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 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
It's no secret that the 40K community is somewhat... vocal in voicing its displeasure concerning just about anything. Currently, the biggest 40K forums tend towards negativity. Take this site for example; it's practically impossible to have a 40K-related discussion (or any topic that even tangenitally touches on GW) without trolls, whiners, and the overall dregs of the community taking the conversation over and turning it into a GW bash-fest with almost no effort. The signal-to-noise ratio seems to be getting much worse with almost each passing day.

Different communities face this same issue, and have dealt with them in different ways. The official World of Warcraft forums, for example, are just as bad as most 40K forums. Blizzard has made some half-hearted attempts to clean things up, but nowadays the only people who spend and real amount of time there are trolls and whiners. Going to the WoW forums looking for a real discussion is an exercise in futility and sifting through pubescent complaining and obnoxiousness. Other communities suffer from this malaise as well, and have dealt with it in different ways. The Freebootaz, for example, charge a nominal fee for access to their forums which has proven to be an effective barrier against trolls. While this may not be an effective solution for every 40K forum, it still works well enough to improve the signal-to-noise ratio to be useful.

My question is this: how much responsibility does the community have as a whole in this? Should we rely on mods and forum owners to dictate the overall tone of discourse, or do community members bear some of the responsibility for the current state of affairs? If community members as a while bear some of the burden, what can be done to improve things?

The problem with trying to solve any perceived issue like this is two-fold:


1) 'The Community' as a whole, cannot agree to do anything, because there can never be an agreement on what should or could be done. By its very nature, the community includes people with a huge variety of opinions.

2) Assuming at an administrative level you're enforcing some sort of guidelines, what precisely is the point of such a goal? If you're trying to foster discussion about a particular game, are you really helping by ensuring that discussion on that topic ONLY follows whatever guidelines you set?


This topic is a tough one for me personally, because I personally don't like to dwell on the negative aspects of 40K or GW or anything related to my hobby for that matter and would generally prefer to discuss topics with people who share my common views. Yet, at the same time, the goal of this particular site is to be an open forum to the entire spectrum of miniature gaming. Yes, I know this site has always had a heavy-focus on 40K, but that's also partially because 40K is the most popular miniature game as well.

So anyway, the point being, if people are unhappy with aspects of a game or a company or whatever, then they should be as free to speak their mind as people who feel the opposite. Yes, people who are unhappy tend to be more vocal than people who are happy about something online, but a level of backlash against a company or its practices are absolutely a reflection of how the public (or at least their potential consumers) are feeling.

Now, we do hold the general rule for all posts and posters that you need to remain polite, and that guideline does apply in relation to any company including GW. Unfortunately, GW does continually seem to utilize business practices that drive many of their customers seemingly batty, which in turn causes so much ill will that it becomes practically impossible to enforce the same level of politeness towards GW comments as we do towards other people and companies.

Because if we were to try to do that, it is just such a prevalent feeling, that it would essentially mean that we'd have to continually censor people to the point that they'd have no interest in posting on this site anymore.

However, even though there may seem to be a prevalence of negativity, I often think that people spend a lot of time actually feeling trapped by that negativity instead of just ignoring it and moving on. If you like the game of 40k, for example, you can go into any of our 40k forums and discuss particular aspects of the game. Sure you'll get the occasional snide remark about GW for sure, but in general those forums are filled with people talking and loving 40k. In addition, we do have an 'ignore' function that allows to hide the posts of those posters you identify as having a viewpoint that you have no interest in reading. Once you 'ignore' a few people that continually bother you, all of a sudden you may find your experience much more pleasurable.


So I guess to answer your original premise:

• I don't think the community as a whole can ever agree to do anything because nothing could ever be agreed upon.

• I don't think (in the case of Dakka) that enforcing rules about only posting positive things about GW (for example) would be a good thing, as the overall online public sentiment (not just on Dakka) is often negative towards GW and therefore to try to censor people from expressing as much would instead lead the site to feeling oppressive and people would stop using it because of that.


I think instead, there is always a place for smaller more focused communities that *can* agree purposely not to talk about certain things because they simply don't want to (The Freebootaz forum is a great example). Dakka, on the other hand, is pretty much the largest collection of miniature gaming forum conversation on the planet, and therefore it needs to allow the prevailing sentiment to be heard, even if that sentiment isn't necessarily what you or I happen to agree with.

