Cleaning Up Our Collective Act

[Bhutt]

Glad to see we have Hasbinbad here to "police" things.

There are times in life that people just need to suck things up. Listen kid, I'm sorry you've had a bad home life, people have picked on you, etc. Grow a sack. Go join the military or something.

Last I checked, it's America. If you're acting like a jackass I have every right to call you out on it.

You're acting no different in your postings then the people calling you names. In my opinion, you're worse.

[jilena]

Originally Posted by isitatomic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Let's:

1. ENFORCE the rules (mentioned ad nauseum already)
2. CHANGE the rules to be more realistic
3. SCRAP the rules altogether

I don't care HOW you feel about ME, I defy you to say that none of the above options are a needed solution.

I feel bad taking the low road here. But seriously, none of the solutions above are needed. Why? Because this is a moderately active message board at best for an emulated game. What happens here matters not the tiniest bit in the end. The board is probably seeing twice its usual postings because the server is down but once it's back up, the average joe user will go back to playing the game and the same people who sit here calling each other fags all day will go back to calling each other fags all day.

This is hardly a life or death situation, no small children or kittens are being threatened, and in the end no one here is gonna go to leave the forums and cry themselves to sleep tonight over anything said here. I just don't think that many people care.

That all said, rules are rules and should the GMs/Devs/Mods choose to enforce them I wouldn't see any issue with it. I just don't think that the situation is so dire that DEMANDING action from those in charge is really necessary. People are here for the server, not the message boards.

[isitatomic]

Originally Posted by jilena [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The board is probably seeing twice its usual postings because the server is down but once it's back up, the average joe user will go back to playing the game and the same people who sit here calling each other fags all day will go back to calling each other fags all day.

There is absolutely a degree of validity to this. I certainly wouldn't be posting *as much* if playing were on option this past week.

Originally Posted by jilena [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

People are here for the server, not the message boards.

A point you seem to have missed is that playing EQ is, with infrequent exceptions, a game that RELIES on SOME notion of community. Engaging with and being a part of that community is often expected of you so that a guild, for instance, knows what kind of players they are going to be recruiting. It seems you're doubting the usefulness of the boards to begin with, which may very well be a question worth asking. But there is definitely a good amount of useful info to be found here as long as you don't wander into BS land, which is decidedly hard to avoid.

[jilena]

Originally Posted by JaVeDK [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I have to disagree with you Jilena. Cleaning up ones language and acting civilized is the exact opposite of "dumbing" the conversation down. It's a testament to the sad decline of the English language (of which I am not even a native speaker BTW), that people are unable to communicate with proper words in a respectful manner. It seems that sounding cool and using the right buzz words and gangster slang is more important than the actual content. In many circles a well thought out and concisely formulated argument somehow loses out to an outrageous and, apparently, funny insult. I'm not saying that I never smile at a well crafted insult, but I cannot get behind the notion that it's somehow more interesting or cool to be a funny jerk than an intelligent gentleman.

My point wasn't so much that it's impossible to be funny without being vulgar so much as that almost all humor is at someone's expense. No matter what the topic is someone is bound to be offended. If we do away with everything that could possibly be construed as offensive we eventually reach a point that it gets to be ridiculous.

I am 100% with you in banning people who post nothing but complete shit or spew nothing but anger angst hate whatever... Again the occasional "EAT A BAG OF DICKS BITCH" is funny. But someone who posts nothing but "FAG!", "YOU FAIL AT LIFE", "I HOPE YOU DIE IRL", "CHOKE TO DEATH ON THAT DOUGHNUT FATTY!", "CRY MORE NOOB" in every single response is obviously not contributing to the forum in any meaningful manner. No one will miss these people. I just think being TOO strict is asking for a pretty fail boring place.

Also please consider that some of us have been dealing with people online for a LONG time, we are pretty desensitized to what some might find offensive. I mean I was looking at violent images, reading disturbing forum posts, and viewing scat porn on BBSes before some of the members of p99 (tralina for instance) were literally even born. It takes a LOT to offend me or gross me out. I have been to the internet, I have seen things, what has been seen cannot be unseen. As such I have a pretty twisted sense of humor and I am guessing this is also common in a good number of p99 folks.

This is not an excuse for acting the fool obviously, but disapproving of our indifference or tolerance of such behavior is a bit unfair. I can find much better things to be offended about and waste energy on than someone being called a faggot on a gaming message board. *shrug*

[Omnimorph]

Originally Posted by jilena [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Or the forums will be filled with boring inane posts about what people had for breakfast. No one will be offended. Nothing interesting or funny will ever be said. And life will go on. I don't think overmoderation is any better than no moderation.

If every post is pure drivel (or "dribble" as I have seen used in like 10 posts on here) whether it's offensive or not doesn't matter. I'd rather read funny offcolor/offensive posts than boring "mature" posts.

Sure if it's a response to every post "eat a bag of dicks" gets old quick. But a well placed "fag!" as the only response to a huge well thought out post will still illicit a real out loud laugh. I guess this makes me juvenile or at least means I find humor in the juvenile... Either way I don't think I am alone in finding this sort of thing funny in moderation. I am not saying the forum should ever be allowed to turn into /b/ but there is a reason so many post there... A lot of people find that sort of humor...well...funny?

*shrug*

Eat a bag of fags, dick!

see what i did there? mixing it up from time to time is always nice [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

More to the point though, ops shouldn't need to waste their time patrolling the forums. I do find most of the cussing at people to be mildly amusing, but like mentioned if every post was just arbitrarily affronting the person posting before you it would take away the point of the majority of the threads here. (admittedly most of them are unrelated to EQ at the moment, but hopefully that'll change [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.])

[jilena]

Yeah... I guess I am just not seeing where this has been out of control on this forum? I mean sure people aren't having the deepest of conversations but for the most part even the arguments are semi-civil with a few exceptions.

And really... This is a classic EQ server. Hardcore EQ players ARE the same people on /b/, something awful, foh forums, etc.

[Aarone]

"Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world."
- The Buddha

[ulrich]

I very rarely post on the forums, because of the attacks I received months ago.
It's worse than the Wow forums with all the vulgarity!!!
What if you wanted your 11year old daughter to play p1999. Than someone directs her to the forums? You come home from work and she says what does "explicit words" mean daddy? Someone called me this.
"You will say don't let your kids go on the internet" that's just an excuse.
These forums could be a great knowledge base for new and old players. Plus people could have normal conversations without being called names by the endless trolls.


I think they should do away with the rants and flames section. <This would help a lot.

People can go to other websites like foh forums if they want to attack people for what they did in-game or whatever.

[jilena]

Not to state the obvious but I have never seen a single thing posted on this forum that you couldn't find 10X as bad on google in 30 seconds. If you let your kids use the internet unsupervised you are essentially introducing them to ANYTHING horrible you could think of and at least 10 million more things you never thought of. That's how the internet works. It's not for kids and neither are most online games. *shrug*

[ulrich]

Originally Posted by jilena [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not to state the obvious but I have never seen a single thing posted on this forum that you couldn't find 10X as bad on google in 30 seconds. If you let your kids use the internet unsupervised you are essentially introducing them to ANYTHING horrible you could think of and at least 10 million more things you never thought of. That's how the internet works. It's not for kids and neither are most online games. *shrug*

It's schools too that allow children on the net unsupervised. I guess everyone could home school their kids. Now with wifi and laptops.... hard to stop.

In highschool we had someone supervising AND a network admin at the library. My classmate would still put hardcore porn up on half of the pc's before we left. So when the next person used that pc. Bam they would get an eye full. You can't say a parent can supervise their kid 100percent of the time. They do have to go to school and all.