Discussion on forums (A newbie’s perspective) and Forum Etiquette.

[DayDrinker]

A comment in another thread prompted me to write this and I am not sure what section of the forums it should go into, so I apologize if I have posted this in the wrong place.

The comment in question was about topics belonging to someone or a group of people.

I know I am new to the aChat forums. Maybe things work differently here, but my experience on forums has always been that once something is posted the topic belongs to the community. It is a place for discussion, sometimes agreement and sometimes disagreement. From the perspective of someone new, this idea that certain topics belong to certain people is incredibly unwelcoming. This is a community not a private conversation. If I see a post and I have something I would like to share or comment on I should feel welcome to share or comment. Whether I agree with the original poster or not should be irrelevant as this is a forum for discussion. It is okay to exchange ideas, to agree and respectfully disagree with one another.

Along with that I would like to say that the bullying and mocking of people is also very unwelcoming behavior. It does not matter if the person being mocked will ever know. When a new community member sees that behavior, it discourages them from sharing their thoughts for fear that they will be the next person mocked.

I appreciate that everyone has been kind to me as I dipped my toes into the forum. It would be great to see these forums be a thriving and welcoming part of the aChat community. I think these forums need to be treated less like a personal playground and more like a community for that to happen.

[Vaughan]

Hello and welcome to Forum.
Your post is fine and if there is a better place for it to be, I’m sure it can be moved later.

I also find it incredible how a few people’s behaviour has in effect split forum which is quite disheartening after all the hard work people have invested into this place.

For a while there has been no active moderators and as such, older members like me and a few others good souls have stepped forward to run contests, guide and help people when asked, created banners for members and have shared our knowledge where we can to help people achieve their goals.

As there were no moderators, people opened and ran their own topics and where they wished, locked them. This in effect made them the gate keepers to their own topics and as such had the final say on how that topic was looked after.

Some issues were reported to me on occasions and on the whole were resolved easily.
Forum is self moderating and governed by consent and compromise and respecting other members.

We all supported each other’s topics by posting the OP’s requests and following post examples.

All went well until a new member came to forum and was lambasted for his sexuality and kink by a small group.
The attack by this small group was uncalled for and the people spoken to about it.
Forum was a friendly place. We welcomed new members, not bullied them!

Instead of being nice about it though, this small group continued with their bullying tactics and now included the people who had asked for it to stop. Behaviours included passive aggressive posting, aggressive posting, quantity posting, recruiting new members and influencing their views so more passive aggressive posting occurred by the new members and eventually they succeeded in achieving something that hadn’t been done in years.

They had 2 topics removed by Achat because of their content and succeeded in splitting forum.
One of the people responsible had involved other topics by trash posting and had upset other members.
One member who was enjoying the topic that was being spoiled asked it to stop quite nicely and resulted in them being viciously attacked and insulted.

And so this is why people like me had two options.
As OP, I could either lock my topics so trashy arguments were not littered all over them, spoiling the flow and content, and also to prevent further trash posts going up in the targeted topic
OR
I could ask people to respect the topic subject and what I wished for it to contain. As it was my topic and some research had gone into some of them, I did not wish them to be the butt of someone’s ill will.

I tried my best for the latter to leave my topics open and for the moment members are kindly respecting each other’s topics again.

The general feeling is still the same, enjoy the topics, follow the subject heading and example posts and all will be fine.
If you start going off topic or begin arguments, or openly mock members, then the OP or current members who enjoy the topic will probably ask you to remove the offending posts or to open a new subject topic that fits your posts.

Many topics often spawn new ideas which is fantastic.

A discussion topic can always be opened like this one, if you wish to discuss something.

If this simple rule isn’t followed, then there is no point in forum sections or in topic subject headings. It will be a free for all. Total chaos and mayhem will reign and forum will be even more confusing for some than it is now.

You are also absolutely correct and mocking any new member is diabolical and members like me will always ask for that behaviour to cease immediately in public and ask for those concerned to hash it out in private, either in PM or in the game.

New members should be welcomed and encouraged and certainly not influenced to take sides in a dispute or hostility that should stay between the members concerned, if they cant resolve it.

I hope this goes someway to explain Forum Etiquette that we have practiced for a while now and will continue to so.

I wish you a warm welcome to Forum and if I can help or assist you in any way, please ask. Forum PM is probably the best as my game messaging is always clogged up.

Good luck and don’t forget, you are the OP so are in charge of this one. 🙂

[Author]

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