How to have a civil online community

You will always have a small minority who believe it is their right to say what they like. I've seen here recently people referred to as 'morons' or 'retards'. It is so easy for them to do it, and, with no recriminations, is reinforced as being acceptable behavior.

It is never acceptable to call other people names or exchange insults. Put across a point of view strongly, yes, but not at the expense of others. You have no right to call someone a retard simply because they have a different opinion to you.

I've long been a believer in moderating with a strong hand. By that I don't mean interfering, I mean sorting out individuals who make being online a pain for others.

There are some fine communities here amongst the various Stardock sites, why let a small minority spoil the enjoyment of everyone else. I wouldn't be afraid to ban if the whole is benefitted.

Another guy trying to change sins players, the fact is it cannot and will not change, I could write an essay on this, but it is pointless, becuase I think you can figure it out urself mate.

Freedom(s).

There, i said it.

Shame on me? Well, shame on anybody who can't see the whole concept of communicating in this realm of ours called the web.

It's a new "way of life" in fact. Not far from the cantine talky around the noon meals... any & all people would fit in as much as they're allowed to.

Sure, there's a line to be drawn where objectional behaviors must be controlled, but tell me - seriously - have you ever been able to shut up someone on any subject in casual conservations (these of the real kind, that is).

Sure, there's always the tavern chit-chat that leads to some all-out brawls of the grunt crowd. But, behind the curtain of alllllmmmmooossstt anonymity, can you claim that any particular person *IS* drunk - online - at that specific time - and with that reply?

See, how complex this issue becomes?!?

Moderating the casual is easy, censoring the whole mob for whatever reasons much more risky.

I believe stuff such as guide-lines, policies, user agreements, local membership rules are quite enough to maintain control over who & what is acceptable on any given site. Anything beyond these strict limits (presumed understood by users & members, btw) should and must be fixed by the system & people (be it moderators or even CEO!) in place.

Otherwise, both sides of the soooooo precious Freedom equation simply fails.

So, shut the f**k up - too. Or, as a result, take me seriously -- somehow. Now. Online.

The basic red-yellow-green framework makes sense to me, especially because I've let myself lapse again recently. Sometimes it's just terribly hard to put your values where your fast-typing fingers are...

Responsability.

Civics.

Coexistence.

I enjoy a site like joeuser.com because of the majority of people here who usually tend to have very interesting replies to the topics I follow the most (politics, computers and sometimes little bit of religion). I also enjoy when some people get into a "go to hell", "you first" argument but I also admit it does distract from the topic and can sometimes be boring when the same peopson does it over and over and sometimes for no real reason than to just pick on someone who they argued with before and were probably cute off by the article being locked.

My opinion is that any issue can bee seen from many points of view and that if you plan on expressing your point of view you have to be willing to have it attacked (not in an insulting way) by an opposing view and be ready to defend it not with insults and name calling but with facts and proof. I also think if your opinions gets "blown out of the water" then maybe you should learn to accept defeat as oppose to resorting to name  calling and insults.

Some people can't stand being challenged and defeated; they believe their opinions are absolute and while acting as if they are open minded they really are bias and don't really plan on excepting an opposing view as even possible. Therefor when you argue against their points, even if you can prove them wrong, they will simply dismiss you and continue to rant about their opinions except from there on any reply to you will be made with dislike, annoyance and anger which then adds insults and name calling to the replies.

In the end very little gets done on the argument that started as a debate.

Personally on the boards I moderate, I follow the "Futurama God" philosophy to moderation: if you do things right, people won't know whether you've done anything at all.

Now, mind you, the boards I moderate tend to be populated by young adults and older teenagers that are less likely to get into a flame war to begin with, but most of the time I find quickly deleting the offending posts and sending private messages to the offenders gets things cleared up.  Even if they do want to go on a tirade about "draconian moderation" it'll be in a nice sandboxed private message box where no one else gets to hear about it.

Just follow the house rules or get kicked out. It has nothing to do with "freedom of speech" or liberty or growing a thicker skin or... whatever really. When you join a forum, you agree to follow a set of rules and to behave in a civil fashion towards other members. If those rules don't suit you, prepare to find somewhere else to vent your "opinions". I really don't see what's so hard to understand about that.

Don't like it? Door's over there.

I hate red, can you change it to blue?  I don't like feeling red...

Red probably doesn't like you feeling it either <hides>

I don't really get why people so often feel like being trolls, even though I am a disagreeable son of...ahem, anyway.

I'm not entirely non toxic myself but I prefer people not be outright jerks.  I don't care how much people complain about it, if they can't be civil they have no business in a community, online or off.

Anyone talking about the ideal of freedom needs to realize that ideals only work when supported by everyone.  I could list examples of this pretty easy, but I'm sure anyone can figure that one out.

I've moderated one particular forum for a number of years, and in a pseudo-advisory position on another. There's really two effective methods to have a better community; harsh punishment and participation. With flaming, warn them. If they do it again, suspend their account or outright ban them.