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
So how's the "TROLL THIS THREAD" discussion in the DCM forum going? Having fun snickering amongst yourselves?
...
...
...

Please stick to the topic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Secondly, I agree with Yakface that if you want to talk about 40K you can go into various specialist 40K areas on this site, sich as YMDC, or 40K Discussions. They are generally positive about the game and ignore GW business practices.

I haven't been on Dakka for very long, but wanted to offer a view based on things I've seen on a couple of other forums. Namely: unconditional praise (and attempting to shut down all discussion other than unconditional praise) has a stronger chilling effect on discussion than just about anything else.

I guess what I'd say, ultimately, is that the best way to improve discussion is to just address the posts and avoid getting bogged down in fighting over something. If someone says something you disagree with, there's no reason to keep hammering them until they repent or leave; it's okay to just let it go if no good conversation will come of it.

Also, "hater" is an awful word. Almost nobody is a "hater" - they usually have reasons behind their opinions, not just "hate." Please remember that almost everyone who goes to the trouble of posting will be doing it because they still care about the HHHobby or whatever you want to call GW's particular slice of it. I think you can tell a game is dead when nobody cares enough to criticise it anymore.

All that said, in my experience Dakka has a very good quality of posting overall and think if anything is to be avoided by the community, it's letting disagreements balloon out to the point where they overshadow the topic of the thread. That usually takes at least two people!

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:

 Adam LongWalker wrote:

 WarOne wrote:
To be fair, GW does very little damage control. The one guy who made an appearance on the forums to recruit in the name of GW did a fairly decent job of taking the slings and arrows here. I applaud him for his honesty and the time he took to reach out to the community.

Once it was made understood that any company can come down to this site and recruit for employees from it then I was fine with it. Sooner or later I'm going to do something like that. Find employees.

@Kung fu Hamster I'm wondering why are you here at this site? You already starting up to stir up people all ready. Is this your purpose?

This forum has a large userbase and has a lot of great information available, particularly in the P&M forums. It could be a hell of a lot better, however, (along with a great many forums not excluisively dedicated to 40K or wargaming in general) if the users and/or mods did a better job of improving the quality of discourse and did something about people being negative simply for the sake of being negative.

Think of it as taking Wil Wheaton's "Don't Be A D***" mantra to a new audience.

I realize that this particular topic wouldn't be met with universal acclaim, but my intention was not to piss anyone off simply for my own amusement.

You should have tried to at least act like it then in that blanket statement first post. Your subsiquent attempts at "responsibility" only add to the blantent instigation.

Exactly what is your issue? That you think it should only be discussed about how GW can do no wrong, and that everything is puppydogs and cake?

First things first, before you continue. You shot out of the hole that everyone that didn't think the way you did was a whiner, troll, or GW basher because it is cool, yet YOU are trying to get a topic out crying over civility.


How does that work?

First, you are coming off as a clownass. You negated pretty much any other opinion then yours.

Second, You have not given any give in the "give and take" in a art of conversation. Your fist move should be- state the issue, see who bites. Not "Whats my responsibility because GW has turned into Gak on a stick."

Then thirds- you are consistantly just arbitrarily shooting respondence in the face with oddball comments. I don't even see that you even read them here. Just arbitrarily just dicking on the mods, owner, and posters, for no other reason then to get a rise out of people.

Want a point of contention? I think your wrong. GW is a Gak company, I hold no responsibility to them at all, and I'll give you a few reasons why I think so.

- GW is consistantly reducing the quality of the product, while at the ssame time claiming that it is the best on the market. They overcharge for shoddy work that in any other industry standard would have landed them in court over thier obvious misleading claim that they are a high end hobby product.
- Product is faulty. QAQC is nonexistant, materials are hazardous to the health of children and pregnant women, product sold is not the product being advertised.
- Pricing is increasingly ridiculous to the point of borderline criminal.
- Customer support is not there.
- Discourse, flim flam sales, and complete head in the sand attitude has taken a once top notch product and degraded the said product to the point where it is no longer viable to buy these figures with a straight face.
- The company President/ CEO is participating in fraud and waste in the company while at the same time milking the profits to his own investments.
- Finecrap, and the ever evolving deception campaign that they (GW) are waging.
- Market manipulation and the way in which they treat independent game store owners.
- Online presence, lack there of, and the continued turtle in a shell attitude when they are confronted with issues.
- Lack of any responsibility to anyone other then themselves, ethics, and the lacking there of.
- Confrontational attitude of staff, and thier continued contempt to thier customer base.

