I'm a bit concerned

[Jinx]

what we re expecting is people on at least a bare minimum level of social competence and interaction skill. - that involves the ability of a multiperspectual point of view of various issues as well as a high tolerance when being criticized ( by total strangers ).

in RL that would almost be equal to being stopped by someone in the street to be yelled and at told off. - the only thing that brings all the people together is a free roam arcade space shooter. - and considering that this is hardly a strong basis for an equal to equal interaction, things are better than one might expect - though no perfect of course.

patronizing attitudes, arrogance, know-it-all attitudes are common here - just as in RL. - and what we like to forget is - the forum is a meeting place where kids chat with adults. - one cannot be certain about the ages that are posted, but if at least some of it is true - we got kids at around 10-12 years up to adults of like 40-50 years. - the only other place you might see such a setup of different ages debating about a topic ( leave family of course ) is a schoolroom. - and in such an enviroment, the roles are anything but equal to equal - but teacher to pupils.

when it comes to swearing, we love to point out how kids play this game, too. - harsh bans for swearing are the result, when people are much more attacked on the forum in perfectly civilized english as clear of slang swearwords as the best oxford english. - and that is an odd thing, - cause indeed... the interaction is usually on a much friendlier or easier base ingame than it is on the forum, - yet, insults, personal attacks, grief and prejudice has almost no consequence on the forum, while in the game, we lock people out for at LEAST 7 days up to - i think a month was the highest ban for swearing so far.

one problem is of course that there are hardly any rules on the forum. - everyone can speak their mind, cause everything is quite anonymously. - in the end, no one can really consider the other one well, cause what we know of the other person is mostly what the other person allows us to know about him / her. yet, we assume we can consider the people, categorize them and apply stereotypes.

what the forum might (sometimes) need is a much more intense moderation - if we had all the people we got on the forum, people that activly talk to each other - in one room in RL... we d soon need at least a few psychologists or we should hope that no one has brought any weapons.

---

Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC