Maybe a little confusion here (DBO)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, January 23, 2018, 11:58 (2293 days ago) @ Claude Errera

If Claude agreed to it, then it's whatever, because it's his forum (though from the way he worded it, I don't get the feeling that he had the final say). But I say it's discouraging, and will just make folks think twice about starting their own threads if they're not here to sing songs about Bungie.

I'm not sure what you mean when you suggest I didn't have the final say; I'm not sure there WAS a final say. Xenos told me about the idea, and asked if it would be an okay thing to try out. I said I thought it was a good idea. Does that mean I had the final say? I guess, maybe. (But as I was trying, badly, to explain to Speed last night, when someone is set up as an admin here, they have admin privs. That doesn't mean they get to do what they want as long as I agree - it means they get to do what they think is right. I think it's a (small) credit to my judgement skills that they ARE asking before they set it up... but they didn't have to. If I'd said "I don't think it's a very good idea", they could have said "okay, thanks for the feedback, we're gonna try it anyway" - and I would have been okay with that.)

Yeah, that's the vibe that I was getting, which you're confirming (huh, guess #Xenoswaswrong yet again). I felt that it was obviously run by you, but that the implementation was not specifically at your behest, but was made by someone who felt that he knew better. And that's fine, I suppose. Just gotta make sure that certain folks don't start abusing that (which, when it comes to something like 'criticism', this thread has shown that many people have different levels of interpretation for it).
Like we were discussing last night, some folks tend to jump the gun rather than addressing the problem or talking with others. The B.org community has always done a fine job of managing itself and shooing away the Spiders who would build cobwebs of toxicity.
It's worked out well for nearly two decades, I think.

I have received a surprising number of emails this morning from people I haven't talked to in quite a long time - a decade and a half, in one case. To a person, they wanted to reach out and offer spots on raid teams, time for nightfall runs, just screwing-around-in-destiny time. They're people I didn't even know were still playing Bungie games - and every single one of them is unhappy with the tenor of this place, which is why they aren't here.

I would say that the onus is definitely on the community to make the place more welcoming and friendly. As others have noted, people around here don't really engage as much as they did when Halo was good, and that's a bummer. Whether it has to do with Destiny itself, Bungie and their issues, or the people around here, everyone has their reasons. It just surprises me how many people complain about people complaining, without contributing any of the nice things that they want. That's a factor that drives people away as well, I'd wager.
I want to see more from those people.

I'd love to bring some of those people back into the fold. You might think this will stifle 'free expression', or 'honest debate'... but I think it might turn this place back into what it was started as - a home for people who loved Bungie and their games.

I mean, they'd have to go out of their way to register, find, and disable the "Criticism" topic (and be aware of that as an option in the first place), otherwise the forum will appear the same as it was before the change. Again, if nobody bothers to contribute positive things, then nothing is really changing for the better, is it?

Please never forget that we're not talking about health care, or taxes, or climate change - we're talking about video games. We're talking about something that's supposed to be an escape, a fun diversion. And if all the conversation is negative... then it's not that. (And don't for a MINUTE think that you're being 'constructive' and helping Bungie know what's wrong with what they're doing. You're not - they hear all that negativity, and more, in other, more relevant places. They don't come here to check the community barometer, that's for sure.)

And the folks around here tend to pretentiously turn up their nose at those other places, so you can understand why the same complaints are made here as well. But yeah, video games are supposed to be about fun, and getting your time and money's worth out of the product that you bought (two areas where Bungie has clearly stumbled for a passionate segment of the community). Sometimes being a part of a community helps both of those things, and sometimes it's just an outlet for people to express their own creativity or thoughts. All good things, which is why I don't like that some people are given the power to hide the thoughts that some have from others, just because they don't want to hear anything that doesn't conform to the way they want to think.

Which is what this does.
But yeah, I too want this community to reach its potential, and I do want it to be welcoming, so I want the people who complain about the negativity to make it so, without trying to tuck any differing opinions away in a hide-able corner of the forum. That just makes it discouraging for the people who are actually engaging and bothering to be active members of the community, since they will have to be wary of the admin looming over posts, looking for criticism.