crazy when people starts to "kick the tire" of the issue. Posting an opinion is an invitation to people on any forum to try it on for size and cirtique it. Anything less is of course just a back slapping or circle jerk and could be done better in other forms of communications. For example, if I post that Tiger Tanks should be able to cross rivers in CM:BO, people have the right to turn it over and ask what is the nature of rivers in CM:BO, historically how did Tiger tanks cross rivers, etcetera. Slammers usually take criticism of their ideas as silencing their "free speech" and get really riled, sending the thread spiraling down into chaos. (Of course the slammer could also be just throwing a bomb if that subject has already been talked to death and people disagree on it fundlementally).

In the end, there is probably four types of threads here, and when you enter one or start one, you need to understand the culture of a thread of that sort to be able to handle it (since a large part of the problem is thin skin -- people think critique of there ideas is critique of them). A therad can be a communication thread like the Peng thread or one of the Tourney threads, people get together in there to form a community. It can be an informational thread, such as people announcing a new mod or service, it can be a simulations and historical thread, where the mechanics of the game are discussed, and it can be a humor thread, where nothing said means anything but it is fun to read.

It is pretty odd for someone to get mad ad discussion of history in a thread on the mechanics of the game. It happen though, when someone ducks their head in and says "this matters not, it is just a game." Or it is poor manners to say, "BTS should change the game because I think tanks are too weak" and either not support your proposition, or get mad when people choose to take your suggestion seriously and talk it out.

[Spook]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slapdragon:

This is very true in many cases, but there is a great core of very intellectual people who like to discuss hard, but never get irked with each other. Spook and I by far rarely agree, but we debate like adults.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, in irony, while we may co-exist frequently in contentious threads, I think it's other posters that we more often have our debates with.

There's always the issue of what is being discussed too. When "nationalism" comes to the fore, civility often gets chucked out the window. Nationalist debates in places like the Matrix Games forum "Art of Wargaming" should carry a disclaimer to first don an asbestos suit. Same for broaching the subject "Northern Ireland" at the History Channel-UK forums.

BTW, Slap, can you still link images to here hosted from your site or some web account? My Bravenet account doesn't seem to allow this anymore.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Spook:

Actually, in irony, while we may co-exist frequently in contentious threads, I think it's other posters that we more often have our debates with.

There's always the issue of what is being discussed too. When "nationalism" comes to the fore, civility often gets chucked out the window. Nationalist debates in places like the Matrix Games forum "Art of Wargaming" should carry a disclaimer to first don an asbestos suit. Same for broaching the subject "Northern Ireland" at the History Channel-UK forums.

BTW, Slap, can you still link images to here hosted from your site or some web account? My Bravenet account doesn't seem to allow this anymore.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes I can, when my server comes back up next week.

[Brian]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Spook:

Part of the trick is knowing who to converse with here, because there are always a few that like to stir things up or, not listen to reason when his opinion on a CM element is challenged to be proven better.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'd actually have placed you amongst one of the worst culprits of abuse with your anglophobia.

[Spook]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian:

I'd actually have placed you amongst one of the worst culprits of abuse with your anglophobia.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Keep up with unsubstantiated troll lies like that, Brian, and you'll likely be the next to go after Eumundi & Beazley.

See here, Cauldron? What we have here is Brian giving us a demonstration of a bomb-throwing, as related above by Slap.

An anglophobe, Brian? Gee, I'd doubt that a good British e-mail friend of mine near Biggin Hill UK, who never shirked to trump about the UK in the earlier TalonSoft Campaign Series forums, would agree. Nor would Ted Meyer in Northumbria, who I worked with as a co-referee for a recent CM campaign game concept.

Go over to the Matrix Games discussion forums, and you might find there where I held sway against the populist branding of Harris & Bomber Command as "war criminals" for BC's nighttime area-bombing campaign of WWII.

Or the "History Channel" forums. These are mirrored for the USA & UK, but I visit the UK one exclusively because I find many of the posters there (& their chosen topics) as more compelling to read, including the posting of an "essay wall."

An anglophobe would never bother.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian:

I'd actually have placed you amongst one of the worst culprits of abuse with your anglophobia.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is an example of a bomb calculated at resulting in a flame war and thus shutting down a particular thread or discussion. And here is a dilemma -- there are two roads to travel here, leaving the Troll to post calumnies, or engaging the Troll.

The first choice is good, except as can be seen, rarely quiets the Troll. It does however reduce the amount of work any particular person has to do to face a troll.

The problem with this route is that people who are new to Internet communications, or who are gullible, or have limited knowledge of a mature arena of discussion, or who even do not understand how this forum works and what has been written before can be lead astray by the Troll. So someone who is ignorant of the truth may read an accusation of Spook being an anglophobe, and take it to heart.

