Keep It Polite
Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:00 am
It's come to my attention that over the last few weeks the general hostility on the forum has been rising. I have waited a while to let some of the worst blow off, hopefully having people cooled off a bit in general, but I'd like to make a post about how I'd wish people to act on the forum.
Whenever one of my team or myself feel attacked on forum, it causes us to spend more time and energy trying to deal with that than doing what we want to do, which is to make this server a better place, be it by creating new mods, fixing existing bugs, making events, etc etc. It can lead us to get demotivated and turns it into a downward spiral where it just leads to more complaints and more arguing.
This isn't a post where I'm going to lay blame at anyone in particular, and I'd prefer not to have to expand forum rules to become really draconian just to deal with problematic posts and posters. I truly want everyone to be allowed a free say in anything that goes on here, regardless whether you are player or part of the staff.
Just keep in mind that arguing calmly and politely will more likely get you heard than raging out about things, which can make us on the staff get very tired of those people, making us ignore them more, or making us lash out.
Avoiding passive aggressive posts is also a good idea, since it's really transparent when someone is just annoyed in general and makes a post that fires grazing shots at the subject or people in question.
If you feel you're getting very fired up about something and feel like making angry posts, please take a deep breath, analyze why you feel it makes you angry, and try making your reply calm and logical. Keep in mind that not everyone will see things as you do, and even though you have a very strong opinion on how something should be, it might not be that us on the staff agree with you. We might also not want to spend half our days explaining why we don't want to do a certain change, especially if it's something that has been discussed twice a year since the server was founded. At the same token, we on the staff will try be patient, and remember that not every player knows which topics we're tired of discussing regularly, and respond politely when we do.
If things do not improve, we might need to take further measures, but I'm hoping that we can all be adult about this and try to improve our posting habits.
Remember to have fun everyone!
Whenever one of my team or myself feel attacked on forum, it causes us to spend more time and energy trying to deal with that than doing what we want to do, which is to make this server a better place, be it by creating new mods, fixing existing bugs, making events, etc etc. It can lead us to get demotivated and turns it into a downward spiral where it just leads to more complaints and more arguing.
This isn't a post where I'm going to lay blame at anyone in particular, and I'd prefer not to have to expand forum rules to become really draconian just to deal with problematic posts and posters. I truly want everyone to be allowed a free say in anything that goes on here, regardless whether you are player or part of the staff.
Just keep in mind that arguing calmly and politely will more likely get you heard than raging out about things, which can make us on the staff get very tired of those people, making us ignore them more, or making us lash out.
Avoiding passive aggressive posts is also a good idea, since it's really transparent when someone is just annoyed in general and makes a post that fires grazing shots at the subject or people in question.
If you feel you're getting very fired up about something and feel like making angry posts, please take a deep breath, analyze why you feel it makes you angry, and try making your reply calm and logical. Keep in mind that not everyone will see things as you do, and even though you have a very strong opinion on how something should be, it might not be that us on the staff agree with you. We might also not want to spend half our days explaining why we don't want to do a certain change, especially if it's something that has been discussed twice a year since the server was founded. At the same token, we on the staff will try be patient, and remember that not every player knows which topics we're tired of discussing regularly, and respond politely when we do.
If things do not improve, we might need to take further measures, but I'm hoping that we can all be adult about this and try to improve our posting habits.
Remember to have fun everyone!