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The always popular your post count is too low point.

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:

 WarOne wrote:

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
It could be a hell of a lot better, however, 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.

This can be done constructively by getting like minded people to join such a cause. Make a thread about it in the Nuts and Bolts section and see what others say.

I may do this, but my opinion is that forum users would be a better source of change than forum mods/owners. Social/group pressures coming from within tend to be stronger than external forces in quality control for thing like this, I've noticed.

The intent of a nuts and bolts thread would accomplish both; forum users could critique what you are asking to see if it is valid and moderators may weight in on it too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tigerone wrote:
The always popular your post count is to low point.

You need to change that to to a too.

And you get a bonus point for the Bundy avatar.

 Adam LongWalker wrote:

 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.

The problem is that you sound like a pro. You sound like a person who has been here in the past and not some new commer with under 100 postings.
There have in the past been people coming to this site as well as others stirring up the community in a negative fashion spouting off a lot of Pro GW crap.

Credit is given when credit is due. When GW does the right thing they do get praise.

I realize my postcount and short history here isn't going to help my credibility in any way. However, as this phenomenon isn't unique to the wargaming community, it shouldn't be considered as large a negative as it appears at face value.

EDIT: As far as my "sounding like a pro", it's simply a byproduct of both my profession (IT security) and prediliction towards efficient and productive communication. I try to make sure I get my point across in the most efficient way possible. It does have the side effect of appearing like an astroturfer paid by some PR firm to try improving GW's image and reputation, but that's not the case, I assure you. I detest astroturfers as much as the next guy.

 Atropus wrote:
That is with any forum, as a long time member of several gaming forums i will state that ANY AND ALL FORUMS degrade into a mass of negativity as people use the interwebs for a place to vent anger. If its meaningful or not..

Not every forum degrades into this. I am part of several that have intelligent, adult conversations. (Note: not GW or video game forums- yea those forums always devolve into this stuff).

The more mature the membership and exclusive a forum is the better it is. Dakka (and other GW game forums) are populated with a number of children and emotionally immature adults which is why the site is the way it is. However we must remember a forum is populated by a minority of the player base and the naysayers are a vocal minority of forum users. So you probably have 1-5% of the player population being vocal haters on these forums. You also have people on here who have an axe to grind for whatever reason and will go out of there way to tear down people and the company.

So the admins of this forum have a choice. The let it be free for anyone to say what they want or they regulate what is said. If you do the latter it takes more work on the admins and moderators part, you will limit your membership and you will lose out on constructive criticism however you will have more meaningful topics of discussion and the forums will be a more enjoyable experience for those select few. If you do the former you will have a larger membership, you will have a lot of negative non-constructive topics but you will also have some meaningful topics on the flaws of GW and their game systems.

So it is all a balancing act. As much as the negativity on here gets to me, I personally do not think it should be limited. People would quit the site in droves and you would lose out ont he nuggets of good information that the large playerbase brings to these forums. Now perhaps there is room for another forum out there in the world that does not allow for overly negative topics (or the constant repetition o the same negative topics), it would be an interesting experiment if anyone wishes to tackle that.

If you see someone trolling and/or being rude to other users, please hit the alert moderator button and we'll check it out.

That being said, most of the criticism I see of GW isn't just trolling or being rude to other users. I love 40k, and I used to love WHFB, but I certainly see GW do a lot of things worthy of criticism.

 Mannahnin wrote:


That being said, most of the criticism I see of GW isn't just trolling or being rude to other users.

Without being specific to prior incidents, what would be a criticism that is rude or trolling that would be something a moderator would respond to?

 Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:
If GW didn't hate it's customers we wouldn't have this problem.

example 1


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:
I hate how all these threads complaining about the quality of discourse keep popping up. If only the moderators did a better job at removing threads complaining about the quality of discourse we could have a much greater quality of discourse.

Number 2

 Mannahnin wrote:
If you see someone trolling and/or being rude to other users, please hit the alert moderator button and we'll check it out.

That being said, most of the criticism I see of GW isn't just trolling or being rude to other users. I love 40k, and I used to love WHFB, but I certainly see GW do a lot of things worthy of criticism.

Agreed. I have 35 grand wrapped up in this hobby. Been playing miniatures for 44+ years. Tactical board games longer. Been involved in the entertainment industry in one manner or another for 30+ years. It comes down to liking the hobby but not liking the corporation.

