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Because Dakkadakka's moderation policy is very lax.

I'm an active member on the biggest (and oldest) wargaming forum in my country. Of course, it is a dwarf compared to Dakkadakka. It is 15 years old, but it sill has very regularly new members, young and less young.

However the moderators are ruling with an iron fist. It's nothing new, it has been that way since the beginning of this forum.

Some new members struggle with this moderation policy at first. They are used to other forums / social medias where moderation is quite lax, where you need to really step out the line to be "punished". Some new members never accept it and after a couple of messages, they just leave. Good riddance in my opinion.

As a result, I had the most interesting and polite conversations about the hobby (far better than on Dakka, to be honest). Whether it was about playing an army, painting, other games, GW's pricing policy and/or financial situation, should GW ditch the IGOUGO in favor of alternative activation, etc.

So, there are actually several questions nested in the OP's question. He's asking about an outcome: threads being derailed with petty arguments. So, what causes this outcome?

The first, and easiest reason is that Dakka's moderation philosophy is very liberal, and allows for a very wide range of discussion. Further, it allows for even heated discussions to go on if it's neither impolite or completely off topic. Mods are also more likely to call for a halt or crop posts that violate a rule, rather than cull lengthier discussions.

The second reason is related to the first: Dakka seldom permanently bans posters who post on topic along with disruptively or anti-socially. This means that many posters who would get the hook in other discussion groups are allowed to remain. (This does allow for a wider variety of people to post on Dakka, and isn't necessarily a bad thing)

So, you see a lot of derailed threads because it's more or less tolerated and seriel offenders are allowed to stick around.

Add to this the fact that you are more likely to see these responses compared to Reddit, and I think Dakka probably is no more attractive to antisocial behavior, it's simply a bit more tolerated here.

I think a big part of it is that the OT has some fairly active users who have been around for years that have minor issues with one another and will take up any opportunity to needle those they dislike.

I'll second (third?) the moderation policy. They step in when people complain, and otherwise don't really curate the discussions. This makes sense because it's expensive enough to operationally support a site like this, let alone go to the effort of actively guiding the discussion. Given the 'success' of that platform-as-a-business strategy it's probably for the best.

 Gnarlly wrote:


Why is that? Is it simply a characteristic of the maturity, mentality, and personality of many 40k players, unfiltered by internet anonymity??

^ This.

If you go to 40k facebook groups, you'll notice a lot of the same behavior. I've left nearly all of them - can't even have a basic conversation without someone getting hung up on some trivial and meaningless point.