Are these forums worthwhile, do you get infomation and entertainment from them? Yes.

Are they always nice. No.

Do I care that they are not always nice and fluffy? No.

Is most of the angst, rants and piss taking all part of what I like. Yes.

Would posters voting on other poster's posts make the site better. No.

Would people having to use their own name make the site better. No.

A lesson I learned a while back about privacy (online anonymity in this case) is one I learned from an old philosophy prof I had back in my youth. When someone is in private (ie. at home behind closed doors) or anonymous, that is when they show their true selves because they are free to do whatever they wish. That is the actual reflection of who they are, for better or for worse.

So while I dislike the trolls and jerks and so on, I also must remind myself that if people weren't "free" to be themselves, I would also have a much harder time finding the people that are truly kind and respectful, and not just putting on a facade to gain acceptance.

 Maybe the OP does have a point that internet trolling and cyber bullying needs to be addressed, and the best way to do that is to have a serious discussion on it.

However MMORPG.com is simply not the place to do so.  People come here to troll other people who play games they don't like.  And the majority of the people here like it that way. That or at least the incentive to make free sites like this a more respectable source of information is not here.  My personal recommendation is to try to make this topic in the Penny Arcade forum.  I feel it would be given more respect there then at this place.

I tell people what I think no matter if my name is attached to it online or not or if I'm standing right in front of them lol.  It's gotten me in trouble, but hey that's me lol.  I always have to tell other players that are my friends and fellow guildmates that if I say something to not take it too seriously,  since most of the time when I'm online, I'm just cracking jokes and what not.  Most people like me for it, makes raiding alot less tedious and more fun.  One of my favorites in WoW is to say "This place is starting to look like RFK (or stratholme"",  which to those that know, RFK has a bunch of skeletons piled up, and stratholme is full of undead.  My guild knows me by my real name anyways, since we are all on facebook. Which brings me to my next thing.

Facebook is an example of people not caring what they say even if they're name is attached to thier comments.  There's alot of facebook posts every second that are negative.

I did what he proposed in the OP 15 years ago, I had been playing other peoples muds for awhile and made the crazy decision that I could do better, so with some friends we created a mud a mature mud.

Very quickly we found out how people love to cheat and abuse and it being an adult mud with adult content it went down hill very fast, so I took a stand, help people accountable for lying and cheating, delt with bullies and stalkers the game went from maybe 1000 player base to 100, people knew that if they lied about real life etc they were asked to leave, people could talk about anything as long as they were responsible for those words.

What happened to that game ?

It is now one of the longest running muds still going with a small genuine comunity, people have met on our mud and married in real life and some of our closest friendships started there.

It took effort and time, stopped the mud becoming huge because only 10% stayed but those 10% those 100+ people were a good a people as you will find anywhere.

This is not about taking away speech it is making you responsible for your speech, we are not talking about different views and opinions we are talking about the nasty little people who threaten rape or violence, who insult and attack, who stalk and destroy for no other reason than they can.

BTW even though the mud is still running on my server I rarely log on anymore, the effort years being an admin burnt me out which is the only sad part.

Originally posted by Scot

Would posters voting on other poster's posts make the site better. No.

 

Yes!

Wish they would implement this.

Originally posted by Muppetier

Originally posted by Scot

Would posters voting on other poster's posts make the site better. No.

 

 

Yes!

 

Wish they would implement this.

I've seen many sites that do this.  What does it really accomplish?  Especially when we're talking about opinions.  Great, I've got 28 "recommendations" for my post.  Do I get a medal?  Does it mean my opinion is more valid then yours?

That type of system works when there is a factual answer to a question.   Stackoverflow is a good example.  The best answer gets rated highest by the community.

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by Muppetier

Originally posted by Scot

Would posters voting on other poster's posts make the site better. No.

 

 

Yes!

 

Wish they would implement this.

I've seen many sites that do this.  What does it really accomplish?  Especially when we're talking about opinions.  Great, I've got 28 "recommendations" for my post.  Do I get a medal?  Does it mean my opinion is more valid then yours?

