Bad Attitudes

[Maya]

I've noticed, as have a few other users that some members are there just to make sarcastic, nastly comments, on some posts, as if looking down upon other members, or just for the 'thanks' and appreciation of other members 'of their ranking'
I don't want to be afraid of voicing my opinion, or getting things wrong, but when you can guarantee that some users will post nasty and intimidating comments in reply, you do consider to not even bother posting.
Instead of posting inside jokes, or comments, explain what the user may of misunderstood. Instead of patronizing them, explain.
I've been here since the start, and have always felt welcome, and its only really came to me recently to post this.
I don't want to offend anyone by posting this, as I said, I shouldn't be afraid to give my opinion.

 

[LiamC]

As much as it pains me to say, I have to agree with this. I find it quite intimidating sometimes, so to a much younger member seeing these types of replies it must be awful. It seems to be a prevalent issue at times, in the off topic forums most, and it's come to a point that I've decided to "hide" the off topic forums from my homepage.

 

[Poisson]

Me and another forum user teamed up a few weeks ago and PM'd the mods about behaviour like this. It is the worst I have known it......

 

[Sam]

Obviously, bullying and stuff isn't acceptable.

But the topic you started recently, about Bulgarians and Romanians soon being allowed into the country. Well, the entire premise of the topic was incorrect. That's probably why there was so much negative reaction in that topic. It would have taken a minimum of two minutes research before you created it to work that out.

I think people just get annoyed when other people don't put the effort into their posts and topics that they do. I'm not asking you to read a couple of books on a subject, but just to do a little bit of research before starting a topic on it.

 

[DiogoJ42]

Disclaimer: This is a differing opinion, not a personal attack. Know the difference.


I have witnessed countless examples of friends ribbing eachother in jest. Even heated exchanges of views. Yes, occasionally there are full on arguments between members. But nothing that comes close to "bullying". (In my day bullying meant getting beaten up, not reading a nasty word on a screen...)

TST is the most friendly and relaxed forum I have known in.... ohhh, 16 odd years of internetting... even more so than TTF was.
To say otherwise implies a very limited experience of online life. If you think this forum is bad, then I strongly suggest you never visit a certain well known American coaster forum.

I once found a forum for Nerf gun modding, that had a policy of instantly banning anyone who asked for help with a project, even if they were new and didn't know of this insane rule. It seems they only wanted to show off, not help others.
Many forums get militant about not bumping threads older than a week, whereas we have the much more sensible policy of not having multiple threads on the same subject.

So many internet forums are rude and unwelcoming, but this is not one of them.


As for being afraid to voice an opinion... well, most of the time I know that whatever I say will be shot down by certain members as "you're only saying that because you are a miserable old ****". But I still post it anyway because that's how I feel about the matter. I'm not going to lie about my opinions just to "fit in", and neither should anyone else. Never be afraid to speak your mind because of what others may think. So what if they don't agree with you? That's their problem!

 

[Ben]

I will post a proper reply later on, but as ever the golden rule is: press the report button if you see a post you dont like.

You will always get a response and we will look at the situation.

 

[Ben]

And here is said proper response.

I'll try and look at this subjectively.

Initially Im quite sad to see people find our community an unfriendly one - as a team we work really hard to make it nice, so its never nice to see people dont enjoy the experience. Ive just had a quick plow through several topics in several areas and didn't see anything that alarmed me.
But while we are a really solid team we can't be everywhere at once, so as part of wanting members to join in with our 'community' ethos we actively encourage members to press the report button if you see a post you dont like.

When you report a post, it appears to ALL team members logged in until one of us deals with it. When we do, it gets logged and what action we took also gets logged.

Sometimes we might disagree with your point, but we will always explain why we do and reply. We are usually pretty hot time wise for replying to reports too.

We also don't publicise when we take actions against members, such as warnings, restricted posting etc - because its between the team and that member, so if you dont see an immediate action it doesnt mean we havent done anything!

After my quick browse and its naming in here I did look into Mayas topic in Corner Coffee and perhaps the responses werent what Maya was after, but in my eyes as the discussion initially was flawed it was never going to go anywhere.
We do keep getting small gripes from people specifically relating to topics in Corner Coffee - and its really hard for us to manage.
We are not a political discussion forum or similar, we are primarily here for Alton Towers and theme parks - so at times its not suitable for a team member to wade into a discussion (especially some of the heated ones) when the members in there know so much more on the topic than we do.

Its a hard situation, do we remove all potentially heated discussion and solely stick with safe topics? I suppose we could but many members like them and as ever we dont really like to decree what can and cannot be spoken about.

We are open to suggestions on how to deal with it though.

But for now all I can re-iterate is use the report button. We do stuff when you do.

