Regardless of whether or not more moderation would've made the forums more or less active, the point is that Badspot's style of moderation, which was not only lasseiz-faire but also outright hostile, lead to a toxic environment, and is embarassing in retrospect considering how much actually heinous stuff went on unperturbed.
I mean if the fundamental point is just that Badspot should have banned the few dozen at most posters who were admitted creeps or who had multiple people going to Badspot with inappropriate DMs to minors on and off site then I can't really disagree.
I didn't get the sense this is what people in this thread were saying should have happened though.
It seems like they wanted Badspot to ban people or thread owners to delete other users posts just for being insulting, or even just being off-topic. (ref. pixel)
That is, Badspot needed to fundamentally change the evil toxic culture of this website.
I dunno man, I honestly can't help but feel sad reading through this thread.
I don't have a great memory for events even a few years ago, so my memory on stuff that happened like 10+ years ago is admittedly sparse.
But I was on these forums constantly from like 2009-2014 in my formative years when I was lonely.
I've got 56
pages of private messages from other people. My first PMs in 2010 were from some guy accusing me of being a Plaz alt. Hundreds of PMs of people asking when my servers would be up or offering to help me work on an add-on.
The dozens of add-on threads I've posted where people thought to download my work and put it in their servers even though it was probably of stuff quality. PMs from people
years later asking if I still had a copy of some dumb script I made in like a weekend.
Even the
12 drama threads made about me where I did something stupid and acted like an starfish and people tried to call me out on it.
I was probably introduced to much of the edgy politics I had back then here but also had the opportunity to think about my positions though the constant bickering and debating.
Hell, I was introduced to some of my longest friends on here. We're (hopefully) not the same people we were even like 6 years ago, but nevertheless I probably wouldn't have people I talk to constantly to this day that I share a 12 year old cache of memories with if it wasn't for this site.
As much as some people may have disliked me, or even had a good reason to dislike me, I never recall the atmosphere being toxic such that I felt I had to be forced to participate. I was in skype calls, then teamspeak rooms, then at the very end discord servers with literally like 3 digits worth of people I talked to. I never got the feeling any of those people hated being here and were only here because they were forced to be here or groomed into it.
If you're still here, years after new account creation has been disabled, if you have thousands or even tens of thousands of posts here you choose to make...
I really do believe there had to be something
fundamentally decent about this place to keep you coming back.