That type of system works when there is a factual answer to a question.   Stackoverflow is a good example.  The best answer gets rated highest by the community.

Agreed. There is no way to rate opinions .. particularly ones that you don't agree. And people don't agree on the Internet.

Plus, what is the end goal here? We are not talking about curing cancer. It is just an internet forum where people rant, argue, and occasionally inform.

Create a "John Smith" online identity. You're still plenty anonymous (and assumed identities, unless used for criminal purposes) are not illegal in any state in the US.

Pretty big body of existing Pen Name precedent covers your legal tookus.

A lot of corporate entities seem to believe this is their free ticket to avoid paying moderators. Won't, can't ever work in the long haul. Just ensures that a lot of Demosthenes and Lockes will be born in cyberspace.

Incidentally, all that's required to create a Demosthenes or a Locke on this particular site is a spare email address. I've got six (at the moment) available. Can pick up any one of them and establish a full-on net  ID (Facebook, linkedin, the works) given an hour or so of warning.

Microsoft and Google want you to use a "master" account, but it turns out-that doesn't need to be a real person. Might want to start evading them anyway.

So, I was ALSO recently thinking about "anonymous" forums and assholes thereon, and had an epiphany.

A lot of these people are probably the same people who have no discretion on Facebook -- who on their social graph are the people getting shot down for jobs and dates because they have such low impulse control they post the pictures of themselves sloppy drunk, the sexists/racist/homophobic/hateful comments of various sorts, and so on -- _under their real names._ 

It's coincidental for many of them that their game handles provide pseudonymity (colloquially called anonymity).  

They've always been there.  We knew them in high school.  We walked away.  We see them being assholes outside the bars we _don't_ go to.  We walk away.  But on web forums?  We can't walk away.

That's the only difference.  It's like they walk in the door and go, "Heh, idiot, think you're too good to talk to me?  Well, I finally got you.  Talk to me on my terms, or I just own this place, and you can find your own damn bar.  Fuck you."

I just don't have that much testosterone/androgen, whatever.  I don't own the venue.  I lose.  So, oh well...  Not often, but sometimes.  Most of the time, I just go to the next conversation -- this is to say, yes, I walk away, but just to the next table.

I mean, if their assholity on the gamer forums were under their real names (and hey, you know, the game companies have their real names right?  Or generally someone's real name on a credit card...) what would you do?  Call them up and scold them for their incivility?  Publish their names so they'd lose their jobs like Adrian Chen did to the Reddit Troll on Gawker (assuming they were that bad a troll)?  Call their mom and tell her to cancel their account and their allowance?

I mean, really?  What difference would it make if there were a real name?

Isn't this real name/anonymity thing a fallacy?  WTF?  Why did it take me so long to see this so clearly?

The poor(ly behaved) will always be with us.

There will always be jerks.  You can't possibly avoid them online by the same maneuvers you do in the real world.  That's the only difference.  They are no more or less anonymous than the dude walking down the street who tells me he likes my boobies -- and yes that happens in RL too, in a big city.

There's a place for strong identity and strong anonymity on the web -- for example, on a small town civic affairs web site, likely you want people to use their real names, most of the time.  Even there, there might be dissenters worried about repurcussions of calling out the police chief for bad behavior in a small town -- there are some damn good reasons for using pseudonymity (I'm the former execdir of the Tor Project, and trust me I have a few of them I could share!  Check out the "who uses Tor" section at https://torproject.org for a good list).  

But you know, my reputation on nearly EVERY game site on the web is under shava23 or shava, and that is my name for all intents and purposes -- my handle and my rep.  More people in the world, I'll wager, know me by username/handle than by real name (and I bet more people know me by username than can pronounce my real name, first and last,  to my face correctly the first time they  meet me, even if they think they know what it is...heh).