Show me where I'm wrong.


And yes, I embrace my hate and make it part of me. ESPECIALLY when I've invested years of time, money, and effort into a game/ system/ product, and have to sit back and watch some nutbag who is only interested in padding thier own pockets and shilling over to the lowest denominator in an environment of chones and YES men.

If you think I do it to be a "kool Kid", your mistaken.

For the better part of 5 or so years, GW has gone down the wrong road and taken a giagantic gak on players and the community. They treat thier employees like gak and fans even worse.

SO, If you think that it deserves appause and unicorns, thats all on you.

 Grot 6 wrote:
Want a point of contention? I think your wrong. GW is a Gak company, I hold no responsibility to them at all, and I'll give you a few reasons why I think so.

Don't forget their use of legal threats to bully people into submission even when they have no valid argument (for example, the most recent "we own 'space marine' no matter what the law says" idiocy). Aren't you glad that prices are going up to pay the lawyers to waste time on that nonsense?

It's hard to take a thread starter seriously when they claim to be trying to improve the forum but immediately set about describing everyone who behaves in a manner not approved by them in strongly pejorative terms. To broadly take the issue of 'negativity' in threads and describe it as a 'bash-fest' drummed up by 'trolls, whiners, and the overall dregs of the community'. This is just as much an aggressive moan at the community as any 'GW bash fest' thread is, except the accusations of trolling are made from the off by the OP. Simply conflating the genuine criticism with negativity-trolling is just not reasonable. I see the OP claims that he is okay with genuine criticism, but my issue is that this seems a back peddle from his first post, but generally I think his threshold of where criticism turns into trolling is a lot lower than most people.

Most people probably think their behaviour is 'about right' and that those worse than them are trolls and those a lot better are white knights or snotty about rules. The job of the mods is to try and maintain a benchmark for behaviour following forum guidelines and not in accordance with their personal preferences for which topics are okay to be discussed, and the manner in which people write posts.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:

My question is this: how much responsibility does the community have as a whole in this?

100%.

Hate is not the opposite of love, apathy is.

If you don't like GW anymore, stop playing their games and talking about them. Just let it go.

This argument, that if you don't like what GW do you should stop participating, doesn't make a lot of sense. It's entirely possible to like the game and the figures and the community, but not like the company itself. Turn this logic around, if people don't like Dakka perhaps they should just leave. Don't want to? Your reasons will probably be similar to those that 'hate' GW but still want to be part of it.

48 pages of highly detailed and reasoned discussion about GW's prices. Or alternatively, pages and pages of "GW are so stupid and out of touch", one or two quantifiable breakdowns that are ignored, then page upon page more of simply whinging.

The only point to this sub-forum is to bash GW. Sometimes I like defending them, simply because the level of vitriol directed at them is so easy to turn on its head. The fact is not that all critisism of GW is badly thought out or poorly articulated, it's that, as I know from experience, a post that disagrees with an anti-GW post will get you flamed out of the thread. An anti-GW post will get one or two other posts agreeing. A post sticking up for GW will get you 6 or 7 posts, usually 2 or 3 of which are worthwhile, with the rest questioning my sexuality, intelligence or age.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

This argument, that if you don't like what GW do you should stop participating, doesn't make a lot of sense. It's entirely possible to like the game and the figures and the community, but not like the company itself. Turn this logic around, if people don't like Dakka perhaps they should just leave. Don't want to? Your reasons will probably be similar to those that 'hate' GW but still want to be part of it.

Dakka is a community, not a commodity.

Warhammer is a commodity, not a community.

A community is an ever-shifting matrix of over-lapping opinions and ideas formed by the minds of your contemporaries within that community. A commodity is something you choose to buy or not. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Few people will leave a community simply because they don't like one aspect of it. Nor will they spend all their time whinging about it - one thread about GW hatred on dakka hardly compares to the dozens or so that are created or threadjacked in any given week that hate GW with a passion.

 BryllCream wrote:
A commodity is something you choose to buy or not. If you don't like it, don't buy it..

Except with something like 40K, it's not quite that simple, because it's not just a one-off purchase. It's a continued investment of time, effort, art and money. After years of putting uncounted amounts of each of those into this game, it's not as simple as saying 'Yep, I don't like what GW have become, or what they are doing with the game' and quitting. There's too much invested.

And so we complain. Not about everything, because GW still do enough right to keep (some of ) us interested. But all that stuff that they're doing wrong just piles up, and makes the whole experience less pleasant. And so we complain. Because we want this game to still be enjoyable, because we have too much invested to just walk away from it.

For a community that just hates on GW we sure have a lot of subforums dedicated solely to 40K and WFB.

Dakka discussion is to talk about stuff. By the very nature of it there will be "GW bashing", because when people talk they will disagree. How long do you think a "GW is great" thread would go on? There really isn't anything to talk about in one. The first guy posts "GW is a good company", then everybody agrees, then the discussion is done.

People will talk about what they are passionate about. If GW makes then mad, they will talk about being mad. There is plenty of GW love on Dakka. News and Rumors has lots of people with good comments on new releases. We have multipage threads about novels, forge world, and the other releases. Most of the "GW is good" threads will be related to specific events and end up in N&R. Most "GW is bad" threads will end up in Dakka Discussions, simply because they are two very different type if conversations."

We have 13 sub-forums dedicated to GW. Lots of people here praise GW, lots of them don't. Like I said before, Dakka is not a pro-GW forum and maybe not even a GW-centric forum anymore. If you don't like people that don't like something you like, then maybe you should rethink this whole being on the Internet thing.

 yakface wrote:


*snip*

Thanks for taking the time to write that Yakface, I think it's something that will strike a chord with most of us who spend time on the forum.

I think the old adage 'there is no smoke without fire' is one that can be applied easily to the amount of negativity directed towards GW. And I can know this as I remember a time, as a member on the old Relic and Bolter & Chainsword forums for more than 10 years, when this negativity was on nothing like the same scale as it is now. I also know that I can look around at many other forums that are not involved with GW, and find very little negativity although, funnily enough, when that company does something that the community does not like there then people will have issue with it, and make a negative comment.

I think that no doubt there are people who will ride the bandwagon and make a comment to fit in - we're subject here to the same social norms as the playground, the office, or whatever. In the same way, you get people deliberately playing devils advocate/being facetious (one of whom just admitted to doing so a couple of posts above me! ) just to get a rise, because they feel the comments are unjust or whatever. That being said, as Insankiak (and a couple of other posts above me have said) its a mistake to tar all negative posts with the same brush. Speaking personally, I have a massive collection of GW stuff, and the company's products have brought me countless hours of enjoyment over the years. But, that doesn't stop me from being deeply disappointed by being unable to purchase their goods while living abroad (with their trade embargo), or the drop in quality that accompanied Finecast. So I voiced my displeasure about those things. If neither of those policy decisions had been enacted by GW, then I wouldn't have had need to write about them - can you see where I'm going with this?

I do agree that something of a 'Zeitgeist' often forms about a particular product - in this case the general negativity surrounding GW. But, you could say if that is the case then at least they had that good reputation before hand - the dedicated fanbase that formed because of their prior accomplishments. And I think it is those fans, as Yakface pointed out in his post, that are now railing against the far more corporate-focused GW of the past 5 years or more. Of course however, the ability exists within GW to turn things around, start doing things to pull those fans back towards them, and then eventually for the atmosphere of the forum to follow suit and reflect that.

I might be too new to DakkaDakka to accurately judge this but I don't get where the OP is getting at.

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
It's no secret that the 40K community is somewhat... vocal in voicing its displeasure concerning just about anything. Currently, the biggest 40K forums tend towards negativity. Take this site for example; it's practically impossible to have a 40K-related discussion (or any topic that even tangenitally touches on GW) without trolls, whiners, and the overall dregs of the community taking the conversation over and turning it into a GW bash-fest with almost no effort. The signal-to-noise ratio seems to be getting much worse with almost each passing day.

