The thing about gaming sites is that they attract a much younger segment of people compared to a lot of other forums. I'd say that probably 3/4th of the members over there at Gamefaqs are in their teens, so naturally you get that adolescent testosterone kicking in and every body has to be Dirty Harry with a keyboard. We, on the other hand, and sites like Digital Press and Atari Age tend to attract an older variety of gamer, so we're relatively free from a lot of the BS that goes on at other sites.
That's not to say that all younger gamers are dicks and that all older gamers are awesome and polite, but generally the older the crowd, the less the BS in my experience. At least on video game sites, anyway.
Moderation also has a lot to do with whether I want to be a part of a website, too. If the moderators are all pricks that try to walk around being internet tough guys and generally try to run the show, usually that guarantees that you're going to have people calling them out on their assholishness and basically leads to a bitter, hostile environment. Case in point; I was a member of the worlds first, and largest motor oil forum. I joined in 2002, the year it was founded, so six years and eight thousand posts later I, a founding member, get banned for telling a moderator to stop acting like he's John Wayne every time someone asks him a question. That's it, no more and no less. All my posts deleted, and my account was as though I never existed. And the environment there was stifled and hostile, as the moderators really did everything they could to exert their will on the populace. That's a prime example of too MUCH moderation.
On the other hand, there is another forum that I was a part of that had almost zero moderation. The reason I left was because out of nowhere we have neo nazi skinheads going to war with Marxist communists over who hates America the worst, and exactly just how evil or useless Jews and blacks are, etc. There is no way I would allow that type of shit to start up here, much less let it go on for months and years. The mods there are ultra liberal "freedom of speech" tools that don't want to censor anyone or anything, and there's just no excuse for that level of laxness. Especially when it's not even a politically themed forum, but a freaking tobacco website! That's a great example of too LITTLE moderation.
Gamefaqs is a good example of a site that alternates from one extreme to another. The mods are quick to put an end to some shenanigans, but when it comes to petty arguments and personal attacks, they pretty much let it go on until it explodes. A lot of the time, it's the moderators themselves that are engaging in pompous bickering, so how are you to call out childish behavior when it's one of the guys that could have you banned or otherwise make your day pretty miserable if you're trying to be a worthwhile contributor?
I just don't want this site to ever deteriorate to that sort of hostile environment. It's inevitable (in my eyes, anyway) that we will one day become as big as Digital Press or Atari Age, and with that type of traffic it's pretty much impossible to monitor everything, but I'd like to keep everything here as friendly as possible without being a douchebag. With the members/mods/admin we have, I think it will be pretty easy to maintain a warm atmosphere of camaraderie.
Put it this way, I'd like to see ZAP! surpass GameFAQS in popularity but I don't want the boards to look like we share the same membership.
). It's like we're getting old and mellow or something (cranks up death metal)
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