Change of Tone on the Forum

One possibility is to go the other way, develop a subcommunity of people who've proven themselves through some sort of objective criteria. You can make some of the forums "Members only" and aim for a more active and trusting community on those forums. For instance, one possibility for an objective criteria might be posting work and critiques in the Showcase forum, and something which we might hope to see in the private forums could be about trying to edit and develop much larger projects, like posting your outline for the entire novel.

 

Mmm, we have to be careful with wielding the Ban-Hammer too lightly, or creating some sort of elite class. As any community grows the chances for friction increase. For a long time these forums were a fairly insular community with relatively few active members. We're gathering more, quickly, and as Black Dragon said some of that 'nastiness' of the internet is emerging. It is caused in large part by anonymity - and the increasing size of our community makes for more anonymity amongst the members.

I don't think we should do anything about it, really, except stay positive and discourage people from mud-slinging. Trolls don't stick around if you never feed them - and closing threads/banning people IS one way of feeding trolls. It gives them a concrete reaction to their trouble-making, which is what they want to incite.

Personally, I find it easy to ignore silly or ignorant threads and posts, so I don't think I'm affected as much as Amanita or others. I just hope we don't react by closing the forums off or limiting the chance for input - even if some of it is ugly. That way lies stagnation, and I've seen too many forums die of it.

 

Honestly, I meant to suggest a subcommunity as a way to increase the chance for input, not limit it. That's why I mentioned the Showcase, one of the current private forums, as an example of ways to earn access to a subcommunity, if it existed. The goal of having a higher level of membership would be to create a more collaborative environment to encourage people to share more specific details of their work in order to make people better writers. I didn't mean to suggest closing off a whole bunch of the forums to everyone. I just want to make that pretty clear.

I don't really feel like it's appropriate for me to comment a lot about moderation after the last few weeks, but I will say that if a mod jumps into a thread, quotes the perpetrator and says "I understand the point you're trying to make, but it's being lost in your tone. Please avoid the snide remarks." If you do that, you can also send out PMs saying, "Please leave the moderation to the mods, we've got it." I think that's usually all that's really required.

But there's a bigger problem I've noticed, and it's that we seem to be a community of egos. I mean that nicely, for the most part, I really do. But I see a lot of threads where someone asks a question, and by page two people are trying to outsmart the question instead of answer it. "How's this idea for a prologue?" quickly gets a response, "Why do you even need a prologue?" And while that can be great in terms of an academic-type of discussion, it doesn't really answer the OP's question or provide a lot of value to the person posting the question. I see that kind of thing happening a lot, and I think overcoming that sort of situation is the next step in getting the community to add value to its membership. That's not something that's fixed with moderation, but it is on the subject of changing the tone.

 

Your opinion most certainly matters, and you are definitely not alone.

In a recent PM conversation with another member, I expressed this fear:

Specifically, my fear was that heated discussions left unchecked would damage reputations.

We can all benefit if everyone makes two considerations before posting. The first is to consider whether your remark will leave the reader(s) with that same feeling expressed by Amanita in the above quote.

The second is to follow the golden rule quoted by She Who Has Reached the Level Beyond Grandmaster:

 

Uh oh. It was a matter of time before it would start, and Mythic Scribes has grown incredibly since I've joined up. In my personal experience here, I have not encountered much if any of said problems, excluding a cursed-up LOTR thread.

I'm looking at this through blade runner currently, and I'm pretty sure it exists... But wouldn't an efficient report system be one of the best ways of dealing with this? I liked the mentioned idea of a "respected group," but I entrust the moderators with holding that title. I think having an elite group would cause some friction with members feeling left out.
However, I do approve of the idea that you should have to "earn" your way into some of the forums - the showcase and challenges boards specifically, perhaps even this one. This brick wall so-to-speak would weed out a good number of the trolls and vulgarity-users. Perhaps to gain access, one would have to participate in a special set of newbie challenges directed by a higher-up, or gain access by achieving a certain amount of reputation points, commendations that could be implemented, or by recommendation for promotion into a member rank.


Will post more, and upon reading this, I hope I never insulted anyone in any way or provided unintended negativity. Lemme know what you think about aforementioned solution ideas.


Edit: I just posted and noticed Black Dragon's post so disregard my report comments.

Another idea, since there is a thanks button, why not a negativity button? Or a thumbs down? Perhaps this could be included in the report. After receiving so many you would eventually earn yourself a temp ban then a permanent-ip ban along with email-ban to prevent new accounts from being made.
On the thumbs down button, whoever who uses this will have to provide a reason why for moderators to judge if the recipient loses rep or doesn't. This prevents abuse of the button in cases of random spitefulness or plain old douchebaggery (honestly could not think of a better way to put it).