Apart from the obvious statement that internet commenting always attracts more negative than positive statements, for various reasons, and apart from general observation that most of the anger directed at GW seems to be pretty much justified (in terms of "is a valid moral or factual evaluation of GW's practices"), the statement I highlighted seems to be empirically wrong, or at least does not correspond to my observations (I acknowledge the difference).
I read several of the sub-forums on DakkaDakka, and the amount of anti-GW trolling, irrational GW-bashing etc is hardly noticable.

Yes, there is a lot of criticism, and sometimes it might not be phrased in the most intelligent way, and you can read the same arguments again and again, and you might find that tedious, but as long as they are not completely unfounded and abusive, I just get over it/ignore it. We are talking about GW, and they do not make it very easy to love them, despite what one might think about the game itself, or the fluff, or the hobby aspect of modelling/converting/creating an army.

The OP might have a point of people easily getting OT (e.g. a thread of a painted miniature gets hijacked by people wanting to talk about how that miniature's profile is broken or how expensive it is), and that can make a discussion turn sour. But when that happens the thread usually gets closed pretty fast.

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
My question is this: how much responsibility does the community have as a whole in this?

Is the community a thinking being? Can "the community" act as one?

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
Should we rely on mods and forum owners to dictate the overall tone of discourse, or do community members bear some of the responsibility for the current state of affairs? If community members as a while bear some of the burden, what can be done to improve things?

Of course, the overall tone is laid out by mods and forum owners! They are called "forum rules". And if someone violates those, it is up to the mods' discretion to decide if a warning, a post-delete or something more severe is appropriate.
If you want to question the mods' discipline in doing that, you should address it like that. To them.

And what other responsibility can single forum members have then the one over their own posts? I can - and did - remind someone of sticking on topic and pointing to PM as a means of OT discussions but other than that, I am not responsible for other people's posts nor can I influence them otherwise, except by using "alarm a mod" button.

Am I missing out on other opportunities?

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
It's no secret that the 40K community is somewhat... vocal in voicing its displeasure concerning just about anything. Currently, the biggest 40K forums tend towards negativity. Take this site for example; it's practically impossible to have a 40K-related discussion (or any topic that even tangenitally touches on GW) without trolls, whiners, and the overall dregs of the community taking the conversation over and turning it into a GW bash-fest with almost no effort. The signal-to-noise ratio seems to be getting much worse with almost each passing day.

Different communities face this same issue, and have dealt with them in different ways. The official World of Warcraft forums, for example, are just as bad as most 40K forums. Blizzard has made some half-hearted attempts to clean things up, but nowadays the only people who spend and real amount of time there are trolls and whiners. Going to the WoW forums looking for a real discussion is an exercise in futility and sifting through pubescent complaining and obnoxiousness. Other communities suffer from this malaise as well, and have dealt with it in different ways. The Freebootaz, for example, charge a nominal fee for access to their forums which has proven to be an effective barrier against trolls. While this may not be an effective solution for every 40K forum, it still works well enough to improve the signal-to-noise ratio to be useful.

My question is this: how much responsibility does the community have as a whole in this? Should we rely on mods and forum owners to dictate the overall tone of discourse, or do community members bear some of the responsibility for the current state of affairs? If community members as a while bear some of the burden, what can be done to improve things?

IF GW didn't make it so easy to turn every conversation about them into a bashfest then you'd see a dramatic downturn in the whiners and trolls.

The Community has a huge responsibility in this because without us, there'd be no forums to speak of. Not all of us are adults here, quite a few are teenagers but learning how to act in a public place is just one step to growing up. Whether or not a community member has gotten that far is evident in what they post, how they post it, etc. Be intelligent, Be curteous, and Be Adult about about what you post.

 Tigerone wrote:
Some of the most vocal "bashers" have not spent 200 a year on GW. They spend more time on Dakka than they ever have or will painting or playing.

To be fair, many of the most vocal bashers are no longer playing GW games. Their money is going to other game systems, models, and (maybe) chicks.