Ben

 

[Prometheus]

Love that post Diogo <3 Yep, there are some pretty harsh forums out there.

I don't think anybody on here has a bad attitude personally. It's almost like pub banter and nothing like normal forum talk between members here (that's because so many members are friends in real life IMO.)

I will say though as a newbie, it can be daunting on here lol, that's because of the feeling of a very tightly knit community and unless you have balls of steel like TheMan it's difficult to know were to start and really get to grips with the conversations lol!

I think that apart from that slightly daunting feel, this forum is much nicer and friendlier than many many others. ;D


Edit: Just to say that the 'daunting' thing isn't in any way a criticism, I'm sure attending a meet would obliterate any of the feelings I mention right away.

 

[Fredward]

The forum is close knit, its friendly and appears hostile to outsiders because we do know each other. The only issues I've had aren't attacks or bullying but single peoples posting styles, those selected few do get on my nerves on occasion. But you have to learn to live with it, its the way they post.

This posting style will put off people joining in, (and that's not just new people or people who don't go on meets, since many people who are meet regulars have also expressed these concerns) which has been discussed countless times before. Its the way a minority posts. Put them on the ignore list if it'll help, which this forum REALLY needs to make more obvious and easy to use.

 

[WillG]

To say otherwise implies a very limited experience of online life. If you think this forum is bad, then I strongly suggest you never visit a certain well known American coaster forum.
...
So many internet forums are rude and unwelcoming, but this is not one of them.

I was just about to post precisely the same thing - compared to... certain other forums I've seen in the past, this is a VERY cotton-wool clad site, and somewhere where the majority of members heavily sugarcoat their differing opinions. This isn't a bad thing - it makes a very refreshing change, as does how welcoming this place is to a new member compared to other forums that seem to actively discourage fresh blood! Every time someone on here has disagreed with me (and I've posted some fairly controversial views in my first month on the site), they've practically apologised for doing so, even if it's the whole point of the conversation.

In turn, I doubt I've offended anyone, but know that my putdowns are meant in good humour 95% of the time, and if not, you'll probably know about it Equally, it's nice not to feel overly censored or restricted - it'd be a pretty poor discussion forum if potentially controversial topics were prevented altogether purely due to a risk of offense or disagreement - as I've said before, unless the topic is 'bacon', it's very dull when everyone agrees. Granted, I've only been around a few weeks, but I've not noticed the problem.

 

[Novas]

I think the exact opposite to the OP I'm afraid. A week or so ago I posted some positive feedback about how welcoming I'd found the place, and I still stand by those comments.

I have seen the odd out of context swearing and personal attacks etc, but every forum has this. What matters is how such instances are dealt with and I find the community to be well moderated with most such posts rarely surviving for more than a couple of hours.

I’ve not read the thread on immigration. Why? Not because it doesn’t interest me, and not because I don’t have an opinion, but because this is the freaking internet! It wouldn’t matter if that thread was posted on the My Little Pony forum it would end in nothing more than a load of poorly informed opinions in turn leading to personal attacks.

 

[Sam]

People get irritated by posts where someone has clearly made no effort in making it (either spelling, or basic research, or something else), that's all it is.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2

 

[Fredward]

Can I have sources for that claim Sam? Come on facts, figures, how are we supposed to have a good argument/discussion if claims like that are just made with no evidence behind it.

 

[Poisson]

I would say opinions on here are not sugarcoated, but merely expressed in a way in which you want to read them. A debate rather than an arguement if you will.

If the person is having an opinion facts are NOT strictly needed, but should be correct when used. I have been known to post again when facts I have used have been higlighted as incorrect to retract my claims on the grounds of being factually incorrect. However I was adding facts to support my views, not because they are required. Look around the forum and there is some fantastic pieces without facts....this is because facts are not mandatory when one is giving an opinion.

This post afterall is my opinion and view of things

There really is that many mistakes in my posts?! Damn this Tapatalk milarky!

 

[EuroSatch]

Sorry, but when posts - such as the one in question - include such intolerant and unsubstantiated views, then they will be met with intolerance. That goes for if the same post was made on other social networks or in the flesh.

 

[Tim]

Sorry, but when posts - such as the one in question - include such intolerant and unsubstantiated views, then they will be met with intolerance. That goes for if the same post was made on other social networks or in the flesh.

Now I haven't read the post in question but this to me feels like part of the problem. I see no reason from one post alone to drop all niceties, online or face to face.

Maybe the person is just ill-informed, maybe they posted something in a moment of annoyance. If it happens that one of these are the case (and you can't know they aren’t until the op has shown no signs of budging from that view) then it's just nasty to trash someone’s opinion before they've had chance to reflect on it.

