This forum has gone downhill since I started posting on it almost two years ago. A "blame the victim" mentality has always been common among the GM team and PS staff, but lately I've seen a lot of people get away with posting things that I would personally suspend their posting privileges for. Here's a good example:
Why isn't this in the complaint department with all the other useless whining amongst the useful criticisms? As for the gist of the thread it appears there is more than enough blame to go for all the participants.
This was posted to a thread where everyone was being polite, constructive, on topic, and helpful. The post added nothing to the discussion. It insulted everyone participating in the discussion as a "useless whiner". It ignored the facts and gave blame to the blameless for the sole purpose of causing trouble.
Not only was this post left untouched, but the complaints about that post were deleted!
I've visited a lot of forums in my time. Some of those forums were almost completely unmoderated, but those forums didn't have nearly as many problem posters as this forum does. Other forums were moderated by fascism, where one poorly written post could get your account banned. Moderators would even edit posts to insult the problem posters. An example:
the new duel system sucks ur all idiots
Would be editted to say:
I don't know how to do a search.
That kind of thing gets people behaving themselves in a hurry.
In summary:
Planeshift, you're losing your forum just as you're
losing your game. The moderators are very well intentioned but unfortunately ineffective at stopping problem posters from doing their thing. A moderator like AendarCallenlasse might not make friends, but he gets stuff done and he keeps the forums clean. And why would you want to be friends with trolls? They eat innocent goats.
As a sidenote:
Yes, I'm one of those problem posters at times, and that's proof that things need to change around here! I post what's on my mind because I i. Have no investment in the planeshift community and ii. Have no official relationship with the Planeshift project. I can turn my behaviour on and off like a lightbulb, and if you're in a fight with me (especially on IRC), it's probably because I'm playing with you. But don't ignore the problem just because you dislike me personally and I happen to be the one speaking up about it. If you do, then that makes you a fool.