I joined Dakka to see pretty pictures in the gallery and ask questions (as I was new to 40k when I joined). I've gotten into my share of inflammatory threads, and I'm not proud of that. I think that I, like a lot of people here, are invested in their hobby. And by "invested" I mean money spent on models, hours spent assembling and painting, money spent on Black Library books, time spent reading those books, time spent building lists, time spent playing games, time spent discussing a rules system that is "open to interpretation" in many areas, to put it nicely.

This particular forum has members surrounding the globe. The sun never sets on Dakka, to turn a phrase. You have doctors nurses, bus boys, engineers, blue collar, white collar, married with kids, engaged, forever alone, seniors with one foot in AARP, high school kids, and everything in between.

Throw all of these people on the internet with general anonymity, varying degrees of passion about "their" hobby, experiences with G-Dub or local tournaments, and (let's be honest) a rather loose rules system with codecies that are NOT balanced against each other, and you have a powder keg of emotions and vitriol and angst ready to go off at the slightest perceived insult of "their" hobby.

What can we do? Make love, not hateful posts. Try not to assume that the other person is trolling you or insulting your hobby and listen to them as though they were your buddy that you game with and share beers with.

Unless they're railing on the Horus Heresy Forge World books. feth those people!

Here's a given.

People find it easier to complain than to compliment. It's human nature to express displeasure when things are not as you'd like them, because when things are going as you'd like them, you're too busy enjoying yourself and going about your business to complain.

OP, there are certainly a few of us who are more vocal than others, I'm usually happy to share my thoughts on most subjects. I've probably trolled issues or individuals online before, due to personal dislike. But in my criticisms of GW, no, that's my opinion as a consumer of the products, as a customer and a long time one at that. You want to know why I voice that here? Because unlike many companies, GW provides me with no framework for vocalizing to them, they have made it clear that they know they make the best minis in the world and don't require my input or consumer feedback.

Now let me make something really clear, GW is a many headed hydra, when I go at GW, when I rail (which, due to 'Kirby Fatigue' has been steadily decreasing year on year, from previous fiery vitriol in years past to a Charlie Brown resigned 'good grief' more recently), I am principally targeting 'Corporate' GW. I happen to like 'Creative' GW, I know, through various media, some of the team, past and present, and I get somewhat defensive of them when I hear personal attacks directed at these guys, because they are fellow hobbyists with the good fortune to work at something they love. I don't always agree with them and I've had long discussions with a couple of them about 6th edition's direction because I didn't like it. Them making a ruleset I disliked in comparison to the previous edition did not cause me to hate them, just to disagree. I disagree with my wife from time to time, I'd still draw down the sun from the sky for her, not seeing eye to eye is why we're people and not ants.

Onto the GW I dislike. Corporate GW, the company that seems to behave like Weyland Yutani if Weyland Yutani made toy soldiers and was actually a fairly tiny company... It's arrogant, aggressive, treats it's own employees at middle management and below like crap, treats it's fanbase worse than crap, exploits, manipulates and bullies. Don't tell me that other companies behave like that, I was the complaint coordinator for a multinational company a great deal larger than GW and if we pulled their crap and treated our customers like that, we'd have been out of business within the month.

This community isn't daft. There are likely some less than stellar intellects among it, but it's overall IQ is likely to be higher than a random group of people of the same volume, due to the nature of the hobby and who it appeals to. These people do not appreciate being used and ill treated and GW is entirely guilty of doing that. Just as there is a constant effort by GW to recruit among the younger demographic, there is the older demographic falling out of that brief affair, taking a look around and experiencing that satori moment of 'wow, that was gakky', for one reason or another. Perhaps they got halfway through their second army and realized they needed to take out a mortgage to finish it due to the most recent price hike, perhaps they took days and weeks of work to set up a GW fansite, dedicated to their particular favorite game and were rewarded by the threat of court action, perhaps they just tired of returning the same miniature 20 times to get one that wasn't a bubbly, limbless mess, perhaps they live abroad and watch their country's sales prices treated as a test bed for the latest gonad-squeezing experimental price hike, perhaps they got sick of being treated as second class because they'd gone into the shop and been treated as second class because they were just on their rounds to pick up a couple of paints and were unaware of the crippling sales targets the poor buggers behind the till are being forced to meet, perhaps they were one of those poor 'redshirts' and learnt the hard way about how the company deludes it's self with bizarre 40k styled rhetoric about 'summary executions' for individuals not meeting sales targets.... Meh, the list goes on. The company is bizarre and twisted and when people realize that and look at it's behavior, they get pissed off.