So this means the second way of deal like a troll such as this is engagement, which Spook has chosen.

In fact, if this Troll had approached things differently, he might have been in the clear here. Calling someone a pus filled wallaby is ok as long as it is done in conjucntion with intellectual argument. For example, although the who anglophobe thing is a red herring, he could disagree on this topic and say,

"Spook, you are a fool and a poltroon if you believe that. The reasons are A (plus supporting evidence), B (plus supporting evidence), and C (plus supporting evidence).

Of course what Brian did is step into a different subject and throw a bomb almost at random that had little or nothing to do with the subject, poor argument style and even poorer manners.

[Slapdragon]

In addition, you can usually hear the death knell of a thread when a flamer ducks his head in. If the flamer is a bomb thrower, he leaves it to others to do, if he is a sicko, he will take the attempts to ignore and engage (both basically trying to shut him up so that a real conversation can occur) as affronts and start a fill court press.

Blame usually sits with the first flame or bomb thrown.

[Spook]

BTW, Slap, my reason for asking earlier is that I am considering creating some CMBO small arms graphics charts, rating "firepower" againt range, and comparing against various weapons types. This, of course, can be accessed in a CM game from unit info boxes, but sometimes putting things together on the same chart helps for visual reference.

If I can't get my account to link the graphics back to here in the CM forums, I am considering asking if you'd be willing to host these for linkage.

(Perhaps a CMHQ article might be a better venue, but leaves less for chance of active discussion.)

Actually, in more recent times, I've been tinkering with theories on how "aimed fire" could be addressed with more detail in the future CM II engine, which is connected to the charts I am now planning.

[Mark IV]

One of our dearly departed brethren once described the "Newbie With Attitude" (NWA). There is abuse of newbies, and then there is abuse by newbies. I don't recall seeing many newbies attacked here on the basis of being newbies alone.

The attacks (much too harsh a word, in most actual cases) come when a newbie shows up to set BTS/the rest of us straight, as though we had all just fallen to earth.

"My (dead unit) got killed, this sucks."

"If you modeled x, then why isn't there y?"

"Why didn't you ever think of (pet feature)?"

Many of the old-timers were here before the demo was released, and some were actually discussing WWII before CM was even thought of, and many of them really have heard it all before.

To be fair, a REAL FAQ with a great honking button at the top of the forum screen would go a long way toward reducing these incidents. In the meanwhile, a moment's reflection before hitting Submit would spare a lot of feelings:

"Let's see, WWII fanatics have been living and breathing this game for the last 2 years... is it even possible that they may collectively arrived at this same conclusion, and/or dismissed it, before I arrived?", and so forth.

Even without this insight, most newbies have been welcomed with open arms and relatively gentle and reasonable pointers to Search, which admittedly sucks, these days. It's all about attitude.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mark IV:

One of our dearly departed brethren once described the "Newbie With Attitude" (NWA). There is abuse of newbies, and then there is abuse by newbies. I don't recall seeing many newbies attacked here on the basis of being newbies alone.

The attacks (much too harsh a word, in most actual cases) come when a newbie shows up to set BTS/the rest of us straight, as though we had all just fallen to earth.

"My (dead unit) got killed, this sucks."

"If you modeled x, then why isn't there y?"

"Why didn't you ever think of (pet feature)?"

Many of the old-timers were here before the demo was released, and some were actually discussing WWII before CM was even thought of, and many of them really have heard it all before.

To be fair, a REAL FAQ with a great honking button at the top of the forum screen would go a long way toward reducing these incidents. In the meanwhile, a moment's reflection before hitting Submit would spare a lot of feelings:

"Let's see, WWII fanatics have been living and breathing this game for the last 2 years... is it even possible that they may collectively arrived at this same conclusion, and/or dismissed it, before I arrived?", and so forth.

Even without this insight, most newbies have been welcomed with open arms and relatively gentle and reasonable pointers to Search, which admittedly sucks, these days. It's all about attitude.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

And most of us were newbies here once. I remember when Micheal Dorosh first came to the forum. It took him about 3 posts to catch the drift and now he is considered a grog's grog, all with a number near 6000.

My first account before the great meltdown was 1600 something, and there was an active community with a long background of discussion even by then.

[ 09-22-2001: Message edited by: Slapdragon ]

[Michael Emrys]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slapdragon:

My first account before the great meltdown was 1600 something, and there was an active community with a long background of discussion even by then.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You bet your ass there was, sonny!

Michael

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael emrys:

You bet your ass there was, sonny!

Michael<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is not to say all of them were all that bright mind you.....

[Madmatt]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian:

I'd actually have placed you amongst one of the worst culprits of abuse with your anglophobia.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Brian, if you don't have something either constructive or nice to say about someone that we would prefer you say nothing at all.

Consider yourself warned.

Madmatt