There are a great deal of professionals that are on this site and they give their expertise to this site, which I believe is for the greater good.

First off, a lot of people in this thread are completely twisting the OP's words and being blatantly offensive to him, and it's really destroying the opportunity to have an intelligent discussion here. If I'm not mistaken, he's saying that far too many people continually spout off that GW sucks, hates everybody, is evil, and other general complaints, NOT that we should be pro-GW and white knight it up.

Anyway, the first 40k forum I was a member of was 40k Online. There are a very small number of GW hate or complaint threads, and whenever someone makes a post in that style it is generally ignored. Now, that's not to say there's white knighting either, certainly not; only meaningful discussions. And honestly, I think it's directly related to community size. On a smaller forum, someone being nonsensical or trollish will simply be ignored or receive swift moderator action and so be discouraged to make further postings. On a larger forum such as Dakka, a poster will likely have somebody agree with him and somebody that will argue with him in an equally unintelligent fashion, thus fueling the fire. Also, mods on Dakka have far more threads to moderate than smaller forums do.

 Tigerone wrote:


example 1

Number 2

 WarOne wrote:


Without being specific to prior incidents, what would be a criticism that is rude or trolling that would be something a moderator would respond to?

I'm taking away that bonus point and docking you one bonus point for the future.

Seriously though, most users post responsibly and any that get out of control are dealt with accordingly. GW does however provoke strong reactions so it is inevitable some conversations get diluted and drowned out by the noise at times. Not enough to ruin the forums however.

 DarkCorsair wrote:
First off, a lot of people in this thread are completely twisting the OP's words and being blatantly offensive to him, and it's really destroying the opportunity to have an intelligent discussion here. If I'm not mistaken, he's saying that far too many people continually spout off that GW sucks, hates everybody, is evil, and other general complaints, NOT that we should be pro-GW and white knight it up.

Thank you. This was the main thrust of my initial post.

 DarkCorsair wrote:

Anyway, the first 40k forum I was a member of was 40k Online. There are a very small number of GW hate or complaint threads, and whenever someone makes a post in that style it is generally ignored. Now, that's not to say there's white knighting either, certainly not; only meaningful discussions. And honestly, I think it's directly related to community size. On a smaller forum, someone being nonsensical or trollish will simply be ignored or receive swift moderator action and so be discouraged to make further postings. On a larger forum such as Dakka, a poster will likely have somebody agree with him and somebody that will argue with him in an equally unintelligent fashion, thus fueling the fire. Also, mods on Dakka have far more threads to moderate than smaller forums do.

This is very true, which is why I brought up the idea of forum members policing their own (something I learned from my time in the Marine Corps) rather than relying on overworked volunteer mods to handle everything.

The job of a moderator is not to be public relations for a company.

And the "responsibility" of a community is to facilitate the objectives of that community, not to help it get robbed blind by a third party.

I tend to agree with the OP.

My answer is to simply play with my space barbies and not get emotionally invested in the strategies of a multinational corporation.

I do believe a lot of post comes off negative even if they are not meant to be that way. At least 1/3 of the topics in the discussions index tend to be the same old I hate (insert whatever GW did that day) posts.

What I fail to understand is why someone that does not paint or has played a game of 40k in over a year comes to a forum about a hobby and get mad and moan about a company when they are not even a "customer" of GW.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I tend to agree with the OP.

My answer is to simply play with my space barbies and not get emotionally invested in the strategies of a multinational corporation.

Ah a fellow DCMer and the holder of the most Dakka Bonus Points. Here comes a straight forward question.

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

 TedNugent wrote:
The job of a moderator is not to be public relations for a company.

And the "responsibility" of a community is to facilitate the objectives of that community, not to help it get robbed blind by a third party.

And at no time has anyone here suggested doing so, or even hinted at it.

Removing blatant negativity and people trying to show off their negativity to impress others is not the same as being a blind cheerleader rah-rah'ing constantly.

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:


And at no time has anyone here suggested doing so, or even hinted at it.

Removing blatant negativity and people trying to show off their negativity to impress others is not the same as being a blind cheerleader rah-rah'ing constantly.

I would much rather you were a blind cheerleader than that you started removing posts you disagreed with.

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
Iit'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.

Stay classy.

