On derailing threads

[HA GOTEM I DIDNT ROLL]

When bad actors in the community are trying to influence public perception of the team through plausibly deniable Civil Debate™ (read: sea lioning), yeah, mockery and calling the bluff is an effective foil.

[Royal Blood]

Making 'fun' of other peoples feelings isn't helpful at all, unless you would find it beneficial if everyone replied to your posts with out of touch memes because I personally find it 'laughable' and justify my own right to make fun of you because I 'personally' think your opinion is nothing more then a joke.

Then by all means, take peoples genuine angst and unhappiness and respond by mocking them. That's healthy and productive.

[HA GOTEM I DIDNT ROLL]

Making 'fun' of other peoples feelings isn't helpful at all, unless you would find it beneficial if everyone replied to your posts with out of touch memes because I personally find it 'laughable' and justify my own right to make fun of you because I 'personally' think your opinion is nothing more then a joke.

Then by all means, take peoples genuine angst and unhappiness and respond by mocking them. That's healthy and productive.

you didn't read it
which is a mockery in and of itself

[Cerk Evermoore]

Free speech online as a defense against shitty trolling, nice. You admitted in your own post you are making fun of people's anger and frustration in a public fashion. That seems like you are trolling for angry people, or else why would you intentionally be throwing gas onto a fire?

[Face]

When bad actors in the community are trying to influence public perception of the team through plausibly deniable Civil Debate™ (read: sea lioning), yeah, mockery and calling the bluff is an effective foil.

And who gets to decide whether they're bad-acting or actually putting points forward? You?

((great sign-off by the way, love a bit of Blood Meridian on a neverwinter nights server forum ))

[Royal Blood]

It was never about you having a different opinion. But rather that you 'threw gasoline' onto a fire by posting a meme taking someone's initial feelings and mocking them with unhelpful commentary that did nothing but inflame the situation. By qouting the other poster, you agreed that you didn't find their opinion valid, and that in turn validates your own right to mock them and be wreckless in your behaviour or inflame a situation.

[HA GOTEM I DIDNT ROLL]

It was never about you having a different opinion. But rather that you 'threw gasoline' onto a fire by posting a meme taking someone's initial feelings and mocking them with unhelpful commentary that did nothing but inflame the situation. By qouting the other poster, you agreed that you didn't find their opinion valid, and that in turn validates your own right to mock them and be wreckless in your behaviour or inflame a situation.

so you did the same thing

[Royal Blood]

I sure did. It's not so great when it gets turned back on you, is it?

[Zavandar]

this is really self-defeating

[DM Chiliad]

Please take it back several notches, or I'm locking this one too.

Thanks.

[Ork]

Go outside and have a wonderful day, even though you haven't earned one.

I was onboard all up until this, man. Petty.

[l33tfragiletings]

Go outside and have a wonderful day, even though you haven't earned one.

I was onboard all up until this, man. Petty.

[l33tfragiletings]

It's alright. Just tone it down a bit ^^'

[Lukkas]

So I suck at organising my thoughts, but here they are in a somewhat rambling fashion.

Is it fine to drown out opinions or viewpoints that differ from your own by trolling threads into oblivion?

Seems to me, yes it is. That's half the reason I keep taking breaks from Arelith. A month or so at a time of the toxicity on the forums burns me out faster than almost anything else. Of course there's always the option to just ignore the forums except for the update posts, but it's a part of the community as much as the game is. I don't post often (and my first forum account got purged while I was on break during the whole "hacker" fiasco, but only had 2 posts associated with it), but this kinda hits home for me as an active lurker. I don't post, because these forums are full of people who prefer to make ad hominem attacks over reasonable arguments. Any time a topic of any amount of contention comes to light, it attracts that kind of behaviour. At least, it has for the last few months or so.

I've been playing for 2 years, but didn't really see this behaviour become so virulent until I want to say last February/March-ish. There was always a small subset of players more interested in wreaking havoc than cooperative storytelling, but they seem to have really burst out of the shadows at about that time. I keep poking my head back in to both the game and the forums every couple of months or so to see if the Arelith I immediately fell in love with during my first stint here is back, but it's starting to seem like that Arelith is long gone. It may be the players, it may be the DMs.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. What matters is, you (the royal you, by the way; as in anyone reading this) should be the best person you can be. If you feel like you are, you're doing your part, no matter what anyone else says. What matters is that you're true to yourself, not just some version of yourself someone else wants you to be. If you think you're being civil and you receive a ban, what have you truly lost? A community ruled by what you may reasonably perceive as despots? If you're doing your best, and all you receive from the playerbase is hostility, what do you lose if you decide to move on? A community of toxicity which tries to drag you down with them?

Take risks. Make mistakes. Try not to assume ill-will. If you're not happy, it's your job to find a way to fix that. Nobody else's.

Likewise, the DMs frequently tell people to step out of their echo-chambers, but it is my opinion that more could be done to make the forums more wholesome and conducive to that end. How're people supposed to see the other side if the response to someone else dragging the topic down for their own malicious ends is always to lock it? In my opinion, the administrative team as a whole is too small and uncoordinated to handle a community of this size. More could definitely be done to assure the synchronicity of the administrative team as a whole, perhaps an internal record of policy? Perhaps a disciplinary committee separate from the DM team? A good DM is not necessarily a good disciplinarian, and vice-versa. It seems that the onus placed upon the DM team is far too great for them to handle at their current capacity. Heck, didn't we used to have a moderator specifically to keep the forums constructive? Perhaps that idea needs to be revisited.

TL;DR - It seems like some degree of trolling has become acceptable, if not normalised. It also seems to be, as mentioned before, weaponised. What does it matter, though? You do you. If you don't receive a response in public, poke the DMs in private. They're busy, so they won't always respond. Poke 'em again to ask if they're still thinking on it. I've rarely seen a second "poke" go unanswered, personally. Y'know what? I once reported a retired admin for over-reaching on the forums, and guess what? There were results! The retired admin apologised for his (her?) behaviour the very next day.

Another interesting tidbit of note; the same topics do seem to keep being revisited on the forums, and every time, they seem to meet the same end - locking. To me, this seems to solidify my opinion that the DMs are trying their best, but just don't have the resources at hand to keep the more malicious players from successfully torpedoing topics contrary to their agenda.