However, a good moderator also has to be a member of the community. Far too many times I've seen staff members of other places simply not participate in discussion unless someone was infringing the rules. The first forum I joined actually had no active administrator! You have to really understand the community you moderate in order to do the job properly.

Also, there's no reason for members to insult one-another. If there is such a problem though, it might be a cause of miswording and can be fixed up without any punishment. Regardless, such flaming here does make things look a bit bad, no offense intended.

I would argue the opposite:  a good mod has to NOT be a participating member of the community.  That's like a ref also being a player.  The minute the mod participates, the discussion is colored, because you know if you alienate the mod, that mod becomes biased, and now you have to worry about that mod searching for loopholes to cite you for "infractions".  And as a mod, even you know that when you participate--particularly on a controversial topic--you are acquiring a bias.  OTOH if the topics you're participating in are pretty innocuous--like cooking, technical stuff, travel, bricks--I don't see the big deal.   Like the mods on the Galciv2 forum:  customer support issues I consider to be "technical" stuff.  Sure, participate.  But if you start getting into something like sports, you're starting to enter a grey area.  I know I, personally, wouldn't regard your conformance to the rules any differently because you were a New York Jets fan.  But if you are someone who chose to be a mod for a sports board, chances are you're passionate about the topic.  It would be inappropriate for you to openly favor one team over another.

I really like the idea of impartial judges, so I wanted to agree with you on a first reading. But the sports analogy doesn't hold up. A game like basketball can have refs because the NCAA and NBA provide fairly clear, simple rules to govern action on the court. Web forums, even when they're centered on a game, are not games.

Sports refs provide rapid, hopefully-consistent enforcement of clear, formal rules. Web moderators work with broad guidelines (very fuzzy 'rules') to help groups stay civil even when they discuss very 'hot' topics. Formal sports have clear calendars and specific team membership lists. Web forums have a bunch of people who come and go, agree and disagree, and are otherwise far more like a jungle than they're like a posh English garden.

I'm not toxic....just destructive and creative.

Good point!  I agree.

You are a mad bomber!  Pull, the pin, toss the grenade, and stand back and watch the fun!

On Heavengames (which is a large community of different games)  in the Age of Wonders section there is this mod (can I name him btw?) who's a rulerider (does that make sense in english?) which I dislike. I'd say they need to participate in the community. Otherwise I feel like they are some securityguard at a bar or something and I don't like that. That's part of me as well since I don't like other people having more power then me (yeah I KNOW how this sounds....)

To me it's good if a mod participates in a discussion and takes sides in sports or whatever.

The minute the mod participates, the discussion is colored, because you know if you alienate the mod, that mod becomes biased, and now you have to worry about that mod searching for loopholes to cite you for "infractions".

If the mod gets alienated (distanced) then he gets LESS biased. How did you arrive at that conclusion of yours?

How about if the guy is being a jerk?  By that I mean he is being insulting to others or deliberately being antagonistic even if it's in a passive way.

Sometimes I steam in to a thread where some ass hat is trolling or just acting like a spoilt brat and call it like it is that they guy is an idiot.  Am I using unacceptable behaviour or do I just have a low idiot threshold and it's not really a crime to shoot people who are deliberately painting targets on themselves.

Case in point, not me calling this guy out but a totally justified response that I agree with:

https://forums.stardock.com/373491/page/1/#2503681

How much basketball do you play?   Calling fouls in basketball is an extremely fuzzy part of the game and it affects virtually everything you do.   The analogy's actually pretty good, because most games of basketball are pickup.  You call your own fouls.  And pickup definitely has its share of lamers who will baby up any time you touch them.

Webster's:

alien·at·ed; alien·at·ing

1 : to make unfriendly, hostile, or indifferent especially where attachment formerly existed

the TTV dictionary (tetleytea version):

1.  to piss off, often as a result of not kissing their a**

Guilty, but I never run there, I always walk and most of the time I'm driven.

I don't play at all, but I like to learn and think about important subcultures. You mentioned refs, so pickup games never came to mind. Now, though, your sports analogy's starting to work for me, but that's because I think a forum is more like a pickup game than a formal game.

This, I agree, would be a problem. I haven't seen it personally since back in the BBS days, but that's because Stardockia is the only place on the modern web where I 'waste' this sort of time. I can tell from what I read here that many (most?) game-related boards are awash in barbarians, and I pity the poor mods who have to wrangle them.

That's an incredibly Vulcan response. But I agree.

if you wanat to have a civil internet community, have everyone go by their first names. Seriously.

It's amazing.

No, I'm going to going ot hand out the link to it for the masses but it's quite an unusual forum

Aye, you are likely correct, though the trade off would be harsh. In my experience anonymity allows concepts to flourish and test themselves without the baggage of social anxieties, where people either filter or exacerbate their opinions on account of the percieved flow of public opinion. Though I understand that this will occur regardless, in the anonymous scenario the idea will usually take precedence over the individual...in the world of 'you are this snippet of language' people will fall back to the defend the keep everytime, leaving the ideas themselves to flounder under the stairs as gimps of the social.