another website I am on is now deleting threads if they get too verbally abusive.

[Daemonette666]

If your thread gets hijacked by trolls, or someone who takes a comment badly and starts throwing around personal abusive comments, they remove thew thread, review it, and if too bad, they do not bring it back. If it has only started, and they get it quickly, they will locked it and return it to the forums, but with a warning to others to stop the dog piling or personal attacks against others.

It has probably been going only for a while, bit by bit, but the moderators seem to be up scaling the moderation and review of the posts. All it needs is for one person to report a thread, or for one person to comment on the thread, please calm down and avoid personally abusing people, calling them names, etc.

As soon as someone starts calling people Ediots, Nazzzzees, Homfobes, Rassist (all spelt incorrectly so they show up), etc, then the thread is either given the chop, or reviewed. They normally give a "in bold and large type" warning to get the thread under control, and for everyone to calm down, and stop the abuse.

You could be following a thread that was gong well, and seemed to have proper discussions, logical view points, rule quotes, and nothing over the top, and all of a sudden it goes out of control while you are at work, or asleep, and you do not even know why it was removed, and find out second hand from another member that persons X, Y and Z abused person W and ignored the moderators warnings to cease.

I was discussing a thread helping another gamer in designing a Chaos Army for 40K based on what miniatures he had purchased, and gave a few recommendations on how they could be employed, and what units he should probably invest in to make his army a little more survivable and competitive. Because of 2 suggestions I made, I got dog piled on about the merits of the units. Even after explaining why I prefer those units and how they improved my own CSM army giving specific examples of how they survived where similar units with a different Chaos Mark were wiped out quickly when played against Eldar and SM type armies, I was called an idiot, and other names by one person.

I then asked the person to word their replies in a more civil manner and answer the question with facts and reasoning, not abuse. A few trolls then dog piled in on the thread, without getting abusive, and the next day (afternoon) when I checked the post again after replacing my keyboard and mouse which locked up after the computer system auto-downloaded a software update from Windows, the thread had been removed. Not locked - removed. I found out from someone else it went down hill very quickly, even with me not there to reply to the persons abusive reply comments.

I wonder if BOLS will ever get that way with some of the threads we get on this site?

[daboarder]

I hope not,

I definitely think the "lighter funner topic starts" idea you guys are running in general is helping ease the tone a lot.

[Bigred]

I'm pretty pleased so far.

Not too much vitriol going on, and lots of folks are doing a great job of starting genuinely interesting topics.

I can't speak to other forums, but too much moderation can be just as damaging to a community as not enough.

[daboarder]

Take warseer for example and their little "in crowd"

[tawelwch]

Take warseer for example and their little "in crowd"

LOL!

I love and hate Warseer. The Painting section is the best I've found, it's amazing. But I was really, really upset by someone you would probably say was in the 'in crowd' though they did apologise after I feel really wary of it now.

I think that there's always an 'in crowd' on forums and things like that though.

[Wolfshade]

The zero tolerance affect does have it's good/bad points.

I think one of the problems is that there is a group concensus and that if you disagree with that you must be wrong, even though your own experiance suggests otherwise and any suggestion otherwise is a danger to their world view which is too scary to contemplate!

[Phototoxin]

LOL!

I love and hate Warseer. The Painting section is the best I've found, it's amazing. But I was really, really upset by someone you would probably say was in the 'in crowd' though they did apologise after I feel really wary of it now.

I think that there's always an 'in crowd' on forums and things like that though.

Dakka is worse for what the OP described however. They also have a couple of over zealous moderators in common which doesn't help.

[eldargal]

Yep, I lurked on Dakka for months to decide whether I wanted to post there or not, the result was a resounding '**** no'. The place is a cesspit. Warseer at least is redeemed considerably by it's project log section.

[Phototoxin]

Yep, I lurked on Dakka for months to decide whether I wanted to post there or not, the result was a resounding '**** no'. The place is a cesspit. Warseer at least is redeemed considerably by it's project log section.

Are you my long lost twin sister?

The plog section is indeed the best bit of warseer. People there actually treat each other with respect and encouragement!