So the blessing is, there will always be ways to find the people we really click with via this medium too.  And that's what we can lose sight of.  There were basically no serious wargamers in my town of 8000 in Vermont growing up in the early/mid 70s, anywhere near my age -- certainly none at all who were female.  I went to science fiction cons to find people like me and got to see them every four months or so after I was in my mid-teens.  

The world isn't like that any more.  Hand me the troll repellant.  I'll take the bad with the good.

Originally posted by MindTrigger

EDIT: Before anyone reads this please understand:  I AM NOT ADVOCATING THAT EVERYONE'S NAMES BE PLACED ONLINE.  I am only putting the problem up there for discussion.  It will be up to individual people, communities and societies to come together and decide what the solution is, if any.  This is just a discussion about how anonymity often gives people a free pass to be gross to each other, and we should all wonder why that is.

 

EDIT 2:  Updated the title of this thread to make it more in line with my post.

--------------------------------------------------------------

First of all, I want to present an article I read recently about a high profile tech guru who went from advocating, forcibly, concepts such as free information and internet anonymity.  Due to the nastiness coming out of humanity online in recent years, he has changed his attitude on these subjects.  It's a great read for those of you who have the attention span.  He's a bit more active on this subject than I am, but having watched the internet grow over the years, I know exactly what he means.

What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/What-Turned-Jaron-Lanier-Against-the-Web-183832741.html

We are seeing companies like Google try to nudge their users on YouTube, and all their other services, into using their real names online. One of the (many) reasons for that is that YouTube is a cesspool of disgusting and useless comments from people who hide behind a screen name and see it as license to be grotesque toward fellow humans as often as they can.  I understand the problem, and it has become so bad that as a web developer today, I recommend that my clients simply turn commenting off on *all* of their YouTube vids.

Like Jaron Lanier, I used to be a big advocate of blanket anonymity online, as well as freely available information, art, music, etc.  However, my views have changed quite a bit, and I think if the internet is going to mature further, the culture is going to have to grow the hell up.  Yes, there is a place for privacy and anonymity, but if people cannot be trusted to wield these things in a responsible manner, then I cannot fault businesses and organizations for wanting to end those privileges.  In my opinion, Google and others are doing the right thing by trying to clean up the gutter-dwellers of their user base. They have the right to do so, and you have the right to not use their service.

The problem we are seeing on MMORPG.com with the community is happening all over the internet, not just here.  As long as people are free to feel like they can hide who they are and say whatever they want, many apparently choose to be disrespectful and hateful.  I'm sure many a book will be written on this subject in the future, but for now the evidence speaks for itself.  Worse yet, this abhorrent online behavior has seeped into meatspace (the real world), and can be seen, for example, in how hatefully divided the USA is on political matters. So much so, that our country is barely moving forward these days.  Mud-slinging has become the norm, and intelligent discourse is buried beneath the growing volume of hate-speech, logical fallacy, straw man arguments, ad hominem attacks, and other useless hot air.

While we cannot clean up the whole internet from here, we can start by adding some nettiquette features both at the forum code level, and as users of the forums.  We can also take with us the idea that we are wasting our time and impeding the general development of the human race by not holding ourselves to a higher standard online.

I'm not saying that forcing users to use their real name on THIS website is the correct answer, but I do believe something must be done if the quality of this site is going to rise again.  As a daily user, I often find myself not wanting to get involved in conversations these days because they aren't entertaining, interesting or fruitful. I’d like to see this site, and the internet as a whole, grow up and start getting past this mess.

 

Sorry but I suspect that Google pushing users towards using their real credentials has nothing to do with cleaning up bad behavior, and everything to do with their rental services deals with big industry.

http://www.youtube.com/t/youtube_rentals

While it sounds wonderfully nobel and humanistic to say they are trying to weed out the antisocial bad apples, the sad reality is as Google works their way closer to its goal of becoming a wide spread, all encompassing, media delivery service, its just too damned hard to charge anonymous people money.

Originally posted by NorseGod
[mod edit]

Herman Munster

13 13 Mockingbird Lane

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by NorseGod
[mod edit]

Herman Munster

13 13 Mockingbird Lane

 

WTF Dad?