Some folks get angry for a long time, for me, as I said, that hellfire and brimstone has died a death and all I can summon up for GW now is tired contempt. I believe the company is on a steady decline, it's upsetting for me and for lots of others because we really really want to love that company, we used to love it.

OP, I'm not a troll about my dislike of the company, I'm not a dreg, I'm a disgruntled customer sharing my experiences and feelings with other disgruntled customers. The reason you hear so much negativity is there is so much to be negative about. If you don't like that, you might be better served by asking yourself why these people are all so pissed off or jaded, rather than grumbling about people grumbling...

I have put 22 years of time and spending's on GW, to see my favorite system seller go from a beloved company by fans for fans to a corporate culture of milking the customer as much as possible. Then yes i think that i am in the right to voice my ire.

The Reason why GW is still making money is that many of the long time fans already spend too much time and money, to just dump GW, those figures have emotional value to a lot of us (IMHO).

I have spent a lot of money and time on 40k only to be made to feel like I don't matter beyond the starting purchase. I like the fluff, the worlds, and how much of a legacy GW has made with their games for the community. So when GW goes and starts to act the bully, or only cares about attracting warm bodies, or treats people like they are the problem, I complain.

When GW hands me crap, I'm not going to make crapade.

GW really brings it on themselves when they strut around bullying people in our minis wargame community because they have the finances to do so.

 WarOne wrote:
Do you think DCMs have more investment that regular posters to help self-police themselves and in turn help improve the forum conversations?

Not particularly, no.

Personally, I became a DCM simply because I like the site and wanted to support it. I don't feel that this changes the fact that people have opinions and that I'm going to disagree with many of them. As long as this is done within the strictures of forum rules I think posters should follow their bliss. That said, my ignore list grows daily and there's parts of the forum that I avoid entirely due to the fact that they are a complete haters' ball most of the time.

We should make that a fund-raiser. The Hater's Ball and wargaming weekend.

You can have ethical arguments, well educated arguments..... wait thats not right either. You can have a conversation about the pros and cons of a company.

Heroclix (wizkids) has had the same issues as GW, price inflation for less product. Questionable quality control, catering to the new crowd instead of the loyalest. The forums are much the same, Its either your a reasonable hater with the right to dislike the company OR your a crazy Kool Aid drinker that has to much expendable income and no logical spending habits. There seems to be no middle ground, just like politics and sports.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 WarOne wrote:
Do you think DCMs have more investment that regular posters to help self-police themselves and in turn help improve the forum conversations?

Not particularly, no.

Personally, I became a DCM simply because I like the site and wanted to support it. I don't feel that this changes the fact that people have opinions and that I'm going to disagree with many of them. As long as this is done within the strictures of forum rules I think posters should follow their bliss. That said, my ignore list grows daily and there's parts of the forum that I avoid entirely due to the fact that they are a complete haters' ball most of the time.

Sad but true.


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 d-usa wrote:
We should make that a fund-raiser. The Hater's Ball and wargaming weekend.

I doubt you would cover the printing cost of the tickets.

Personally I've not bought anything from GW for a couple of years now and cut down drastically some time even before that, mostly because of the way I feel GW as a company are acting, partly because of the cost, partly because I don't think that most of the new kits are very good, and also because I have started buying into other systems (which are awesome, made and run by awesome companies, and have awesome fanbases ).

When GW does something I like, I might post positively about them, when they do something I don't like, I almost certainly will post negatively about them... as has been mentioned, people are far more likely to post negatively about something that they don't like than positively about something and that is reflected well in the comments about GW in this and most other forums.

I feel that Dakka does a reasonably good job at making sure the negativity doesn't just take over everything and curtails the most obnoxious posts. However, just because someone is being negative about something you are positive about, doesn't mean they are attacking or trolling you...

 DarknessEternal wrote:


If you don't like GW anymore, stop playing their games and talking about them. Just let it go.

That argument doesn't work. It is quite possible to be critical towards what GW has become, but still have a great love for the 40k universe.

My biggest thanks to Dakka has been the fact that you can really say what you think, and that this community has introduced me to many new ideas. I am playing games from companies that I have really heard of prior to joining. I might have seen them on the shelves before, but talking to users here got me educated and opened my eyes that there is more to the tabletop gaming hobby than GW.

But this community also gave me lots of neat ideas for 40K. Without Dakka I would not have started and painted a small True Scale Space Marine army and played in one of the biggest 40K tournaments in the US. I got to spend with the best bunch of strangers I could ever meet online, played some great games of 40K, had a round table with Black Library authors...all things I would have never got to do if it wasn't for this community. And guess what? A lot of the folks that are super passionate about GW, who spend a big chunk of money flying up there, staying up there, building an army for the event (with lots of commission stuff) are some of the folks you will see "hating" on here. They are voicing their opinion because they care.

I started with 2nd edition, when 40K was silly and 'fun'. When White Dwarf was full of ideas and content, with ideas to scratch build stuff. I played 40K when they had the fun black and white magazine full of scenarios, short stories, campaigns, and fan fiction. I played it when the website had a full bitz section where you could get the pieces for whatever conversion you could think off.

We don't "hate GW" because it's cool or hip or fun. I "hate GW" because for me it almost feels like someone with whom I have had a relationship with since 1994 has changed and become somebody completely different. I remember the good times, and the thrifting apart hurts. This year I decided that I really can't afford GW anymore, and after all these years it truly hurts and feels a bit like a break up.

That's why we "hate". If you want to call remembering where the company came from and what it used to be and comparing it to GW now hating.

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
It's no secret that the 40K community is somewhat... vocal in voicing its displeasure concerning just about anything. Currently, the biggest 40K forums tend towards negativity. Take this site for example; it's practically impossible to have a 40K-related discussion (or any topic that even tangenitally touches on GW) without trolls, whiners, and the overall dregs of the community taking the conversation over and turning it into a GW bash-fest with almost no effort. The signal-to-noise ratio seems to be getting much worse with almost each passing day.

 Peregrine wrote:
Your problem is that you confuse legitimate criticism with being a "bash-fest" and expect that even when GW does stupid things the majority of talk about GW should be praise. GW-related forums will stop being a "bash-fest" when GW stops constantly doing things that deserve criticism.

There you go. Ive seen enough.

I think that the community at large needs to learn the difference between "bash-fest" and "legitimate criticism".

Legitimate criticism does not need some attempted zinger remark about Mat Ward, Fineprices, or any number of the normal silliness that you see in such threads.
Legitimate criticism is also not just quoting someone's remark--whether you agree with it or not--and replying with a "facepalm" Orkmoticon.

Legitimate criticism is replying to someone's remark with a reply consisting of some measure of substance.

This is white dwarf #5 Feb 1978 written by the co-founder of GW



And look at my sig, thats Rick Priestley "bashing" GW.

Except that's not what you posted before now was it?

That's not a "bash". That's legitimate criticism.

I agree that the bashing is off the charts, especially in the News and Rumors forums. It's growing increasingly tiresome to hear people complaining of being "insulted" by GW releases that they don't want to buy, and I think this sort of immaturity really detracts from the environment of the forum. If there were an alternate forum that had a higher standard of discussion in their News and Rumors section I would strongly consider migrating there.

It's possible of course that this type of forum doesn't exist at all, which is a shame. I like Dakka overall and I think it also has strong potential to become a community hub for the entire wargaming hobby, not just GW/Warmahordes. But I'd be a lot happier if we had higher standards.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
Could you please explain how making products that you don't want is "a slap in the face?" If you don't want to buy something, just don't buy it and move on. Why feel insulted?

Because some of us, despite GW's best efforts, still love the hobby and want it to succeed.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:

My question is this: how much responsibility does the community have as a whole in this?

100%.

Hate is not the opposite of love, apathy is.

If you don't like GW anymore, stop playing their games and talking about them. Just let it go.

Especially when specific people who post 10-15 times in a single 24 hours in *ONLY* GW and 40k threads are posters who claim 'I don't actually play 40k or GW games'.

I understand those people who claim to want to see their once great hobby restored to former glory and 'complain' to help... these other posters who just enjoy watching GW burn and are non-customers and just enjoy trolling the threads. Not at all constructive to those threads.