Here's the thing. I don't care about GW one iota. My gaming interests lie elsewhere, from historicals, though Fantasy skirmish like Confrontation to Sci-fi sports like Dreadball. I've played most of the GW gaming 'efforts' in my time but so very few of them are worthy (Epic is the only one I'd honestly say is a great game - all of modern 40k aspires to it, and it's TWENTY-FIVE years old) that the company as a whole is 'meh' to me. When issues like pricing come around, I feel like it's important to note that GW is way out of whack with the majority of other retailers. When discussion of rulesets it going on, I do feel it's important to note that 40k and Fantasy are decades old (and show it).

So I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? "Don't be mean to poor GW?" Well, why not? If there are aspects to their business practices, pricing policy, rules system, so on, so forth that require comment, then is it nor right to pull them up on it? I'm a fair person and happy to apportion praise as well as blame, but I'm not sure what GW have done recently that deserves praise.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

 DarkCorsair wrote:
First off, a lot of people in this thread are completely twisting the OP's words and being blatantly offensive to him, and it's really destroying the opportunity to have an intelligent discussion here. If I'm not mistaken, he's saying that far too many people continually spout off that GW sucks, hates everybody, is evil, and other general complaints, NOT that we should be pro-GW and white knight it up.

Anyway, the first 40k forum I was a member of was 40k Online. There are a very small number of GW hate or complaint threads, and whenever someone makes a post in that style it is generally ignored. Now, that's not to say there's white knighting either, certainly not; only meaningful discussions. And honestly, I think it's directly related to community size. On a smaller forum, someone being nonsensical or trollish will simply be ignored or receive swift moderator action and so be discouraged to make further postings. On a larger forum such as Dakka, a poster will likely have somebody agree with him and somebody that will argue with him in an equally unintelligent fashion, thus fueling the fire. Also, mods on Dakka have far more threads to moderate than smaller forums do.

Was there when it was called Eldar Online. And there is a reason why that site has declined from its glory days so regardless, I understand what you are trying to say as a reference. If you would have commented on others smaller sites such as Botler and Chainsword or Age of Strife, you would have gotten a lot of street cred from me as those sites, though small have excellent support staffing.

The mods here do a very good job in policing and is a reason why this site is one of the largest (if not the largest) hub of information about our hobby that we enjoy.

One more thing. Every Mod here I have spoken too in PM, they were all friendly in their postings. Like what real people are supposed to do and not letting the position go to their heads. I am very grateful of this aspect here. Because of this and other positive aspects (good god on the all of the wonderful artwork and helpful tips) of this site, I'll do whatever I can when this site is ever in need of help.

If you don't like the way some people talk about GW here, then you can always go to the GW forums. Or maybe complain about big bad Dakka on their Facebook page.

This is a forum, where people talk about stuff. White knights gonna white knight, haters gonna hate, and everybody else just goes in with our lives. I'm happy the mods don't censor opinions, and I am okay with censoring attidutes that break the rules.

Dakka is not a GW forum, it's a wargaming forum. That evolution means that you will get people here with lots of opinions about GW. GW is obviously not interested in fostering a positive online environment for their fans to hang out.

 WarOne wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
I tend to agree with the OP.

My answer is to simply play with my space barbies and not get emotionally invested in the strategies of a multinational corporation.

Ah a fellow DCMer and the holder of the most Dakka Bonus Points. Here comes a straight forward question.

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

Would like to believe so however we are all human and our emotions do come into play at times. However at the DCM I can have a civil conversation, right or wrong, and get their perspective on why they believe on a certain topic.

So how's the "TROLL THIS THREAD" discussion in the DCM forum going? Having fun snickering amongst yourselves?

All those juicy pictures in our tower you could have shared...

Of course if you somehow have access to the DCM section without being a DCM then you probably would have noticed that nobody really bit on this. The "trolling" DCMs in here have actually provided valid feedback.

If you have a problem we do have fancy triangles in the corners of each post. Click them and alert a mod.

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

To be fair, what did I say towards the beginning of this conversation:

 WarOne wrote:


Also, do not confuse the intent of DCMs as well. Many, many complaints of DCMs are simply caricatures of what stereotypical forum users express. We may not count at all when it comes to the complaining department because we really do not mean it.

Or do we?

