Obviously nobody has educated you to read and write.

Pro-tip, if you're going to berate someone at least make sure your grammar is up to standard.

I didn't mean anything negative by it. It just seems an apt word to describe them. Especially the one about the space heater :D

Yeah I know.

I just wanted to tell everyone I like his threads. :P

I also like Sour Skittles, but I'll save that for another thread on another day.

i can bet a few coins that no matter what, the same people will still find a way out and keep abusing the system
the others who were always victims will not only keep being annoyed by perpetrators BUT it's also those same victims that will be picked up by GOG moderation as well

so now the greatest danger for peaceful regular forum users is from gog itself, and there shall go our defiance (because we already know and are used to the others, sadly)

One thing to consider: The reply, if on a public forum, isn't *just* for the person who posted the ignorant statements; it's also for the bystanders who are reading the thread, some of whom might be easier to convince, or who might be more willing to learn.

That unfortunately means: If self moderation worked exactly conversely as it does now, it would be super useful. If we ever get to that point, I'm writing you a sonnet. :)

Your assessment of the present situation is of course highly accurate. Some frankly wonderful people on this forum have given up any kind of resistance and have accepted a background radiation of xenophobic hate as something you have to ignore to make it go away. That's "letting off the hook" in a way, and they're mistaken to think that this could ever have a positive effect.

And some frankly less wonderful people, in trying to further some political goal of theirs, simply accept far more extreme and aggressive positions of some even less wonderful people. They're teaming up with extremists to attack forum members without really associating with the much more hateful member. And that's just pitiful.

It's true. And it's a double edged sword, as "playing for the public" is a strong factor in the empty nature of forum dialogues. It's an element that encourages purely rethorical effects (denials, diversions, playing dumb, etc) at the expense of reflexivity. Again, partly because of tl;dr and partly because of pre-defined sides, forums don't function much differently than tv debates, favouring theatrality, reductionism and preconceptions confirmation. It's more of a circus game than philosophical dialogue.

The readers are diverse. We can't know the proportion of intellectually curious readers and pure cheerleaders (sometimes picking up cool sounding retorts to re-use elsewhere). Speculation on these proportions on a gaming forum comes to pessimism and optimism...

Racist, misogynist, alt-right and nazi views exist here and are unfortunately very frequently expressed on this forum.

To my knowledge, one of the people who expressed literally nazist views in almost all of his posts was banned from this forum just a short while ago; another seems to have stopped posting. An unashamed homophobic troll has been made to leave as well I think; and someone who frequently expressed views that bordered on pedophily has left when the gamergate thread was closed, which was naturally home to deeply troubling homophobic, transphobic and misogynist views.

So excuse me if I don't exactly feel as if I misapplied certain derogatory labels, making civilized discussion impossible in the process. The civilised discussion was made impossible by those views, and this is still going on as we speak. Pointing them out is a fairly helpful thing, however offensive you may find that.

I'm all with Telika concerning facilitating constructive discussion. We're e.g. facing hostility towards informed and intellectual discourse. We're seeing a theatre of age old cheerleading performances instead of progress on the basis of knowledge and compassion.

That's kind of the question / problem were those discussion made impossible by those "views" or were those "views" made more prevalent and more visible than they should have been simply because some have taken a great care to make any attempt of civilized discussion impossible by broadly mislabeling anybody whose view of the world wasn't 100% aligned with their own.

Yes there was/are trolls posting on the forum and yes there was/are unacceptable (i.e. in the legal sense) things posted here, but IMO a lot of the toxicity of this forum, I am tempted to say the majority, also come from some peoples oversized sense of self-righteousness. It was in the long run a lot more harmful than the minority of trolls.

If peoples were able to discus even with those they strongly disagree with without being condescending and / or throwing label left and right it would go a long way promoting constructive discussions here (if not constructive at least "civilized" ones).

When the other person's view is along the lines of "you don't have the right to exist", I don't think civilized discussion can really work anymore. This isn't a case of "strongly disagree"; this is a case of one's existence and identity being threatened.

@fables Do you find this sort of post acceptable? I don't! Treat this as a report.

I feel that some people have taken your recent action as affirming their "side" and to the detriment of those who disagree. At least 5 individuals who are lauding your actions have played a significant role in the destruction of civility on this forum.

The first is Vain, who continues to spread his hate. In this very thread, post 51 talking about "xenophobic hate mongers" "spreading their toxic waste"; repeated again in post 158 "xenophobic hate". As well as the above "simplifications" of individual's positions on matters.

When the truth is that the vast majority of the people Vain complains about have valid concerns and discussion and Vain uses ad hominem attacks in lieu of actual arguments.

It is not "xenophobia" for someone to believe European countries are letting in too many immigrants for their own good.

It is not "misogyny" to publicly disagree with a certain cultural critic over her cherry-picked condemnation of her perceived sexism or racism in video games.

It is not "alt right" to support some positions of the President of the United States who was fairly elected by a representative majority.

And none of these positions makes one a "nazi" either....

Additionally, you have Dtgreene and Telika who call anyone who disagrees with anything they say racist or transphobic or TinyE and Breja who will derail any thread they don't like while insulting those involved in the thread.

It is not "transphobic" to question whether being lesbian, gay or transgender truly form at birth. Nor is it "transphobic" to point out the significant inadequacies of certain studies claiming this to be true.

If you want this to stop, you need to set an example that shows no favoritism to certain so-called "leftist" viewpoints when they are discussed in an equally toxic manner.