Over these past years I have noticed some very bad things going on with our community. As you know, the community of a video game really impacts the quality of the game and people's first impressions of the game.
I have determined the key problems of our community to help point out that - yes, we look REALLY BAD to people from outside of the community. We are compared to a pack of trolls, an annoying bunch of furries, and sometimes a circlejerk of mentally impaired minors. Many people seem to just want to push us out of the internet - this is immediately shown by people like Man of Reason and Kalphiter who have organized attacks or have publicly insulted the game to scare people away.
1. Aggressiveness.Our community is really aggressive - even to each other. Most topics will eventually have some kind of childish argument or negativity around it in some point of its life.
Here are some forum specific examples:
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?board=31.0 - This entire board.
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=269327.0 - The replies.
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=259265.0 - Nigerian Cunts clan (so bad that even badspot fail binned it)
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=263972.0 - Qi clan.
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=268539.0 - Replies.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SDlI47xPPdYJ:forum.blockland.us/index.php%3Ftopic%3D269529.0+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_J6oqfESkmUJ:forum.blockland.us/index.php%3Ftopic%3D269529.15+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us - Replies. (cached, as this topic was deleted.)
When someone leaves a negative review on steam - you tend to see some very hostile users trying very desprately hard to prove them wrong and make the reviewer look bad. These are people from our community.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198049735921/recommended/250340/http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198072685716/recommended/250340/http://steamcommunity.com/id/itwasallforyou/recommended/250340/http://steamcommunity.com/id/Kalphiter/recommended/250340/http://steamcommunity.com/id/thelastprecursor/recommended/250340/2. The treatment of new players.http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=269307.0 - Brings to light a very serious issue.
When you look around the forums and find a new user making a topic introducing themselves to the forums - you also see many people posting about how they are an alt or that they are an idiot or anything. Why? Why do you people do this?
Another thing is that if some user makes a post which was a mistake - it appears we have no tolerance for mistakes because, well, you will see our community begging for this user to be banned or simply brewing up entire pages of insults.
This really does not make our community look friendly - it kinda scares people away who wish to buy the game.
3. Eagerness of getting people banned.All the time - you almost don't have to search to look for it - you can find users trying to get other people banned, even for making simple mistakes. They will strech the rules as far as their imagination will allow to get someone banned - it's like a game to them. It can be almost seen as using Badspot as a toy to play one of our games.
4. How people determine someone is angry.Recently I have been accused of being extrememly angry. I have decided to check around the forums to find that this happens a lot.
http://badspot.us/img/Comic-Anger.pngThis problem really shines when the accused states they aren't angry and try to resolve the situation peacefully. This tends to cause the accuser to get actually angry and start flaming him.
5. Denial."every community is like ours" "we aren't bad - the haters are :))))" - Posts like these are very common in response to a post or topic implying our community isn't the best. The funny thing is that the Minecraft Forums, various steam community forums and even chucklefish forums don't have these problems, or at least aren't as big as they are here.
Examples of users who are really good:sir dooble
DemianThere are probably a few more. You should follow the example these guys put up.
The point is that we need to FACE OUR PROBLEMS AND IMPROVE OURSELVES. We can fix this, we can become a friendly community - we can make people like us - we can feed on positive attention instead of this yucky negative attention. Please, don't dismiss this topic as just some guy who hates the game, because I don't. I love the game so much, and I love you guys. It makes me tear up to see the forums in this state of disrepair. Come on. Stand up for what is right, and rebuild yourselves for the better. I've done it, you should be able too.
As for why this is in GD, I thought this is more like a community wide important announcement. If badspot feels this is drama then go on and move it.