I think this is the main problem with these so called debate topics. Someone says something, someone else disagrees in a very blunt and sometimes hostile way then each person ends up taking sides in a defensive manor rather than proper debating.

The best debates I've had have always been when people play nice.

 

[Dave]

I sometimes find posters can be rude, especially in debating topics, but compared to some forums it's a much more chilled atmosphere. Every time this sort of topic has come up (here and back on TT) my response has always been report the post so we can check.

We have a decent sized team but everyone on that team works full time or is on full time education so we practically have 1 full time equivalent observer on the forum. We can't check every post so it's essential people use the report button. However disagreements will occur in debating topics, It's the nature of the beast and the only solution is to not have those topics on here.

 

[Tim]

The odd thing is this forum tends to be so nice and pleasant that when arguments occur they really stand out.

I'd also like to echo the Team by advising everyone to use the report button. Just writing in a thread about something the mods should do (like the very common "delete this post please") in no way guaranties they'll see it, but whenever it's flagged I've found someone's normally been on the scene in mere minutes

 

[TheMan]

Sorry, but when posts - such as the one in question - include such intolerant and unsubstantiated views, then they will be met with intolerance. That goes for if the same post was made on other social networks or in the flesh.

Now I haven't read the post in question but this to me feels like part of the problem. I see no reason from one post alone to drop all niceties, online or face to face.

Maybe the person is just ill-informed, maybe they posted something in a moment of annoyance.

Maybe the person is young, has not formed proper opinions as is correct for their age, and is seeking out views from others for which those older and with more knowledge, could in fact, share those politely without resulting to default daily mail comments.

I posted in the actual thread, since then a couple of other posts suggesting similar things have cropped up.

This is something that the community need to take responsibility for, not just the mods, as often the offending posts do not break any rules. I would not welcome tighter rules, I welcome a more inclusive, understanding, and balanced forum.

I will say though as a newbie, it can be daunting on here lol, that's because of the feeling of a very tightly knit community and unless you have balls of steel like TheMan it's difficult to know were to start and really get to grips with the conversations lol!

Now I have finished absolutely piddling myself laughing at that ;D I have to admit it can be daunting on here, I found it hugely so, especially as I wanted to get stuck in, and involved in as much as possible. I have a tendency to grab a chair, sit down, and make myself at home (unless in your house, then I far more reserved lol!). I think the thing with me though, is the more difficult something can get, the more pig headed determined I am to make it work.

The familiarity here, can lead to it feeling difficult to enter the groups dynamic if you are anything less than confident, there are years old in-jokes, and much more. That is not a criticism of the forum itself as it is based around a core long standing membership, without which, this place would not be here.

However, having met a big bunch of this rabble at the meeting, and bar some people initially approaching with the tentativeness of a gazelle approaching a lion - most people realised I'm not too scary, and a fair few did their best to make me feel welcome, and I made a few strong friends.

This isn't so much a forum, as a community of people from all different backgrounds, it can take a bit of getting used to the curtness at times, even perhaps some mistrust - I just think there are times when for some whom this forum is like a comfy old pair of trousers, they might remember what it is like to be new, and be more willing to share opinions and knowledge openly and in ways that come across less condescending.

I always try (probably don't always succeed lol!) to welcome new members, even though I have only been here since October myself, and consider age appropriate responses to tough subjects.

That, as you grow wiser, is your responsibility - thus this is how I feel about this topic, those with wisdom of this community, experience, and many friends - may wish to take a step back occasionally, and recall their feelings upon joining a group of total strangers, especially who aren't short of an opinion or two, and are generally exceptionally intelligent.

Share it folks, educate, don't condescend.

And SOD OFF Ben, I can pull the "newbie" card out for this conversation hahaha!!

In short though? If these people really were idiots with real bad attitudes, there is absolutely no way I'd be here talking and posting so much (ask my most recent business partner). Things just don't always translate so well in text. Give some thought to what you are saying and how it comes across if the other person has absolutely no clue what context you are talking in.

I always try to remind myself of that too... even though I may not always get that quite right *ahem*

:twirly:

 

[Ben]

And SOD OFF Ben, I can pull the "newbie" card out for this conversation hahaha!!

In short though? If these people really were idiots with real bad attitudes, there is absolutely no way I'd be here talking and posting so much

OI! You've been here for ages now, you're about as new as Corkscrew!

All of us have gone through the stage of being new to the forum, when I joined some 8/9 years ago it was much harder to get in and get noticed.
At the time meets were often organised via text between just a few people and it certainly wasnt open and welcoming as it is now - there were lots of 'cliques' then, as in just handful of people that seemed to be in control and that was it.

So it does make me smile abit when people say we arent nice, lord knows we've come along way from the dark ages!