Are forums a "perfect medium for flamewars"? (Re: Formal cri

[ChaosRider]

If someone is tired of haters and posts full of angry here you have a great way how to deal with them:

Spoiler:

http://forums.wesnoth.org/download/file.php?id=64407

[iceiceice]

Ok, I'm pretty sure this *was* just an off-topic about the merits / demerits of forums vs. mailing lists. At least I don't think it was a "flame war about flame wars" or about whether the BFW forums in particular are flamewar prone. But alas, shots = fired.

My view:

There are once in a while posters here who really miss this key point underlying the relationship between devs and users.

But ignoring those the user base is by and large pretty good and has lots of useful things to say and contribute, and I think the devs understand this. I'm going to even go out and highlight one person -- SlowThinker has identified a ton of bugs and posted detailed bug reports / feature requests to bugs.wesnoth.org, like this one that is quite subtle: https://gna.org/bugs/index.php?21661

Now he's made a lot more reports than he's seen actual bug fixes, but he doesn't get discouraged! And actually I'm quite hopeful that we will be able to fix more of these in the near future.

SlowThinker has been around for a while, and he knows to go on IRC / use the bug report system, so he is much better at communicating with the devs than many users, who sometimes seem to complain that the devs are unreachable, that they don't read the forums, and that that is bad bad bad.

I agree, it is good if the devs read the forums. I read the forums quite a bit, and I think its a good medium for communication. However, the forums have a lot of noise on them. If you say you want the devs to read the forums, I hope you don't mean this thread: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... &start=105
Not that there's anything wrong with having that discussion, its just not important for the devs to participate.

Do the devs read the more technical sections / try to offer help when possible? Yes, some of them are very good about this.

To be honest I don't know very many of the devs, having not been around for long, as there are a lot of them, although the few I do know I think very highly of. However I am somewhat doubtful that the devs are "more reasonable" / have better personal qualities than typical users (excluding the obvious bad manner cases). Actually if you ignore outliers, my feeling is that the wesnoth users are more mature than those of any other video game community which with I have experience (admittedly not many). I think it really just boils down to, the devs and moderators are heavily invested in the project, much more so than the typical user. Wesnoth is a pretty unique project -- figuring out what it is, who the devs are, and how to best communicate with them takes work. It's easy to understand that someone who isn't invested is more likely to just show up and shoot their mouth off, this being the internet and all.

But as I said before, there are definitely users who are quite heavily invested in the project whether or not they have a fancy colored name tag, and I think these people and their views are certainly respected by the devs, at least as far as I can tell.



Edit: My view (unsolicited) about the other thread being locked.

The forum has strengths and weaknesses. But its clear that discussing "sensitive" topics is not one of its strengths. As a consequence of this it is necessary to have several "private" forum sections e.g. for artists who don't want their work publicly criticized, for moderators discussing secret moderator business, etc.

The previous thread featured several somewhat insensitive posts, and frankly wasn't very productive. More productive discussions were had elsewhere, and eventually a consensus was more or less reached (I guess this is debatable, but shadowm said he felt as much). In those circumstances it was entirely reasonable for shadowm to lock it, even if it wasn't a full on flame war -- I don't think that it was, nor did anyone actually say they thought it was, as far as I can tell. I don't think locking it was meant implicitly as a criticism of the participants or anything like that.

[pyrophorus]

You could have made it shorter: "Except some few trolls, everyone in Wesnoth is fantastic, as Wesnoth itself..."
Freshly promoted people most often have this point of view.

Friendly,

[Wintermute]

There is a larger segment of developers who read or at least scan the forums than who post meaningfully in them. The forums are still a fair way for users to get noticed and a thread that gains traction will surely be noticed my some developers who will point it out to other devs who they think would be interested. One reason that developers are often using IRC or the mailing list for debate is that they are using the better medium for talking to their target audience. Most of the time, they are trying to communicate with other developers about something. Sometimes those conversations are very interesting and sometimes they are very arcane and require a lot of knowledge about certain issues to usefully contribute to the debate. I think the point I am going for here can be illustrated by reading through the IRC logs. You may get an idea about what a conversation in a space assumed to have "any user" sounds like ( #wesnoth), answering questions and so forth, and what it sounds like when developers talk to each other (in #wesnoth-dev). The general forums are often NOT a good place for the latter kind of conversation because even while the majority of users may read such posts and even contribute meaningfully it only takes a handful (E.G. one) person to derail a forum topic and cause massive waste of time and interest. This is different than what happens on IRC because forum topics then sit there dormant for years only to be brought back again (often after the issue has changed or is no longer even relevant) and the same people who may have posted thoughtful comments before don't really feel like another go-round when they have already made their point or are working on entirely different projects. In addition, if you start a forum thread you feel some obligation to maintain it, even when it goes off topic or becomes irrelevant. If you stop posting in it then suddenly it perpetuates the image that the devs aren't reading the forums, when in fact there may be any number of reasons for not posting something. I don't like to issue ultimatums ("I'm not posting in this thread anymore") but sometimes you just have to walk away for a bit. I can say there have been times when I have been physically enraged by something that happened on the forums (usually it's someone who wants to argue every single point while you feel they are not actually addressing the main issue), and it's important to step back and gain perspective.

On the other hand, the forums are a *great* place to get feedback from a wide range of users. I have been very grateful to the forum regulars and occasional posters who chime in with feedback or otherwise participate (test stuff, create stuff etc.) as a result of forum threads. Keep in mind also that some developers have been doing this for more than a decade. For my own part, there are things I would readily take to the forums and ask for feedback and help on, and other things I would never consider posting in the forums because other media exist to more directly get the job done. In general though I think the Wesnoth forums are great and quite well run and populated. The key thing to remember for users posting ideas has been mentioned above: requests for change are all about how you frame it and present it. Change takes time! Be nice and nice people will want to help you - or at least listen to you.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Ok, so you post a sprite of a new unit which looks like a nazi stormtrooper or something potentially controvertial... someone posts some silly comment which offends someone else and a flamewar ensues: what to do?

post something to the effect of "Hey guys, I opened this thread to get feedback on my sprite, not to discuss ethical issues pertaining to the holocaust" the mods will sort people out if the flamewar continues.

You post a sprite and some details about your new era for example, let's just say you say stuff about slavery... someone takes exception to what you have said and there is a flamewar which prevents people from giving feedback: what to do?

open a new thread on off topic to "discuss" what you said, say that this is to keep the feedback line open, post nothing and let hot-headed people flame you, don't bother to read the thread and keep on with what you're doing. People will get tired of the one-sided discussion and/or mods will lock the thread.

Things work both ways.

[TheCripple]

Since "flaming" is a phenomenon of online conversation and internet forums in general,
the question is surely : Are the BfW-forums a perfect medium for flame-wars ?

It's a name that's largely restricted to online conversation - the actual phenomenon is plenty common offline. Interactions between serious sports fans of different teams come to mind here - the contents of their discussions are no more important than what you'd find on the typical video game forum, and they can get just as hostile.