Forum for Tolerance

 Over at The Casual WAR, Josh decries the wonderful world of forums, frustrated and disheartened by the constant stream of negativity, ne’er do wells, and other such villainy over on forums in general.

It’s real easy to get discouraged by forums. After all, unless you’re a moderator like me, you don’t really have any real control over what you post, and to a certain extent, what you read. When people have the ability to post the kinds of things they do online with little to no retribution, things can get, well, interesting. This would be very much rectified if my patented “Internet Forum Assistance” system were implemented, where anyone posting something that would normally get them beaten down in an alley were they to say it to someone’s face would get them an electric shock.

Until then, you’re kinda stuck going to forums where the maturity of some people equals that of a monkey flinging poo. But hey – it’s not ALL bad. Thing is, community is created by the people who post, not by people like me who moderate. We’re just around to preserve an overall standard for what the forum’s creators want to have. 

Lots of people take the time to create very informed, well done, and interesting posts. Every so often you’ll even get a post that spurs an actual discussion that doesn’t involve a flamethrower, a pitchfork, and inexplicably, your mother. Thing is, these people deserve to be rewarded and recognized, and many good forums will do this by giving people an “attaboy” or even awarding custom perks like we do. Encouraging productive posting is much, much better than attacking all the non-productive posting.

Really, depending on your mileage, a forum is mostly good, solid posting, and you can choose what you want to read. Don’t like that a particular section is filled with trolls and the kind of language you’d expect from a motorcycle gang? Go to a more heavily moderated section and only read what you want. Think that you can’t deal with the fact that a particular poster does nothing but cause you a headache? Drop an ignore on them, or better yet, report the poster and let the forum monkeys like myself deal with them.

Forums are really cool and neat places. This sounds odd and at the same time sensible coming from a forum whore who has at least 5 forums he checks daily, but it’s true, otherwise they wouldn’t have superceded mailing lists for popularity and communication. But forums require some level of participation from its members to be as good as they are. You basically get what you put into a forum. Make some good posts, report the bad ones, encourage people who post like you do, and you get a more enjoyable experience. Don’t post, or get frustrated, or simply not visit, and while you are mentally better off for it, you’re really missing out.

Of course, this is completely different than not visiting a forum you can’t stand to read any of. I mean, let’s be real, if you hate pirates, you probably shouldn’t be on the National Association of Pirate Enthusiasts site. But as a geek, if you can tolerate other geeks and help create better community, I think you’ll find forums aren’t so bad.