Quote:
Originally Posted by Tree_UK
lol, until people realise they can edit the big red letters out. Great idea.
|
There are workarounds for anything really, the difference is where you choose to focus. I spend more time finding workarounds that enable me to fly the sim and after a while i've managed to not only have fun myself but also help others do the same. On the other hand, people are free to look for workarounds that enable them to clutter the forums instead of flying the sim.
Tree, you know i'm all for free speech and i've defended your right to have your say in the past, but repeating one-liners is doing nothing for us. We don't get any development updates any faster, same for patches.
What's more, the vocal group's skewed idea of freedom of speech is encroaching on that of the rest. When we can't have a single thread, however far the original topic might be from their preferred issues to talk about, without it descending into the usual sad situation, then it's time to reassess the whole matter and understand that they are detracting from the freedom of speech of others who want to talk about other equally valid issues.
In plain terms, the repetitive one-sided banter ("whiner" and "fanboy" alike) prevents anyone else from having a discussion about anything else. How is this freedom of speech when a vocal minority is effectively deciding what is ok to talk about and what is not, by pulling every thread in the direction they want? It's not, it's just some community members enforcing their beliefs on everyone else by disrupting any discussion that doesn't agree with or doesn't have a direct consequence of furthering their own agenda. It's more like an effort to monopolize the developer's attention and get their preferred set of toys before everyone else than freedom of speech really.
I don't want to have the same things crop up in every single unrelated thread and disrupting discussions that are equally, if not more, important to many people than the lack of AA or the kind of green used in the fields or the tracers. What can i do about it? Well, there are two choices here really: i can either do the same to them and derail their threads for a change to see if they can take a taste of their own medicine, or i can propose different moderating techniques and let the powers that be take it from there.
It just makes people bored having the same issues pop up in a dozen different threads per week and diminishes the signal to noise ratio. If some people had spent as much time reading a few helpful posts as they have repeating the same things for the past couple of months they wouldn't be asking how to solve issues that have been answered since April.
It's well within your rights to present an opinion and well within the rights of others to disagree, challenge and ignore it.
Let's face it, the strategy failed, it might have been annoying to the developers and the most hardcore supporters at first but it still didn't produce any tangible results. If anything, it has caused even the more level headed or even previously uninvolved people in the community to either get dragged down into slagging matches or become bored with it and openly start combating it, like i'm doing now.
Right now it's just an annoyance and the only reason it can't be easily ignored is the sheer amount of volume it takes up in the forums. And just to be clear, i don't mean the message (critical or positive) but the attitude with which it is conveyed.
Still, all it takes to change that is a bit of forum moderation. The mods don't need to delete the offending posts and stifle anyone's freedom of speech. All they have to do is prune and move/merge every such post or thread into a sticky complaint, speculation and arguments megathread that the rest of us can ignore at their own leisure while talking about more interesting things, while the so called "whiners" and "fanboys" are confined to their own private arena.
You see, it's not the opinion i take offence to. It's the aggressive proselytizing that i disagree with. In that sense the so called group of "whiners" is no different than the so called group of "fanboys": different agendas, same tactics, equal amounts of the false sense of speaking for the entire community, plus annoyance and lack of usefulness for everyone else.
Let them argue all they want to, as long as they don't aggressively try to drag everyone else in their feud. If they do, then it's time for the "peacekeepers" or "bouncers" to cordon off area so they can't negatively influence the rest of the community.
Getting the feeling that i'm having my eyes glued open a la A Clockwork Orange while being forced to watch grown men mud-wrestling in thongs every time i browse the forums is hardly synonymous to freedom of speech, it's merely being subjected to endless bouts of boredom against my wishes. And before someone says that it's well within my rights to ignore it, let me just say that i shouldn't even have to get that far if i'm within the forum's original focus: if i'm watching a sports game in a bar and two people come in, throw down an inflatable pool filled with mud, strip to their underwear and start rolling in it, it's not me who should be forced to leave the premises in order to avoid the spectacle but them.