Cannerus did point out this thread and me giving nonchalant answers to what we were "supposed" to do in and of itself does anything other than highlight what I stated earlier. Instead of mocking it, I embraced it as an opportunity for discourse.

DCMs are not above this form of behavior (trying to take things seriously). Have I not been trying to have reasonable discourse here? Then again, you should go further within that thread to see us trying to purport the existence of ten foot tall space marines as an elaborate hoax to convince others that GW really does use ten foot tall space marines for their lore and games.

After been on this site for a while watching it feels like alot of the users on here only like to insult each other and be generally rude towards each which turns me off on interacting here and contributing. I think the subject here should be broadened to complain about GW but be nice to each

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:

Removing blatant negativity and people trying to show off their negativity to impress others is not the same as being a blind cheerleader rah-rah'ing constantly.

There's that tarry brush again.

That 'blatant negativity' isn't always just 'showing off'. For some (I would go so far as to guess most), it's just a way to vent their frustration with a company that seems dead set on driving them away from a hobby that they have invested a heck of a lot of time, effort and cash into. What you see as baseless negativity that is bringing the forum down, others see as a large part of what being a member of this sort of community it's all about. Just because our isn't positive doesn't mean it isn't productive... Having that avenue to act out their displeasure I suspect is what allows some of us to keep coming back to this game, even when we should know better.

If GW did more to encourage good will from the vets instead of seemingly deliberately alienating them, it wouldn't be add much of an issue... Hence my earlier comment about this situation bring one of GW's own creation.

 insaniak wrote:

 Kung Fu Hamster wrote:
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.

That's a mighty large brush you have sitting in that tar pot...

The negativity towards games workshop is entirely a thing of their own creation. The community is under no obligation to try to clean up the mess that GW have made.

So when you called me out two weeks ago for calling out the Dakka-moderation as encouraging only hatred, did you really mean to say "We completely agree with you and Dakka would not exist since insipid and banal bashing is all we have"?

 insaniak wrote:

If GW did more to encourage good will from the vets instead of seemingly deliberately alienating them, it wouldn't be add much of an issue... Hence my earlier comment about this situation bring one of GW's own creation.

This. Fair enough there will always be people who complain but there is a difference between them and people who love the hobby, want to love GW but simply can't get over the fact GW seems determined to force them out. There are a lot of negative threads out there at the moment but how many of them start with "GW did X" rather than "I'm just going to yell loudly"?

 Peregrine wrote:
Your problem is that you confuse legitimate criticism with being a "bash-fest.

It sounds like a discussion about Religion In the OT forum!

Quietly mention the fact that your against genital mutilation or the dogmatic belief in each and every sentence in an old book and you are "bashing" religion. It was Frazzled favourite term, usually after he said something so obnoxious that anyone else would have been censured for it.

The whole term is poisonous and was created just to shut the dissenters up. There's no such thing as "bashing" something. There's just legitimate criticism, or silly childish criticism, and the latter should be ignored.

Plenty of the critical points on here about GW are perfectly valid. Plenty of them aren't. I learn from the former and nod, and smile shake my head and ignore the latter, or form a rebuttal if I can be bothered, but either way why is it an issue?

I don't think there's a problem here, forums work as intended, you read, you learn, you sift through a little garbage but so what?

I don't see what community responsibly is required frankly. Allow the user to ignore what he sees fit according to his own taste. In my case, I've never put anyone on ignore, some people have me and ten others on their list, each to their own and no harm done. It's total control.

On forums and life In general we need less use of the term bashing, and less moderation, not more! What ever happened to all the people who say "I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it" is that just total baloney and people with no integrity just chant that loudly until they read something they disagree with and then demand quietly that it be scrubbed from existence?

And I'm not just saying that because of our entirely nonimpartial moderators. I'm saying it because it's entirely logical. For a people's that claim to love freedom so much, we don't seem to like the idea of being free to ignore that which we don't agree with and prefer a more infantile "please protect me" approach.

Read the forum, don't read the forum. Ignore what and who you like, but in my eyes that's where any sense of community responsibility should cease, be it from Blizzard, games workshop or anyone else.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
So when you called me out two weeks ago for calling out the Dakka-moderation as encouraging only hatred, did you really mean to say "We completely agree with you and Dakka would not exist since insipid and banal bashing is all we have"?

No. Accepting that some people don't view GW in a positive light is quite a long way from 'encouraging only hatred'...