Get off my computer!!!111

-Eddy

Originally posted by NorseGod

Originally posted by LadyEuphei

Originally posted by NorseGod
I think all these do-gooders should lead by example and post their full name, address, and phone numbers right here in this thread.

I think we should all lol at you until purple mushrooms sprout from your behind...but all wishes can not be met, and yours is even worse then mine....

I guess you guys weren't serious about this issue after all.......

 They are. "They" jsut believe they are without blame. Like Lady's thread the other day where she calls for civility, in which she has several posts calling others names.......

Mostly I just don't post in threads anymore, because unlike Glen Beck, I dont have the fortitude to "Argue with Idiots" <- It is a book by Beck.

I see the liberal "Joy of Hate", <-really good book by Greg Gutfeld, everywhere I look these days and it makes me long for a Libertarian society where people would grow some thicker skin and remember that "Sticks and Stone will break my bones, but WORDS will never hurt me.

Originally posted by Four0Six

Originally posted by NorseGod

Originally posted by LadyEuphei

Originally posted by NorseGod
[mod edit]

[mod edit]

{mod edit]

 They are. "They" jsut believe they are without blame. Like Lady's thread the other day where she calls for civility, in which she has several posts calling others names.......

Mostly I just don't post in threads anymore, because unlike Glen Beck, I dont have the fortitude to "Argue with Idiots" <- It is a book by Beck.

I see the liberal "Joy of Hate", <-really good book by Greg Gutfeld, everywhere I look these days and it makes me long for a Libertarian society where people would grow some thicker skin and remember that "Sticks and Stone will break my bones, but WORDS will never hurt me.

People take Glen Beck seriously?  When did this happen?  I put him in the same category as Stephen Colbert and Jon Steward.

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by Four0Six

Originally posted by NorseGod

Originally posted by LadyEuphei

Originally posted by NorseGod

 They are. "They" jsut believe they are without blame. Like Lady's thread the other day where she calls for civility, in which she has several posts calling others names.......

Mostly I just don't post in threads anymore, because unlike Glen Beck, I dont have the fortitude to "Argue with Idiots" <- It is a book by Beck.

I see the liberal "Joy of Hate", <-really good book by Greg Gutfeld, everywhere I look these days and it makes me long for a Libertarian society where people would grow some thicker skin and remember that "Sticks and Stone will break my bones, but WORDS will never hurt me.

People take Glen Beck seriously?  When did this happen?  I put him in the same category as Stephen Colbert and Jon Steward.

It's ok Four0Six, I understood the point you were making.

Originally posted by NorseGod

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by Four0Six

Originally posted by NorseGod

Originally posted by LadyEuphei

Originally posted by NorseGod

 They are. "They" jsut believe they are without blame. Like Lady's thread the other day where she calls for civility, in which she has several posts calling others names.......

Mostly I just don't post in threads anymore, because unlike Glen Beck, I dont have the fortitude to "Argue with Idiots" <- It is a book by Beck.

I see the liberal "Joy of Hate", <-really good book by Greg Gutfeld, everywhere I look these days and it makes me long for a Libertarian society where people would grow some thicker skin and remember that "Sticks and Stone will break my bones, but WORDS will never hurt me.

People take Glen Beck seriously?  When did this happen?  I put him in the same category as Stephen Colbert and Jon Steward.

It's ok Four0Six, I understood the point you were making.

I do too.  But it gets lost in the political non-sense and references to conservative talking heads.

But on web forums?  We can't walk away.

Sure you can't, I can picture the hooded man standing behind you with a knife to your throat, forcing you to read those rancid posters instead of skip over them/notreply.

lol

Did you all know the criterion edition of Honey Boo Boo will be available on Blu ray soon. Figured you all would want to know.

OP, I suggest you watch the movie "God Bless America."  It will make you feel better about how this thread turned out.  It will give a little more insight into just who you were trying to address.  You can thank me later.